After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Ghost That Solved Its Own Murder: Red Barn Murder

Episode Date: December 10, 2023

The Red Barn Murder in 1827 was ground zero for true crime podcasts. It become one of the first cases to explode in the media and caused a national sensation. It had everything - sex, murder and a ghost that revealed the location of its own corpse. What more could Britain's budding army of armchair detectives want?Huge thanks to Una McIlvenna for her beautiful (and historically accurate) recording of the ballad the 'Murder of Maria Marten'. Una is Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer in English at Australian National University. Her book Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900 won the Katherine Briggs prize for folklore this year. You can find out more about her work at https://www.unamcilvenna.com/Edited and Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthly

Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. It's a mild May evening in 1827 and we're on the edge of the picturesque village of Polstead in Suffolk, England. Behind us, lining a pretty green, are low cottages, their wooden frames barely visible under whitewash and their windows glinting in the last of the spring light. On one side is a country inn, a favourite with sun-worn labourers looking to shake off a day in the field. On the other is a much older building, a fine farmhouse set back from the

dirt track that snakes its way around the settlement. Within the year, both will become important sites in a nationally infamous case. But this evening, we're moving away from the centre of Polstead, and out, down the track, to a small home on its periphery, from which a young man has just exited. He's dressed plainly in brown clothes clothes frayed at the edges, a green handkerchief tied at his throat and a cap pulled low over his brow as he sets off down the lane. We follow him, noticing with curiosity as we walk the strand of long dark hair that has worked loose from the hat. Too long, perhaps, for a man of his age. Then there's the

gate. The way he moves, as though uncomfortable in his get-up. After a while, the figure turns off the track and into a field framed by woodland and headed, at one end, by a large red barn. We move closer and watch as the young man pauses on the threshold. He reaches up for the cap, pulling it off, to reveal a tumble of curls. This is a young woman in disguise. She's waiting nervously by large double doors that loom up before her. We're so close, we can see her chest fluttering up and down, her breath shorter with every intake. She looks around, and then enters, disappearing into the dark within. A few moments pass, and we can hear muffled voices from inside the barn. inside the barn. The young woman's, certainly, but another too, lower, forceful, insistent.

We wait as the evening gloom settles in, keen to see who might emerge. Not much happens in this quiet corner of Suffolk. Then, a shot rings out, breaking the bucolic quiet and sending the inhabitants of a nearby tree scattering into the sky. By now, it's too dark to see the one lonely figure that exits hurriedly from the barn, though they're taller, perhaps, than the woman who went inside. Whoever it is, they're agitated, setting off along the treeline at a pace before disappearing into the night. It will be a long while before anyone in the village realises the truth of the events that have just taken place. By the time all is revealed, sleepy Polstead will be on the minds and lips of Britons everywhere.

Come all you thoughtless young men, a warning take by me, and think on my unhappy fate, to be hanged upon a tree. My name is William Corder, to you I do declare, William Corder, to you I do declare, Is, Deeds and the Paranormal. I am Anthony Delaney. And I'm Maddy Pelling. And today we are travelling, under the guidance of said Maddy Pelling, to rural Suffolk and the site of an infamous 19th century murder, which I knew nothing about until Maddy shared this with me. So it's been really interesting. Well, Anthony, this case really does have everything.

It's got the evocative rural setting. It's got illicit love across social class. It's got an attempted elopement, a brutal murder, supernatural visitations, and get this, even dreams held up as evidence of a crime. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Yep. There's going to be a police chase. There's going to be a sensational trial. And there's going to be a dire warning for all young men. So listeners, beware. This is a case that shocked early 19th century Britain. It drove, I think it's fair to say, a cultural shift in how we think about and how we write about true crime today. And

interestingly, it laid the foundations for the Victorian melodrama, which as many of you will know, was a popular form of theatre at the time. So Maddy, you talked about this laying the context for the Victorian melodrama that was to come talked about this laying the context for the Victorian melodrama that was to come, but we're slightly earlier than the reign of Queen Victoria in this time period. So just set a bit of a scene for listeners who might not be so familiar with the 1820s. That's when we're talking about, right? The 1820s. Yeah, the 1820s. And you know, I think it's a little bit of a strange time. So we've got the end of the Regency era in 1820 on the one hand, we've got Jane Austen dies in 1817, the last of her novels are published posthumously leading up to 1820. On the other

hand, we've got Queen Victoria who's going to become the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland in 1837. So it's a little bit of a strange gap. In this decade, there are lots of things that mark the end of that late Georgian world., there are lots of things that mark the end of that late Georgian world. And there are lots of things that mark the beginning of the 19th century as we know it. So we've got Napoleon dying on the island of St Helena in 1821. We've got things like the Stockton to Darlington Railway opens in 1825. It's the first modern railway in Britain. So we are well into the Industrial Revolution at this point that's only going to continue to grow. But it's still a time when rural life,

