Murderous Women

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Murderous Women" - Not Just the Tudors

Podcast Information

• Title: Not Just the Tudors
• Host/Author: History Hit
• Episode: Murderous Women
• Release Date: March 17, 2025
• Description: Professor Suzannah Lipscomb explores a wide array of historical topics, delving into fascinating stories beyond the Tudors, with expert guests uncovering tales of murder, espionage, and witchcraft.

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Murderous Women," Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by historian Dr. Blessing Adams to explore the dark and intriguing history of female killers in Early Modern Britain. They delve into notorious cases, societal attitudes towards women, and the portrayal of female criminals in contemporary literature and media.

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The Murder of Thomas Arden (1551)

Professor Lipscomb opens the discussion with the chilling case of Thomas Arden, a wealthy landowner in Faversham, Kent, who was brutally murdered in 1551. Driven by his wife Alice Arden and her lover Mosby, Thomas's rise from humble origins made him affluent but earned him numerous enemies.

Key Points:

• Alice's Betrayal: Alice, 30 years younger than Thomas, engaged in an extramarital affair, leading to the conspiracy to murder her husband.
• Failed Attempts: Multiple attempts using poison and hired criminals like Black Will and Shakebag failed until a final, violent assault resulted in Thomas's death.
• Aftermath and Justice: Alice maintained a facade of normalcy until evidence led to her confession. The conspirators faced swift and severe punishments, with Alice being burned at the stake.

Notable Quote:

"The murder of Thomas Arden fueled countless ballads, plays, and cautionary tales, speaking to deep anxieties about the breakdown of proper order." — Dr. Blessing Adams [05:45]

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Female Criminality in Early Modern Britain

Dr. Adams introduces her book, "Thou Savage Female Killers in Early Modern Britain," which examines how female murders were sensationalized and used to reflect societal fears about gender roles.

Key Points:

• Recurring Themes: Female killers were often portrayed as sexually immoral, betraying their husbands, and disrupting household harmony.
• Moral Lessons: True crime literature of the time served not only to inform but also to instruct, reinforcing societal norms and gender expectations.
• Public Fascination: Stories of female murderers garnered more sensational coverage than those involving men, highlighting a deep-rooted fear of women stepping outside their prescribed roles.

Notable Quote:

"These crimes, while rare, were mined for moral lessons, portraying women as both potential rebels and inherent threats to societal order." — Dr. Blessing Adams [08:38]

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The Case of Margaret Fernseed (1607)

Professor Lipscomb and Dr. Adams discuss the case of Margaret Fernseed from Peckham, who was accused of murdering her husband, Anthony Fernseed, a London tailor, in April 1607.

Key Points:

• Unusual Evidence: Margaret's lack of visible grief upon discovering her husband's body led to suspicion despite the absence of concrete evidence.
• Trial and Confession: During her trial, Margaret confessed to various moral failings but maintained her innocence regarding the murder, highlighting the intertwining of moral judgment with criminal prosecution.
• Legal Implications: The trial introduced the legal fiction of the "married spinster," allowing Margaret to be prosecuted as an autonomous individual, challenging the notion that married women were entirely under their husbands' legal authority.

Notable Quote:

"Margaret's failure to express expected grief was perceived as monstrous, undermining her role as a nurturer and caregiver." — Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [33:22]

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The 1675 Plymouth Poisoning Case: Anne Evans and Philippa Carey

The episode delves into another harrowing case involving Anne Evans and Philippa Carey, two female servants who resorted to mass poisoning in Plymouth in 1675.

Key Points:

• Motivation: Disputes within the household, particularly over pilchards, escalated into a plan to murder their mistress, Elizabeth Weeks.
• Method of Murder: Instead of targeting Elizabeth directly, Anne and Philippa poisoned the family's beer and Sunday meal, resulting in multiple deaths, including that of a child.
• Investigation and Punishment: Early forms of forensic investigation were employed by neighbors and the coroner, leading to the conviction and brutal execution of both women. Anne was burned at the stake for petty treason, while Philippa was hanged as a murderer.

Notable Quote:

"The detailed and horrific descriptions of their executions were deliberately designed to instill fear and deter similar crimes." — Dr. Blessing Adams [51:49]

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Societal Attitudes and Gender Roles

Throughout the discussion, Professor Lipscomb and Dr. Adams explore how these cases reflect contemporary attitudes towards women and their roles within the household and society.

Key Points:

• Dehumanization and Othering: Female murderers were often portrayed as monstrous beings, unworthy of their gender roles as nurturers and caregivers.
• Gendered Expectations: Women were expected to exhibit specific emotional responses to grief, and deviations from these norms were grounds for suspicion and condemnation.
• Method of Murder: Poison was stereotypically associated with female killers due to perceptions of women as physically weak and morally suspect.

Notable Quote:

"There was a lot of rhetoric surrounding the othering of these female killers, describing them as monsters and unwomanly creatures to reconcile their heinous actions with their perceived nature." — Dr. Blessing Adams [25:22]

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Parallels to Modern True Crime

Dr. Adams draws striking parallels between the portrayal of female killers in Early Modern Britain and contemporary true crime narratives.

Key Points:

• Persistent Stereotypes: Modern media still sensationalizes female murderers by highlighting deviations from expected gender behaviors.
• Emotional Judgments: Just as Margaret Fernseed's stoicism was scrutinized, modern female criminals often face intense scrutiny over their emotional expressions.
• Societal Reflection: These historical cases reveal enduring societal anxieties about women's roles and the fear of their potential for rebellion and violence.

