Samuel Atherley was a former soldier who murdered his girlfriend, Mrs Matilda Lambert and her three children John, Annie, and Samuel, by cutting their throats at their home at Arnold, Nottingham, on 10 July.

He had lived with the woman for seven years and killed her after she told him to leave. He struck her over the head with a hammer before he took out the razor.

After he had cut their throats, he turned the razor on himself but survived after being treated in hospital.

He was hanged by Henry Pierrepoint and Thomas Pierrepoint in Nottingham on the 14 December 1909.  He was thirty years old at the time of his execution.