Original subtitles

Murder's the darkest and most despicable crime of all. And yet, we're attracted

to it.

Grizzly crimes like these would appall us if we encountered them in real life.

But something happens when they're turned into stories and safely placed

the covers of a book.

If you think about people's reaction to notorious killers like Dr. Crippen...

Or to great detectives like Sherlock Holmes or Poirot, you'll see that this

preoccupation with murder has a very long history.

In this series, I'll trace its origins back to the sprawling London of the

19th century, when newspapers first began to delight in reporting murder to

frightened public.

An appetite for sensation developed as Britain became more literate and working

-class people were starting to be able to read.

I'll show how all this had a huge influence on Charles Dickens, who turned

murder and its detection into a suitable subject for literature, and how the

detective writers who followed, from Conan Doyle...

To Agatha Christie, distance murder from sordid reality.

They turned it into an elegant kind of crossword puzzle involving the most

respectable of suspects.

In this first programme, I want to begin not with fiction, but with real -life

murder 200 years ago.

Grasmere in the Lake District.

In 1811, the writer Thomas de Quincy was renting a cottage from his friend, the

poet William Wordsworth, when something happened to shatter the tranquillity of

this lakeside village.

A young family had been murdered, not here, but 300 miles away in the

of London. Yet the news shocked Grasmere because this was something new.

the senseless and motiveless murder by a stranger of four people all at once.

In the preceding year, 1810, there had only been 15 convictions for murder in

the whole of Britain.

De Quincey was struck by the effects this crime had on the good people of

Grasmere.

One lady, my next -door neighbour, never rested until she had placed 18 doors.

each secured by ponderous bolts and bars and chains between her own bedroom and

any intruder of human build at every sixth step one was stopped by a thought

of portcullis but de quincey noticed something else

besides fear in the reaction to this murder there was an element of ghoulish

enjoyment too He felt that the British were turning into a nation of what he

called murder fanciers.

De Quincey began to define what made a good murder, breathlessly describing the

ultra -fiendishness of the crime and revelling in the murderer's tiger's

The murder that repulsed and gripped in equal measure took place in December

near the church of St George's in the East.

At 29, the Ratcliffe Highway, Whopping.

The family who lived here were terribly young.

Timothy Marr was a former sailor. He was just 25.

His wife, Celia, had recently given birth to their baby boy.

And they also had an apprentice, James, who was 14.

On the evening of the 7th of December, just before midnight, the Marr family

sent out their servant, Margaret Jewell, into the poorly lit neighbourhood to

buy oysters.

Not then a luxury, but a cheap and nutritious type of street food.

Her journey was fruitless. There were no oysters to be had at this late hour.

On her return, she found that she'd been locked out. Margaret banged on the

front door and called out for the mars to open up.

While Margaret the maid was waiting to be let in, she heard a sound inside the

house. She heard footsteps and the crying of the baby.

But nobody came to let her in.

She was still waiting outside at half past midnight when the night watchman

by. Their conversation and Margaret's banging woke up the next door neighbour,

pawnbroker, and it was he who eventually got access to the house by climbing

over the wall and coming in through the back door.

The Ma's next -door neighbour now started to search the house, and very

came across the body of James, the apprentice.

His head had been bashed in, so much so that his brains were splattered on the

ceiling. Then he found Mrs Ma, Celia. She was face down, crushed up against

front door. Then behind the shop counter, there was Mr Ma, also face

as dead as the rest of them.

A little crowd had gathered outside the front door. So the neighbour now went

running out. He shouted, murder, murder.

These people outside knew the Marr family and they had a question.

Where was the baby?

The baby was still in his cradle, but his throat had been slit.

Into this scene of slaughter came Constable Charles Horton from the nearby

Marine Police office at Wapping.

After searching the shop, Horton concluded that no money had been taken.

He then explored the rest of the house.

When he reached the bedroom, he discovered the murder weapon, a maul

against the chair. A maul is a special type of mallet that's used by ship's

carpenters. It was covered with blood.

The Mars shop and home was now turned into a morgue, and it was also open to

public. In the days following the murder, hundreds of people traipsed

look at the bloodstains, even to gawp at the bodies which were laid out upon the

beds.

All ranks in society came, from the finely dressed to the very poorest.