Notable Quote:

"It's fascinating how the rhetoric used to describe female killers then mirrors the language we see today, demonstrating that some societal attitudes towards gender have remained unchanged." — Dr. Blessing Adams [56:26]

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Conclusions

The episode "Murderous Women" provides a profound exploration of how female criminality was perceived and portrayed in Early Modern Britain. Through gripping historical cases and insightful analysis, Professor Lipscomb and Dr. Adams shed light on the intersection of gender roles, societal expectations, and the justice system. The enduring parallels to modern narratives underscore the persistent challenges in reconciling societal norms with individual actions, revealing that certain aspects of human behavior and societal judgment remain remarkably consistent over centuries.

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Notable Quotes Summary:

• "The murder of Thomas Arden fueled countless ballads, plays, and cautionary tales, speaking to deep anxieties about the breakdown of proper order." — Dr. Blessing Adams [05:45]

• "These crimes, while rare, were mined for moral lessons, portraying women as both potential rebels and inherent threats to societal order." — Dr. Blessing Adams [08:38]

• "Margaret's failure to express expected grief was perceived as monstrous, undermining her role as a nurturer and caregiver." — Professor Suzannah Lipscomb [33:22]

• "The detailed and horrific descriptions of their executions were deliberately designed to instill fear and deter similar crimes." — Dr. Blessing Adams [51:49]

• "There was a lot of rhetoric surrounding the othering of these female killers, describing them as monsters and unwomanly creatures to reconcile their heinous actions with their perceived nature." — Dr. Blessing Adams [25:22]

• "It's fascinating how the rhetoric used to describe female killers then mirrors the language we see today, demonstrating that some societal attitudes towards gender have remained unchanged." — Dr. Blessing Adams [56:26]

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Conclusion

"Murderous Women" offers an engaging and comprehensive examination of female criminality in Early Modern Britain, highlighting how historical cases continue to inform and resonate with contemporary understandings of gender, morality, and justice.

Transcript

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad Free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own on Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, Brilliant Rivals and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tutors From History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn and to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. In the winter of 1551, the quiet market town of Faversham in Kent was the scene of one of Tudor England's most notorious murders. The brutal killing of a wealthy landowner, Thomas Arden, at the instigation of his wife Alice, would shock the kingdom. Thomas Arden had risen from humble origins to become Faversham's most prominent citizen, but his success had come at the cost of others. His ruthless business dealings had made him wealthy, but they'd also made him enemies. Yet it was not the hatred of the townspeople that troubled Arden. It was the betrayal happening within his own home. Thomas wife Alice was 30 years his junior, young, beautiful and unfaithful. For months, she'd been carrying on an affair with a man named Mosby, a former tailor risen to service. Their trysts were barely concealed, conducted brazenly under Arden's own roof. Arden was trapped. Divorce was impossible and he feared losing what his May December marriage had brought him, connections to Alice's influential family. So he suffered in silence, watching his wife flaunt her lover before his eyes. But Alice grew tired of this arrangement. She wanted her husband gone permanently. Alice and Mosby began to plot. They recruited allies. Michael, a servant, promised Mosby's sister's hand in marriage. Clark, a painter with knowledge of poisons. And Green, a dispossessed tenant with a grudge against Arden. Their first attempt was to poison Arden's breakfast, but he tasted something amiss and refused to eat. Undeterred, Alice turned to more violent means. She hired two hardened criminals, Black Will and Shakebag, ex soldiers turned highwaymen. Multiple attempts were made on Arden's life, but each one failed. Through sheer bad luck or bumbling incompetence, the conspirators grew desperate. Finally, on a cold February night, they made their move. Ardyn returned home late, oblivious to the danger that awaited him. Alice greeted him with feigned affection, while Mosby suggested a friendly game of backgammon. As Arden sat down to play, Blackwill lurked in the shadows, ready to strike. The attack was swift and brutal. Blackwill threw a towel over Arden's head, trying to smother him. Mosby grabbed a heavy pressing iron and beat Ardan viciously. In the chaos, they dragged the struggling man into the counting house. To their horror, Ardyn was still alive. In a frenzy, Mosby slashed Arden's throat while Black Wheel stabbed him repeatedly. In a final act of savagery, Alice plunged a dagger into her husband's chest. Again and again, Arden's body was dragged through the snow covered garden and dumped in a field behind the house. The killers, hoping the falling snow would cover their tracks. Back inside, Alice put on a show. She invited neighbors in, played music and danced as if nothing was wrong. But the next morning, Arden's absence was noticed. A search party was formed. Alice played the part of the distraught wife, but suspicion was already falling on her. Bloody footprints leading back to the Arden house showed the way to his mutilated body. Inside, more damning evidence was found. Blood stained rushes, a hidden knife. Under questioning, Alice's facade crumbled. She confessed, naming her co conspirators. Swift justice followed. Mosby and his sister were hanged at Smithfield. Michael and other accomplices met their fate on the gallows of Faversham. Black Will was burned alive and flushing, and Alice, as was the sentence for a woman who murdered her husband in the 16th century, was burnt at the stake in Canterbury. Alice Arden was led to her death on a cold March Day in 1551. As the flames engulfed her, witnesses claim she cried out, cursing her lover Mosby for leading her to this fate. The murder of Thomas Arden fueled countless ballads, plays and cautionary tales, speaking to deep anxieties about the breakdown of proper order. It's just one story of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, child killers, or women holy and unnaturally wicked, which have been collected by Dr. Blessing Adams, historian and former police officer, in her book, Thou Savage Female Killers in Early Modern Britain. In it, Dr. Adams recounts how the notoriety of such crimes revealed a society that was at once repulsed by and attracted to murderous female rebellion. Dr. Blessing Adams is my guest today. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. And this is not just the tudors from history. Dr. Adams, welcome to the podcast.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Hi. Thank you so much for having me on.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Let's start with the story we've just heard about the murder of Thomas Arden of Faversham. What are some of the characteristics of this crime that you found recurring in the cases that you examine in your book?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

