After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Poison in the Tower of London

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Today’s story is one that takes us to a very familiar setting - the Tower of London - but shows it in a new light. Edward Francis was an enslaved man who lived in the Lion Tower. In 1691 he decided to poison his enslavers. Maddy and Anthony are joined by (friend of the pod) Dr Misha Ewen who helped bring this history to light. Misha is the author of "The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580-1660".Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitPlease vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Hello everyone, it's us, your hosts Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney. But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds of your time. If you're enjoying After Dark and we love you if you are, we would love you just a little bit more if you could vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards. So go to the show notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm. They will send you an email. You need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30 seconds.

If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't, stop what you are doing right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Antony. And I'm Maddie. And today's story is one that takes us to a very, very familiar location. It is the Tower of London, but highlights a history that you might not be so well acquainted with.

To tell us a little bit more, here's Maddie. 1691. Inside the Tower of London, there are lions. They prowled and padded around their dens. The keeper of the lions was a man called Thomas Dimmock, and the building he lived in was aptly called the Lion Tower. Inside the kitchens of Lion Tower were ale, oats and milk. Standing over these, rat poison in his hand was Edward Francis. Edward was an enslaved man, owned by Thomas Dimmock, the keeper of the lions. Edward was black, almost certainly born in Africa, before being captured and brought to London. While the lions roared outside the window, Edward tipped the powdered poison into his enslaver's food. It is an incendiary moment at the symbolic heart of English power. There's so much going on here, so many layers of imprisonment

and power being exerted within the tower's wall in a story that reaches out into surrounding London and across oceans. Welcome to After Dark. This is the story of the poison in the Tower of London. I am so looking forward to this one because we were recording with today's guest, Misha Ewan, who I'll give a proper introduction to in just a moment. We were recording with her last month, it would have been, I guess, and that was about the Virginia Dare episode. So go back and listen to that if you haven't already listened to it. But I heard Misha and Freddie chatting as I was preparing for the next episode, whatever, and Misha was on her way out and I was like, what is that episode?

And this is that episode. So I'm excited to talk about it. As I said in the very opening, we are in the Tower of London. So something that we're very, very familiar with here in After Dark. But this history is not linked to Ambalin. It is not linked toward a rally.

These are people that we so often talk about when we talk about the tower. Instead, we're following the history of a marginalized person, that of Edward Francis. And as I said, here to guide us through that history is Dr Misha Ewan, and now part of the extended After Dark family, of course. Misha is a historian at the University of Sussex and author of The Virginia Venture, American Colonization and English Society 1580 to 1660. Misha, welcome back. Thank you. So great to be here again. I'm really excited to share this story with you.

I am genuinely so excited about this, not least because, and we will get onto how you came across this story, Misha, but it's one of those histories that gets uncovered. It's unexpected. You found it out. It's so exciting. I'm so looking forward to getting into it. Before we venture into this particular era in this part of London, Anthony, do you want a little bit of context? Go on, Maddie, give me some time context as to what we're dealing with

during this particular moment in time. I think we're late 17th century, right? We are, we absolutely are. So the timeline for this story is between 1687 and 1692, which is a pretty exciting time of change, I suppose. So in terms of big cultural events, we have Isaac Newton publishing The Principia and, you know, introducing the laws of motion and gravity. Ever heard of it? Brand new information to me. Yeah. We have the Great Fire of London a generation before in 1666. And you know when people were

like, what period of time would you travel back to? And as an 18th centuryist, I always have to say the 18th century. But I always do think privately about this moment just after the Great Fire of London in those those two decades afterwards, when the city's starting to be rebuilt and that cityscape is changing from those old, very close, narrow, medieval streets full of wooden houses. And one of the big buildings that's been created in this moment is St Paul's Cathedral. The building for that is by the point of our story in 1687, well underway. In 1688, so a year into this story, we're going to get the glorious revolution when King James is deposed by William and Mary, his own daughter and son-in-law. This is a struggle

that extends to Ireland in 1790 with the Battle of the Boyne, which is a battle between James and William's troops. In 1692, we get British troops up in Scotland dispatched to Glencoe and we get the Glencoe massacre. We have done an episode on that. So if you haven't listened to that yet, go back and find it because it's a really interesting, surprising and bloody history. Also across the pond, the Salem witch trials are beginning in this moment. So it's, it's pretty significant few years, I would say. It is. And actually, just listening to you rattle that off there. Just listening to you rattling on. No, no, no.