This sort of access to a crime scene would be utterly inconceivable today.

This parade of neighbours and strangers through the murder scene was motivated

by fear, by curiosity, and a feeling that they too should look for clues and

help to solve the crime.

Regency London, which was expanding rapidly, had no centralised police

Pleasing relied on night watchmen and constables paid for by local parishes.

Magistrates had to depend on witnesses willing to come forward with

The overcrowded streets of the East End teemed with foreign sailors.

Crime was rising, but people were more worried about disease, destitution or

than they were about being murdered.

But now locals began to fear every stranger in their midst.

Without the murderer being quickly apprehended, fear would soon turn to

To discover more about the problems faced by the authorities in a case like

killing of the Mars, I've come to meet Rosalind Crone at the Marine Police

Museum in Wapping, still located in its original 1811 building.

What have you got there in that big book?

Okay, well, this is what we call a register, a waterman's register, which

all the constables who were working for the Thames River Police or the Marine

Police in the early 19th century. So if we look down the ledger here, we can see

the name of Charles Horton. And he's the man who responds to the Mars murderer?

He is. He's sort of the first constable on the scene.

The Marine Police were employed specifically to protect the docks and

cargoes from light -fingered locals.

It was just by chance that their man Horton was near to the Mars shop.

He picked up the cutlass that men would have carried for protection.

Yes, that's right. And he would have had a little set of handcuffs.

Yes, that's right. I don't think they were expecting to capture too many

criminals. No, no, they found those quite easily. Straight on and on.

And they were only one of many. There were thousands of these small proto

-police forces across London, is that right?

Yes, it was. So what we've got to remember about the early 19th century is

dealing with kind of old policing structures as opposed to kind of police

which comes...

in about the late 1820s. So we have basically policing at the local level,

the parish level, with the employment of a small number of constables and then a

larger force of night watchmen. We've got to remember that these constables,

they're mainly kind of reactive.

They're not active.

They're not protective.

They're not meant to be.

And we're dealing with a murder here that was particularly horrendous.

And pretty much unheard of, you know, among the local community.

This is a really, really shocking act.

What did people think of the response of the authorities?

Lacking. They hadn't caught anyone yet. And it gave people a real kind of sense

of fear, but also a sense of anger because the authorities looked like they

weren't doing enough.

They hadn't caught the perpetrator. He was still out there at large and could

commit another crime.

The Mars neighbours in the East End showed an admirable sense of community

the face of their fear.

Seven days after the slaying of the Mars, thousands lined the streets to pay

their respects.

The funeral cortege made its way through Wapping to the parish church of St

George's in the East.

There was a terrible sense of outrage and shock after this crime.

The victims were killed in their own home by strangers. Nobody around here

safe. There was also a good deal of sympathy for this young, hard -working,

respectable family.

Only two months earlier, Mr and Mrs Mark had been at the church for the

christening of their sons.

Now all three of them were buried in a single grave.

Their tombstone has disappeared but their epitaph read, life is uncertain in

this world.

Though deep in mourning, the East End was chilled by the realisation that a

brutal murderer remained at large, and might strike again.

And then, only twelve days after the killing of the Mars, it seemed that the

same murderer visited Wapping a second time.

On the 19th of December, a very strange sight was seen outside the King's Arms

pub in New Gravel Lane.

The lodger, who lived on the top floor of the pub, started climbing out of the

window. He came down a rope that was made by his bedsheets. People passing by

the street stopped and stared at him, wondering what was going on.

It became clear when they heard what he was saying. He was shouting, murder,

murder.

A crowd soon gathered and forced its way in.

Inside they found the bodies of the publican John Williamson, his wife and

servant. Like the Mars, they'd been hacked and beaten to death.

That night there was pandemonium.

Fire bells were rung and drums were beaten in alarm.

Volunteers armed with cutlasses and pistols searched houses and boats moored

the Thames. Even London Bridge was closed.

The desperate magistrates now demanded that anyone at all suspicious be picked

up. Foreigners, vagrants, all the usual suspects.

Valuable time was wasted on false leads.

And people were starting to grow angry with the authorities who failed to

protect their community from what now looked like a serial killer.

But at last there was a breakthrough.

