While most people link chocolate with Easter one Brighton woman preferred to use the sweet stuff to poison her victims.

Christiana Edmunds, who became notorious in Brighton in the late 1800s, used to feed chocolate laced with strychnine, a rat poison, to people she did not like.

Her crimes stretched to poisoning a four-year-old boy in 1871, leading to a life prison term at Broadmoor. Now her story is being depicted in The London Dungeon, where actress Hannah Cole portrays the villainess as part of an Easter performance.

Miss Cole, 25, told The Argus: “She’s just a lovely crazy character to play. It’s a really good opportunity and a nice role. It’s scary fun, quite sinister and quite evil.”

Christiana Edmunds lived almost opposite the surgery of Dr Beard, a married man but not averse to a secret flirtation.

She fell in love with him and one day visited his wife with a gift of chocolates. The next day Mrs Beard fell ill but recovered.

Miss Cole said: “It’s a perfect little love story really – she loved someone but he didn’t love her back so she tried to kill his wife.

“She used to get the rat poison from a dentist to kill stray cats and it went from there.”

Christiana embarked on a career of buying chocolates, lacing them with poison and returning them to the unwary confectioner who then sold them to the unsuspecting public.

In June 1871, four-year-old Sidney Albert Barker died after eating a chocolate, though the coroner ruled accidental death.

Soon after, Christiana sent chocolate parcels to prominent people in Brighton but was eventually found out and arrested.

She was charged with the attempted murder of Mrs Beard and tried for the murder of the boy in January 1872.

She was found guilty and sentenced to death though her sentence was reduced to life imprisonment after a plea of insanity.

Miss Cole, who lives in South East London, added: “Because of the mental health side of it, I think it’s really important to know the history.”

Christiana spent the rest of her life in Broadmoor Prison for the criminally insane, where she died, unrepentant, in 1907.

Miss Cole added: “It’s a different twist on an Easter show – I just hope people don’t get put off their own chocolates.”

Death By Chocolate runs at The London Dungeon until April 12.

Visit thedungeons.com/london

The local links

Christiana Edmunds lived with her widowed elderly mother at 16 Gloucester Place, Brighton, which no longer exists.

Almost opposite in Grand Parade was the surgery of Dr Beard, now beneath the University of Brighton.

She bought her poison from a chemist and dentist in Queen’s Road, Brighton, and returned her chocolates to JG Maynards, a confectioner in West Street, Brighton. The boy’s inquest was held by a coroner in Ship Street, where the verdict of accidental death was reached.