← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
'She Devil' Serial Poisoner of Victorian England
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling. And if you would like After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access.
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- [02:04]
B
Today we're diving into a 19th century murder investigation that shocked Britain. The case of the pot and poisoner Sarah Daisley. Sarah was a young seamstress in a sleepy village in Bedfordshire who saw her first husband, her infant son and her second husband all die in swift succession. It was death after death, after death when Sarah attempted to remarry just six weeks after her second husband's funeral. The local whispers spiraled into A national scandal pointing to one particular culprit. Arsenic. Sarah was branded as a wicked woman who had defied all human decency to claim her freedom. But was she really a cold blooded killer? Or a tragic victim of a miscarriage of justice? Today, we're exploring this brutal case of poison, patriarchy and the legacy of Britain's first female serial killer. Welcome to After Dark.
- [02:57]
A
Moonlight shines down on the crooked roof of the Golden Eagle in Biggleswade. It's a cosy place, serving up its higgledy piggledy charm to weary travellers on the Great North Road. But tonight is different. Because tonight, underneath its sloping roof, Sarah Daisley has been installed. A baying mob had followed her to the doors of the Golden Eagle and she is wide awake. Now she lies in bed beside another woman sent by the police to watch over her. As the night draws on, Sarah asks about executions and whether judges hanged people much these days. At last, she falls silent. She hears the room creak to itself. In the dark, she feels the charming market town of Biggleswade becoming a ghastly prison all about her. Well, hello there. My name is Anthony Delaney.
- [04:21]
B
And I am Madi Paling. We're very formal today.
- [04:23]
A
We are. Well, yes, this is. This is who I am today. Just for today. But listen, we are here to talk about villagers because actually, having grown up in one, I know how odd and brilliant villagers can be. And as you probably know, every quaint village has its dark side. Today's story is of Sarah Daisley and it takes place in the area around the market town of Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, more of which anon. And our guest to help us through this story is none other than Nat Doig, who is the creator and presenter of Weird in the Wade, a podcast that explores the dark history of the Biggleswade area. So we're going to be learning about Sarah and asking whether she was Britain's first female serial killer or the victim of a miscarriage of justice. But first, to set the scene, let's throw over to Nat. And Nat, first of all, welcome to After Dark.
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C
Thank you for having me. Hi.
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A
We're very, very excited about this. But before we get started as an Irishman, where the hell is Biggleswade?
- [05:23]
C
Well, it's only 40 miles north of London. It's just on the A1. Also the east coast rail line. And yeah, it's in Bedfordshire. It's a little market town and it kind of made its fortune from being on the Great North Road. People stopped there. It's the Kind of town you pass through.
- [05:43]
A
She means that in a nice way.
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B
I feel like, Nat, you've probably tripled, if not more, surely, the tourism to Biggleswade with your podcast. I have to say I've never been, but I have recently moved to North Yorkshire. No, that's not the one. That would be sincerely unhelpful, wouldn't it? I've moved to North London and I am going to now visit with all your stories in my head and I'm going to have a little wonder around.
- [06:08]
C
Presumably you do live there? Yes, I do.
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A
Oh, my God. I wish you'd said, no, I've never.
- [06:12]
B
Been set foot there. It's dreadful. There it is.
- [06:15]
A
No.
- [06:16]
B
So what is it about? Because we often come up against English folklore, Scottish folklore, Irish and Welsh folklore on this podcast, and there's so much that's universal and there's so much that's specific to very particular parts of the landscape, different communities. What is it about Biggleswade that makes it so special?
- [06:33]
C
I think, actually is because of its ordinariness. I was really conscious. I grew up nearby for about five years in my childhood. My dad was in the Air Force and I lived in a place called Henlow, RAF Henlo, which is not far from Biggleswade, and then moved back 15 years ago. And I've lived in Biggleswade ever since. And I was really conscious of the fact that if you look up folklore for Bedfordshire, there's not a great deal. Bedfordshire is a kind of county that gets forgotten and overlooked. And then if you do find stuff about Bedfordshire, it's all on the pretty side of Bedfordshire, which is the west, where there's lots of lovely hills near to the Chilterns where the River Ouse flows. You know, there's lots of lovely villages and stories about that side of Bedfordshire. Our side of Bedfordshire, the east side, is. You're sort of joining East Anglia there. The very flat, monotonous landscape and there just seemed to be nothing. There was so little written about it, particularly around things like ghost stories. But even looking at sort of kind of mainstream history, very little gets written about that side of Bedfordshire.
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A
I kind of want to give it. This is so off topic, but I kind of want to give it its own, like, theme TUNE I feel like I want to go, biggleswade. Biggleswade or something. I don't know. That's the beginnings. You can develop it from there. Well, sure, yeah. For the purposes of this. So now that we've kind of established where and what Biggleswade is. I love saying Biggleswade. Okay, I need to get past this point or else we'll never get to the end of this episode. But what I want to know a little bit more about is the specific story. And we're here to talk about Sarah Daisley today, if you can. Nat, give us without too many spoilers, give us an overview of what we're going to be talking about today and then we'll get into the specifics. So what is the story?
