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Hello and welcome to my Victorian Nightmare. I'm your host, Genevieve Manion, and I'm here to talk about mysterious deaths, morbid fascinations, disturbing stories, and otherwise spooky events from the Victorian era. Because to me, there's just something especially intriguing, creepy and oddly comforting about horror and mayhem from the 19th century. So listener discretion is advised. Hello friends, and welcome to this, my 103rd episode. And do I have some 19th century terror on the open seas for you today. In 1828, the merchant brig Mary Russell set sail carrying a small crew, valuable cargo, and all were expecting a calm and easy voyage. But somewhere on the open seas, the captain's mind became infected with paranoia and nightmarish visions of murderous mutiny. The crew became afraid for their lives, and the ship became the scene of a horrifying massacre. For you today, dear Listener, I will discuss one of the 19th century's most shocking maritime murder cases. A story of the slow unraveling of a man's sanity and survival against all odds. This is the story of the Mary Russell Massacre of 1828. But first, hi everyone. Welcome to my show and happy July ween. July 4th is finally over, so prepare for Halloween decorations to start showing up at a Walgreens near you. I am delighted at the idea. I stayed in with Toby on the fourth of July. He doesn't get too scared of fireworks, thank goodness, but it's still pretty unnerving. I would never leave my baby boy alone on a spooky night. Not for all the time tasty hot dogs in the world. I did attend a lovely 90 degree Japanese flower arranging class with friends though the next day. I love being in my 40s. I am not doing anything that I do not want to do anymore. I am not going into sweaty crowds. I am not allowing my puppy to be scared at home for fear of missing out. I am arranging flowers with a bunch of witches and then having a big pizza party, which is exactly what we did afterwards. And I was home by 8pm Highly recommend being a single woman in your 40s. It's where it's at in 2026. Thank you everyone who has joined the Patreon. Those of you who received the show ad free with witchy content, dark poetry and true crime extras. This week's episode is the trunk murder of Charles Arthur Preller, an 1885 homosexual whirlwind romance turned deadly. It is quite a story. If you too would like to subscribe to the free trial, simply click the link in the episode notes and or subscrib subscribe to the newsletter while you're at it. I put a picture of my ikebana flower creation and the dewiest picture of me ever taken in last week's newsletter. Speaking of hot dogs, that's exactly what I look like in that photo. An Irish American boiled hot dog in a black dress. I'm a mesmerizing apparition in the summer heat. Anyway, if you want to see pictures like that, subscribe to the newsletter. You'll also get updates on the show, updates about Toby's adventures, and horrifying illustrations from the Illustrated Police. This episode of My Victoria Nightmare is brought to you by Alloy Health. Sometimes it feels like you're all alone when dealing with perimenopause or menopause symptoms. But you are not. Almost 50% of women in their 40s and 50s are going through exactly the same hot flashes, same brain fog, same weight gain that will not budge no matter how many salads you eat, no matter how many freaking miles you run and are not seeking hrt treatments. Yet 50% of women going through perimenopause and menopause don't even think of getting help for at least three years after they started experiencing symptoms. And it makes sense why women have not been listened to by doctors. We have always just been told to expect this misery as we get older. But things have changed and I am not playing that game. 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Okay, first, before we get to the horrifying story of the Mary Russell massacre, I need to discuss something. So I often tell stories of folks waking up in the morgue or busting out of their coffins during their funerals. In the 19th century because those stories were common. I've discussed in episode 12, the death tests of the 19th century that were really not very trustworthy. Pouring boiling water over the chest of a presumed corpse. Heart flags. These were flags that you would stab into a heart through the chest and if the heart was beating, the flag would pulse. There were many more tricks of the trade, all more disturbing and upsetting than the last, but there were illnesses and conditions, and still are, that would create comas so deep that none of the tricks would work. Many folks nowadays believe that that couldn't possibly happen. We have far more advanced technology to tell if someone is dead or not, so we can all be rest assured that we'll all go to the grave, well and truly dead. But Ugh. A toddler has woken up in the morgue. I'm serious. This is a horrifying story on so many levels that luckily has kind of a happy ending. Just in case you did not hear, it is being reported that a few months ago in Febr, an 18 month old adorable boy was pronounced dead after almost drowning, but was found