rural culture is still, I think it's fair to say, thriving in a way that it maybe isn't later on into the century. And that is the setting for our story today. Okay. So that's really useful because if someone is coming to this story like I am with not very much knowledge of this particular case, I'm just going to do a bit of a roundup, Maddy, and you tell me if I have all of these details in order and that they're correct before we move on to talking about some of them in a little bit more detail. So we're in Suffolk, it's 1827. We have this rural setting that you've described and in a farmhouse that are going to become really important as this story unfolds. We see what we think is a man making his way

into the barn. As it turns out, that labourer is a woman in disguise. This is the infamous red barn, which is isolated in a field. And then there's some talking from within the barn and somebody else, we're not quite sure who, exits after the sound of a shot, that's key, a gunshot. Somebody else exits and it is not the person that we saw going in. Am I up to speed so far? You are up to speed. And all of this is going to play out in a world in which there's a deepening divide between rural life and city life. So we've got industrialisation, we've got more people moving into towns and cities to work in factories who

would previously have worked in the fields. And we're going to see a sort of fascination with this rural world that's being left behind. It's also a time when the press is growing, the print media. So news is travelling faster than ever before through things like newspapers, pamphlets, print satire, for example, which we know is a huge element of the late Georgian culture. We've got ballad singers. Now they're really important and they're really relevant to this story. So we've just heard a little bit of a clip of a real ballad that was written about this case. So ballad singers, they were itinerant, they would travel to wherever there were crimes being reported or criminals being

displayed in some way, put on trial, executed. They would write in pretty fast turnaround, stories, songs about the crime that had taken place, the person involved in it, and they would sell a printed copy to those who were literate, but they'd also sing the songs that they were selling. And so if you were illiterate, that might be how you heard the news, the things that had happened in your local area, the things that were happening in big cities. That, for a lot of people, was how they got their news content. There are things as well like the postal system. That's going to be important to this story. The postal system is upholding a network of correspondence that's no longer, I suppose, no longer limited to little

rural areas. You can write with pretty good certainty, knowing your letter is going to arrive, to anyone in Britain. We also have things like record keeping. So parish records, births, deaths, marriages, what debts you owe to shopkeepers, all these ways in which people's lives are measured, they're becoming more precise. They're harder to manipulate, they're harder to evade, to avoid. And these are the things that are going to, on the one hand, catch out the criminals in this case and also bolster the story around it in the public eye. this case and also bolster the story around it in the public eye. You know, one of the most evocative things that we have sitting adjacent to that. So we have all of these things that you're talking about being measured and a lot of them will stick and come down to us generations

later. But this idea of the ballad, that this is the tune, this is the melody, these are the words, these are the lyrics, the timings that contemporary people in the early 19th century heard themselves. There's something very transportive about that where, you know, I think as historians, we're always looking for ways to get ourselves as far into the past as we can. And for me, ballads are one of the ways, like sometimes when we read poetry and we read letters, we're like, here are their words. This is really important. But then couple those words with melody and rhythm and the emotion that comes through in some of those ballads. That for me is transformative and it really ignites an archive and brings it to

life. And what we have to remember as well is that ballads serve to really spread these stories. They catch like wildfire. People hear a snippet of it. They repeat it. They sing it. They maybe change the tune a little bit or change the words, but the essence of the story stays the same and it passes from community to community. The other thing that ballads do in terms of true crime is they transform real life people involved in these cases. And particularly this case, this is really a foundational moment for this kind of ballad culture. They take those real people and they make them into stock characters. And what we see with the case of the Red Barn murders is the people involved, they become the stock characters of melodrama. They appear on the stage in the months after this case breaks. It's as quick as

that, that their representation in art, in theatrical performances, in singing, in all these different forms is almost instantaneous. And it absolutely spreads so quickly through Britain. So who are these people then? We have these two figures entering, well, one entering, one leaving the Red Barn. Who are they? Okay, so time to meet our main characters of the melodrama. We have one Mariah Martin. This is the young woman we see dressed in men's clothing making her way to the barn. And we also have William Corder, the man who exits the barn after the gunshot. Now, I have provided, Anthony, with some depictions of these people. And we'll put them up on socials so you

can follow us along on Instagram and we'll make these images available. So the first thing to say about these, Anthony, before I ask you to describe them, is that they are from an account of this case that was published very, very soon after the case went to trial. And it's a really important source, not only because it gives us first-hand accounts. So the author of this was a journalist who went to Polstead, who's a London journalist, he went out to Suffolk and he interviewed pretty much everyone in this village. We're talking Mariah Martin's family, the victim's family, we're talking William Corder's family, we're talking the parish priest, the tavern owner, the people involved in the inquest that we're going to get to. But what it also does is it publishes images of the crime scene as well as the people involved.