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C
So the kind of heart of the story is that it is a 19th century arsenic poisoning story. And without giving too much away, there is arsenic involved, but that isn't the whole story. Sarah's story. If you'd asked somebody in Biggleswade or in fact, if you'd asked somebody in Adelaide In Australia in 1843, the name Sarah Daisley, people would have heard of it. This wasn't just national news, it was international news. I tracked down, like I said, newspapers in Australia covering this story because of the fact that there was an inquest into the deaths of both of her husbands and her baby Jonah as well. So this wasn't just a woman who had poisoned one husband, it was claimed that she'd poisoned two and her own baby. And for the Victorians, there was this added kind of interest in the story because the first time it was reported in the sort of newspapers was because she appeared in front of the Lord Mayor of London and she stood up to him, she answered back, she was confident. And although it's often in the newspaper's interest to portray a woman accused of murder of being a bit Bolshy by the sounds of it, she really was, because her demeanor changes. And then they report on the fact that suddenly she's not as Bolshy, she's not as confident. And the one thing that they all comment on is the fact that Sarah Daisley was good looking, that she had auburn hair, she had clear skin, that she was what the Victorians called handsome, that she was a kind of robust beauty.
- [09:56]
A
That's what they say about me now.
- [09:59]
C
So, yeah. And she came from respectable stock. And that also really drew in the interest. She wasn't a poor working class girl. She'd actually been born into quite a well off, wealthy family in Potten and Potton, which is sort of the next town along from Bigglesway, don't ever call it a village, will get very upset. Had been a really respectable and genteel town in the Regency only about sort of 40 years previous, 20 years previous. Potton was really well known and for that reason, I think it was kind of. She'd come from this background of respectability. Her father was a hairdresser, which to us kind of sounds like, you know, hang on, you know, a hairdresser. You know, there's loads of hairdressers, but back then this was. He was doing gentleman's wigs.
- [10:52]
A
Yeah, you know, skilled work.
- [10:53]
C
Yeah, skilled work. And her uncle had a large tailor's business and employed many people in Potter. So she got this respectable background and then had fallen on hard times when her father made a really bad investment and lost all his money. And that story, this tragedy, it's so Victorian, this idea of a woman who came from respectability, fell on hard times and then becomes a person of sort of notoriety and gossip because she's getting through two husbands so quickly. She gets married really quickly after her first husband dies. When her second husband dies, she gets engaged really quickly.
- [11:36]
A
She's given them a lot to talk about.
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C
Yeah, there's so much to talk about. It's a real scandal.
- [11:41]
B
She's a fascinating figure. And often on After Dark, we come across women who are accused of murder and as you say, the newspapers kind of have a field day with them. They're fascinated by how they look, what their physical appearance is, how that might relate to their moral beauty or otherwise. But you're giving a real impression of a very tangible person here. And also, I will say someone. This is my. I always gone about this on this show, but someone who is born in the end of the Georgian era and then is Victorian, I love that because I think that's such an interesting moment in history when everyone's attitudes are changing so much. And to have straddled both of those periods, as we would identify them, you know, as separate periods, is so fascinating. So we know that she comes from this respectable family, as you say, her father's a hairdresser, which is very skilled work at the time, and she herself becomes a seamstress.
- [12:28]
C
Right.
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B
So presumably she's going in and out of people's houses, she's taking on freelance work. So what is her standing in this place of Potten?
- [12:37]
C
So I think in the place of Potten, she will have been known as someone who had experienced hardship, and so there would have been some sympathy for her and her mother, except she doesn't follow her sort of cousins route into sort of seamstressing. I assume that she trained with her cousins because her uncle Joseph was a tailor. She becomes a seamstress, but she doesn't work for him. Like you say, she's going into people's houses. And this gets commented on quite a lot, that she was going into people's houses unchaperoned as a teenager and in her late teens. And this was seen as not as respectable as if she'd worked for her uncle's business. And the other thing that gets commented on is she doesn't give up that work when she gets married. Now, of course, many working class women back in the 19th century couldn't give up work. They would carry on working. But because she's got this kind of middle class birth, they kind of carry on judging her as if she's a middle class girl or woman. And so they're like, this is terrible. This is terrible that she's going around to all these houses mending men's shirts and she's married. This is awful. And yet this clearly was something that she needed to do because she wanted a certain standard of living. You know, she's always got a servant. And again, the fact that, you know, both her husbands were farm laborers, yet they've always got a girl, you know, a younger girl living with them in the house.