alive in the morgue hours later. He was pronounced dead at 6:20pm on Super Bowl Sunday in Arizona, but then found alive in the morgue at 11:52pm later that evening. Everything that led up to the child drowning and what happened during the six hours that the boy was allegedly dead is under investigation by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. The boy survived. He didn't just temporarily awake from death and later die, which is something that I've discussed happening even recently. Even currently. You occasionally hear the stories of folks waking up at their own funerals, sitting up in their coffins, but then quickly dying shortly after. This boy has survived, but his parents are being charged with child abuse. The parents said that they didn't realize that the boy had wandered out of the house during the football game and wandered into the pool. But that's not why they're being charged. They were allegedly both smoking weed at the time. They both admitted to smoking marijuana. Oh God, what a nightmare. But it appears that these folks have no prior convictions of any misconduct, child abuse, anything at all. The Mercy Gilbert Medical center did their own internal investigation and are calling it a heartbreaking situation, but there appears to be more to this story. It doesn't just seem as simple as two parents got high, the child got out, drowned, died and woke up. It seems like there was allegedly some seriously strange negligence on the part of the doctor who pronounced the child dead. This is horrifying. A police officer was present when the doctor pronounced the child dead while he was still visibly gasping for air. It was so clear that he was gasping for air after being pronounced dead that the police officer said, hey, the child is still clearly alive. And the doctor told him, I went to medical school for a reason. And then he said, please do your thing and let me do my thing. So what the hell was happening there? More horrifying still, it seems even the parents could see that he was visibly still breathing while the doctor called the time of death and asked for a moment of silence. This was at 6:20pm Then at 7:18, a detective thought he heard an audible gasp from the child as he was being taken into the morgue, which has a temperature of 36 degrees. The detective was there to take a photo of the child. And again he heard an audible breath. So audible that he told a nurse, who then told him that it was something called agonal breathing, which is explained by the compressions, oxygen, and possible pressure applied by family members when they earlier attempted cpr. It's like a brainstem reflex, but. But if a body is dead, would you still have brainstem reflexes? I'm just not aware myself. All of this sounds completely insane. The boy was placed in the 36 degree room. The door was closed at 7:23, and at 11:52, when the medical examiner arrived to retrieve the body, he was fully breathing on his own. He was immediately airlifted to another hospital for treatment. The boy is currently receiving breathing assistance from a ventilator and has a void. Needed serious brain damage somehow, thank God. But he will require ongoing medical monitoring and therapy. It just makes me want to cry. I want to be cremated when I die. I don't want to take up any more space and I don't want any trees planted above me or anything. I have smoked so many cigarettes in my life. I don't want to kill any innocent trees or plants. With the amount of nicotine and whatnot I've put in my body over the years. Just like put me in a sock drawer or something. But these stories really make me not trust that I won't wake up in a crematorium. I am adding a Chopin directive to my last wishes. Remove something important from me before any of that happens. Because it isn't machines or instruments that call your time of death, folks. It could literally be a guy having an ego tantrum that day. Get your show pen directives in order. Ghouls. God almighty. Okay, let us discuss the Mary Russell Massacre of 1828. My main reference for this story is a MentalFloss.com article written by Ellen Gutowski. All of my other references can be found in the show Notes. In the early morning of May 9, 1828, Captain William Stewart instructed his men to unload his ship, the Mary Russell of cargo in Barbados and reload it with new valuable cargo before returning back to a port in County Cork, Ireland. They let off a couple of mules and loaded up with sugar, animal hides and a few other exports all bound for the coast of Ireland. Captain Stewart was known as a good captain, a professional. He had captained many cargo ships in his day. He was a slender 53 year old gentleman with sharp features and wiry red hair. Classic 1820s sea captain. A good Christian man as it were. A man who believed the Lord was entirely at the helm of every ship that he sailed. And since every decision he ever made led every one of his ships safely home, he believed that he must be extra attuned to interpreting the will of God. And who was anyone to doubt him? After all, he had yet to make any grave mistakes upon the sea. Before packing up the ship and setting sail to the Emerald Isle, Captain Stewart