Loading summary
Transcript13 lines
- [00:00]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
- [00:03]
B
Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?
- [00:07]
A
Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your.
- [00:10]
B
Home in auto policies.
- [00:11]
A
Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary.
- [00:17]
B
Not available in all states.
- [00:20]
A
Meet the computer you can talk to with Copilot on Windows Working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block? Share your screen with Copilot Vision to help spark inspiration and use Copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with Copilot Vision. Copilot sees what you see. Let Copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new apps, games and skills faster. Try now@windows.com copilot.
- [00:51]
B
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 adv foreign. And welcome to this my 70th episode. I made it to 70. What a milestone. I hope that you had a fabulous week despite everything due to reality. And I'm pretty sure I've still not adjusted to daylight savings. I have been waking up at 5am every morning and my brain does does not shut off until midnight. So that's fabulous. I can't get back to sleep so I've started just getting out of bed and taking weird baths. Weird 5am baths. Have you ever done this? I feel like I'm taking a bath in another dimension. It's day and yet night. I should be unconscious, but I'm not. So I light some candles to make it extra weird. I play soft baroque music like Vivaldi and Bach and Scarlatti. In a way it makes me feel like I'm haunting my own mourning. I'm in a time I shouldn't be floating, listening to music from days of old in the flickering candlelight, frothing with anger and desperation, longing for rest. You should give it a try. Let me know what you think. Okay folks, I gotta tell you, I don't know if it's because we have five effing planets in retrograde right now and we are all feeling sensitive and delicate or what. I know I sure have been. But you have been sending me of the most touching emails and messages over the last few weeks and I'm having a hard time holding it together. It has been a tough few weeks for a few reasons not related to my 5am jolts out of dead sleep that I won't go into. And so your messages have really meant a lot to me and I just want to share with you some of the sweetness that has come my way. Maybe it will brighten your day as well. An archaeologist named Danielle Knights reached out after she heard episode 55 about the bloody benders, and in the end of that episode I mentioned how much respect I have for archaeologists and the work that they do, specifically how honorable and lovely it is to try to uncover the stories, the voices, the lives lived of people who are no longer with us. And she sent me a poem that she wrote about the work she does and I'm gonna try my best to get through it without crying. It reads, I dig in the dirt and I dream of people. They're like us but and far away. They have no voices to say their names, but I hear them speaking from the grave. Listen. But there is no message, only a long forgotten presence, no more or less. Just existence, struggle and love and hunger and faith. A life lived and ended then buried in the soil for me to find and hold and look, for me to cherish and to love. Ah, simply beautiful. I was so touched by that kind message that you sent me and this poem. In many ways this is what I'm trying to do with this show. I'm digging through old newspapers the way you dig through dirt, for the people, the voices, especially the ones who were lost too soon to say their names again. Their graves may be overgrown with ivy, unseen by family for a hundred years. I want their spirits to know that they're still held onto, if only by some redheaded Nosferatu here in Brooklyn. So again, thank you for the work that you do and for sending me your email. I also received some other emails from folks saying simply the kindest things and a review on Apple Podcasts that was so kind. Z. Ruiz wrote something so sweet that I started sobbing into my coffee and then they ended it by saying, don't cry too much into your coffee. Sorry babe, you ruined me. Thank you everyone who supports my show with your kindness by simply listening and by joining the patreon@myvictorianightmare.com I am happy to see that a few of you have joined my new Extras tier. That really means a lot to those of you who subscribe either to just the show extras or the full fan coven are the reason why I can continue to make the show without you. I wouldn't be able to. And for those of you who can't join or just don't want to join for any reason, that's totally cool. But who have rated the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify? Those of you who brought me to 8,000 ratings on Spotify this week, thank you so so much. You ensure that I show up in more Spotify suggest questions so more people can find the show. I am so grateful for all of you. I bought a dress last week that I cannot wait to wear to all of my holiday parties and it's rather form fitting. I'm feeling extra spicy this holiday season so I will also be wearing my Honey Love bras and shapewear. I