I think one of the main characteristics in this particular case was the fact that Alice Arden, the murderer, the murderess, was, was considered to be a sexually licentious, immoral woman, a woman out of her place. She was having an extramarital affair with a servant, which was considered to be incredibly shocking at the time. And these sorts of stories of unruly wives and wives who have been unfaithful and have betrayed their husbands were really, really popular. They seemed to dominate the murder news. These particular murder stories very much giving the impression that there was a special fascination with not just stories of female killers, but female killers who were also betrayers of their husbands and their families.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

It's interesting with the Arden story because it sort of is clear in a subtext kind of way that Arden was quite ruthless, that perhaps he's married to Alice's much younger woman because she is well connected. You know, you can start to see, I mean, obviously in the end he does get brutally murdered by her and her conspirators, but you can start to See something of it from her perspective. And you make the point that women killed rarely, and that many times when women killed, they may have been operating in the context of domestic violence or provocation, but when women did kill, their crimes are garnering kind of sensational coverage, much more so than the murders committed by men. And I wondered what this tells us about attitudes towards and expectations of women in the period.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes, you're right. I mean, when, as you say, women rarely kill, men committed the majority of violent crime and homicides in this period and today as well. But, yes, sort of like when women did kill and they were reported on, they were enlarged and they were picked apart and moralized over to such an obsessive and extensive degree. And I think, in part, the reason behind this was because there had to be some moral or some sort of, like, religious or social lesson dragged out of these crimes. And this is why I think they were republished so many times and went through so many editions. And why they were written about so much is they happened rarely. But when they did happen, there was a lot to be mined out of these stories and out of these crimes, there was a lot to be drawn out of them, which is why they were written about so much. The case of Alice Arden is especially interesting because, as you say, her husband was a deeply unpleasant man. He was deeply unpopular in his community. He was one of those sort of nouveau riche sort of people, new money, very much sort of, like, disliked at the time. But he was also disliked because he failed to. To assume the proper manly role in his household. He wasn't acting as the patriarch of a household should in this period. He allowed his wife to have an enormous amount of sexual freedom. He allowed a servant to have a position in the household that was above his station. And this sort of thing was outrageous and it was unacceptable to the early moderns. So in a lot of the writing about this crime and a lot of the records about this crime, it's not just Alice that's being criticised as a dreadful, terrible, unfeminine woman. Her husband Thomas, was equally criticized for failing to act as a man should. As a man. He failed to control his wife and he failed to control his family. So his murder was considered to be his just desserts, really. He didn't have much sympathy as a victim of murder.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And do you think that's why this particular crime had such an impact on the public and was so significantly developed and widespread?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes, I think there were two big lessons to be learned from this murder case. The lesson for wives obey Your husbands be submissive, play the role of woman within society. And then the lesson for men is you have to be in charge of your household. You have to be in charge of your wives. So in this particular story, Alice Arden failed to play her role as a woman in society, and Thomas Arden failed to play his role as a man in society. And this really was the big shocking message to come out of this. I mean, the murder itself was shocking and it was incredibly bloody and brutal, and that in itself was sensational. But I think this was written about so much, and there was even a play written about this, really hammering home that message. Know your place and do not step out of line. And I think this one was so popular because it wasn't just Alice failing as a woman, it was Thomas failing as a man.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I'm really struck by the fact that in that regard, these. The publication of these cases serves a similar function to what has been written about in early modern Europe as charavari or rough music, or the sort of displays of how to demonstrate proper order in a household by mocking men who were cuckolded or mocking men who didn't have sufficient household authority. And we see kind of displays of that throughout this period. In some ways, actually, therefore, these sensational cases are picking up on a more general vibe, a more general set of attitudes towards gendered roles.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Absolutely. One of the big differences, I think you find, if, I mean there's many differences, but between true crime reporting today and true crime reporting in the early modern period is true crime reporting wasn't just reporting the news. It wasn't just telling you the descriptive details of what happened in this particular event. It serves a purpose beyond telling the news. It needs to teach a lesson. It needs to be instructive. And one of the reasons why these are so explicit and so shocking and so frightening as well. They're deliberately designed to frighten and shock and to shake the reader. That is, in order to impart a further lesson, a further message. And you're absolutely right. And you said before about how there being common themes running through lots of different murder stories. You were asking me about what common themes there were, and I was talking about betraying women, women betraying the household, women stepping outside of their gender roles. This was such a common theme throughout the true crime presses at the time. It's impossible not to see that there's definitely something going on more than just reporting of the murder news. It's very much a moral instruction going on with these as well.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And tell me about this true crime Literature. What's the sort of nature of the source material?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

So the main source material that I was looking at when I was researching my book was I was looking at the true crime pamphlets of the day, which were sort of like small booklets that would have been sold by booksellers. These were designed for people perhaps slightly more literate. People of all classes were consuming this sort of material. So it wasn't just the lower classes that were into true crime. It was very much something that was read across the class spectrum. So these were slightly more sophisticated, they used a slightly more elevated language. They sometimes had woodcut drawings, but mostly they were texts. And these were more in depth and they told a really good story with a moral message. And then you would have had the broadside ballads as well. And just speaking what you're saying about music. So these were single sheet prints with a ballad, with a verse, really, and it was set to music. The music would have been provided at the top as to set to the tune of, you know, Mother's Mercy or something. And these usually were typically with big, bold woodcut illustrations. And these were designed for the less literate, for the less educated classes. They were usually pasted onto the walls of ale houses and coffee shops and things like that. And they were designed to be sung out loud to non literate audiences so they could reach a further audience than just people who could read. So these were the sorts of things that were the true crime media of the day. In the particular period that I'm writing in, there was no new newspapers as we know them today. All the very, very early prototypes of that sort of thing were just starting to emerge. So really the way people got their murder news was through these pamphlets or through broadside ballads and through music. And sometimes the music was quite jolly. I had a friend of mine play some for me and I was quite shocked.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Isn't that interesting? And I guess given the fact that we see so many female killers being disproportionately represented in these ballads and broadsides, there are clearly commercial reasons for publishers to focus on women's crimes. How is this reflected in the titles, the headlines that they used?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