- [14:13]
A
That's so interesting because Maddie, you were talking about like straddling the time periods, but she's also straddling this class structure as well. And she seems to be falling in between both of them to a certain extent and almost getting the worst of both worlds where she has the expectations of that middle, middle class societal thing, but the finances of the working poor potentially, or, you know, working class at least. So she is falling in between the two. Okay, now you've mentioned marriage. And marriage seems to be some yardstick by which Sarah is measured to a great extent. So let's start with the first one, that being Simeon Mead. So let's talk about that first marriage. What was that marriage like? Who was Simeon? How was the relationship? I know, I like it.
- [14:52]
C
Yeah, yeah, there's some great names in this. So yeah, Simeon, Simeon Mead. We know that he was well built, that he was handsome, that he was seen as a bit of a catch for a young woman who has had a sad start in life. He was a farm labourer. His family lived over on the border of Cambridgeshire. And it's at this point that she moves to a little village called Wrestlingworth, which is a few miles away from Biggleswade and a few miles away from Potton.
- [15:17]
B
I can just hear our American listeners now saying, what are these people?
- [15:20]
A
Not just the Americans, not just the Americans.
- [15:23]
C
Wrestlingworth It's a lovely little village and she moves there with Simeon. And I believe one of Simeon's younger relatives, she's either a half sister or a cousin, moves in with them as well, and they get married when Sarah is 20. And we know later that she tells the Mayor of London that she felt that she married too young. Now, 20 for the time is not that young. It's on the younger sort of side. You know, I looked it up and I think for that period, about 23 is the average age for getting married. But, yeah, she obviously felt that she did get married too young, but they're married for six years. And by all accounts, the biggest issue in the marriage is that Simeon is a drinker and Sarah will stand up to him. And there's an account given at one of the inquests, it will be Simeon's inquest, where a neighbour says that she saw Sarah refusing to give Simeon a shilling that was in her pocket because he would just spend it on drink. And unfortunately, it's at this point that we find out that Simeon could be violent because he hits her because she won't give him the money and he takes the money from her. So, yeah.
- [16:37]
B
So fascinating, in terms of her not giving him the money to go and buy the drink, how is that represented in the accounts that you've read? Because I can see it being represented both ways, right, that she's seen as a not very loyal, loving wife if she's not letting him get along with this, but also equally, that she's taking this moral standpoint, which, of course, from a Victorian point of view, once we move into the Victorian era, they love. And they loved the idea of temperance and all of that. So how is that behavior and that relationship understood?
- [17:06]
C
So that is really interesting question, because there's a. Again, both are reported. So I think the initial report in the inquest about this is very much saying Sarah was a good person. She was someone that was moral. She was someone who, you know, didn't want her husband to go out drinking their money away. She was being careful. And then she gets punished for that by her husband. So the person telling the story is coming from that. However, it also gets reported in the papers in a way that she was a defiant woman, just like you said, that she's defying her husband. And there's a lot of discussion when we get onto the murder trial about violence towards husbands, being violent towards wives and it being frowned upon. But also, at the same time, she's criticized for not being obedient. So she can never win. It's this kind of. She stands up to him and she's seen as being moral, but she's also seen as being disobedient, which is the.
- [18:08]
B
Lot of every woman in every household in Britain at this point. Right.
- [18:11]
C
Yeah.
- [18:13]
A
The family expands because we have the arrival of baby Jonah in 1840. Right. How does that impact this family dynamic?
- [18:22]
C
Well, we know for a fact that at that point there's definitely somebody else then who moves in to help with the baby. So if she wasn't there before, Anne Mead, the relative of Simeon, is there definitely when Sarah has the baby. And one of the things that really came across, and you mentioned it earlier about villages, is that back then, it really did take a village to bring up a baby. There is, like, so many people coming and going from Sarah's house all the time. You know, they're giving evidence and they know these things have happened because they were there in the house and they saw them. And this kind of grows during that period of time where she's got the baby, because for a little while, she will have been in conf. Where she wouldn't be expected to leave the house. And so she needed people to be coming and going for her, collecting errands and, you know, while her husband was at work. But there's very much this idea that she's got lots of people there helping her look after little Jonah. So it isn't just her and Simeon. We kind of think about, you know, new babies now. There's this kind of, oh, when do you invite the people round? And there's a real move now, isn't there, to sort of letting couples spend time with the baby themselves. And to. And back then there was like, no, everybody is in and out of that house helping bring up the baby, which, you know, is fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.
- [19:39]
B
So we have the baby arriving in February 1840. By June 1840, things have gone a little bit awry in the household, haven't they?
- [19:45]
C
Tell us what happened. So, unfortunately, Simeon becomes really unwell, and it's a really unusual illness. He's described as basically, his throat swells up, he can't breathe very well, he's not sick. And this is really important. Nobody, apart from one witness, says that he's sick. So the vast majority of witnesses, and many people, as I've said, were in and out of that house, say that this was fever, swelling, just generally not being able to breathe or swallow. So it got to the point where he couldn't eat easily. And within six days, I think it is he is dead. And one of the things that is described is that a young girl who was sent to lay out the runs out of the house when she sees him in absolute shock because his tongue had swollen up so much it had dislocated his jaw.