A sharp -eyed police constable noticed a clue on the murder weapon itself, not

before time, you might think. He spotted initials on the handle, JP.

And a woman came forward to say that she knew who JP was. It was John Peterson,

a sailor from Hamburg.

But it has to be said he had the perfect alibi. On the night of the killings,

he'd been away at sea.

Another lodger, a 27 -year -old seaman called John Williams, quickly became the

prime suspect for no other evidence than that he'd had access to the mall.

Williams was arrested and taken to Coldbar Fields Prison for questioning.

But two days after Christmas, the prison guards found his lifeless body hanging

from an iron bar in his cell.

Because John Williams had committed suicide, everybody instantly jumped to

conclusion that this was an admission of guilt.

He'd killed himself to cheat the hangman.

The police and the magistrates were delighted with this outcome.

They'd really needed to reassure Londoners that the killer was off the

and that the case had been solved.

At the same time, though, they'd been denied the proper trial and execution to

provide a sense of closure.

On New Year's Eve 1811, a cart bearing John Williams' body left the prison and

made its way through the streets of Wapping.

It was a very public display that the authorities had at last got their man.

Shops were shut and blinds were drawn.

There's little evidence that Williams really was guilty, but scapegoat or not,

his dead body was used to placate the people of Wapping.

When the procession reached the home of the Mars, it came to a halt.

The cart with the murderer's body was now directly outside their home.

He has the murder weapon, the bloodied maul, positioned by his head.

At this point, one of the members of the crowd leapt up onto the cart and they

twisted his body around so that he had to look at the home of his victims.

It was as if the crowd were forcing him to confront the consequences of his

actions.

This ritual of punishment ended here at the crossroads of Old Cannon and Cable

Street.

At the end of the procession, the crowd did find its voice.

There were groans and cheers and shouts as John Williams' body was lowered into

a shallow grave at the centre of the crossroads. And then a stake was

through his heart. This is traditionally what you did to a suicide, to stop his

or her ghost from wandering around.

But John Williams' skeleton did go wandering.

A couple of decades later, gas pipes were installed along here, and the

digging the hole discovered his bones.

His skull somehow ended up in the possession of the landlord of the Crown

Dolphin.

The horror in whopping reached all corners of the country through

one -sheet publications called broadsides. These sold in their hundreds

thousands.

And newspaper proprietors realised that sensational killings could boost

circulation enormously.

But fact and fiction became blurred.

By the time the Ratcliffe Highway story reached the Lake District, the murders

had taken on an almost mythic quality.

A process that did not go unnoticed by Grathmere's most curious resident,

de Quincey.

Thomas de Quincey was a complete oddball.

He was addicted to opium and spent a lot of his time in a sort of crazy,

creative dream.

He was an unconventional but rather brilliant writer.

Some people think the two things are connected.

When he was living here at Dove Cottage, he reproduced the best -known piece of

writing about the Radcliffe Highway killings.

Thomas de Quincey's essay on murder was basically a great big tease.

He was setting out to provoke all the newspaper readers who'd sucked up the

details of the real -life crimes and relished them.

De Quincey claims that there was this imaginary murder club for people who

things even further.

They were connoisseurs of crime, and they believed that murder ought to be

elevated into one of the fine arts.

This was all satirical, of course.

At their meetings, they talked about their favourite murderers, and top of

tree was John Williams, the most accomplished practitioner yet of this

Mr. Williams has exalted the ideal of murder to all of us. He has carried his

art to a point of colossal sublimity. All other murders look pale beside the

deep crimson of his.

Leave aside morality.

After the deed is done, why not enjoy a good murder?

De Quincey skewers this idea that we consume murder, that we judge them, that

like a good one with vulnerable characters and interesting developments.

But if a crime is dull and brutish, as he said, we damn it unanimously.

And this sense that we enjoy murder runs from De Quincey's time right until the

present day.

Twenty years after the murder in Wapping, another killing was turned into

the 19th century's most potent stories.

It would be mythologised and transformed into popular entertainment within weeks

of the murder itself.

This story played to the growing obsession with violent crime.

It would be acted out not in the turbulent East End, but in the sleepy

village of Polstead.

It was here, in 1827, that a crime took place that still resonates today.

Maria Martin and the Murder in the Red Barn.