And that to me feels, I don't know if it's the first time this happens, but it feels very, very new in terms of how true crime is being presented to a public readership, essentially for entertainment. So let's get into these people. Describe for us, Anthony, who we're looking at here. We have a sheet of paper with three individuals, a man at the very top, a child to the bottom left, and a woman to the bottom right, as you look at the piece of paper. Now, we're going to discard the child for a second because we haven't encountered her in the story, and we'll concentrate in the male and the female in the image. Imagine any of your Jane Austen heroes or villains. That's the kind of dress that we're looking at. We have a gentleman in relatively fine clothing. He's got

a high shirt and cravat. His hair is worn in that style that's brought forward in that kind of romantic Napoleonic style. It's also worth noting with him, he seems to have a scowl on his face. He seems to look a bit disconcerted. Then to the bottom right, as I said, we have a woman with curled hair. The curls are falling just from under her bonnet, which is very, very frilly. Again, think Austin heroines. A high-waisted dress and yeah, very pleasant, very smiley, very relaxed face. And this I presume is Mariah. It is Mariah, yes. And in the copy of this text that we're looking at, someone in the 19th century, in 19th century, beautiful handwriting has written

the murderer next to William Corder and the victim next to Mariah Martin. And what this tells us is about how people were interacting with these texts, that these cases became sort of celebrity cases, and you could own your own piece of this and you would write in it and maybe annotate any clues you felt had been missed off. This is armchair detection beginning already in the 19th century. So we have these two characters. So Mariah Martin, we know that she was born in 1801, and she's the daughter of a mole catcher, which is not a job that necessarily exists today. I don't know. Are you listening and you're a mole catcher? Write in, let us know. It's something of a lower class job. It's certainly a job that is tied to the countryside. And it is very much as as it sounds, involved in removing moles from

country estates, fields. They're very disruptive. And also, I suppose, the bodies of moles were sold. Think of like moleskin gloves, for example, in the 19th century, very fashionable with the ladies. That is the most I have ever heard anybody talk about moles in my entire life. This is because as a teenager growing up, my dad had a vendetta against a mole in our garden that ruined it. Sure, great. Who didn't have a vendetta against a mole? We heard nothing but the mole for several months until it died. I will say of natural causes, no moles were harmed in the making of this. She's the daughter of a mole catcher. Yes. So Mariah Martin is the daughter of not a mole, but a mole catcher. She goes into service in a

household in Polstead. The options for a young woman at this time are very limited, economically speaking, and there aren't many jobs in rural Suffolk available to her. It's likely that she grew up helping her dad with the mole catching, a story I can clearly relate to. And we know that she is a servant in the household of the Corders. Now the Corders are slightly higher social status. They're farmers, they are probably tenant farmers, you know, renting the land off wealthier, bigger landowner, but they sit above Maria Martin and the Martins family in the social strata of the village of Polstead. We know that at some point during her employment in that household, that she has an illegitimate child with William Corder's brother,

Thomas. Now there are four boys in the household, four young men set to take over the farm. Thomas is one of them. And she calls this child Thomas Henry after her father. And that's the child that you're looking at in the image of her. She also potentially has another child that dies. It's very hard to find this in the archive or record. Now, I think this is suspicious. Thomas, along with two other of his brothers and the father die within a few months of each other. And William suddenly inherits the farm and he's living there alone with his mother and with this servant, Mariah Martin.

Sorry, Maddy, just because I'm learning this as we go as well. So we have Thomas, who's the father of the child Thomas, the son Thomas, who is the illegitimate child of Thomas Corder and Mariah, the servant. Correct. And within months of that child being born, Thomas and Thomas's father, and therefore William's father, died. Now, you're not necessarily saying

they died in suspicious circumstances, but it's just a strange timing, right? It is strange. So Thomas definitely doesn't die in suspicious circumstances. He falls in the river trying to cross it when it's frozen and he drowns. But the other two brothers in the household both die and the father. It could have been illness, but I do think it's strange that William is left alone to inherit. And we know something of William's background up until this point. He's a young man who at school is called foxy because he's untrustworthy he's a pretty well-known liar he's a ladies man and up until this point he's actually been involved in several instances of forgery and fraud that his father's had to pay people off to keep him out of prison

to keep him from being arrested so he's definitely not a trustworthy character and so i just i see the collapse of his family there as being a little bit suspect. Noteworthy, I think. Absolutely. Yeah. It's noteworthy. It is. So we have these two characters and we know at some point that they start up a relationship. So Mariah already has her son, Thomas. She's possibly had another child that's died. Maybe that was Thomas's child. Maybe it's the child of someone else. We don't know. that was Thomas's child. Maybe it's the child of someone else. We don't know. Now, William starts to feed a narrative to Maria that the local constable has heard that she's having these illegitimate children. He disapproves of her and he's going to set out to arrest her.