- [20:41]
B
Wow.
- [20:42]
C
Even though that's a really unusual death, nobody at the time suspects anything unusual. They just think it's some kind of sickness.
- [20:49]
B
Now, the Swotland tongue gnat is really interesting to me because in the new book that I've written, there is a couple who are potentially poisoned with arsenic. And one of them has the same symptoms where her tongue swells up and fills her whole mouth until she can't speak. She's still living at this point. But do we have any idea of what Simeon was suffering from? Was it definitely poison? Are there other possibilities? How can we ever get close to a diagnosis?
- [21:14]
C
Well, when they exhumed the body, which they did, obviously, a couple of years after his death, there was no sign of arsenic in it. So he wasn't poisoned by arsenic. And the tests they had, they did multiple tests. So what? I wasn't sure at first. I was thinking maybe it was an allergic reaction. But after I put my episodes out about the pot and poisoner, a nurse got in touch and suggested to me that it could be something called Quincy, which is where if you have tonsillitis and you don't get treatment for it quickly enough, or if you're just susceptible, basically, you can get an abscess. It's really, really serious. I mean, people in the past died of it.
- [21:57]
A
Now, I'm gonna hop in here because little did we know, I have had Quincy three times.
- [22:02]
B
3. You'll be so dead in the night.
- [22:05]
A
Oh, I would be so dead. And one of them was an ambulance call, and I had to be hospitalized. And during that time, I could hear the doctors talking, and they said, why is he in an ambulance for tonsillitis? And the other guy said. The other surgeon doctor said, this is a code. One that is his life is in danger. And I was, like, very conscious.
- [22:24]
B
But were you young at the time?
- [22:26]
C
No.
- [22:26]
A
This was like two or three years ago. What Ye. It was. Still, to this day is the most painful thing I've ever experienced. The swelling is. I remember the day that we had to call the ambulance. I wasn't able to take my antibiotics because my whole throat had closed over. Now, my tongue hadn't swollen. So I will say that. But if, as this nurse has suggested, it was Quincy, they said in the hospital to me that if you weren't treated. And if I hadn't been pumped full of stuff, it's very easy to treat, by the way. Like it took mere minutes.
- [22:52]
B
But they wouldn't have been able to.
- [22:53]
A
Yes, exactly. But they wouldn't have been able to do that in the 19th century. So if it's that I have a lot of. And I had a fever, I was dizzy, is out of it, no vomiting. But that's so interesting now because I don't hear of other people who have Quincy. But yeah, I've had her three times in total now.
- [23:07]
B
Well, I love a speculative theory. Yeah.
- [23:09]
A
Yeah, me too.
- [23:11]
B
And I'm glad that you're not dead. There is that.
- [23:13]
A
I'm glad I'm not dead.
- [23:14]
B
But going back to Sarah's story, it's not all about.
- [23:16]
A
I'm sorry.
- [23:17]
B
Yeah.
- [23:18]
A
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- [26:56]
B
What I'm fascinated by is that this tragedy, on the surface, what seems like a tragedy happens to her husband who is other than her seamstress work, the only other income of the household and no matter the relationship that they share. And obviously you know, there's ideas that he's violent, that he's drinking too much, which is not unusual at the time, but of course is a terrible situation. But even then the loss of a husband is a disaster in this moment. You know, he is her protection in society, her standing, all of that. She's got a young baby still in arms. What happens to her next? Because she's not one to take her time, is she? Now she's a quick mover.
- [27:33]
C
She's a very quick mover. She has a friend called Elizabeth Daisley an older lady, as in older than Sarah. And she invites her to move in with her. Now, it turns out that Elizabeth also has a son named William.
- [27:47]
B
I can see what's gonna happen.
- [27:50]
C
And it's not long until Sarah and William are courting and they get married. And at the time, it's seen as. It's about four months.
- [28:00]
B
Four months since the first husband died.
- [28:01]
C
Yes.
- [28:02]
A
Quick in any terms. But in terms of 19th century, very quick.
- [28:06]
B
I am judging her a little bit here.
- [28:07]
C
All right, Just a little.
- [28:09]
B
I mean, look, she needs a roof over her head. She's got the baby, she needs the protection.
- [28:13]
A
Oh, yeah. We can't forget about Jonah.
- [28:15]
C
Yeah. She's got a baby.
- [28:16]
B
Four months.
- [28:17]
A
I know. Yeah. It's very quick. And if she was somebody who was standing out in that society already, this isn't gonna help that cause.
- [28:24]
C
No. So this obviously does get tongues wagging that she gets married so quickly. When it's reported in the newspapers, once she's accused of murder, people say that she was living with William before she gets married. And that just adds to the scandal. And of course she was, because her friend Elizabeth took her in. And it's sadly only a. Well, just over a month after she marries William that Jonah suddenly dies.