But like, you know, just going one after the other. When you hear it all together, because actually in my head, those things are somewhat connected. But actually, when you hear them one after the other, just there, there's an awful lot happening on a kind of a global scale. And this history, Misha, brings in some of that global history as well. So before we get into the nitty gritty of it, this history is new, I would say, to probably most people who are listening today. Certainly is new to me. Tell us how you, before we get into it, how you came across the history of Edward Francis.

Well, at the time I was working as a curator for historic royal palaces. So part of my role was to look into the histories of colonization, of people of colour who had lived in the palaces in the early modern period. And actually there had already been some work done around this person known as Edward Francis, but this research wasn't particularly detailed. There wasn't much depth to it, not all of the archival sources had been examined. And significantly for me, this story wasn't being told at the Tower of London itself, so it wasn't something that at that time we were presenting to our visitors. So I was really keen to kind of go back to the archival stories, try to piece together a bit more about this person, importantly find out if he was connected

to an earlier document, which was a advertisement placed in a newspaper for a runaway enslaved person, which we might come onto in a moment. But significantly for me, this was about kind of getting this story out there as well and making sure that this was something that was being shared to people who came to the tower to realize that there are these other histories there,

that it's not just about royalty and prisoners, as you've already mentioned, but that the Tower was connected to these much more global changes that are taking place at this time to do with colonisation, to do with enslavement in the Atlantic world. LW It is a sort of historian's dream really to be able to add a new story to a site like the Tower of London that is just so globally well known and some of its more famous stories are so well rehearsed, they're so familiar to us and Anthony mentioned some of those at the beginning. Give us an idea, Amitra, of what the Tower of London looked like in the moment of our story. We've heard in the introduction there were lions there, so for anyone who's not been to the Tower of London or doesn't know much of its

history, what was it like in this moment? AMEETA I mean, in some ways, the fabric of the Tower of London hasn't changed hugely since the 17th century. So the space that you walk around today won't have looked much different in terms of kind of the structures of some of the buildings. So the white tower that you visit today was still there in the 17th century. But the kind of location of the Lion Office was where there was also a tower menagerie. And if you go to the Tower of London today, you'll see these wire sculptures of lions in situ. So it kind of gives you an indication of where this place was. And this menagerie had existed since the 13th

century. And by the 17th century, it was actually a bit of a tourist attraction. So people might have come to the tower just to look at the animals that were there that included these lions. And then, yeah, obviously how Thomas Dimmock comes into the story is that he had this position as the keeper of the lions, which was a very prestigious role, something that people were really keen to acquire. And Edward's history, who we're here to talk about today, is very closely linked to this Dimmock character, right? What do we know about Edward himself? Where did he come from and why was he at the Tower? SG So this was kind of part of the research that I wanted to do. So Edward Francis first appears in the historical archive through this court case and testimony that is given

at the Tower of London. But a few years earlier, so four years before in 1687, Thomas Dimmock had posted a newspaper advertisement in the London Gazette seeking the return of a runaway enslaved boy who was described as being 16 years old, as wearing this silver collar around his neck. And this boy was described as speaking bad English, as having holes in both of his ears. And so I wanted to try and find out, you know, was it possible that this young boy who had been described in this earlier newspaper notice, this enslaved boy, he was probably African born, whether or not that was the same individual as Edward Francis. And I think looking at some of the historical material, to me strongly suggested that it was the same person.