Maria Martin was the daughter of the local mole catcher.

She lived on the edge of the village with her family and her illegitimate

In a much grander house at the centre of Polstead lived the man who would kill

her.

This is the much grander house lived in by William Cawdor. His father was a

prosperous and God -fearing yeoman farmer.

In some of the stories that later sprang up around this case, William Cawdor was

described as the squire of the village.

But this actually makes him sound straighter than he really was.

He did have criminal contacts in London. And when he'd been at school, his

friends had given him a nickname that reflected his sneaky ways.

They called him Foxy.

The third character in the story was the red barn itself, which stood in a field

just outside Polstead.

There's a very melodramatic explanation of the name of the red barn.

As the sun sets, the evening light is supposed to have turned the barn the

colour of blood, giving it the reputation amongst the locals as a place

So it was an ideal place for secret meetings between William Cawdor and his

lover. They weren't going to be observed.

Friday 18th May was the last time that anyone in Polstead saw Maria alive.

That night she had a secret rendezvous with William Cawdor under the cover of

darkness at the Red Barn.

She thought that they were planning to run off together.

For a whole year, as far as Maria's parents knew, she really had eloped.

William Corder even wrote to them saying, I have left her at Ipswich.

Maria couldn't write herself, he said, because she'd hurt her wrist.

In April 1828, Maria's stepmother began to have nightmares.

I have dreamt on three nights that she was murdered and buried in the Red Barn,

she said.

This apparent intervention by Providence in the form of Mariah's stepmother's

dream would become an important part of the story.

Her father now began a search and soon found Mariah's decomposing body in the

exact spot the dream predicted.

The prime suspect was, of course, William Corder.

He was arrested by the constables in Brentford, outside London, where he'd

up home with a new wife.

In the phenomenon de Quincey had identified, the sordid Red Barn murder

provided excellent raw material for entertainment.

And in the 1820s, the most theatrical way of telling the story of notorious

murders was melodrama.

This stylised form of theatre was performed here at the Old Vic in London,

had opened ten years before the events in Polstead.

The proper name of the theatre was the Royal Coburg, but because of all the

murder mysteries they put on here, everybody called it the Blood Tub.

Let's find out how that murder in Sleepy Suffolk got turned into a smash hit

melodrama.

Melodramas were a heady mix of music and acting. They had sensational plots,

with actors representing good and evil, all to a raucous musical accompaniment.

For a modern audience, they were rather like pantomime.

To learn how real -life murder was turned into this wildly popular form of

entertainment, I've come to meet the actor Michael Kirk.

So, Michael, what exactly is melodrama?

Melodrama, well, I suppose if we were describing melodrama nowadays, we would

probably describe it as over the top.

A story of great love, great passion, and they meant it. It was very,

very important.

The story of a melodrama is, if we don't do this, we die. It's that important.

And did the audience not mind the basic implausibility? Because we get

coincidences, we get people seeing things in dreams, we get ghosts.

I think they loved it because it was so popular.

And they wouldn't just sit there and watch. They would so much want to be

of the play.

They would expect to jeer the villain, cheer the young village maiden.

It would have been a bloodbath out there. I think it must have been every

for himself.

And I actually think, I don't think we ought to talk about it anymore.

I think we ought to get up there and give it a go.

So it's time for Curtain Up for Mariah Martin or The Murder in the Red Barn.

Jean III inside the Red Barn.

Corder discovered digging a grave.

Villain's music.

All is complete.

I now await my victim.

Will she come?

Oh, yes.

A woman is fool enough to do anything for the man she loves.

Hark! With her footsteps bounding across the field, she comes with love in her

heart, a song on her lips.

Little does she think that death is so near.

William Knott!

Fear? Where can he be?

What ails me? I feel fear in my heart. My limbs

tremble. I will return to my home.

Stay, Mariah.

William, I'm so glad that you are here. You don't know how frightened I've

been. Did anyone see you cut the field?

Not at all. I followed your instructions.

That's good.

Now, Maria, do you remember threatening to betray me about the child to

Constable Ayers?

It was but a girlish threat.

Tremolo fiddle.

But don't talk about that now. Come on, let's leave this place. Not yet, Maria.

Look what I have made here.