love their new Cloud Embrace bras. They're seamless wireless so you don't see any nonsense poking out and it's perfect for more shapely girls like myself. I always thought I needed underwire until I met this bra. It's sturdy and lightly, elegantly padded. With all of the traveling I will be doing this season, there is nothing worse than wearing an uncomfortable wire bra on a packed flight. They fit so comfortably. Perfect travel bras and their shapewear also fits seamlessly. I want to be able to eat all of the appetizers without being concerned I'm going to look six months pregnant by the end of the night. I am an appetizer shark at every party. The shapewear does not roll down, doesn't roll up, doesn't pinch you in weird places, it enhances curves, it doesn't squish you in like a sausage. Their shapewear just makes you look smooth and supported all over. Honeylove was founded by women and designed by women who actually wear what they make. Treat yourself or someone you love to Honey Love this holiday season and right now you can save 20%@honeylove.com victorian just use our exclusive link honeylove.com forward/victorian to grab your discount. After you order, they'll ask where you heard about Honey Love. So please send support my show and let them know that I sent you. Celebrate the season feeling confident and comfortable with Honey Love. Okay for you today, dear listener, we will be returning back to the blood smeared Victorian Railways. A number of months ago I did an episode on Victorian Train Murders and I was really in the mood to dig up those stories again this week. It's been so misty and chilly in the city it just made me want to take us back to those cold and foggy 19th century nights along Italy, England's treacherous, murderous and ever so beautifully detailed transportation system. We will have not one, but two grisly murders. One that was the very first train murder in England's history, and another that didn't occur on a train, but where the train and telegraph were instrumental in the capture of the killer. It is such a wild story, I cannot wait to share it with you. But first let us have our first segment with their own eyes where I share with you the personal, haunting accounts of petrified Victorians. Sorry. Sometimes when I read the same thing in a script that I wrote for myself a million times, I go into like a kind of autopilot, and then I see what I wrote for myself to read. That made me laugh the first time I wrote it, and it makes me laugh again. I've got the memory of a fish like that. Okay, back to it. And I have such a treat for you. I found in the Cheshire observer of 1869 an article written by a skeptic who met with friends of his who were very much not skeptics and who had a number of ghost encounters to share with him in hopes of convincing him otherwise. This article contained a few stories, so I'll include others in episodes to come, but here is the first installment, and it reads. Not long ago, I was spending the evening in a secluded country house. The wind whistled outside, the sleet drifted before it, and altogether the circumstances were such as to render the warm fireside a most desirable spot. Having exhausted the usual topics of conversation and influenced perhaps by the wild, dreary weather outside, we broached the subject of ghosts. My entertainer and his wife were thoroughly versed in the ghost lore of the district. Strange as it may seem to the inhabitants of towns, belief in spirits and reappearances of the dead still exists in many parts of Cheshire and North Wales. Determined to put my skepticism to the severest test, my host and hostess told by the glimmering firelight the following ghost stories. First, the lady's tale. In Malpas, not many years ago, there lived an innkeeper who during his wife's lifetime had not treated her well. The wife died, and scarcely had she been buried before her ghost began to walk. As the innkeeper and his daughters were sitting in the bar, the deceased Mrs. Morris would make her appearance clad exactly as in lifetime, begin dusting the chairs, turning the taps and filling the glasses. As for customers, these manifestations happened several times until the dwellers in the house vowed that they could not live there no longer. The whole neighborhood heard of the alleged apparition and at least two bold men volunteered to stay in the bar all night and test the truth of their ghost stories. The venturesome sparks sat up, the candle lighted their grog before them, and fearless of consequences, they had not remained there long after the house was closed when one of them, turning his head, noticed an old woman in the corner of the room. The figure was exactly like the late Mrs. Morris. It neither spoke nor moved, and so frightened, frightened were the watchers. They, like the specter, were speechless and motionless. This continued some time until the length of the apparition went to the staircase door, opened it mysteriously and silently disappeared. The two men, with feelings intensely relieved, rushed from the house by the street door, leaving it open in their haste, and speedily put away wide space between them and the haunted inn. I've said it before and I'll say it