So it's likely that Edward Francis, as he came to be known, had been sold into slavery in West Africa, possibly trafficked straight from West Africa to England by the Royal African Company and purchased by Thomas Dimmock as an enslaved person and then was enslaved at the Tower of London. So by the time we encounter Edward Francis in the historical record in 1692, it's possible that he'd already been a resident of the Tower of London, an enslaved resident

for five years or more. So amazing that newspaper advertisement. I mean, it's so harrowing to hear that and it's a really difficult history to be confronted with. I'm really interested in the description of his person because of course the point of an advert like that is to find someone who has run away. Would you say that this is typical of the time in terms of enslaved people who are described or coded, I suppose, in their physicality, both in terms of possibly their African origins. You mentioned the holes that he has in his ears and that he's described as speaking bad English, but then he also has this silver collar around his neck, which very much shows him as a piece of property. There's something so fascinating from this perspective to be able to come almost

into contact with someone like Edward and that we have such a description of what he was wearing, what his body looked like. Is that how lots of enslaved people in this moment are described? KS Yeah, so I mean these newspaper advertisements, there are hundreds which survive for the 17th and 18th centuries and not just in London and other major ports like Bristol and Portsmouth, but also smaller towns and cities too. It's really common to find these kinds of detailed physical descriptions of enslaved people, people who were African-born, but also people from the Indian subcontinent as well

who were enslaved. Often you will find that these descriptions might mention things such as what we would now think of as country marks, so scars that African-born people may have received in the adolescence, for example. It's because the purpose of these newspaper advertisements is to be able to identify these people within these kind of metropolitan urban spaces. They're often described in the clothes that were last seen wearing, whether or not they took any property with them, so whether they stole any property from their enslavers. And the collars that you mentioned as well, they are fairly common to see in these newspaper advertisements.

More often it seems to be young enslaved men or boys that wore collars and they may have been made from steel as well as silver and copper and likely engraved with the name and even the address of their enslaver. So all of these details that we get in these newspaper advertisements are really fascinating,

not just for kind of understanding the way that people are being racialized in this period and who the enslaved population is in Britain at this time, but also tells us a little bit about the motivations and sometimes the experiences of enslaved people. So Edward Francis, for example, the newspaper advertisement is posted on the 5th of January, but it says that he'd actually run away on the 30th of December. So we know that he's managed to stay free for almost an entire week. He's wearing two coats. It's likely that he's put on two coats because he knows the weather is going to be cold. And so, I mean, there's kind of, you know, ways that you can really analyse and read into these documents, something

more about, you know, the kind of mentalities and worldviews of enslaved people as well, which is so hard to reach usually in the historical archive. And obviously these records are still incredibly limited, but you know, there are ways that historians are now using them to try and discover more about the lives of enslaved people in early modern Britain. When I was looking through these notes yesterday, Misha, in preparation for today's recordings, that image of the collar was something that really stuck with me. And kind of, I don't know, it hammers home sometimes, it's often a piece of material culture that will do that because it starts to infuse histories with people in a very

immediate way. And the fact that there was this silver collar around his neck that said Thomas Dimmock at the lion office, it really hammers home this idea of how black people were viewed or enslaved black people were viewed as property in England at this time. And I think sometimes it's very easy for us to think that the slavery that we talk about in history classes in just general society was happening over there somewhere, i.e. the Caribbean, let's say, or it had something got to do with an African trade that was coming to North America. But of course, this is a far more complex picture and this is starting to show some of that complexity. So one thing which I think would be really useful, Micheal, if you could help us understand a little bit about the context of slavery at this stage, specifically

in England, and then how that contrasts with what's happening in terms of its place in the empire. Yeah, I think there's a reason that this history and context is quite confusing for people. And when I have conversations with friends or members of the public about this history, often comes back to me that yeah, people didn't realise that there were enslaved people in Britain at this time. One of the reasons for that is that slavery occupied this slightly murky, shaky, grey legal area, if you like, so it was never legally codified in English law in the 17th century. There had been certain rulings within English courts that said that black enslaved people could be treated as property.

So just a few years before the story that we're talking about, there'd been a ruling in 1677 that said that black enslaved people could be treated as property. But these were legal rulings, so it wasn't the same as having it kind of set down in law in the same way that we see slavery being codified in places like Barbados and Virginia. But I think looking at some of the evidence that we have now, like these newspaper advertisements, like the fact that people wore these collars around the necks, really symbolizes to us that they were treated differently to English servants at this time, that they were viewed as property and that they were enslaveable within British and English contexts. And I think my own research is on the 17th century Atlantic world, so places like