was asked by his employer to make a stop along the way and pick up a captain who was not so well regarded as he. Captain James Raines, an Irishman who had just been fired. He wasn't captaining a ship. He had been demoted to first mate but he couldn't quite hack that job either. He had acquired a serious drinking habit and could no longer be trusted to take on such serious jobs as these. Stewart's employer told him to scoop him up and bring him back to his family in County Cork. Captain Stewart did not want to do this. He liked his crew tip top shipshop shape and worried that this man would cause trouble. But he didn't have a choice. He had to bring him along. All seemed well and James Raines held his own. He helped out and he behaved himself perfectly well. But one night Captain Stewart had a terrible nightmare. He dreamt clearly as crystal that Captain Rains was plotting a mutiny. He dreamt that Rains was trying to convince his men to murder him in the night and toss his body in the sea. He dreamt of Rains convincing his men to turn his ship into a pirate ship. He had ruined his career. He would never be hired to captain a ship again. And they could all be making much more money if they sold the cargo on the ship themselves and turned to the pirate dark side. They would have only one man to get out of the way. Stuart woke up in a cold Sweat and believed, like with all of his other impulses and inclinations upon his ship, that this was a message from God, a warning. Only problem was that he had no evidence whatsoever other than this nightmare that Raines planned to do this again. He was being super chill so far. But it didn't take Stuart long to start connecting dots which weren't really dots at all. Stuart noticed that Rains spoke in Irish with the rest of the crew, a language that he could not speak. Then one day, another one of the crew, a sailor named John Keating, asked Captain Stewart if he knew anything about Raines history. Any idea if he was a skilled navigator. Stewart considered this question a way of sleuthing out whether or not Raines was worth trusting to captain the ship. It sounds to me like John was just making small talk. But another sailor named John Howes asked Captain Stewart if he could maybe teach him a thing or two about lunar distance. And if he had some time, perhaps a little bit about celestial navigation, the kind of thing that I would also be interested in. And when you've got no booze or social media to waste your time with, these are the kinds of conversations that one could expect to arise on a boat in the middle of the ocean. But the captain was becoming increasingly suspicious that his men were trying to learn how to captain his ship without him. After a few weeks, Captain Stewart was getting more and more paranoid. So paranoid that he asked a few trusted members of the crew to sleep in his cabin with him for protection. Which must have made for a very tense atmosphere. Especially because he decided to keep an axe, a crowbar and a couple of guns within reach of his bed. Then the screws really started to come loose. He pulled a Blair Witch and tossed the maps, compasses and other vital instruments for navigation into the sea. So nobody could navigate anywhere without him. He said he would use the stars and the stars alone to guide them back to Ireland. Which is a really terrible idea for numerous reasons. Like a cloudy night, a foggy evening could be the reason you land off course. He also tossed all of the logbooks so that if the men did kill him and returned to shore saying that he die or they were attacked by pirates, they would be suspected of his murder because the captain's logbook would not be found. It's like an old timey way of tossing the black box. Things that were not at all suspicious began making Captain Stewart even more suspicious and unhinged. His first mate, Will Smith, noticed a broken lamp on the deck and went down to the hull for oil and materials to Fix it. Just him doing this made the captain so certain that his first mate was cooking up some kind of murderous plot that the next morning he demanded that the crew tie up his first mate because he was trying to fix a lamp when he didn't expect that he should. I doubt anyone was even considering mutiny up until things like this started happening. Maybe they did eventually. It really seems like the very definition of a self fulfilling prophecy. Now, there were serious laws about how sailors were to be treated on ships. There still are. And one of the sailors said, the man didn't do anything. If we tie him up for the next couple of weeks, he will be able to sue the whole ship company and we will also be held responsible. You can't just tie a guy up for no legitimate reason on a ship. Not to mention he does important work around here. But the captain was incensed. He demanded that they tie him up and leave him that way. The first mate, Will Smith, was a good first mate. And he was realizing that the captain was acting insane and he didn't want to cause any more trouble. So he told the men to just go ahead and follow the captain's orders, tie him up, hoping that maybe that would rescrew some loose screws, calm the captain down