We have absolutely no evidence for this, and it seems very unlikely. Obviously, whilst in the early 19th century, women who were having children out of wedlock were shunned by society to a certain extent. But we also know that the law was on their side when it came to claiming support from the husbands. So it seems unlikely that people would be looking to arrest her. I just, I don't buy that. But this is the narrative that he feeds her. And can I ask, how has that information come to us? How do we know that he was feeding her this information? Who did she tell someone? So a lot of this comes from the journalistic investigation that happens further down the line.

And this is the guy who comes from London, who creates this sort of the ultimate narrative, the ultimate version of events. And his version is very much drawn from firsthand accounts, firsthand interviews. So it's likely that this is at least fairly true. You know, he's spoken to enough people in the village, including the Martins themselves, that this is potentially the case. So William Corder suggests to Maria that in order to escape this impending arrest that he says is coming, that they should elope. They should go to Ipswich to get married. That's the nearby big town. And that from there, they should go on to London and start a new life together. And he says to her,

and this is really important, he says this plan to her in front of her stepmother. So this is the Mole Catcher's second wife, Anne, who Mariah's grown up with, you know, it's part of her household. He says in front of Anne that Mariah should dress in men's clothing so that she's not caught by this person looking to arrest her and that they should meet in the red barn that night. And from there, they will go to Ipswich. Does Anne, Mariah's stepmother, also live in the house with William? Or where did this conversation happen? So this conversation potentially happens in the Martins cottage.

So Mariah is moving from the two houses. She works in William Corder's household and probably sleeps there. But her own family cottage is several hundred feet away. It's a very small village. So she's maybe moving back between the two. And it's interesting that William is potentially spending time in that cottage as well. So their relationship is certainly not a secret. Can I be suspicious about detail again? I mean, you always are.

Go on. I don't know if I buy that. I don't know if he could move freely and easily between those two locations without causing a lot of intrigue, gossip. I mean, I'm sure there was some gossip, but it would be quite brazen for him to be seen around the Martins cottage. in all these crimes already. And people in the local area know that. They know he's not a good guy. It's such a small and such a rural place that I think we have to accept that some of the social norms, the social behaviours that would be expected

in a bigger town and city do fall away here. They do disintegrate. I don't know whether he's necessarily a frequent visitor to the Martins Cottage, but I don't think it's unreasonable that he would have been there maybe with Mariah when they were hatching their plan to elope. I'll suspend my disbelief. By the way, I don't doubt for a second that he did what you're about

to tell me that he did, but there's a detail there that I'm like, I don't know. That sounds narrative to me. Yes, this is interesting. And the way that you're processing the story is very much how 19th century Yes, this is interesting. And the way that you're processing the story is very much how 19th century readers of this account would have processed it. Scrutinizing the facts, following along step by step as this unfolded. This is an experience that we are reliving now, but that would have absolutely been the case. So Mariah, as we know, goes in disguise. She gets to the barn. William is waiting for her. They're not going to make it to Ipswich, I'm sorry to say. He's going to kill her. Now, the way that he does this is up for debate. So we'll get to the way that her body is discovered much later on. But we hear a gunshot. We know that he leaves the barn alone. And he seems to have made his way to London, to this life that he was promising Mariah they were going to have together.

Now we do know that as soon as he gets there to cover his tracks, he writes a letter to the Martins, to Mariah's family, saying, hi, we carried out the plan. We've eloped. Mariah's really, really happy. We're having a great time. She's thriving. She's absolutely thriving in this city. It's wonderful. I'll write again soon. So it looks like he's got away with it potentially, that he's covered his tracks. He has buried the body in the barn where he's murdered her. So he hasn't had to move her anywhere. It's happened away from the village. Nobody's witnessed it. He's gone to London to start a new life. It looks like he's got away with it.