Virginia and Barbados. And I think what I increasingly realize is how connected these places were, not just socially because people are moving through these spaces, but also culturally and legally and economically as well. So the Royal African Company, for example, is trading from West Africa to the Caribbean, but also directly to England as I mentioned. And I think we have to understand that people in England have knowledge of what is taking place in these colonial contexts. By the 1690s, people have been enslaveable in English colonial contexts since, you know, for 80 years by this point. And then we know people who live in these colonial spaces. And so the idea of a black person being enslaved in England

or a person of darker skin color, essentially could be somebody from South Asia as well, is not an alien or unfamiliar concept to them. And whilst there are some people who oppose it, even in this early period and think that it's, you know, unjust and immoral, it's actually something which is widely practiced and isn't something that most people would be opposed to.

And if anything, for them, for people in Britain, having an enslaved person within your household becomes a status symbol. It's a way of demonstrating your own wealth and the fact that you were able to acquire this expensive property, this human property, and having these collars around their necks is a way to symbolize that. And a silver collar, again, shows that you are somebody of wealth and status. So I think something else that might surprise people is that often enslaved people were dressed

in very expensive clothing as a way to kind of show off the status and wealth of their enslavers. And that is very different from Caribbean contexts. People in Caribbean plantations don't wear collars around their necks. They're often dressed very poorly and kind of threadbare clothing. Caribbean context. People in Caribbean plantations don't wear collars around their necks, they're often dressed very poorly in kind of threadbare clothing. So these contexts are different and there are kind of distinct sort of meanings and different kinds of symbols in which are attached

to enslaved people but I think we have to understand that all of these, what's happening in the Americas is very much impacting how enslaved people are viewed in England as well. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows where Samurai Warlords and Shinobi Spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history

and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by HistoryHit. There are new episodes every week. I suppose something that's standing out for me straight away is just how important the body is of the enslaved person, whether it's Edward or anyone else that we're talking about, in terms of these tensions, these narratives, these different ideas playing out. You say about the enslaved people often having incredibly decorative and very rich fabrics that they're wearing and having a silver collar on, that silver is a valuable metal in this period and indeed now. Their bodies, I suppose, are sites of oppression and control and that's symbolized in all these ways, but also symbols of white wealth as well. I think that's completely fascinating. Something that I want to clarify is the difference between people

who are enslaved in London in this period, in Britain in this period, and freed black people, people who are not enslaved because there are, we know, for example, that Edward Francis has a friend called Tom, who I believe is not, well, we don't know if he's enslaved or not, he potentially might be. But for black people living in Britain who weren't enslaved, was there protection in place? How could they differentiate themselves walking down the street? Would people be able to understand that difference? How dangerous was it for them on the streets of Britain? It's a really good question. So I haven't come across any cases of, for example, a free black person being trafficked against their will to the Caribbean to be enslaved in a Caribbean plantation.

But we do know of people who make the reverse journey, so people who have been enslaved in the Caribbean, perhaps come to England with their enslavers, perhaps when their enslavers die, they gain their freedom, and go on to live lives as free people of colour within Britain. And you know, by the time their children or grandchildren are born, you as free people of color within Britain. By the time their children or grandchildren are born, they're very much considered free. I think legally, I imagine that you would have already always felt your position to be very precarious, and there may always have been this fear that you may be enslaveable. But actually, it's something that, again, is still quite difficult to access in the historical archive.

I mean, I haven't ever heard, for example, of any writings by free people of colour where they may reflect on this reality or their fears around that. But I guess it's one of the reasons that we do see certain kinds of discourses develop between Britain and the Caribbean around, you know, what is freedom versus enslavement? And one of the things that becomes an issue kind of in the period that we're talking about is baptism and whether or not if a black person such as Edward becomes, you know, is baptized, does that mean that they are free? And enslavers in the Caribbean, you know, strongly oppose this because they're worried that if people in the Caribbean start to be baptized, that what will happen to their enslaved property? But is something that you see take place within Britain, which suggests that people of color within Britain understand that that may be a way to protect their freedom, whether they've been born free or whether that's a freedom that they've gained during their own lives. So I think people in Britain are aware of some of these contexts, but it's not something