They did have some wonderful, wonderful headlines and titles. One that I almost used for my book was Matchless Monsters of the Female Sex. I just thought that was so good. But yeah, they had these gender titles, things like Monstrous Mothers and the Adulteress's Funeral Day. I remember that particular pamphlet because it had quite a gruesome image of a woman burning on the front cover. And this is Something that would have appealed to readers. The idea of an adulteress being burned to death and then having quite a gruesome image of that on the front. This was a selling point. Something I should actually say about these pamphlets is they don't just describe the murders that happened, they describe the punishment of the criminal as well, often in quite shocking detail. And sometimes the execution part of the pamphlet is bigger and more in depth and more detailed than the part detailing the crime that happened. Readers wanted to read not only about murder, they wanted to read about execution, they wanted to read about justice, and they wanted to read about punishment, and they wanted to know that murderers got their just desserts.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And do you think these pamphlets were reinforcing a perception of women as temptresses or just plain evil? Or are they saying these women are exceptional?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

You know, it's interesting because the. The idea of. Of the criminal mind, of criminality, of psychological or inherent reasons for people committing crimes in the early modern period, this was very much understood to be something that was external, that was driven by. People were tempted to commit crimes because they were tempted by the devil. They were tempted by the devil to commit sin. So the idea was, is that all women had in them the potential to be criminals. They all within them the potential to rebel, to kill, to betray. And that's why it was so important for men to always be on top, to always control. The idea of, again, going back to Thomas Arden, the idea of a man who releases control, who lets go of the reins, then it's all chaos. If you step away from your responsibilities and let women do what they want, well, this is what happens. They'll not only cheat on you, they'll probably kill you. And this sort of fear is reflected in a lot of. You can sometimes find it even in conduct books aimed at women. This idea that sedition, going against stepping outside your gender role, stepping outside of what's expected of your society, is but the first step on the road to criminality. And then who knows what can follow? Once you start on the road to sin, it can lead you to terrible places. So the idea was very much these women, they were exceptional because it was rare for women to kill. But they were also unexceptional because all women had within them this kernel, this sort of like, this potential to become evil murderers.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And I feel like I know the answer to this question. But given that when women did kill, we can imagine that it was often in circumstances where they were being abused. Do we see any kind of discourse around domestic violence and abuse of Women as a result of some of these cases?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Not that I've seen. I mean, in the odd pamphlet, the author might recognize the fact that the woman had been abused or had been assaulted or was driven to it. But it was never an excuse, it would never mitigated her crime. And really the acknowledgement wasn't really offered as an excuse or as an understanding. And that's in line with the thinking of the time as well. As I said before, it was necessary for husbands to control their wives. It was necessary sometimes for husbands to use violence to control their wives, because if they didn't use violence again, what could happen? So it's better for a small amount of violence in the home to control things and to keep things in order than to let chaos reign. This idea of appropriate punishment, appropriate correction in the home. It was legal for a man to beat his wife. It was legal for a man to do everything up and up to the point of murdering his wife. This was not something that was regulated by law, it was regulated by communities. So your neighbours might step in if things are going too far. If the. If domestic violence is getting out of hands, maybe your neighbors might step in. But it was not a concern for the true crime presses. It was not something they were really bothered about because they considered it to be a man's right to control his wife, to correct his wife, and to use violence if necessary. In that context, yes.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I found that with my cases I was looking at in France in the similar period, communities would step in on one of three occasions, if the beating was daily, if he did it when he was drunk, or if the woman became PTG generally insensate. But otherwise it was considered to be fairly normal.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Anyway, let's move away from that. Let's talk about female killers. Is there any sense that there was a particular method that they thought was adopted by female killers?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes. I think the most popular method that believed to be used by female killers was poison. For several reasons, this was believed to be. It was believed to be a uniquely female crime as well. Even though men used poison to commit homicide. It was thought to be uniquely female crime for several reasons. The first being that it was non confrontational. It didn't involve strength or violence or force. It was something that could be done secretively. So there was no risk for the woman in using poison. There was no risk of being overpowered or of the victim fighting back. This went hand in hand with the early modern perception of women as feeble. Not just feeble and physically weak, but also cowardly and Dishonorable. It was within their natures to turn to something like poison, to use something underhanded and secretive as a method of murder. So for several reasons. It was believed to be uniquely female, but belief and truth sometimes overlap. Women did use poison a lot of the time for those reasons as well. It's difficult for a woman to overpower a man and to commit physical murder face to face. So it did suit their purposes to commit murder by poison. And this is reflected in the true crime media of the day. Although that's not to say that we should rely on the pamphlets as indicators of this sort of thing. They're very much. They're very much not giving a true picture of what female criminality was at the time. They were only giving a picture of what was sensational and shocking at the time. But women did use poison to kill.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes, yes. We can't really look to them for statistics or anything like that.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