long enough to make it back safely to shore. So they tied him up and put him in a cramped compartment under the cabin. Which just sounds like torture. Sadly, Will Smith was wrong. The captain's mania and paranoia only got worse from here. On July 21, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and a nice steady breeze was blowing the sails at a healthy pace toward Ireland. The crew was thankful for that. But the captain asked that the sails be rolled up. In other words, even though those sails were bringing them swiftly to their destination, he wanted them taken down, slowing the process. Just like Smith, the crew believed it was just best to comply with the captain in this state that he was in. So they didn't argue. They had a lot of other work to do that day, so they just got to work on the deck. All men except for Smith, still tied up in a tight compartment under the cabin, were working hard on the deck. But they weren't the only people on the ship. There were also three young boys, two young teenagers and a very young boy. They weren't passengers or children of the sailors. They were workers. It was common to have children as young as 10 years old working on ships like these as apprentices. There were three of these boys on the ship, as well as another who was there for help, health reasons, it was believed that sea air would help numerous illnesses in the day. Imagine putting your 10 year old child on a boat full of gruff sailors and shipping them across the sea for their health. Incredible. Quick side note, I heard someone mention this week that since time only exists the way we understand it, as in moving in one direction in this dimension, and the spirits of the dead exist in another dimension altogether, then maybe it's possible to be reincarnated in the past. Now I do believe in reincarnation and I haven't stopped thinking about this all week, thinking of the places I'd be horrified to turn up in and reincarnating as a kid with tuberculosis, forced to take a ship from Barbados to Ireland in the early 1800s with a psychotic, wiry, red headed captain is certainly one of them. Ugh, God, I really hope that doesn't happen. Just watch it happen. Now I feel like I'm jinxing myself. Anyway, back to it. Okay, so all of the men are working on the deck, tying up the sails that were totally helping the ship sail exactly where they wanted to go. And the boys are hanging out with the captain who is starting to become entirely untethered from reality. One of the boys comes onto the deck, goes up to one of the sailors and tells him that the captain would like to see him in the cabin. The man does as he's asked and a few minutes minutes later the same boy comes back onto the deck, asks another man to come back to the cabin. The captain would like to see him. After six men had been called to the cabin but did not return, the remaining two men, John Howes and James Murley, wondered what the heck was going on. Where are all of the other guys? The boy returned and told John Howes that the captain would like to see him. John asks, asked what happened to the other men. The boy was visibly uncomfortable. He couldn't look him in the eye. He just said simply, you need to come see the captain. John followed and got about halfway down the steps when he saw the captain pointing two pistols at his chest. He froze and asked as calmly as he could, what do you intend to do with your pistols, Captain? End quote. Stewart exploded with rage. He said he knew about all of their murderous, mutinous scheming and they weren't going to get away with it. He was going to keep them all tied up until they got to shore. Howes decided to try to make a break for it somewhere and he called out to Merlie, who was still on deck, that the captain had gone mad. Stewart shot his pistols but missed. But rather than try to overpower the captain, Murley did what everyone else had been doing up until that point to cope with the situation. He said, fine. Even though the captain's guns were no longer loaded, he said, tie me up. Tie us all up. Just calm down. And I don't blame him or any of the men for complying. There are so many stories that you hear of maniacs, murderers, doing this kind of thing to people, telling a group that if they just comply, everything will work out okay. And in retrospect, it's so easy to blame the victims, especially if it seems like they could have just banded together. They could have overpowered the madman or escaped. Like the Richard Speck murders. He killed eight nurses in a situation kind of like this. He tied them up, just told them to comply. I won't go into the whole story because it's absolutely horrifying. It is one of the most heartbreaking murders in history. But it's just to say I don't think that we can blame any of these men for just complying. Even if they had moments where they could have overpowered him. Not just because it was clearly a very horrifying situation, but he was the only man who knew how to guide the ship because there were no longer compasses, maps, or navigation equipment. Remember, he Blair witched them weeks earlier. Howes also stopped and agreed to be tied up with all of the other men who had already