- [28:50]
A
Wow. So that's tragic.
- [28:51]
C
Yeah. And again, if you read the inquest reports, Jonah is described by the vast majority of the friends and neighbors as being a sickly child who was poorly and not very strong for most of his life. That he suffered from a cough and that when he dies, there doesn't seem to be an awful lot of shock. The only who says anything different is William's mum, and that's after William has died. So I can understand why William's mum might have a different point of view.
- [29:27]
B
At that point, Sarah moves in with Elizabeth Daisley. She quickly marries the son, William. Joan is dead at this point in. Is it November 1840? I mean, this is all taking place within one year. The first husband dying, the next marriage, the baby dying. I mean, this is whiplash territory here. But we are moving tragically again towards the death of William. Now she's about to lose a second husband. So how quickly does that happen? Does she have a nice life with him in the aftermath? And the grief of Jonah, is she able to have a nice time, or does this just come in quick succession?
- [30:00]
C
She gets almost two years with William, and it seems that for the majority of that time, their marriage is considered to be good. She still has a servant living with her even after baby Jonah dies. It seems that she's got. Ann Mead stays on to help around the house. Neighbours report that they seem to be a happy couple. However, things change at Michaelmas. At the end of September in 1842, Sarah goes to the Michaelmas fair, which was a really big important event in Potten, probably to meet up with old friends and relatives from when she was younger. And William is not happy about this. Now, William is said to have been ailing that summer, that he's not very well. He seems to have got either a kind of flu Y or cold type symptoms that he can't shave. And he has forbid Sarah from going to the fair, but she goes anyway.
- [30:52]
B
Can I just say, that's such a man flu of like, you can't go out. I'm dying. God, get a grip.
- [30:59]
C
How pathetic.
- [31:00]
B
William.
- [31:01]
C
So, yes, he forbids her from going and when she gets back, all hell breaks loose. There's a huge argument that numerous neighbors say they can hear from the streets.
- [31:12]
B
So he is well enough to have an argument with her.
- [31:14]
C
He is well enough to have an argument with her. He's well enough to actually take that argument out, to start pushing her around so that she runs to a neighbour's house and he gives her shelter and he gives evidence at the inquest and at the murder trial to say that William got so angry that he stormed into this neighbour's house and dragged Sarah out and then knocked her to the ground.
- [31:39]
B
So she's had two violent relationships and these domestic situations she's been trapped in, which again is not unusual in the 19th century. But it's pretty unfortunate that this has happened to her both times and that she's living in each scenario with men who are capable of doing this, whether that's through drink or anger or whatever it is that she finds herself in the same situation again here.
- [31:59]
C
Yeah, I mean, it really is. And the fact that she doesn't have that option, she can't divorce her husband, that's completely out of the question. The only option she could really have to escape would be to just run off somewhere and reinvent herself. And that in itself is also emotionally so difficult, financially so difficult, she's expected to stay in a situation like that. In fact, what she says to various neighbours is that from that point onwards she refused to bring him his beer and refused to bring William his tea in the evenings because that was her way of punishing him for being violent and for knocking her to the ground. We know for a fact that she said that that's reported and kind of corroborated. But it's also about this point that we hear evidence that she also said things like she wished he was dead.
- [32:53]
A
And dead he becomes.
- [32:54]
C
He does.
- [32:56]
A
So this is the second husband that she loses. And he is buried. You said about, you know, Michaelmas, September 30, 1842, they have this argument. But then come October, the sickness that he's potentially been suffering from escalates, he gets worse and he dies and he's buried without an autopsy on 2nd November, we are two husbands and a child down. Now, if we're Sarah. But again, once more, she's not necessarily hanging around, is she? Because there's a man called George Waldock.
- [33:28]
B
Yes.
- [33:29]
A
In the wings.
- [33:30]
C
That's right. So just to say it's both Sarah and William's mother who refuse the autopsy. So both of them say no to the autopsy. George Waldock, he works on a nearby farm. He was a friend of William's. They seem to have worked together at the same farm. And he's been seeing an. Another lady called Ann Carver. And little known to anyone else in the village. She's been seeing a lady called Maisie Minx or Maisie Meeks.
- [33:55]
B
Oh, my God, I love that.
- [33:56]
C
Which is another great name.
- [33:57]
A
Great name.
- [33:58]
C
Yeah. And she is only 16 when he starts seeing her. George.
- [34:04]
B
Don't love that.
- [34:05]
C
Yeah, don't love that. Because he's about 24, I think.
- [34:08]
B
Not unusual for the time.
- [34:09]
C
No, we don't love it. And he's keeping that one secret about Maisie. It comes out at the murder trial that she. In the family way. And he denies it. But it's important to say that. Cause that's what's going on in the background. George has got basically two women on the go. And now Sarah's available. And by Christmas, the bans for marriage are being read out in the church and Sarah and George are set to be married. So she didn't even wait four months this time. Did you just hear.