A grave!

William, what do you... To kill you. To bury your body there.

Or a clog upon my actions.

A chain that keeps me from reaching ambitious heights.

Bear me.

Oh, bear me. It is no use. My mind's resolved.

You die tonight.

Oh,

you wretch.

Who?

May this crime forever be accursed.

Thunder and lightning.

Back in real life, once William

Cawdor had been captured, his story continued.

He was brought back to Bury St Edmunds, the nearest Assize town to Polstead.

The trial began on the 7th of August, 1828, in the Shire Hall of Bury St

Edmunds. William Corder initially pleaded not guilty, but later on he did

confess. He claimed that he'd shot her in the eye by accident and that the gun

had gone off in his trembling hands.

The trial lasted just two days and the jury took only 35 minutes to reach their

decision.

Guilty. On the day of his hanging, a huge crowd gathered outside the jail in

hope of catching a glimpse of the villain.

It took William Corder a long time to die, around ten minutes, and that was

the hangman pulling down on his legs. As the newspapers said, he died hard.

His body was barely cold before the story of William Corder was featuring in

street ballads and alehouse songs.

At the Cock Inn in Polstead I'm meeting Vic Gammon to hear how the story of

Murder in the Red Barn was turned into music.

It's William Corder, it is my name.

I brought my friends to grief and shame.

Unlawful passions caused my fall.

And now my life must pay for all.

Now, there's a whole lot of William Corder songs, aren't there? That's not

only one.

No, I've found about four of them. There's one really famous one, The

Mariah Martin.

is the one that really circulated in a large way. So it was a national hit

everybody in Britain was singing this song. It was a national hit, I think

that's a good way to put it.

It's really, I think the interest in the case, plus the fact that there was at

that time, the 1820s, a strong popular singing tradition, people singing for

themselves for recreation, for fun, meant things like this were a hit.

Well, let's have a sing.

Yes, let's do that.

Come all you thoughtless young men A warning take by me

And think upon my unhappy fate To be hanged upon that tree

My name is William Corder To you I do declare

I courted Maria Martin Most beautiful and

fair

a servant in london in 1828 and i wanted to learn this song how would i go about

doing it the most likely way you would learn it is is from a street ballad

singer there were hundreds of these people even in the mid 19th century in

london they're not just buskers because they would both sing and

sell the ballad at the same time and that's the way you would learn the tune

We have accounts of large crowds of people standing, listening to ballad

singers. It's a really good idea, it seems to me, because if everybody all

across Britain is singing this, it's like a massive public safety warning,

it? It's saying, don't go murdering ladies and burying them in bonds. It

bad for you. You will die.

Yes, I mean...

you can look at it that way, or you can look at it on the way that the popular

press both delights in and takes a sort of distant view of gory

happenings and so on. I think there's both the fascination and the warning

element in there.

They're both quite strong.

Mellow dramas and broadsides and ballads had made Polstead infamous.

Murder tourists arrived, wanting to visit the village, to see the red barn,

even to touch the grave of poor Maria.

This board here tells us that Maria Martin is buried nearby.

She was aged just 25 years.

We can't see her actual gravestone because it was chipped to pieces by

hunters. and there isn't a trace of it left.

As in many a crime story, the murder in the Red Barn shows that we're more

interested in the character and the deeds of the murderer than those of the

victim.

William Corder's crime created a weird industry in what we might call murder

souvenirs. Anyone who had the cash could buy one of these ceramic models.

of the red barn. Take it home, have it on your own mantelpiece.

Slightly more exclusive were knick -knacks made out of the timbers of the

barn itself. This is a little snuff box in the shape of a shoe.

The items associated with the crime were more valuable.

These were the actual pistols. These are what he used to shoot her.

Ascending up the scale of gruesomeness.

This is a book about William Cawdor written by a journalist from the Times.

You'd think it was just a book until you open up the cover and you read that the

leather binding is made from the skin of the murderer, taken from his body

and tanned by a surgeon from the Suffolk Hospital.

But top of the tree, absolutely most gruesome of all, this.

is the back of William Cawdor's head.

It's the skin from his scalp.

You can see on it the little hairs.

And just over here is the murderer's ear.

The tale of Maria Martin showed how a crime of passion in rural Suffolk could

become a national source of entertainment.