been bound in the cabin. The young boys were being forced to tie them up by the captain. Oh, those poor boys. Poor everyone. The captain had coaxed the young boys into submission by threatening to kill them, but also manipulating them by saying that they would receive special awards for helping a captain thwart a mutiny that would be sufficient to make them gentlemen, end quote. After a few hours, Howes was like, this is insane. I have to stop this guy. So he did his best to loosen his ropes, and he did successfully. But he thought it would be best to just stay put and only try to escape at an opportune moment. But the next morning, Captain Stewart checked all the of their ropes and found Howes had loosened his. So he shot him three times. He also had him beaten by the children before he shot him. He didn't kill him, though. He hit him in the thumb, the side and the thigh. Astoundingly, Howes was able to escape. He was able to run and hide somewhere where he would not be found. He was able to find cargo crates with animal hides, and he nestled between them and just stayed hidden while bleeding Out. It had been Captain Stewart's plan not to kill any of the men. So he later would say. His plan was to get them all contained, then flag another passing ship down and send a distress signal so that they may rescue him from his presumed murderously plotting men. He tried for at least a day to flag ships down, but none came close enough. And this is when he became entirely untethered to reality. And mania fully possessed his mind. It occurred to him that if these men were innocent, if he was wrong about all of this, God would have sent a ship in their direction to rescue them. The fact that a boat did not come was a sign that God wanted these men dead. The punishment for the crime of mutiny was death, he thought to himself. So God was giving him the green light to play judge, jury and executioner on all of these men. With his crowbar in hand, he stormed into the cabin where the men lay defenseless. He shouted, the curse of God is upon you all. And the three boys, of whom the oldest was only 15, watched the captain bludgeon each one to death. Their names were William Swanson, James Murley, Carpenter, John Kramer, Seaman Francis Sullivan, Seaman John Keating, Mule handling Timothy Connell, and Captain James Raines. After this, he returned with an axe to methodically hack through each man to ensure that they were dead. And the last man, William Smith, was still bound in a small compartment under the men. The captain bust through it with the axe and murdered him as well. None survived. When the captain was done, he sat back, settled down covered in gore and demanded that the boys fetch him some meat and rum. He ate among the dead men, then had a smoke. He smoked his pipe and told the boys that he thought no more of the bodies before him than if they were a parcel of dead dogs. I can't even imagine the experience that these boys had. I wonder why his mind didn't also consider that they may be part of the mutinous hallucination he was having. He could see how easily, easily he manipulated them. I'm surprised that he didn't think that the men would be using them for the same purpose. The captain would later confess that what was on his mind during this time was how proud of himself he was that he saved the precious cargo and would make his employer happy with him. He thought on what he would do with his earnings from making the voyage and safely delivering the animal hides and such such. He considered all of those men a reasonable price to pay. But the insanity did not stop there. He eventually was able to hail a ship down, a ship called The Mary Stubbs. It didn't occur to him whatsoever that he would be hailed as anything other than a hero. When they were found, the sailors lifted the captain aboard and he went to speak with the captain of that ship, Captain Robert Callender. He told him what he did and asked him, quote, were he not a valiant little fellow to kill so many men? That is some chilling serial killer shit. My God, am I not a valiant little fellow? Crumbs and carrots. The captain was like, um, sure. You say there's another man hiding out on the boat somewhere. Which Indeed there was. Mr. Howes, remember, was still hiding and bleeding out somewhere on the ship. Captain Callender's men helped to find him and they did with the animal. Animal Heights. Stuart told Howes, who was barely conscious but still able to somewhat communicate that he believed he was innocent. Now, because God chose to spare him from him, Howes and the captain stayed aboard the Mary Stubbs and a few of Captain Callender's men took control of the Merry Russell to guide it back to Ireland with all of the dead men aboard. But Captain Stewart took his maniac paranoia along with him onto the Mary Stubbs and began immediately showing signs of sheer insanity, believing now that all of these men were plotting to kill him. But luckily he didn't try to kill anyone else this time. He tried to kill himself. He threw his body overboard not once but twice, and they had to rescue him. Flailing, terrified that they were trying to kill him. They were like, get this man out of