- [34:37]
B
What's that meme of that woman in Bristol? Oh, no, not another one.
- [34:39]
C
Another one.
- [34:40]
B
Can you imagine being sat in the church and the bands are red and you're like, not again, babe.
- [34:44]
C
Come on. Exactly what happens? So when it comes round to the second band's being read in sort of January time, there was whispers and gossip and George has been teased at work, people saying he's gonna be, you know, the next one to be poisoned. And suddenly this rumor has got about that this is unnatural for Sarah to have lost two husbands so quickly. And George goes and speaks to the vicar and says, what should I do? And so the vicar says, call off the wedding. And he calls in the magistra. And that's when they decide that they're gonna have an inquest and they're gonna exhume the bodies.
- [35:22]
A
It escalates really quickly.
- [35:23]
C
It does.
- [35:24]
B
Can you just imagine. Can I just say that if you were. What's the Name of the 16, 17 year old Maisie Minx who is pregnant with George's child? Can you imagine if she had gone to the vicar and said, george has got me pregnant? That guy's not gonna be calling in the magistrate for that. But this rumor of Sarah murdering some people, like, okay, fine, it's a slightly more serious accusation, but there is no evidence that she has done that, really, other than the whispers, like you say, that are happening in the parish. This smacks of misogyny to me, you know, it's only when George is starting to be mocked, people are joking with him about his choice of bride, that he's like, ooh, maybe I want out of this. This doesn't read well to me.
- [36:03]
A
She doesn't help herself, does she? Because off she goes. As soon as this trouble presents itself, she's like, I'm out of here, guys. Not sticking around for this.
- [36:11]
C
No, Sarah, no, no. She gets very angry with George. She tells me him that you knew about this before you married me. These rumours had been going around or proposed to me, sorry, not married me. And yeah, she decides that she's gonna do a runner and she runs off to London. Now her excuse that she gives to the Lord Mayor is that now that she had been dumped by her fiance, she was a single woman again with very little options because the people in the village had turned against her. And she says, I don't want to go to the poor house, I don't want to go to the workhouse. So I'm going to run off to London and I'm going to find my sort of fort in London. Unfortunately, though, she doesn't go by herself. And again, I can understand this, that you know, a single woman traveling down to London, probably walking a lot of the way, she meets a young lad called Samuel Steppings and she joins with him and they run off together to London and she goes to stay with his family at Broken Wharf, which is on the sort of North Thames, the north bank of the Thames, not far from the Millennium Bridge. And you can still go there today. You can see the old steps of the wharf and walk on the little bit of sort of, you know, mud larking beach that there is there.
- [37:21]
B
I mean, she's industrious in her attitude to men.
- [37:25]
A
She is resilient.
- [37:26]
B
Yeah. And she knows how to protect herself or she has done so far, whether that's through murder, whether it's through just simply the choices that she's making in terms of the men that she is partnering up with. So she's run away from Biggleswade, but they're not going to allow her to simply slip off into the night and disappear and live a life, are they?
- [37:47]
C
No. And unfortunately for her, the police inspector for Biggleswade and Edwin Blunden is a former Met police officer. Even though this is so new, you know, having a Met police and having the police, he worked in the Met. So he goes down to London straight away. He gets in touch with his colleagues from the Met and together they team up and they track her down within about 24 hours.
- [38:07]
B
So she's really unlucky.
- [38:09]
C
Yeah, she's really unlucky. Cause, you know, there's very, very few police officers that are experienced, but he is. And yeah, they find her and she's sent to see the Lord Mayor of London in the morning because he has to still get permission to take her back to Biggleswade. She's not being arrested at this point. This is that she's compelled to be a witness in the inquest. And so he gets permission to take her back. And again, very traumatic. While he's in London and he's giving this evidence to the Lord Mayor, the Lord Mayor wants to know, is there any evidence that she's done this? This. Well, the evidence comes through via a messenger that they have found arsenic in William Daisley's body.
- [39:02]
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- [40:53]
A
So off she goes. Back to Biggleswade.
- [40:56]
C
Yes.
- [40:57]
A
Back to Biggleswade.
- [40:58]
C
Yes.
- [40:59]
B
And sing the theme tune again.
- [41:00]
A
I can't remember what it was now, but she's taken back there. She's held. We now know that William, based on the tests they did at the time, that William has arsenic in his body. And we can talk about that because, you know, there are different reasons arsenic might be in a household or might have gotten into one's system.
- [41:17]
B
And there's no evidence. Sarah put it there.
- [41:19]
A
Well, just saying, it's very interesting because we're coming to a trial now, aren't we, Nat? And in that trial we have witness evidence that's given. And this is where Anne.
- [41:28]
C
Yeah.
- [41:28]
A
And Mead, Mead comes back in and.
- [41:31]
B
And that's the, the relative of the.
- [41:33]
A
First husband that was living with them. And talk us through this trial then because here we have Sarah, she's on trial for the murder of William. And we have all these witnesses coming in what unfolds during that case.