again. One of the most terrifying ghost encounter situations to me is when a ghost just simply stands there and stares at you. I watched the first Smile movie last night for the 30th time. I really like that movie, and especially the second. But there's a scene where the possessed gal is just standing in her dark kitchen drinking a glass of wine, and in the corner of the room is the gray black figure of a patient she saw die brutally the day before, just staring and smiling. It's the most chilling shot in the entire movie to me. Yikes. Okay, won't you follow me into the seance room where I share with you the goings on in the spiritualist community of the 1800s? I love these depositions in the spiritualist newspaper that in great detail describe the experiences of people becoming believers in spiritualism and then becoming mediums themselves. This deposition is intense, comes to us from an 1869 volume, and it reads, Mr. Morse, trance medium, said that he first heard of spiritualism by reading the particulars of the trial of Lyon v. Home. And he told his friends that he considered it to be partly mesmerism, partly imagination and partly trickery. Still, he saw that respectable persons more intelligent than himself testified to its truth. So he thought he was not justified in condemning it without investigation. Accordingly, he went to Mr. Cogman's circle at the east end to expose it. After sitting about 20 minutes, he felt as if his head was split open and a shovel full of sand dropped in. Then a power stronger than himself made him get up and begin to roar and bellow, though all the time he was conscious of his axe and very much ashamed of his behavior. Mr. Cogman told the spirit to leave him and the reply through Mr. Morse's lips was, sit down, you old, old fool. The influence made him misbehave himself for half an hour and then left him. He was very much exhausted and not a little out of temper, for he felt that he attended there to expose others and been himself exposed. On the fourth Sunday of his attendance at Mr. Cogman's circle. Better influences controlled him and he was made to take the Bible, give out out a text and preach a sermon for half an hour. And those present declared the discourse to be very good. He himself now and then had a faint dreamy consciousness of what his mouth was saying for a long time. The control of the spirits over him was imperfect and there was much stuttering when they tried to speak through him for months. He did not believe that spirits had anything to do with it, and though that it was was something connected with his own bodily or mental organization which he did not quite understand. But on one occasion he chanced to be at a circle where a seeing medium was present who not only described his spirit friends most accurately, but gave their names in addition, he thought this rather singular, as the young man was a stranger to him. He now accepts his own skills or that of a trap trance medium. And he attended many more circles accepting the guidance of his spirit friends. End quote. Okay, like all of these articles, I love this. It's so fascinating to me. But even though I do to a degree believe in ghosts and sensitives, some folks who can communicate with the dead, I was just thinking how wild it is that so many people in this time claimed to have this skill. And I don't think it was just because almost all of them were frauds. I do believe at least many of these folks believed that they were talking to the dead. But what of the wild events, the floating tables, the wrappings, the flying objects they claimed to see? Was there some kind of collective psychosis, some kind of telekinesis? Like not all of it could have been staged? Was it parapsychological energy that these folks were tapping into that made them think it was ghosts? But maybe it was just them and their ability to move energy with their own collective beliefs in the paranormal. And then I heard something the other day that blew the doors off the hinges of my tiny little mind. Have you ever heard of the Philip Experiment? This was an experiment done by scientists, big shot scientists in 1972 to see if a ghost could be created through human will. The experiment was conducted by a Toronto parapsychological research society led by mathematical geneticist Dr. A.R. george Owen and overseen by psychologist Dr. Joel Whitten. The test group consisted of Owen's wife, Iris Owen, former chairperson of MENSA in Canada, Margaret Sparrow, industrial designer Andy H. His wife Lauren, heating engineer Al Peacock, accountant Bernard Ernest M. Bookkeeper Dorothy o' Donnell and sociology student Sydney K. They created a fictional character with a backstory named Philip Aylesford. His history was that he died by suicide in 1654 at the age of 30 after a Romani woman he loved was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. He had a military career. He was knighted by age 16. He was personal friends with Charles II and worked for him as a spy. There were other details about him that were purposely historically inaccurate. Their first attempt to contact this spirit that they made up bore no results. Nothing happened. But then they decided to closely mimic a seance. They