No, they're fascinating documents in that they reflect a cultural ideal. They reflect sort of like ideas or the zeitgeist at the time. So it's more an idea of what people were afraid of rather than what was actually true, if that makes sense. So these were true cases. These things did happen. But the cases that were reported on were very rare. They rarely happened. So we're not to get the impression that women were prolific killers or that there was a huge amount of this sort of thing going on just because it was printed about in such an excess in the true crime presses, if that makes sense.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And in the Arden case, we have men brought in to help do the job. Does that sort of reinforce prevalent attitudes that women were not capable of doing the deed themselves, rather that they were somehow sort of paying men to do the dirty work for them, really?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes, absolutely. This idea of women using men to commit their crimes for them was. It was quite popular as well. Sort of that. You're asking me about the popular crimes at the time. I've read and written about a few cases where the woman didn't land the killing blow. She was either a part of a team, a male and female team, or she was the ringleader or the instigator that got men to do her dirty work for her. This was very much the idea that women had this sort of like this seductive ability to pressure men to get their own way, to sort of like lure men into committing evil deeds on their behalf. Kind of like the Lady Macbeth figure that would have been popular on the stage. Alice Sardin was considered to be that sort of individual. I Mean, at the end of her murder scheme, there was about eight people involved in this conspiracy to murder her husband, mostly men, but there were a few other women involved as well. And you have to wonder sort of what was going on there. She must have been an incredibly charismatic and persuasive personality to have gotten so many people to join her in this quest to murder her husband. But yes, it was very much an idea that women were too weak to do it themselves. And they also had the power to compel men, be it by their overt sexuality or their sort of like persuasive wiles, to do terrible deeds for them.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And how did the stories of female killers therefore undermine attitudes towards the family, towards a woman's role in this kind of social hierarchy?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Well, women were supposed to be the nurturers, the caregivers, the mothers. So it was almost unbelievable that a woman would be capable of committing murder and doing these terrible deeds. And I believe that there's so much rhetoric in the reporting of these cases surrounding the sort of like the othering of these female killers. They're described as monsters, as monstrous as. Lots of descriptions of them as animals, vipers, tigers, these sorts of things, and lots of descriptions where they're described as being unwomanly as, well, unfeminine. So there seems to be a real attempt to dehumanize and to de. Feminize these women as though in order to do so, in order to understand how is it possible for women to go against the nature of God, you know, the nature of man and God to commit these terrible deeds? Well, in order to understand that, I guess there was this effort to dehumanize them. They're not real women. They're these monstrous, hellish, sinful creatures. Yeah, it's interesting and it's sort of like there's a lot of, I think, dissonance and disharmony, I think, between the way people were thinking about female killers. Because as I was talking about before, I said there was this idea that any woman could become a killer, this idea that anybody could be seduced by sin. But once a woman had been seduced by sin and had taken that step and committed the crime and killed somebody, there was this frantic effort to make her unwoman, to dehumanize her. So, yeah, there's a lot of desperate reconciliation going on in the reporting of these cases.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And one last general question before I want to get into another case, but do you have a sense of how famous or infamous these women became? Were they actually household names?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

I think they would have been, I've been, because I'm not just exclusively reading these sources. So you're looking at people's diaries and people's letters and people who are writing about these events decades, sometimes even hundreds of years after the events. And they're talking about people like Al Asadin as though their names that the reader should be knowing. So these are names that would have been, I guess, our Myra Hindley's, our Rose West's, those sort of things. These names, I mean, these particular women committed their crimes decades ago, but they're still very much known names today. People who weren't alive at the time when they committed their crimes, they're very much aware of what they did. So I think the same thing was very much going on in the early modern period as well, especially with people like Ella Sardin, because, I mean, John Stowe was writing about her. She was, she was showing up in histories, she was showing up in plays. So her in particular, she was quite a long lasting name as a notorious murderer.

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[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Perfect.

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[Dr. Blessing Adams]

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[Dr. Blessing Adams]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

It's so interesting that you've drawn a Parallel though with 20th century female killers, because. Exactly. Well, maybe not exactly, but a very similar rhetoric is used around women who kill today, isn't it? That it is transgressing their natural maternal caring role. And it's interesting to trace that over time.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