- [41:46]
C
It is only William that she's tried for the murder of because there was no arsenic found in Simeon Mead's body. And the amount that was found in baby Jonah is not as much. And so they knew that actually with William it was a much stronger case. So she is only tried for William's mother. Many of the witnesses come back from the inquests, obviously to give more evidence. And the evidence that builds up is very much Circumstantial, hearsay, gossip type evidence. Ann Mead says that she saw Sarah making up pills in the kitchen on Wednesday morning. We have a family called the Gurrys who say we gave Sarah some medicine for William. They also put leeches on William, so that's the kind of sort of medical level that the Gurries are at. So there's all these different witnesses coming forward saying that they saw Sarah with powders or pills. The doctor who was giving medicine to William comes in. He also can't remember or hasn't written down whether he gave William opiates. So it all gets really, really casual.
- [42:52]
B
There's no record of the opiates he's given to his patients. I mean, that says it all.
- [42:55]
A
We know the apothecary has a record of selling the arsenic to Sarah, though, right?
- [43:00]
C
We do. We. No, the fact that they definitely sold it. And the only thing around the buying of the arsenic is that there's a little boy who says, we sold the arsenic much earlier in the summer, whilst the actual apothecary in Potton says, oh, it was the week that William died. So again, it's like she definitely got hold of arsenic, but when did she get hold of it and how long was it sitting around in the house?
- [43:24]
B
And as you were saying, Anthony, you would buy arsenic for any number of things in this period. Right. It's not necessarily to kill off your husband. It's. It could be, but it's not exclusively that.
- [43:33]
A
Doesn't Ann Mead say that Sarah had potentially replaced contents of pills with stuff she was crushing up, but that William didn't want to take those pills because it was making him unwell? But to convince him to take it, Anne Mead took one of the pills to say, look, it's fine, you can take these pills, you can take this pill. But then she got unwell as well. Yes.
- [43:52]
B
Okay.
- [43:53]
A
So I don't. Listen, I don't know. I was doing some research on this. There are so many conflicting things, it's really hard to get to the core of it.
- [44:00]
C
Yeah. And of course, Sarah gets really angry that Anne's taken the medicine and has fallen ill and basically lets her go home to her parents. But, you know, she has an answer for why she was angry, which is, you know, just like today, you shouldn't take other people's medicine. But then at the same time, she doesn't want Anne to be poisoned. So if she had poisoned William, I mean, even when we get to the last night, the night where it's a weekend, William had been rallying. Dr. Sandal had come to see him and had said, that's it. I think he's over the worst. This is brilliant. He's getting, I'll send you the bill next week. And then suddenly he takes a turn for the worse. And that evening, we've got William's brothers claiming that they see Sarah put a white powder in his tea and they see the powder spilled on a table. We have a different servant now who's there in the house. Not Ann Mead. Cause she's gone home sick. And this servant says, those boys weren't even in the room when William was given the tea. There was no spilled powder on the table. The table wasn't where the boys say it is. And. And she doesn't sort of at the same time say, oh, Sarah's innocent, Because she then says, Sarah sent everyone from the room whilst she administered the medicine. But she's obviously quite indignant that you can't say we saw her do that, because we were all sent from the room. So I have to say that the evidence at the trial really does build towards it looking quite suspicious for Sarah. But there is still nothing definitely, that's saying she definitely put on purpose arsenic in William's tea or beer.
- [45:40]
B
Surely it wouldn't hold up today in court. I mean, there's no chance.
- [45:43]
C
I think the judge at the time didn't think it held up then. He was. Judge Alderson was just really hammering home the idea of reasonable doubt to the jury. And when they do convict her, they take 15 minutes to convict her. He is so upset, he has to sort of sit trembling for about 10 minutes.
- [46:04]
B
The judge does.
- [46:05]
C
The judge does.
- [46:06]
B
Wow.
- [46:06]
C
So he's a really interesting character, Judge Alderson. He was a real campaigner for the abolition of capital punishment. He really didn't agree with it and he would do everything he possibly could to not give a death sentence. So he begs Sarah to confess because if she confesses, he can say that she's contrite and maybe send her to Australia on transportation instead. But she's. She's absolutely adamant that she didn't do it, that she didn't poison William and so he has to cast a death sentence.
- [46:37]
B
To me, that suggests that she didn't do it, because the idea of, like, getting off from this and being able to go to Australia, obviously, still not a great experience, being transported, it's still a punishment. But, you know, Sarah's already tried to escape Biggleswitch. She doesn't want to live there. She's got no community there anymore. Everyone suspects her of murder and hates her. Why wouldn't she take that way out?
- [46:57]
A
I think she did it.
- [46:57]
B
I know you do.