sat around a table, turned down the lights, lit candles and spoke the way spiritually do when they're attempting to communicate with the dead. No doubt with pronounced and spooky risings and falling inflections. And all of a sudden, the scientists began feeling a presence. Table vibrations, breezes, unexplained echoes and rapping sounds which matched responses to the questions they were asking about Philip's life. At one point, the table tilted on a single and at other times moved across the room without human contact. They asked him questions about his life and he could only answer questions about the story that they made up about him, and he could only give the historically inaccurate answers. They used the knock once for yes and two for no technique of acquiring answers. The same test was done again with different made up characters, one named Lilith, the other Humphrey, yielding the same creepy results. Now, there's no way to tell what was really going on here. In fact, the findings by their own opinions were inconclusive. Essentially, they came to a vague conclusion that they must have created this phenomenon by sheer collective consciousness, that the power of collective belief, imagination, focus, was able to conjure an energy that some of them could even hear that made lights flicker. This group repeated this experiment numerous times and even in front of an audience of 50 people who, many of which claimed to feel the presence of Philip, all having been told he was not real. This remains as one of the most fascinating studies in parapsychology and it really makes me think, in the Victorian era, in the age of spiritualism, how many spirits were spirits and how many were simply conjured by the people in the room? Could they have made lamps flicker, tables lift off the ground, cold spot thoughts? Can we do this with our minds? If So I really, really want to give this a try. Alright, my place this weekend, guys. Who's joining me?
- [21:33]
A
This episode is brought to you by Rakuten. Are you scouring the web for the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals? Stop it. Get Rakuten. Rakuten is a shopping sidekick that gets you cash back on gifts for everyone on your list. Right now you can get up to 15% cash back at the stores you love, stacked on top of the biggest sales of the year. That's savings on savings. Cash back is automatically added to your account and you can get paid with gift cards, PayPal or check. Or eligible American Express card members can choose to earn membership rewards points. Now is the time to join. Up to 15% cash back ends on December 2nd. Plus new members will receive a welcome bonus after minimum qualifying purchases. Just go to rakuten.com, download the app or install the browser extension. Terms and conditions apply.
- [22:20]
B
Okay, let us make our way to North London and discuss the very first Victorian train murder. The murder of Mr. Thomas Briggs in 1864. Before his brutal murder on the 09:50 train from Fenchurch street to Hackney on Saturday 9 July 1864, trains in London were known to be heaving with criminals. The early railway quickly became popular. But train cars weren't built for safety necessarily. Many cars had no lighting, they weren't connected by corridors. You would board your car from the outside and if you happened to be in one with someone who intended to rob or assault you, your only escape would be onto the tracks. Newspapers were intensely covering the perils of railway travel, the commingling of the dangerous classes, garroters as they were called, riding on trains with the well to do in tight quarters. Some of this was of course just classist fear mongering. But it is true that organized crime rings especially targeted trains. At this time. Pickpocketing was the most rampant crime, especially on train platforms which were also equally dimly lit. There was also the danger of just just riding a train in and of itself. Train accidents were so common and often deadly. And if you died in a train accident, you died in a horrifying way. Train cars falling off of bridges into rivers, cars splitting in half like dry spaghetti, skewering passengers with wooden beams and splinters, being crushed to death, burning alive. Train cars often caught fire. There were 7,700 train accidents in London in 1864. It is astounding. So trains in London already had a bad reputation before the murder of poor Mr. Briggs on Saturday 9th July, two bank clerks boarded the train at Hackney. They entered a first class carriage and had a seat. Immediately they noticed wet blood on the seats and floor. The train had not yet begun moving. They called for a guard to come and examine the compartment. They found blood covered all of the cushions and the floor and the door. The guard also found a black beaver hat, a walking stick and a bag. I wonder what the clerks that were covered in blood did next. Do you think they'd get back onto the train and be like, we'll explain why we're covered in blood when we get there? This was the 1800s. Everyone had tuberculosis, coughing up blood left and right. I honestly wouldn't put it past them. I continue. The guard locked the door, telegraphed Chalk Farm Station, and on arrival