There's nothing more abhorrent to the modern reader of true crime than the mother who kills her own children. And I think when you read modern day reports of those particular mothers, these reports, these news reports are infused with the exact same language. They're monstrous, they're not mothers, they're inhuman. This same need to pretend that they aren't real women, they weren't real mothers, they're just monsters. It's fascinating and it's interesting and I think it's how we reconcile the idea of, I think even today we very much have the idea that women are still supposed to be nurturers, that they should be incapable of these sorts of deeds. And so when women do kill, especially when women do something like they kill their children, it's unbelievable. Most people really can't accept it.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So can you summarise for us another one of the stories you've chosen to tell in your book, that of Margaret Fernseed from Peckham and the murder of her husband Anthony in April 1607?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes. So in Peckham, 1607, a body is found in a field in the morning by some farmers. The body wasn't there the day before. Quite shockingly, it had its throat cut. He the body, there was a knife clutched in his hand and his money bag was still full of quite a lot of money, so he hadn't been robbed. And they also noticed that there was maggots or as they said, filthy worms. Crawling around in the. In the wound. So they knew that this was not a fresh corpse. This was a corpse that had been moved, had been dead for some time. They dig through his pockets and they discovered that this man was Anthony Fernseed, and he was a tailor in London. He lived on Duck Lane. So they sent some men to report his unfortunate death to his widow, Margaret Fernseed. And when they told her of her husband's death, she was really not bothered. She seemed bored. And the men that had reported the news of her husband's death were really shocked at her cold, unfeeling attitude to her husband's death. And this led to her being the prime suspect in her husband's murder, even though there was no evidence whatsoever linking her to her husband's death. And at the time, the magistrate had said, I can't find anything that puts her as a suspect, except for the fact that she wouldn't cry when she was looking at her husband's body. She was arrested and taken up as the suspected murderer of her husband.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So, in other words, we don't have evidence, but we have the stoic reaction which somehow violates expectations for mourning. Is it particularly a gendered expectation?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes. So mourning and grief at this particular time was very gendered. So men were expected to deal with grief in a very stoic, a very personal internal process. Very much the stiff upper lip, and it needs to be short as well. You can't be dwelling on a death for very long. So where men were expected to, to use an awful phrase, they were expected to man up and deal with it in that particular way. Women, on the other hand, were expected to be far more fragile, far more emotional. They were expected to weep, but only to a certain extent. There's not to be any excessive weeping or wailing. So they were expected to cry, they were expected to cling to others, and their expressions of grief were expected to be much more communal, much more public. So Margaret's failure to cry and her failure to grieve in the expected way that a woman should. She was grieving like a man, really, that they would have expected a man to have grieved like that, but not a woman. So it was this unwomanly conduct in the face of her husband's death and also her sort of, like, cold and unfeeling attitude. People were really baffled by it and they just thought, this is not only weird, it's monstrous. And the conclusion must be that only a person so unfeeling, she must be the killer, which is absolutely amazing in my eyes.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And it's extraordinary, isn't it, that there's such a tightrope to walk in terms of appropriate grief. Not too much, not too little. And, of course, we know people grieve in complete different ways, but when it comes to her trial, it's not hinging on forensic evidence, but what is coming out is her moral transgressions. Do you think in the end, she's put on trial not just for the crime of murder, but for her perceived immorality?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes, absolutely. So when she was arrested, she was imprisoned in the White Lion Jail. And during quite a lengthy period of time, she was repeatedly questioned. And over these series of interviews, it came out that she had been having an affair. So she had, as with Alice Arden, she had betrayed her husband by having an extramarital affair. And then, furthermore, she confessed to being a bawd, which was she pressed to be a prostitute. She confessed to owning a brothel. So she was a brothel madam. She abused other women. She was quite an awful person. She would manipulate and trap young women into prostitution by having them raped by pimps and then trapping them into that particular lifestyle. So as she was in prison, she confessed to all these different crimes and all these moral failings in her life. But she was always insistent that she was not guilty of murdering her husband. So she was very free with her confessions of moral sexual misconduct. But she was very clear, I'm innocent of killing my husband. So when it did come to trial, the trial centered almost entirely around these abhorrent aspects of her moral character. She was an adulteress, she was a prostitute, she was a bawd. And this is what she was being really put on trial for. The evidence against her as the murderer of her husband was very scant. There was really not much at all, even evidential standards of the time. It was incredibly weak because we had this impression that in the early modern period, if you were in court, then you're probably already gonna be found guilty anyway. But people were found innocent, and there were evidential standards, and she really wasn't. It was a really dodgy trial. The majority of witness testimony against her was not talking about the murder at all. It was just talking about how she was horrible, that she was a sinful, awful woman. She was loud, she was a scold, she was aggressive, she was rude. So these are the things that were brought up in trial. And then when she was eventually found guilty and sentenced to death, there was very much the idea of good. This is what you get. This is the reward of all the terrible things that you've done throughout your life, which isn't how justice is supposed to work. She wasn't on trial for all those other crimes, and yet she was.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And in her trial, there's a legal fiction that's adopted of the married spinster. What did that mean? How did that make her eligible for prosecution as an autonomous individual?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yeah. So this is really interesting. It's something that I started to notice as I was reading through various court records is in the indictment, it would say something like, here we have Margaret Fernseed of this particular parish, and then it would say spinster. And I thought to myself, as I was reading the trial record, but she's not a spinster, she's a married woman. In fact, a great deal of the case hinges around the fact that she was having an affair. So I just thought, well, what is this? And I came across a really wonderful paper where the author was describing this fiction, this fiction of the married spinster as being a bit of a legal fudge that was used in court. And the reason behind it was, is that married women were legally subsumed under their husbands, so they were not legally autonomous individuals. And so this raised a tricky legal problem that if women were not legal individuals and that they were entirely under the responsibility of the husbands, that they must obey their husband in everything when they commit a crime, who's responsible? Because she could always argue, well, yes, I committed a crime, but my husband told me to do it and I have to obey my husband in all things. So this was sort of a thing that was a bit of a tricky legal problem that was being written about and argued about in various legal circles and by various legal writers. I don't think any of them ever really came up with a convincing solution. But what seemed to be going on in the legal records is that by calling them spinsters in the courtroom, it was sort of like releasing them from that position of being underneath the legal authority of their husbands. So husbands are legally responsible for their wives up until the point their wives commit a crime, and then they seem to be cut loose and they suddenly become spinsters so that they can face the music in the courtroom as a legal individual.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And do you think we can trace eventually, maybe indirectly, the recognition of a married woman's legal autonomy in later centuries to cases like Margaret Fernse?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

I think that would be an absolutely fascinating research project, is tracing the marital status of women throughout, sort of like the judicial process, and finding out when they cease to be wives and then they start becoming spinsters again. It's not something I'VE really looked too deeply into. I really only looked into it in the context of this particular case. But I think you're absolutely right. I think this is something that'll be a really fascinating subject to dig into.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And I suppose this case really demonstrates that moral judgments when pertaining to women, were quite different from those compared to men. How does this case kind of highlight that disparity, particularly with adultery laws?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

I suppose especially with the adultery laws, the disparity, especially the way that men and women are treated by the judicial system is this little thing that comes up time and time again throughout the cases in my book is petty treason. And this is the idea that when a husband murders his wife, then he's guilty of committing murder. But when a wife murders her husband, it's not considered to be murder, it's considered to be petty treason. And it really is a form of treason. It's underneath the treason act. So like high treason, a woman owes her husband a complete obedience and allegiance. Just as a subject owes obedience to the monarch, a wife owes obedience to her husband. So when a wife kills her husband, it is analogous. It is like a subject killing their monarch. And like traitors, women were treated in the same way by the courts. So if they were found guilty of petty treason, then they were subjected to a traitor's death. And in the case of women, that would have been getting burned at the stake. So husbands who murdered their wives would have been hanged as any murderer would have been at the time. And then wives who murdered their husbands were burned at the stake. And this could be an absolutely horrific process sometimes. We can never know how many times women were granted a merciful deprivation of the senses. So they were strangled at the stake before the fires were lit, usually not to death, but sort of so that they were. They couldn't really feel they were passed out or they were unconscious. But this didn't always happen. And in notorious cases, women were left to burn alive. So it would have been absolutely horrific.