It elevated William Cawdor into one of the most notorious murderers of the

century. And 20 years later, it would be a famous murderess who would similarly

enthrall the public. This attractive and apparently cold -hearted woman became

infamous for her part in the crime known as the Bermondsey Horror.

Maria Manning was living at No. 3, Miniver Place, Bermondsey, South London,

her husband, Frederick.

The year was 1849.

Frederick and Maria Manning were a newly married couple in their late 20s.

Frederick had been a guard on the railways, and then he'd failed in

a publican, and now he was unemployed.

His wife Maria was a much more exotic character. She was Swiss and she'd lived

the high life as a lady's maid. She'd travelled abroad and stayed in stately

homes. But she too had fallen on hard times. Now she was making ends meet as a

dressmaker.

A frequent visitor to the Mannings' house in Minver Place was Patrick O

He worked for the customs and he was rumoured to be a very wealthy man.

The three of them certainly had a curious relationship. In fact, it was

scandalous. This was almost certainly a love triangle.

On Thursday 9 August, Patrick O 'Connor told friends that he'd been invited to

have dinner with the Mannings.

This was the last time he was seen alive.

Sometime during that evening, he was ruthlessly killed.

Then, using his keys, Maria went to his lodgings and stole his valuables,

including his stock and share certificate.

Four days later, O 'Connor was reported missing to a now centralised

Metropolitan Police.

On Friday the 17th of August, two police constables got access to No.

3 Miniver Place.

They were PC Barnes of the K Division and PC Burton of the M Division, both of

the Metropolitan Police.

Inside the house, they found a state of confusion.

Whatever furniture had been here had disappeared and the Mannings were gone.

constables reported back that the nest was still here, but the birds had flown.

Their search then took them into the back kitchen.

The two police constables had eagle eyes.

In the kitchen, they noticed that one of the flagstones was loose near the

hearth. They soon had it up, and there was O 'Connor. He was naked, he'd been

trussed up, he'd been tossed in quicklime, and his dead body was now

The hunt for the murderers was now on.

Led by the newly formed detective branch of the Metropolitan Fleet under

Inspector Charles Fields, the Bermondsey horror was a chance for them to prove

themselves.

First, Fields' men had to track the Mannings down.

But where were they?

The Mannings had split up and run in different directions.

It seems that Maria had gone off first, without the knowledge of her husband,

but with the couple's stolen wealth.

So Mannings had robbed O 'Connor, and they'd killed him, and on top of that,

Maria had double -crossed her husband.

Maria fled north to Scotland, while the hapless Frederick caught a steamer to

the Channel Islands.

To discover more about how the detectives were able to trace the

up again with Rosalind Crone in South London.

In 1811, when we have the Radcliffe Highway murders, there's a slightly

response from the authorities, but things are very different by the time of

Mannings, aren't they? Yes, what we see is a much more joined -up system of

policing, but more significantly is they're joined by a new detective force.

Now, the Metropolitan Police Force in 1829 are meant to be very much a

preventing... crime force so they patrol beats and they keep a watch over over

people and property the detective force that's founded in 1842 are meant to

detect crime you know slightly different function but they're only a small

office at this stage about eight men in total in their office in in scotland

yard

So we've got this new detective squad and they're allowed actually to go after

the criminals for the first time. How did they actually catch Maria?

First of all, the detective sergeant who is sent out to have a look at the house

is able to track down the cab driver who takes Maria to the station.

He is able to figure out that she goes to Euston station and gets on a train

bound for Edinburgh.

Then he was able to use telegraphic communication to wire up a message to

colleagues from the Edinburgh police, putting out a description of Maria,

they circulate and are able to track her down.

Maria was arrested in Edinburgh.

Shortly afterwards, Frederick was apprehended in St Helier.

This was a coup for the new team at Scotland Yard.

Their success in catching the Mannings was the first time the public became

conscious of their emerging role, investigating homicides.

On 25 October 1849, the Mannings, husband and wife, were brought to the

theatre in the land.

The Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey.

For the ever -curious British public, this latest melodrama was reaching its

climax.

They'd met a new hero, the detective, who could hunt down and capture the

killer. And murder itself had entered the modern age, the perpetrators fleeing

by train, the sleuths tracking them down by telegraph.