there, ran to tell the station master. They detached the car and sent it to BO to be examined. The objects found in the car, the hat, the walking stick and bag, were sent to the Metropolitan Police. Not long after this discovery, the engine driver of a train track traveling in the opposite direction spotted something unusual on the side of the tracks up ahead. It appeared to be a man lying face down. The train was moving slowly, so the engine driver had enough time to stop the train and had a guard inspect the man. They discovered that this man had been brutally beaten. He was covered in blood, severely injured. He. He was unconscious, unable to speak, but still barely alive. It became clear that this man was beaten to within an inch of his life and tossed out of a train car. He was taken to a hospital where he died from his injuries. The following night, it was determined that his identity was Thomas Briggs, the chief clerk of a bank. He was almost 70 years old. It was determined that the bag and the walking stick belonged to Mr. Briggs, but the hat was not identified as his. It was assumed that it must have belonged to his killer. A relative who identified his body said that he was missing both his gold watch and gold glasses. I've never seen gold glasses before. It was then assumed that the motive for his killer was likely not personal, but robbery. This murder caused a sensation. Riders of the railways in London were already fed up with the crime on trains and now a murder. The public demanded safety regulations and better security on trains. Trains. In fact, his murder led directly to major legislative and regulatory changes in railway safety. Laws were quickly passed to create corridor carriages that exited into the train, not just out to the tracks. The communication cord was added to every car so that passengers could pull the cord and directly notify train security. Lighting was put into every car and more was done to protect passengers Both the government and Briggs's bank offered a substantial reward for his killer. The first clue from the public about the killer's identity came from a jeweler whose name was, get this, John Death. He gave the description of a twitchy German man who came into his shop in Cheapside on 11 July, just two days after the murder, to pawn a gold watch chain. It was identified as belonging to Briggs. Now the next clue as to the whereabouts of this mysterious gold chain pawning man is was wild for a few reasons. Newspapers had already started running articles about the gold chain being pawned in the jeweler Death's shop. A cab driver came into the station to say that his kids brought home a jewelry box with the word Death on it. A German man named Franz Muller was about to chuck it, but the kids stopped him and asked if they could keep it, and he handed it over to them. This man had been engaged to his oldest daughter, but he quickly called off the engagement, hopped on a boat and sailed for New York on July 15th. This cab driver also identified the black beaver hat as being bought by him and given to Mueller. He also had a photograph of Franz. The photo was shown to Mr. Death, who confirmed that that was the guy who pawned the chain. The hunt was on. Two sergeants hopped on the next steamship to New York from Liverpool, a much faster ship than the one Muller was on. They arrived three weeks before he did. I hope that they got some sightseeing in while they were here. They were waiting for him when he arrived and arrested him the moment he got off the boat. Extradition proceedings began and he was back across the pond within just a few weeks. His trial began on October 27. Several witnesses testified to seeing Briggs boarding the train that day, including the ticket collector who punched his ticket. Mueller's defense was an alibi. He said he wasn't there. He was elsewhere with a sex worker who testified on his behalf. Another witness testified that he saw Thomas Briggs board his compartment with two other men, neither of whom were Franz Mueller. It was also suggested by the defense that the cab driver who pointed police in Mueller's direction was actually the killer. But none of these testimonies and accusations went far. Mueller already had a previous conviction for theft and larceny, which was strongly leaned on by the prosecution, not to mention the hasty escape to the States and The testimony of Mr. Death, who identified him by photograph. Mueller was found guilty and sentenced to hang. He was publicly executed in front of a drunk and disorderly crowd. The scene was full of so much madness and Disorder that it led to the abolition of public executions across the country. Franz Muller was executed on November 14, 1864. He never confessed and professed innocence until the end.
- [30:46]
A
This episode is brought to you by cars.com on cars.com you can shop over 2 million cars. That means over 2 million new car possibilities. Like making space for your growing family. Becoming the type of person who takes spontaneous weekend camping trips. Or upgrading your condition wherever life takes you next. Or whoever you're looking to be. There's a car for that on cars.com visit cars.com to discover your next possibility.
