Catherine Hayes, a servant girl, marries badly, poisons her way through it and is burnt at Tyburn - and Thackeray, sickened by novels that made criminals romantic, wrote her deliberately repellent to spoil the taste. Born in Calcutta and sent home at five, he lost his orphan's fortune at cards and by then was writing for money; this 1839 serial is his attack on the Newgate novel, and his contempt keeps slipping into something like pity.