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[Dr. Blessing Adams]

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[Dr. Blessing Adams]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Okay, let's move on to think about the 1675 Plymouth case. This is a poisoning case and involves two women, Anne Evans and Philippa Carey. Can you describe it for us?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes. So this is a case of a mass poisoning that happened in Plymouth. And what happened was, is so there were two servants. Philippa Carey was the nursemaid and Anne Evans was a young apprentice girl. She was about 14 or 15, so quite young. And they were in the Weeks's household. And both these servants were having a constant falling out with their mistress, Elizabeth Weeks. And they were always arguing. There was a lot of tension within the household. And one particular day there was an argument over pilchards that just seemed to explode into this absolutely massive domestic disharmony. And as a result, Philippa and Anne decided that they wanted to murder their mistress Elizabeth by feeding her arsenic rat Spain. But the way they went about it was quite strange. It was quite horrific. Is instead of just administering poison to this one individual, they decided to poison the family's supply of beer. And then they also poisoned the family's Sunday lunch, the pottage, by putting poisoned oats into the communal pot, which was then served to everybody at the Sunday lunch table. I think it's quite extraordinary and quite callous act of mass poisoning. And it's hard to understand why, in an effort to kill Elizabeth, they decided to give poison to everybody, including young child. That would have been Philippa's young charge. She would have been looking after this boy probably when he was very young. So, yeah, it was a very strange case and it was quite interesting as well because it took a long time for Elizabeth to die. And the only other person in the house who died was her daughter Mary. And that would have been the young boy's mother. But there was a lot of illness in the house and it was, it became well known throughout the local area that the Weeks family were desperately sick. People were coming in and out of the house, people were trying to help. It went on for a long time. And as they were suffering in their beds, Philippa and Anne were still administering them more poison. More poison. It was just such a cruel, I think, act in order to do away with their mistress. Because they didn't like her.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yeah, I mean, it's an extraordinary case. Can we talk about the fact that they were able to access arsenic? Were there no controls or regulations about who could purchase it?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Arsenic was commonly available in most households in this period because it had lots of purposes outside of homicidal poisoning. It was used in cosmetics, it was used in. I mean, it's called ratsbane, so it was used for pest control, it was used to keep down vermin populations, it had lots of very mundane domestic uses and it was available from apothecaries and anybody could go to an apothecary and buy arsenic. But there are some regulations. People buying arsenic would have had their names written down in a record book or something. So there was some effort, I think, to keep an eye on who's buying what from apothecaries. I don't know if this was in order to keep an eye on what sort of poisons are going in and out of the shop or if it's just a record. For his own books, for their own books, I don't know. But they kept records of who was buying arsenic and they got around this by visiting an apothecary that was not familiar with them, because they would have had an apothecary that they visited as regular customers. They would have been well known. They would have been going in and out all the time to buy ingredients for various bits and bobs. So they found an apothecary who didn't know them and I assume that they just used false names and had false names written down in the book. So arsenic was commonly available. It was also, I hate to say, a good substance to use for committing murder, but it was because it was almost impossible to tell, really, that you were being poisoned with arsenic in the moment. It has no smell, it has no taste. Although I should say white arsenic, it's water soluble, so that if you mix it into something, it just disappears. If you're using yellow arsenic, it sort of like remains as a bit of a crunchy, gravelly red residue. But white arsenic, you couldn't tell you were drinking it. And then the symptoms would come on a good amount of time after you'd ingested it. And the symptoms manifesting were very similar to other common illnesses at the time, food poisoning or some viral infection or some sort of like viral illness. So it was Very difficult to tell that you had been poisoned at all. And people could have been poisoned by arsenic and their deaths would have just been brushed away as common illness. So we don't know how many people were getting away with murder by arsenic because it was so sneaky. It was very easy to kill people with it and pretend it's something else. So, yes, it was very common and it was very devious.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And do you feel that Anne Evans and Philippa Carey were just particularly awful individuals, or do you think that this case can help us reflect on questions around the position of household servants, especially women, the way that if they were facing mistreatment, they had no recourse, really.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yeah, it's interesting. I personally have got no sympathy for Anne and Philippa. They did have recourse. They could have just left the employment, and there was no shortage of demand for domestic servants, so they could have gotten a position elsewhere. And I also feel like if they really were that wronged and that maligned and they really, really had to commit murder, they could have just murdered Elizabeth and not poisoned a small boy at the same time.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Thus speaks the police officer. I feel.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes, although I was just a constable back in the day, so I luckily never had to investigate this sort of thing.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Talking about investigations, how was this case investigated?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