- [31:11]
B
Okay, our next dastardly murder didn't take place on a train. But the railway system and the telegraph was instrumental in catching the killer. This is the murder of Sarah Hart. In 1814, a man named John Talwell was sentenced to death. Death not for killing anybody, but for forging a ten pound note. I've mentioned before that rather than pass laws to make stealing bodies from graves for the surgeons illegal body snatching, governments preferred to make more crimes punishable by death because it was legal to use bodies of executed criminals for medical research. This sounds like one of those instances. Mr. Talwell's life, however, was spared because the bank where he intended to use the forged ten pound note was run by Quakers who staunchly opposed the death penalty. He was given a life sentence, shipped to Australia to perform hard labor on coal ships before being moved to work in a convict hospital. He was a model inmate and promoted to working as a clerk for the hospital. He was pardoned five years later for being such an upstanding worker. So he went from a death sentence to one year working on coal ships to working in a hospital. And that was that. He returned to London, met a lady, had two beautiful children and enjoyed owning a successful pharmaceutical shop. Talk about turning your life around. But in this time, the 1830s, the air in London was so choked with toxic coal fog due to rapid industrialization that it was literally killing people in large numbers and in. In fact, both of Mr. Talwell's children, William and John, died due to pollution related illnesses. His wife, heartbroken and sick on the poisonous air herself, required a nurse in the home. A young woman named Sarah Hart came to care for her. Mrs. Talwell also had tuberculosis which was exasperated by the smog and pollution in the 1830s. Tuberculosis was so extremely prevalent that it reached out epidemic levels at the time. It was the leading cause of death in all of Europe at that time. And the toxic smog that hung in London due to the Industrial Revolution only hastened deaths from this terrible disease. Mary, John's wife, died in 1838, and John had already been having an affair with Sarah Hart. She continued living in the home after Mary's death and gave birth to two of his children. But John had no intention of marrying her. In fact, he moved her out of the home as soon as she had the children to make way for his new wife, a Quaker widow. He moved her and his two children into a cottage nearby and agreed to pay her one pound a week. The wife had no idea this woman existed. By 1844, his business was folding and he no longer could afford to pay for his mistress's home and his children and his new wife and his own home. So he decided it would be best if he murdered Sarah. On January 1, 1845, he purchased two bottles of steels acid. This was a preparation used for the treatment of varicose veins that contained prussic acid. This is a highly, highly toxic poison. No amount of this poison treats treats any conditions at all. It certainly doesn't treat varicose veins, and yet it was sold for that purpose. In fact, when I googled what drinking this acid does to the body, Google didn't even answer the question. It just gave me a suicide hotline and said it couldn't answer the question. I spoke last week about how utterly poison addled the Victorians were. John brought the bottle with him to visit visit Sarah. He also brought some beer to share. When her back was turned, he poured almost the entire bottle into her drink. Sarah's neighbor, Mrs. Ashley, suddenly heard loud wailing and retching through the wall that they shared. She quickly got up to run next door to see what was happening. Upon opening the door, she saw John fleeing the cottage. Mrs. Ashley ran inside to find Sarah Sarah writhing and frothing at the mouth on the floor. She ran for help, but by the time a doctor and reverend arrived back at the home, Sarah was dead. This reverend was as sharp as a tack. He never saw Talwell, but he quickly got a good description of him and ran to the train station, assuming that the killer would most likely try to get away by the nearby train. He was right. He saw John boarding the train just as he arrived. But the train began pulling out of the station just before he could catch up to it. Talwell probably thought he'd gotten away with murder and was home free. But, and this is pretty cool, he would likely have been right if the station where he left Slough wasn't equipped with the newfangled telegraph, as was the destination Nation station Paddington. The Reverend ran to the station master and told him what happened and the man snapped to life. He quickly began to telegraph the next station that quote, a murder has just been committed at Salt Hill. And the suspected murderer was seen to take a first class ticket to London by the train that left Slough at 7.42pm he's in the garb of a Quaker with a brown gray coat on which reaches his feet seat. He is in the last compartment of the second first class carriage, end quote. And what follows from here is like out of a movie. At the Paddington Station, Sergeant William Williams was quickly handed the message. Before the train arrived, he threw a plain coat over his police uniform and ran