here. So they moved him back to his other boat and where he threw himself overboard again. But this time a fishing boat picked him up nearby and sailed off faster than their boats could catch him. Captain Stewart was now a killer on the loose. The captain of the Mary Stubbs had all of the evidence that he needed that this was no issue of mutiny, or at least there was something terribly wrong with the captain. And it's likely that he not only murdered innocent men, but that he very likely, likely would try to kill again. As soon as they docked in Ireland, the captain quickly reported the murders and endeavored to arrange a search party to find the wayward, murderous captain. For all he knew, he would be berserking by now. But thank God the man who picked him up in the fishing boat delivered the captain directly to the Coast Guard and the captain told them his whole story, which by this point wasn't convincing anyone that he wasn't seriously mentally ill. They held him until they could get more information about what really happened. The ship with the bodies was towed into the harbor and shockingly, as it was being pulled up, people had already heard what had happened and were looking for the ship. One officer had come aboard the ship to watch it, but as folks in the harbor got wind that this might be the ship, they asked, hey, can we come aboard and check it out? And the police officer said, yeah, sure, wipe your feet. He invited a number of people onto the ship to gawk at the mutilated bodies of these men. One of the men allowed aboard the ship, a man named William Scoresby Jr. An Arctic explorer, scientist and Anglican minister, was inspired to write a full account of everything that happened on the ship all the way through the trial and even documented the life of the captain. Well, after the trial he interviewed the lone survivors, Mr. Howes, the children, everyone involved. It's his information that this entire story is built with. He described what he Five swollen bodies lashed on their backs, mangled with ghastly wounds and clotted with gore, lying conspicuously visible with lower extremities of two others seen projecting from the mate's cabin. Captain Stewart was officially under arrest as soon as Captain Callender relayed his story of the man's paranoia and admissions of the murder to him. Once they arrived, the coroner was asked to call a jury to try to get to the bottom of what had happened. It's unclear if Mr. Howes was conscious enough or able to speak about what had happened yet it's possible that he was able to provide a few details, but the jury was torn. This is not a court jury, by the way. This was how back in the day it would be determined if murder charges should be issued at all. The facts were would be considered by a group of locals along with a coroner. They considered the fact that the captain had never had a situation like this before. He'd always been level headed, respectable, intelligent and professional. But nothing, not even his own confessions of mutinous signs he saw convinced any of them that the men intended to mutiny. They took into account the testimony of Captain Callender saying how erratic and paranoid he was acting on his ship. And they came to the conclusion that the captain was mentally ill. Nothing that he said justified what he had done. But he was also in a state of mental derangement, so they didn't know how to proceed with the charge. They came only to the conclusion that he should stand trial for murder, but that he likely was insane. Within one week the trial was set and packed wall to wall with spectators. The captain wore a white waistcoat, waistcoat Black coat and respectively tied cravat. He didn't appear to be the mad captain howling at the moon that he had already been described to be in the papers. His defense team attempted to prove that although he appeared sane and reasonable in many ways, he was a monomaniac. A 19th century term for an individual who develops a maniacal obsession that they can't shake. That eventually leads them to kill. The prosecution wasn't considering a case of insanity at all. They did their best to prove that the captain was just a cold, calculated killer. Not mentally ill whatsoever, just a monster. No matter the verdict, the captain would not go free. Either he was guilty for reasons of insanity or guilty he had already confessed to the murders. And nothing that he said about the behavior of the men by his own interpretations, would prove at all that they intended to mutiny. Interestingly, the judge suggested to the jury, however, that they could also consider whether they believed Captain Stewart really did receive messages from God. Did they believe that God would send this man messages. Or do they think the devil was perhaps tricking him and he essentially fell for it? This was 1828. These kinds of things were honestly considered in situations like these in this time. Although I'm not sure how any of these folks would be able to ascertain any of that. Regardless, the judge told them that they could only find him guilty of murder or not guilty for reasons of insanity. They, however, returned a verdict of guilty, but for reasons of insanity. They