When the first of Cawdor's letters arrive at the cottage Mariah's family occupy on the edge of Polstead, most are surprised, though happy, to hear the news of her elopement and of the marital bliss the couple are now supposedly enjoying. Her father dotes on his daughter, but he's hardly bereft at the thought of one less mouth to feed. A mall catcher's income only stretches so far. But for Mariah's stepmother Anne, the absconding of her husband's child with the local squire's son, it's not new information. She was, after all, present when Cawdor first proposed the plan. Indeed, she distinctly remembers his instructions to Mariah, that the girl dress in men's clothing and hurry under cover of evening to the Red Barn, from where they would escape to Ipswich and on to London. But something about Cawdor's letter, the absence of Mariah's

voice perhaps, has left her with a gnawing sense of unease. Over the course of the year since Mariah left them, Anne has been having strange dreams. And like every good countrywoman, she knows only too well the power, magic even, such visitations can hold. Each night, she falls asleep, only to wake in a dream polstered, one where Maria is still there, waiting, insisting on telling her something. Anne sees Maria beckoning her to come, come to the red barn. Sometimes she follows, Mariah's pale floating form leading her to its doors and beyond. When she awakes, Anne is always surprised to find herself safely back in bed beneath the eaves of her cottage. Something must be done, she decides, and so one day she convinces her husband to take up a spade and come with her down the lane, over the field and to the barn that has been haunting her sleep.

It's not long before they strike something soft just beneath the surface of the dusty earthen floor within. The tumbling soil releases a terrible odour, and with hands over their faces to avoid the stench, they uncover a hessian sack with a tangle of dark, blood-soaked curls falling from it. curls falling from it. An inquest the next day will find the green handkerchief that once belonged to Korda still fastened at the neck of the corpse inside. Mariah, it seems, never made it to Ipswich and the promise of a better life. Now her killer must be brought to justice. brought to justice. It's too good, Maddy. It's too good. It has all the elements that you wanted to have, not you personally, that one wants it to have. But do you know what I mean when I'm saying it's too good? It's so good, a recounting, that I am, guess what, suspicious. There are so many details in there that don't quite add up. And this is great because what you pointed out at the start, and I think this is so relevant to this,

is how these crimes are being written at this particular time and how they obviously then shape how we receive them 200 years later. But to me, this is the most incredibly purposefully crafted story. We have a stepmother who is getting visitations from her ghostly stepdaughter, who is guiding her essentially to the scene of her demise, and then coming with a spade. And this is a question that surely didn't happen, did it? Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th.

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follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. well let's talk about the dreams so ann martin mariah's stepmother who has these dreams she gives evidence at corder's trial that this is how she's discovered the body and i think for her they are real she really believes they're think for her, they are real. She really believes they're happening. Now, of course, they are picked up in the later storytelling that surrounds this case. They're perfect for the melodrama. You think on stage how this would be performed and choreographed with the ghost version of Mariah with some fantastic makeup on, appearing to her. But what we have to remember, I think, is that they are living in a rural community at a time when there are cultures of fortune telling, of ghost stories, of believing in magical elements. in 1808, so only a decade and a little while, a decade and a half or something before this case,

we have a woman who is hanged for murder, but she is known as the Yorkshire Witch because of the witchcraft that she's been doing. I think there are rural beliefs that persist certainly into the 19th century and absolutely into the 1820s that mean that people like Anne Martin really believe in the power of these things. Whether or not those dreams are in reality the evidence that leads to the body being discovered is hard to tell. I mean, okay, the barn is on the outskirts of the village, but surely it's in use constantly. Why does the body take a year to be found? And is it found purely because someone's moving something inside the barn and it disturbs the grave? I don't know. But I think the dreams are an important element in terms of how the case is presented to the public and how it's been handed down to us and how we remember it today. It's very much, from our modern perspective,

part of this superstitious superstitious, melodramatic version of the story. I wonder if archivally, and this may be boring for some listeners, so apologies if it is, but I'm just thinking from the history side of things. I wonder if the trial record matches with the newspaper account of the trial. Because if that's the case, Anne Martin got on the witness stand and, let's be honest, lied. That is not evidence that would

stand up now or would be even admissible nowadays. And okay, we can't say that because I just did, but we can't use that as a metric of plausibility because it's the 1820s, not the 2020s. But you're right. I think there's this year where we're missing potentially something far more interesting, where we're concentrating on a woman who's having dreams of her dead stepdaughter, when actually there's probably something far more nuanced happening in and around the local area that leads to the discovery of a body. I think that's fair, but I don't think we can say that she lies when she gets up on the stand. I don't know that she's actively deceiving people. I think she genuinely believes that these dreams are happening and that this is what leads her to

it. I think it's impossible for us to say, particularly at this distance, what the reality is of her motivations. But we're going to get to the trial. But before we get to the trial, we have to find William Corder first. He has left the Red Barn and that's the last we've seen of him. We know he makes his way to London. Now, two things happen here. There's a police investigation and really a race against time to find him. And interestingly, so it's a local policeman who begins the search, but pretty soon a London policeman is involved.

And by chance, really, I suppose, the policeman involved is the policeman who later on in the century will go on to lead the investigation against another 19th century monster, Spring-Heeled Jack, who is the penny-dreadful anti-hero of Victorian melodrama, and in many ways, the forerunner of some of the cultural conversations around Jack the Ripper.

