A (21:32)

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B (22:20)

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.

A (30:45)

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B (31:10)

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.

A (42:47)

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