didn't understand what the judge was talking about. He said the court didn't accept their verdict, but they could amend it right there before they left the box, and everything would be cool. Meanwhile, Captain Stewart was probably like, where am I going? The gallows? The asylum or brunch? What are we doing here? The jury eventually decided that he was not guilty for reasons of insanity. And so the judge sentenced him to close confinement during life or during His Majesty's pleasure. Captain Stewart was very pleased with this verdict. Not because he believed he was guilty or even insane. He was just happy that he would not be executed. He also still fully believed that what he did was right. He had no doubts at all that what he did was what he needed to do to survive. He fell to his knees, clasped his hands and said, I have great reason to bless God, for if I had committed the murder willfully, I would not have wished to live myself. But I did not. End quote. Now, luckily for the captain, this was an era before lunatic asylums, as they were known, became terribly overcrowded. Places of dehumanization and torture. In many cases, this was an era where previously the mentally ill were not considered ill. They were considered like animals that needed to be locked away, beaten, chained to walls, treated like animals in a zoo. Worse than that. But in the early 1800s, there was a gloriously progressive shift away from confining the mentally ill to attempting to treat the mentally ill in facilities that were not built like prisons, but beautiful retreats where people like him would have a great deal of freedom and care. He spent the rest of his life in confinement, first at Cork's Lunatic Asylum. He was there until 1851, then transferred to the Dundrum Asylum for the Criminally Insane, where he stayed until his Death. Death. At 93 years old in 1873, he lived through Mozart's entire life, Beethoven's entire life, and lived to see Alexander Graham Bell's prototype of the telephone. He didn't see it himself. He was in an asylum. But in this place he saw his children regularly. He tutored them. He made model boats which he gave to his family to sell and support themselves. He also took time to study the Bible. He told Mr. Scoresby, the man who first saw the bodies on the ship, who compiled all of this information, that he never thought to escape. He had no desire to leave the asylum. He was afraid that if he ever did, not that he would kill again, but that he would not be allowed to live anywhere without people hunting him down, pointing at him in the streets, shouting, murderer everywhere he went. Even though it sounds like he had a very nice place there. In the asylum, he did have heavy bouts of depression. He struggled deeply with his sanity. He didn't understand why he believed what he did and no one else believed him. He took a solace, though, in a belief that what he did as he believed it was also God's plan, even if they weren't guilty. His reasoning turned to everything done is God's will, including that I killed these men. Whether they were guilty or not, they. There's more to God's plan than we could ever know. I do not agree with the captain that God has any plans for our suffering. I don't believe in any gods. But I do agree with the sentiment that there is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy. I wonder if there are spirits whose purpose is to come here to be held responsible for hurting people. I would like to believe that it isn't a God or someone or something else making these decisions for us. I would like to believe that it was our own spirits that chose a life where we knew what we needed to learn, experience something that we need to feel so that we can evolve into something greater. All the pain and grief and despair is for more than nothing. I suppose what matters most of all is that any beliefs of what God or Spirit wants for us aside in this life, we deliver due justice based on what is fair. And in this case, for Captain Stewart, it seems to me like that was done Only one of the bodies of the men murdered on the Mary Russell has an known grave. Timothy Thomas Connell's brother had a memorial stone erected in the cemetery at Passage west in County Cork. It is likely that the other men were buried in the cemetery, possibly even beside him. In this time, sailors and their families could rarely afford headstones, and any documentation about where the men were placed has not survived. The inscription on the memorial of Timothy Thomas Connell says you gentle reader that pass this way, attend a while. Adhere to what I say. By murder vile I was bereft of life and parted from two lovely babes and wife by Captain Stewart I met an early doom on board The Mary Russell 22 June forced from this world to meet my God on high, with whom I hope to reign eternally. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please rate the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Leave me comments because I love them so much and for ad free listening, True crime Extras, dark poetry and witchy comics content, join the patreon@myvictorian nightmare.com Be kind to yourselves and I will see you in your nightmares.