that is always so obvious to us in the actual historical source material itself. Will Barron Meesha, let's tie some of the two ends of the story together then. So we have this menagerie at the tower and we have Thomas Dimmock and we know that Edward is enslaved by Thomas. of Thomas Dimmock, when we know that Edward is enslaved by Thomas. How does Edward and Thomas link to the menagerie? What's the link there? Just so we have all that information before we move forward with the actual story. We're not even fascinating at all as this is. We're actually not even at the story yet. So just give us that context before we move forward. So Thomas Dimmock is the keeper of the lions. So this is a position which you are granted by a royal

warrant essentially. So he's not necessarily an expert in the keeping of animals and it's unlikely that he would have actually been involved in the day-to-day care of these animals. And we know that Edward Francis is an enslaved person within the Dimock household. It's possible that Edward may have had some involvement in the care of the lines, but again, that isn't something that we necessarily haven't seen in the historical record. But we do know that he's performing different kinds of domestic duties within the Dimock household alongside an English servant as well. So he's enslaved at the Tower of London, but very much within the Dimock household. This know, this kind of family household. Dimock has a wife and he has a daughter as well. So as

much as this is a kind of institutional setting, we also have to think of this as a kind of family domestic setting as well for the Dimock family and Edward being part of that household. Okay, so we have this household, which is already an unusual household in that is within the Tower of London. They are there for the purpose of looking after some lions. These are not typical things in the 17th century in England. Where does Edward get this idea to poison his master from? Are you able to trace in the archive that moment when he makes that decision or he first thinks about doing this. GEM So what we know about this episode comes from the testimony that Edward Thomas Dimmock, Thomas's wife and Thomas's servant later

give. So all of this is kind of, you know, in retrospect, them kind of recounting the events. But Edward mentions that in the summer of 1691, he had approached a black man named Tom who lived on Mincing Lane and he'd had a conversation with Tom about rat poison and whether or not rat poison would be effective at making people unwell. So by the summer of 1691, we know that Edward, according to his own testimony, is considering adding poison to the Dimmock family's food. He says that he then bought a parcel of rat poison from the rat killer who had previously supplied the Dimmock household with rat poison and he started adding it to

the family's food in the summer of 1691. We think this is sporadic, taking place over a longer period of time. LAR Edward's intention here? Is it murder? Is it some form of resistance against his own enslavement? Is it a sort of moral punishment? What's going through his head? Because it doesn't seem, at least to begin with, that he is actively trying to end their lives. LW. Yeah. I think what's really interesting actually is that that's a question that is never directly put to Edward by the Constable of the Tower of London who questions him. He's never directly asked, you know,

what were your motivations and why did you do this? Other people report his motivations, but we never get a clear sense from him in his own words of what he hoped to achieve. And I think this was something that I grappled with a lot myself when I was doing the research. My first instinct was that this was a form of resistance, that perhaps he did think by making them unwell, perhaps even killing the household, that he might gain his freedom.

But there's always this practical question of, well, what would that have actually looked like in practice? I mean, if the whole entire household had died, you know, Edward was considered enslaved and property, so he may just have likely have been given to somebody else and enslaved in a different household. So it's hard to say whether or not he envisioned complete freedom for himself or perhaps he just wanted to be out of this particular situation. I think what we probably can say is that this is a very desperate individual, somebody who I think over a number of years had tried to gain his freedom in different ways. If we do link him back to this earlier newspaper advertisement, which I think is likely that

that is him, he tried running away once before. He'd been recaptured and enslaved again within the Dimmock household, but also within the testimony of other members of the household that refer to him breaking blocks as well and saying that, you know, you should have been punished for this a long time ago. And so clearly he's tried other ways to kind of escape his slavery. At the same time that we get this contrast

that he obviously does have certain kind of freedoms, you know, mobility beyond the walls of the Tower of London, the fact that he's able to go out to Mincing Lane and have this conversation. So it gives us again, just this kind of complex picture of what being enslaved was like on a day-to-day basis. For me, even the idea that he has access to the family kind of, you know, food and meals again tells us something about just how integrated he was within the household at the same time as he was treated so differently as well. I feel like I know him from what you're saying. I do feel like we are getting closer to who this

person was. It's such a basic thing to say, but I am so rooting for him. And you know, you do draw your own conclusions, don't you? Because I agree with you, Micheal, I think it's most likely that the runaway that they're talking about at the beginning probably is him. And therefore, we have this pattern of behaviour that's starting to come together of him understanding that there is a freedom that he is entitled to and that he purposely pursues. And we see that even in the locks that you're talking about then afterwards. And then we see that when he tries to leave and we see it in, I think then probably his attempt to poison the family. And we'll come to some of those details in just a second.