The stage was set for the finale the nation had been waiting for.

Numerous distinguished visitors would now turn up to watch the show.

There were members of the House of Lords and some very grand foreign diplomats

like the Austrian ambassador and the first secretary to the Prussian

All the action would happen in court number one.

Maria made the fateful climb from the cells below to put in her most important

public appearance.

She was dressed to kill in her usual close -fitting dress of fine black

The charges are read out. Frederick George Manning is accused of murdering

Patrick O 'Connor, aided by his wife, Maria Manning.

Both of them plead not guilty.

The court heard that O 'Connor had been shot through the eye and received 17

blows to the head that had smashed his skull.

There were details to suggest that this was a premeditated crime.

In the weeks before O 'Connor's disappearance, the Mannings had bought a

from an ironmonger in King William Street.

a shovel from a shop in Pooley Street, and quicklime from a builder in

Bermondsey Square.

And it wasn't the only damning evidence that Maria faced.

By the second day, she seemed to be on trial not only for being a killer, but

also for being a woman.

To save his client from the gallows, Frederick's defence barrister chose to

blame Maria for the crime.

He demonised her as that most terrible of creatures, a female of loose morals,

quite capable of doing the foul deed on her own.

We are all in the habit, he says, of associating the female character with

idea of mildness and obedience.

The female is capable of reaching a higher point in virtue than the male,

when she gives way to vice, she sinks far lower.

The court deliberated for two days, and then the jury withdrew for 45 minutes.

When they came back, it was with a verdict of guilty.

Frederick Manning is given the opportunity to address the whole court,

turns it down.

Maria is given the same chance and she takes it. She lets rip.

There is no justice for a foreigner in this country. I have no protection

from the judges or my husband.

In the middle of this explosive rant, Maria grabs the herbs used as air

fresheners in the court and hurls them at the judge.

I am unjustly condemned by the court!

Shameful ignorant!

Maria Manning and her black satin dress will cast a really long shadow over

years to come.

She became known as the Lady Macbeth of Bermondsey, and she inspired Charles

Dickens. He refashioned her as Hortense the Lady's Maid, who turns out to be the

killer in Bleak House, and she was immortalised in wax.

Her figure at Madame Tussauds became so popular that it was still on display

there when I first visited the gallery in the 1970s.

The case was the sensation of the age.

Yes, there was sex, grief and treachery, but there was much more.

There was detection by methodical police work, bringing with it a new and

satisfying kind of resolution for the public.

The execution of the Mannings took place on the 13th of November, up on the roof

of the Horsemonger Lane Jail. This was pure theatre.

A huge crowd was expected.

So three days beforehand, the surrounding streets were all cleared and

barricades were erected. On the day, it was estimated that 50 ,000 people turned

up, with 500 policemen to maintain order.

Hangings were getting increasingly scarce, particularly for females.

So this double dose of husband and wife was a complete treat for execution

lovers.

Changes in the law back in the 1820s meant that the death penalty was now

reserved only for treason or murder.

Previously, it had been applied to a whole range of crimes.

So by 1849, a public hanging was a real occasion.

Which is why Charles Dickens chose to observe this one.

He and a group of his friends rented a room overlooking the jail and they held

sort of a party as events unfolded.

Now, Dickens was fascinated by murder and murderers. He was also in favour of

capital punishment. He believed that they should hang for their crimes.

But what really upset him on this occasion was the ghoulish and

behaviour of the crowd.

Outside the jail, the crowd waited for showtime. They sang mocking songs and

commemorative biscuits.

We hear that inside, in private, there was a final reconciliation between

Frederick and Maria.

They ascended to the gallows as husband and wife.

The Mannings were hanged side by side on a scaffold that had been lifted up to

give maximum visibility and theatricality to the grim business.

Maria was defiant and stylish to the end, wearing her black satin dress and

gloves for her final appearance.

She died with dignity.

The case of the Mannings was a turning point in the history of crime.

It had been a case played out in public, a ghastly melodrama with the nation

sucking up every gory detail.

But it was also a case that had been solved by the new Metropolitan Police

Force. Its constables, and especially its detectives.

A new chapter in the history of murder was about to begin.