out to search the platform. As John's train detrained as folks left the train while frantically leaving, looking up and down the platform, he spotted him. But John was already making his way for a trolley car. He ran after him, made the trolley just in time, jumped into the front of the car and Talwell actually mistook the sergeant as a fairtaker and gave him 6p. The sergeant still wasn't 100% certain that this was his man. So he continued to follow him to see if he was going home. Home. He followed him to a coffee shop and then a lodging house. After getting a more detailed description than the quickly written telegraph message, he knew he had his man. He and another police officer busted him at the coffee shop next to his lodgings a few hours later in the early morning. John claimed he wasn't even in Slough the day before. To which the sergeant replied he still had his sixpence from yesterday. His trial began on March 12, 1845. An autopsy was performed on Sarah Hart and it was determined that she was poisoned by prussic acid. And the defense attorney tried a long shot defense strategy. His very first words of his opening remarks were simply apple pips. Apple pips means apple seeds. And his defense of John Muller was that apple seeds also have prussic acid in them. And Sarah likely just ate too many apples that that day. After which all of the witnesses that clearly saw and apprehended John testified. And he was quickly and easily found guilty. And for a second time in his life, Tulwell was sentenced to death. This time he did not escape the drop. He was executed in front of 10,000 people on March 28, 18, 1945. Incidentally, that lawyer was nicknamed Apple Pip for the rest of his professional life. He couldn't shake it. And due to the widely reported nature of this crime, apple sales plummeted. In London for quite some time due to the instrumental technology of the telegraph being used to catch the killer. Train stations that otherwise guys would have slowly adopted the system were quickly wired up with their own. Also, I discovered that the two children of Sarah's and John's were still living in the home with her when she was killed. They were very young. They were eventually taken in by Sarah's mother after her murder. They also went to their father's trial and a very sad and kind detail here. It kind of makes me want to cry. I read read that a police officer who was one of the first responders when Sarah was found made sure to hold on to a watch that she wore that was taken after her autopsy to give to her children. This article in the Bath Weekly Chronicle and Herald says the elder child, a little boy, certainly bears a strong resemblance to his presumed father, Perkins. The officer placed the watch the poor woman wore round the neck of the child and left the two children in the care of their deeply afflicted grandmother. End quote. John's current wife wanted to sit in court, but was dissuaded by friends and relatives that it would just be too much of an embarrassment for her, considering it all came out in court that he was having an affair with Sarah and that he had two children with her and that he murdered this woman. She ultimately decided not to attend any of the court proceedings. But and this is another kind detail, she offered to financially support the grandmother to care for the children because she was poor, as did the Society of Friends, the Quakers of which she was a part. And one more sweet detail, I also learned that Dear Mrs. Ashley, the lady who rushed to find Sarah and ran for help, took the children into her own home the day the murder happened and kept them there to prevent them from being taken to a workhouse. They were only four and five years old. Old. And in cases like these, if there was no other family, no one to take them, that is what would have happened. They would have been taken to a home for orphaned children and expected to start working. She said she would keep them until any family member would be willing to take them in or anyone else to adopt them. She kept them until the grandmother agreed to take them in. With all of the horror in that story, I was so glad I kept digging in those papers. Often. Not always, but often. I find that if I just dig a little deeper, I can usually find the kindness somewhere. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please rate the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe leave me comments and join my new Patreon extras tier or just the show or the fan coven by going to myvictorianightmare.com thank you so much for your support. It means the world to me. Be kind to yourselves and I will see you in your nightmares.
- [42:48]
A
We all know those GLP1 injections work wonders, but that price tag almost gave me a heart attack. When my insurance denied coverage, I was staring at a choice between paying my mortgage or paying for weight loss. Talk about a rock and a hard place. Then I found Elevate Health Compounded semaglutide at just $58 with payment plans that don't require a second mortgage. Same medication, same results, but a price that real folks can actually afford. Visit joinelevate.com today. That's J-O-I-N E L E V A T E dot com. Your wallet will be as happy as your waistline. This medication is not FDA approved.