But I also love this idea that it's to another black man that he turns when he's talking about this plan to poison the family. And there's something about that too, which again is just cracking open a world that we have so little access to actually, where we go, oh, there's somebody leaving those boundaries of the walls of the Tower of London, this kind of institutional Mecca. And they're going out into Mincing Lane and having conversations that hope to in some ways topple those institutions of power. And that, to me, is just all about what history is. It's making me so excited, as you can probably tell from the speed of my voice that I'm tripping over my words. Besides this kind of tantalizing glimpse,

and I literally have chills talking about it, it's so exciting, Misha, you're just so lucky to be able to look at these things when you were looking at it. Once we come back within the walls then of the Tower of London, how did that poisoning start to manifest? I presume it's infiltrating the food supply that you're talking that he had access to. MS. So in the testimony that we get from the household, they describe Thomas Dimmock's first wife, who was named Jane, becoming ill. And it sounds as if she was ill already. She's actually being nursed. You know, a nurse is coming to the household

to try and look after her. And she then dies that summer. And then a few months later, we know that Thomas Dimmock has by now remarried, a woman named Rebecca, which probably wasn't unusual. You know, he has a daughter, he would have wanted a new wife to kind of take up that role within the household. And all this time, or kind of, you know, restarts that Edward is now adding the poison to the family's meal,

they're becoming sick, even the maid says that, you know, she was complaining of stomach aches. It's not until the family's cat dies that they become really suspicious that something untoward has been taking place. But then when the family look back on these events, they see this pattern that actually we had all been coming a bit sick from the things that we were eating. I just find this testimony fascinating on so many different levels. There were so many layers to this and I think one of them is, as you say, it gives us a glimpse into this community of free and enslaved black people who were living in London at this time. But for me, what really kind of struck me

was the role of these women within the household. So Thomas's wife, Rebecca, and the maid, Joanna, the ways that they kind of survey Edward, the way that they are kind of like watching him and are kind of suspicious of his behavior. And this was interesting for me because one of the things that I'm interested in is the role that women have as well in shoring up slavery within England and within colonial context at this time.

So they are just as implicated, if you like, in his enslavement and the way that he's treated. And we very much get a sense of that from the testimony that they give. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where Samurai

Warlords and Shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History hit. There are new episodes every week. You're making me feel like we've stepped into this household, Misha, and there's so much there about the consumption of food. You talk about the fact that even the maid Joanna is starting to feel ill and is therefore presumably eating and consuming, drinking maybe the same things as her master mistress and the daughter Anne. So straight away we get a sense of how that household operates, where people sit within that hierarchy. Tell me

more about how Edward himself is suspected. And as you say, it presumably comes down to the women being suspicious of him. But why is it him in particular, not for example, the maid who is caught for this eventually? GEM Well, we get this description of a confrontation between Thomas Dimmock and Edward, and this description is given by Thomas Dimmock's wife, Rebecca. And in it, Thomas rails at Edward something on the lines of, you know, have I been so bloody to you that you would think to kill me? Did you think to get your liberty by killing me? And put on the spot, Edward answers, yes, that he did think to get his liberty by murdering Thomas Dimmock and his

family. This moment when Edward says yes to that question, Misha, that gives me chills because we get his voice, albeit yes, filtered through, I think it's Rebecca the second wife, isn't it, recalling this incident at that point. But we have the words that he spoke. How unusual is that, first of all, in terms of getting the words of someone enslaved in the 17th century in England, or indeed across its empire. But also, to you as a researcher, when you see his words on the page in the archive, what does that mean to you? What, how do you respond to that as someone who wants to tell this history, but also as a human