It's so interesting, this particular one, because it feels like there was a bit of civilian detective work going on behalf of the neighbors. So. And it's also interesting because the coroner was called when Elizabeth died. The coroner was caught, but other family members were still alive. So the coroner came in to investigate Elizabeth's death and he examined her body. But then he was also able to interview the other victims who were still alive. This absolutely sort of fascinating situation where the coroner, who normally only ever really deals with the dead, is being able to speak to the victims before they die. So he was able to get testimonies from one of the, unfortunately, people who then went on to die. And she accused the servants and said, this is exactly what happened. This is what they fed me. So that was fascinating in the fact that the coroner was able to get in before more people died. But then we also had some of the neighbors that were getting involved and they became really curious because before the suspicion of poison had really come up, they were coming in and out of the house. They were trying to help the family, and they noticed that one of the family dogs was vomiting. And this was something that they would have been aware of, because in all the popular true crime reporting of the time, stories of animals dying or animals being incredibly sick in cases of homicide by poison was really common. So they would have had this popular image of what goes hand in hand with poisoning is dead animals. So seeing the poor dog being sick, they thought to themselves, this is very, very suspicious. Unfortunately, their experiments in order to prove this involved feeding some of the family's pottage to the dog and seeing how much more sick they could make the dog. We don't know if the dog survived, but we do hear that the dog was very poorly. After they fed it more of the family's supply of pottage, then they started to do little experiments on the pottage. They were boiling the oats to see if they could get anything to come out of it. They were soaking the oats to see if they could separate the oats and the suspected arsenic. And then when they'd gathered what they thought was yellow arsenic, they then showed it to the coroner who confirmed, yeah, that's arsenic. So it was sort of like a bit of a joint effort between the neighbors conducting their own little experiments on the suspected poisoned food, and then the coroner, who was doing his own official investigation upstairs.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I love it. We've got early forensic investigations by two Ms. Marples of the 17th century. So can we talk about the punishment in this case? Because they are particularly brutal punishments and they're different punishments for each of those involved. So what sort of message was the punishment intended to give out?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Yes, the punishments were quite odd. So young Anne was burned at the stake as a petty traitor because it was believed that she was the one that put the poison in the food. So she was the one that was prosecuted and found guilty as the lead murderer, I suppose, in this particular case. So as a servant, she, like wives, she owed obedience to her master. So she was found guilty of petty treason and she was burned at the stake. And it's quite distressing because as I said before, a lot of these accounts will provide quite a lot of detail about the execution of these particular individuals. And in the run up to her execution, she's visited quite a few times by a minister called John Quick. And John Quick was very keen to wring a post trial confession out of her. And as part of his process of intimidation, he would describe to her in vivid detail the agonies she was to suffer at her execution. So part of her punishment, the process of her punishment was not only the execution, but this long process of being told in vivid detail of the extent her suffering is going to be. So she was led to the site of execution and tied to a stake and then next to her was the gallows. Because Philippa had been found guilty not of petty treason, but of murder. So she was to be hanged as. As a murderer, not a petty traitor. And she had a noose put around her neck and made to climb a ladder. And then she was made to stand in the position ready to be executed. And as she was standing there, she had to watch Anne be burned first. But it was such a long, drawn out process. I believe it took hours for Anne's body to be completely consumed by the flames. And they were having a lot of difficulty getting the flames to. And they were having a lot of difficulty, I think, sustaining the fire. And during all this, it's described that the smoke from Anne's immolating body is blowing straight into Philippa's face. So she's standing on this ladder waiting for her turn. And for hours she just has to be breathing in the fumes of, you know, her friend, the young girl that was her friend for so long and her partner in crime. And again, I was talking about how these pamphlets are incredibly explicit and they're incredibly disturbing, incredibly upsetting. It's on purpose. There's so much relish and so much detail given to these executions. It's definitely for a purpose. It's definitely designed to put cold fear into anybody who might even consider doing something similar.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And finally, on this case, what flaws were there in the justice system that this case highlights? The circumstantial evidence, the sort of confessions that they were coerced, et cetera.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

They never really got full confessions out of either of these two women. Philippa insisted to the very end that she was innocent. And she was very keen to blame Anne for everything. And then on the flip side, Anne was blaming Philippa. But at the same time, she did admit to putting something in the food. But she claimed she really had no idea what it was. And she was consistent in this claim throughout all her questioning over quite a long period of time. She said, yes, I put something in, but I genuinely didn't know what it was. So there was really this sort of. No one ever really knew who was responsible, who was the instigator, who was the ringleader. It's not really sure. But yes, they failed to get any solid confessions out of either of these two. So it was really based on the testimony of the victims before they died. As to who was responsible for these murders. I think was interesting as well, about the lack of confession was they were so keen to secure these post trial confessions because they were important. I think for validating rulings in the courts, especially when you might say that the rulings were particularly weak or there wasn't a huge amount of evidence against these particular people. And John Quick, who I mentioned before, he was desperate to get a confession out of these two women. I think perhaps because the trial had perhaps been quite weak, there hadn't been an enormous amount of evidence against these two. So it was really essential for John Quick to secure these post trial confessions because it proved that the justice system was at work and doing a good job and it wasn't making mistakes. But he failed to get the confessions that he particularly desired. He was quite aggressive, quite ruthless towards the end.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I started by saying that these crimes showed how society was repulsed by and attracted by women reacting against the strictures of society and challenging hierarchies. What else do you think we can learn from them?

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

What strikes me when I'm working on these particular cases and when I'm researching these is it feels like some things haven't really changed. And you like to imagine that we as a society and that the justice system has come a long way from these terrible dark times where we burned women at the stake. Obviously in this country we don't do that sort of thing anymore. But then there's other things that are so similar. So just touching on, like we talked about attitudes towards women and attitudes towards female killers today and how the rhetoric is almost identical and the public reactions and responses are almost exactly the same. We have other things whereby, going back to the case of Margaret Fernseed and her failure to emote correctly, this is something that we still see today. And if you go on to any True Crime forums or things like that, you'll have people analyzing to an excessive degree photographs of women suspected of murder and talking about, is she smiling? Is she crying enough? Why is she acting like this? So we'd like to think that we've moved beyond judging women by their emotional responses or their lack of emotional responses. But I'm sure many of your listeners at the moment can think of modern cases that have recently happened where that exact same thing has been going on. And it's just all these little things, these things that strike me as familiar. And I think anybody reading the book and their own experiences of life, their own experiences of crime and the justice system, I imagine that they too will be drawing many parallels between what was going on back then and what's happening today and thinking, yeah, maybe we haven't come so far in some ways. And I guess therein lies the lesson as well is things haven't changed that much in some circumstances. Why not? It's a good question to ask.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Dr. Blessing Adams, thank you so very much for your insight, for your research, for talking about it so well and interestingly for us, it's been fascinating. Thank you for your time.

[Dr. Blessing Adams]

Thank you so much.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Thanks for listening to Not Just the Tudors and to my researcher, Alice Smith and my producer, Rob Weinberg. And do join me, Professor Susannah Lipscomb next time for another episode of Not Just the Tutors From History. Hit.

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[Dr. Blessing Adams]

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