They do find Corder quite quickly. And when they do, they find him in London. He is married, interestingly. Casual. they do they find him in london he is married interestingly casual not to mariah obviously he is in possession of two pistols he has a letter from an unnamed friend in polstead warning him that there has been the discovery of a body that mariah's body's been found which suggests his crime was not unknown in that community already. He also has a passport that he's got from the French ambassador, which to me indicates that he's planning to flee to France. One thing that I find a bit icky about Corder is when they discover him

with his pistols and his French passport and his wife, who's appeared from somewhere, it turns out he's got this wife through placing lonely heart ads in the Times. Again, we've got loads about the early culture of print media, early dating. And the function, the multiple functions that it's developed. I mean, if you think about what an 18th century newspaper was, and now at the very start of the 19th century, we have dating, as you say, essentially lonely hearts. We have true crime, which just wasn't presented in 18th century newspapers in the same way at all. This is a really new way that the press is communicating and the uses of the press are very much changing at this time. So it's fascinating to see it all

coalesce around this one person who, by the way, sounds absolutely unhinged. Yeah. And the fact that he obviously gets to London and realises he needs a wife to continue to evade the law in order to look respectable. He told everyone in Polstead he was leaving with a wife. He's written back to say, you know, me and my wife are having a great time in London. He has a role to fill, a role to cast. And he does that through the papers. It's so calculating. It's so sinister. I find it so strange. So instantly around this case, we get the melodramas, we get the ballads. The role of the press really can't be understated here. There's an absolute explosion of interest. And like I say, this London journalist who's called james curtis

takes himself he's a regular at the old bailey so he's often reporting on you know major trials and major crimes and he takes himself off to suffolk and he writes this huge account it's something like 460 pages long or something you can't put it down it's written in a way that is you know and then this happened and then this and everything's hammed up it's absolutely brilliant and 60 pages long or something. You can't put it down. It's written in a way that is, you know, and then this happened and then this and everything's hammed up. It's absolutely brilliant. For anyone who wants to find it, it's called An Authentic and Faithful History of the Mysterious Murder of Mariah Martin. The title is longer, it goes on and on, but I won't bore everyone. And it is a really good read. And Curtis sort of becomes obsessed with William Corder himself. They almost become friends. And actually, so Corder is taken to Bury St. Edmunds for the trial. And when he's put on trial,

Curtis sits quite close to him in the court, so much so that the court artist mistakenly draws Curtis when he's meant to be drawing Corder. I think that's so interesting because what we're seeing here is a shift away from, I suppose, what we could call sort of scaffold culture. This interest in people going to see prisoners getting put on trial and executed for crimes, just for the sake of it, the spectacle. And now we're getting an interest in murderers as personalities. And that's something we're going to see so much more throughout the 19th into the 20th century. And obviously we still have that element in true crime reporting today. So the trial is about to kick off. William Corder is captured. He is ready to be tried. A lot of public attention is on him, even if James Curtis's full 450 page hasn't quite come out yet. But this is being reported in the press.

People in Suffolk know about it. People in London know about it. What transpires at the trial, Maddy? From the start, Cawdor's trial is a media circus. Reporters clamour to be let in to Shire Hall in Bury St Edmunds, where he will be tried before a jury. The start date is put back several days as nearly unmanageable crowds descend on the court and surrounding town,

each man, woman and child determined to catch a glimpse of the Red Barn murderer. As the case opens, the judge is forced to fight his way through the press of bodies to get into the courtroom. First, the details of the case must be established, but even the cause of Mariah's death is difficult to determine with any certainty. A wound to her eye socket might have been the result of Corda's short sword, or the spade with which her father uncovered her. Then there's the handkerchief around her neck, tied a little too tightly. She's also been shot, though whether this happened pre- or post-mortem, no one can now tell.

But despite the limited evidence, the authorities are taking no risks. They want this man, who already looms large in the monstrous imaginations of Britons, to be put away for good. He's charged with nine offences, including murder and forgery. Among the witnesses brought to the stand is Anne Martin, Mariah's stepmother, who tells the court about her terrible dreams and her husband's discovery of the body. Then quiet is called for and a hush falls across the room as Corder himself stands in his own defence. His claims that he had been walking by the barn on the night of Maria's death, and that he'd heard the pistol before discovering her dead

within, fall on unsympathetic ears. He's found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged and dissected in accordance with the law. dissected in accordance with the law. On the 11th of August 1828, a year and three months after Maria Martin's murder, William Corder is brought out at Bury St Edmunds, this time before a crowd of 10,000 spectators, many of whom push against the barriers nearest to the gallows, clamber into adjoining fields and onto the roofs of houses to get a better view. If you leave me at the red barn, as sure as I have life, I will take you to Ipswich town and there make you my wife. I straight went home and fetched my gun, my pickaxe and my spade. I went into the red barn and there I dug her grave. Lines from ballad singers plying their trade drift over the multitude of top hats, caps and bonnets, printed copies of their songs narrating the dreadful crime in their hands, ready to sell, then quiet.