- [46:58]
A
I can tell you. Yeah, I think she did it. I don't think she killed Jonah, but I think she killed at least the second husband. I think you're absolutely right, Nat. I think there is too much circumstantial evidence. I think it's problematically circumstantial, but I think Anne Mead is a really key witness in many ways. Anne is somebody who has come with her, with Sarah, from her first marriage into her second marriage. She is somebody who says she sees this crushing up of some kind of powder happening. Obviously none of us can know, but there is enough there for me to be very, very suspicious. Personally, I would have taken the guilty and gone to Australia. That seems like the smart thing for me.
- [47:40]
B
You would die in the heat in the first two minutes. You would just stay home, rip me. Yeah.
- [47:44]
A
No, no, no, no.
- [47:45]
B
It would not be good.
- [47:46]
A
Now, what do you think? Go on. We're going to pin our colors. So you think not guilty?
- [47:50]
B
I think not guilty. I'm back in the game.
- [47:51]
A
I think guilty.
- [47:52]
C
So I don't think she should have been convicted even for the time, however, it's really hard. Part of me would like to think that she was innocent, but then also part of me is like, actually it would be in some ways better if she had poisoned William because then at least she was. She had some agency. She was doing something, a very bad thing that she was doing. But she felt trapped in that marriage and she wanted to get out the of. And doing that obviously is the wrong thing to do. But it kind of shows that she was still sort of trying to do something rather than just being the victim all the time. But at the same time, I'm really not sure. I can't say for sure. We just don't have the evidence because there were so many accidental poisonings in the 19th century. So many accidental poisonings, yeah.
- [48:47]
A
Now, can I tell you what they do to Quincy when they want to remove it? Right. So you have. You can solve it really quickly. You can go. You go in to the. You sit in a little chair and they get you to open your mouth and then they get a huge syringe. I'm not joking. It's like the needle's about that big. And then the thing I'd rather be dead end is that big and. Maddie, open your mouth and I'll show you.
- [49:07]
B
Oh, my God. No, I'm not gonna actually do it.
- [49:09]
A
And they pop the syringe into the tonsil and then they withdraw the syringe. Can I say puss?
- [49:16]
B
I mean, you said it.
- [49:17]
A
Yeah. And you see it filling up into the syringe. It is one of the. And you just sit there and you're like, oh, God, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life.
- [49:26]
B
This is the most visual anecdote that's ever.
- [49:29]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, miserable. Just to come back to Quincy.
- [49:33]
B
If he'd had that, the first husband, then we might not be sitting here having the.
- [49:36]
A
And we'd know. Right, there you go. And it's a very simple fix.
- [49:39]
B
So just before we go, Nat, obviously on your show, you focus so much on Biggleswade and the surrounding area and this is clearly a really important story. How is it remembered by the local community? Is it still something that people talk about?
- [49:51]
C
I think so in Potton. So before I sort of revived it, it was known about in Potten. And if you look on the Internet, lots of people have written about Sarah Daisley over the years because she's quite often said to be the first British woman serial killer because of the supposed three deaths. But obviously she was only ever convicted of one. Since I did the podcast, there's been a lot more interest in her and her family and the places that are covered. But one of the ways that she was remembered locally was through ghost stories. There was a ghost stories, two ghost stories in Wrestlingworth and that was what led me to her. And they had lasted through, you know, the. Not quite 200 years. I find that fascinating that it was the ghost stories about her haunting her cottage that she lived in and also the checkers pub where the inquests happened.
- [50:42]
A
And I think that might account for some of this conflicting timelines and evidences and all this kind of thing that we get with this. Well, listen, if you want to spend some more time in Biggleswade. Biggleswade. And why wouldn't you? Then you can listen to Weird in the Wade. And there are three episodes specifically devoted to the pot and poisoner. So Nat goes into far more depth than her episode. So do listen and find out a little bit more there, which include a link to those ghost stories associated with Sarah, which is what originally attracted Nat to this story. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of After Dark. If you've enjoyed it, leave us a five star star review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it helps other people to discover us and of course we always love hearing from you guys. So if you have an episode suggestion or you just like to get in touch, then you can email us@afterdarkistoryhit.com hey, this is Jonathan Fields, host of the Good Life Project podcast. Boost Mobile reminds me of what I love when someone reimagines what's possible Possible Offering reliable nationwide coverage backed by a 30 day money back guarantee While other carriers spend millions on flashy super bowl ads, Boost Mobile puts those dollars towards what matters more? Delivering reliable nationwide coverage at prices that make you wonder why we've been paying so much for just $25 a month. You get unlimited service that will never go up in price. Not next year, not ever. And they're so confident you'll love it, they back it with a 30 day money back guarantee. No questions asked. Want to see if Boost Mobile is right for you? Visit your nearest Boost mobile store or boostmobile.com customers who cancel within 30 days of activation will have Boost service fees refunded, activation fees if applicable, and phone payments will not be refunded. Plastic bags, Plastic lids. What do we do with you?
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C
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A
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C
Find one near you@recycleon.org OregonCenters.