As Corder takes his place, the rope about his neck, a sudden crescendo of jeers and taunts from the crowd and the Red Barn murderer falls to his death. For murdering Maria Martin, I was hanged on the tree. Well, there's just so much in there. The first thing that stands out to me there, Maddy, is the idea of the Red Barn murderer. So he's given this title and he's given this persona. And again, that's very headlines-y for want of a more precise word. The other thing that intrigues me about that is the reference to his short sword. Now, a short sword in terms of how that sits with elite masculinity or gentlemanliness, shall we say, is a Renaissance weapon. It is used most often or seen most often in the 18th century.

And it's, yeah, to donate gentlemanliness and politeness and certain things. So the fact that it's coming through here in the early 19th century, and it's still being used at this time when you're talking about this industrial revolution happening across England. And there's still this short sword being associated with this man. It's so interesting because I think it talks about that kind of grey area that the 1820s is occupying that you mentioned at the start. I completely agree. The other thing to say there is that because the way that he's perceived by the press is that he's almost gentlemanly. He's of a sort of lower middling rank within that countryside culture. So he has aspirations to gentlemanliness. And we know that he has a terrible reputation.

And of course, committing this murder means that he's not a gentleman. And there's something there about the symbol of gentlemanliness and masculinity being used as a murder weapon and the fact that that's included in the trial and in the narrative that follows. You're absolutely right. I think it's a shorthand, a cultural shorthand that people would have understood in the 1820s, a way of telling people he's not who he purports to be. He's not this gentleman squire from Suffolk. He is an untrustworthy man who might dress up in the guise of a gentleman, but he doesn't behave like that. And he's really a monster underneath. And the other thing that strikes me then, and I'm sure was interesting to people at the time, is Anne's testimony. Anne Martin, the stepmother of Maria. Yeah, I think you're maybe right to be a little bit suspicious of her. And in the aftermath of the trial, and this is after Cawdor's been killed, so he's been found guilty of the murder and he's been killed. There's some rumour in the press and there's some rumour in the village of Polstead

itself, and this is recorded by James Curtis, the journalist who goes there, that maybe Anne is involved. So Anne is actually only, I think, a year older than Mariah. She's married to Mariah's father, but they're of a really similar age. There's some speculation that she has been having an affair with William Corder and that she killed or they killed together Mariah out of jealousy. What's interesting, and this it's again it's really hard to find the reality of this chronological timeline because it's reported as this sort of melodramatic thing but curtis suggests that anne's dreams that she starts to say that she's having almost a year later start to appear around about the same time that Cawdor marries his Lonely Hearts woman in London.

But in order for that to happen, Anne would have to be in contact with Cawdor to know he was getting married. So could that be the case? I don't necessarily buy it, but I do think, like you said earlier, there's more here in terms of village politics, the subtleties of human relationships and behaviours that we don't get in the archival record. There is probably something a little bit more complicated going on here. And with that in mind, do we take the dreams at face value? I'm going to guess to say you don't. You're not buying them. No, we don't. And another thing I want to look at here, just because we've come out of the courtroom, essentially, when we talk about these things historically or contemporaneous to ourselves, we look at opportunity, we look at means, and we look at motive. So we know he has the opportunity. The red barn is there. It provides cover. We know he has the means. He has a short sword, should he need it. He has pistols. We know that because he was found with two on him when he was discovered in London. But what I'm not getting, and I'm not saying he didn't do it because clearly this man is,

you know, a danger, but what is the motive? Why kill Mariah? I think the motive is incredibly clear. I think he has no intention of running off with it. I think he's been having some kind of romantic or sexual relationship with her. She's already got at least one child who has been the responsibility of his brother Thomas. Thomas falls in the river and dies. There is some discussion in Curtis's account that Mariah has been petitioning the Corders for financial support. So like we said earlier, the law was very clear that if you were a man who fathered an illegitimate child, you were financially responsible for them. You would have to support that child, and therefore, by extension, the mother, I suppose.

If you died, you're no longer responsible, and your family isn't responsible. So was there pressure from Mariah? Was she potentially pregnant again at the time that she's killed? Obviously, we don't know whether the autopsy or the inquest showed that. she's killed obviously we don't know whether the autopsy of the inquest showed that the inquest takes place by the way in the cock inn which is the inn on the village green and it's still there the building is still there you can go and be in and have a drink in that pub i think he wants to get rid of her i think william corder sees her as a drain on his resources we know that he is financially ambitious he's committing fraud he's committing forgery as a young man.

He is out for himself and no one else. And I think he sees her as a threat to his independence and the life that he wants to live. I think that stands up. And I think despite the fact that there is something suspicious with the timing of Anne and Anne's testimony and Anne's dreams, I think it also extricates her from being involved here because that motive

doesn't necessarily impact her at all, apart from getting Mariah out of the way. But again, it's this story weaving, isn't it? It's trying to extricate some of these facts from the story. One of the biggest things to come out of this narrativisation of the case is this focus on Corder as a personality, as a murderer. He becomes a celebrity murderer. He's depicted on the theatrical stage in London well into the 20th century, as is Mariah, but he's very much the character. She's just the victim who falls by the wayside. And we see the typical things a bit like the treatment of Birkenhair that we've talked about before. His skin is used to bind a book after he's died.

I imagine there was a death mask probably made of him. You know, that would be fairly typical for the time. And in the accounts that circulate in the months after he's killed, things like the ballots, things like Curtis's account, things like the ballads, things like Curtis's account. There's a real focus not on the victim, but on Corder as being a sort of dire warning. So he's a monster, but he's a warning to young men. And the warning is very much, it's not don't go around murdering young women. It's don't let your standards slip like Corder did. Be more gentlemanly. You've behaved in an uncivilised way and there'll be awful consequences. It's sort of saying, don't let your passion get the better of you. Don't get caught. And it's a really difficult narrative to square away now from, well, from an 1820s

perspective, certainly, especially if you're Mariah Martin or any other young woman. But I think today that feels particularly insidious to me. Yeah. It's about acting below your station. It's about class. That warning is about class. It's about manliness and suitability. And it's not about don't murder women. Exactly. And I think I'd like to kind of, as we wrap this episode up, to bring our attention back to Mariah. She's someone who doesn't get to live her life. She had a child, Thomas, who, did he go and live with the Martins? What happened to him? We don't know.

And she becomes a stock character on the stage and all of that. But in reality, her body is obviously discovered in the barn. It's subjected to the autopsy in an inquest. It's then buried in the churchyard of St. Mary's, which is the church in Polstead. And the church is still there. You can go and see it. But you can't see her grave because in the years after the trial and quarter's execution, souvenir hunters come and they chip away so much of her headstone that it doesn't exist

anymore. And the same, interestingly, with the barn. And so she's erased again a double time it gets me thinking i suppose about if we think about ballad culture in the 19th century and folk music more generally there's so much misogyny in there there are so many of these stock characters and repeated stories of women who are murdered by men who then run away and get away with it women who you know are having illegitimate children, who are sexually available or sometimes sexually abused by men, and the ultimate fate that they face is to be killed by

them. And how many more Mariahs were there in the 19th century that were buried in the landscape in this way? How many William Corders were there who acted like this and got away with it? And I think it's a statistic we'll never know. But I think it's something to bear in mind and to think about Mariah and maybe women like her who have their voices stripped from them, I guess. It leads me to say, if you are listening to After Dark

from Polstead or Suffolk, or you know of this area, or you know of this churchyard, this graveyard, and if you have any insights as to where Mariah Martin might have been interred, do get in touch. You can contact us at afterdark at historyhit.com. That's right. We want to hear from you. Maybe you have a ghost story or an unsolved crime from history in your local area. Or maybe you have something deliciously dark in your family tree that you would love us to share, get in touch. Let us know. Maybe you simply have a suggestion for a historical event or a historical

figure that you would like us to turn our After Dark critical lens on. If that's the case, you can get in touch with us at the email that Anthony has just stated. I'll state it again. It is afterdark at historyhit.com. We want to hear from you. Until next time, thank you so much for joining us on After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. A huge thank you to Dr Una McIlvenna for her beautiful recording of the ballad, The Murder of Maria Martin. Una is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer in English at the Australian National University. And her incredible book, which Maddy and I have been talking about for quite some time, Singing the News of Death, Execution Ballads in Europe 1500

to 1900, won the Catherine Briggs Prize for Folklore this year. And her work really is fascinating. So do check that out if you get the chance. If you have enjoyed listening to this episode, then we have many more along a similar line that you might also enjoy. So please go back and look at our back catalogue and familiarise yourself with those. But until next time. Goodbye.

Adieu, adieu, my loving friends, my glass is almost run. On Monday next will be my last, then I'm to be hung. So you young men who do pass by with pity look on me. For murdering Maria Martin, I was hanged on the tree. Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet.

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