being, you know, it's, it's remarkable. It's almost mind blowing. We've some we've come so close to his body through the description of him in this advert, if indeed that is him. But here we have his words, we have his his voice, essentially. I mean, it's incredible. Yeah. I mean, these four documents really took my breath away. So all I knew about Edward up to this point was, you know, I'd seen kind of brief mentions in a book about the menagerie, you know, the linekeeper who was poisoned by his enslaved person. And then I'd seen the runaway newspaper notice, but there was nothing that was helping me kind of piece together how these things might be connected. When I looked at the testimony, these are these handwritten signed documents. They're incredibly detailed. You can hear the people's voices because they're written with

this kind of phonetic 17th century, very idiosyncratic language. But when I saw that Edward had also idiosyncratic language. But when I saw that Edward had also deposed and that he'd signed this document as well, I just kept thinking about what that experience must have been like for him, being questioned at the Tower of London by the constable, at this point I imagine really being in fear of his own life, understanding that he was in extreme danger and signing this document. And it just, yeah, I don't know, it was just something very moving about it. And let you say incredibly unusual as well. So I still do not know of an equivalent document that has survived for this period. There are court cases involving other enslaved black people, so Catherine Orca is an enslaved woman who lives in London at this time, not far from the Tower of London actually, and she appears before a court trying to gain her freedom from her

enslaver who has returned to Barbados. So there are other ways in which, you know, enslaved black people kind of crop up in the historical record and archive, but nothing like this testimony that we get for Edward Francis with his mark as well there. So yeah, I haven't had a moment like that, I don't think, actually, in my time researching. It was really actually quite powerful and emotional as well, and especially because of the context and thinking about what this person had endured. And Anthony, you were kind of saying like, you were saying he must have had a sense that he was entitled to his freedom, that he might be free. And also, it's likely that he had enjoyed a childhood being free with family, with loved ones somewhere in

West Africa before he was sold and trafficked to England. And so sometimes we put these people out of their context. I don't know in a way that we see them in this moment when they're enslaved and we forget that they had these entire lives as well. It was something really meaningful to research and meant a lot actually at the time to see his own words and his hand as well. AC One of the things that I know is that you then were able to identify the room in which he was questioned following his arrest in the tower, and when you were working for historical world palaces.

One of the reasons that we were so keen to have you share this history was because in learning more about these histories in such iconic places, we little by little start to change the perception of the histories that took place behind those walls. And I'm just wondering what it felt like for you then to stand in that space and to experience that space with Edward over your shoulder almost because you're bringing that and he's bringing you into that space and it becomes a very poignant exchange, I would imagine. KS There was something really unique, I think, about being able to do this research and think about his story whilst essentially working within this space. We had an office at the Tower of London, and so I was able to draw on all of the expertise of my colleagues there. I said to them, he is questioned by the Consul of the Tower of

London, where did this take place? I said? And so the most likely location is the great room in Queen's House. And I'd been in that room before for a staff meeting or presentations or something, but it's this vaulted, I guess to us today, it looks like a grand dining room. It's vaulted ceiling, these dark timber beams. It still has this dark wooden panelling around it. It very much feels like a Tudor space. It's the room where Guy Fawkes was questioned. Even now, there are these religious images on the walls of hell and suffering and demons that my colleague said they were there to scare people, to intimidate them, to make them think about confession and honesty and truth and the punishments that they might receive for committing such heinous moral crimes. If Edward was brought into this space, I mean, prisoners at the

tower were questioned elsewhere, sometimes in the White Tower, for example. But if he was brought to this space, which is most likely, those surroundings would have been very intimidating, almost kind of imperial, I think, in context as well, as well as kind of royal and symbolic. But at this time, the Tower of London very much is a space at the heart of the English Empire. It's a space at the heart of English imperial power, English royal institutional power as well. And I think all of that kind of surrounding, you know, this is a fortress, it's a prison, it's a community as well,

but all of this would have been intimidating for Edward Francis, and in some ways I think just kind of adds to how remarkable his story is. Unfortunately the Queen's House isn't a space that visitors to the Tower of London normally go into because it's still actually't a space that visitors to the Tower of London normally go into because it's still actually occupied by the Constable of the Tower of London today, but it's something that as curators we would be able to get access to. And yes, it is an amazing space with this rich and very complicated history. LW It's amazing to think that Edward is potentially questioned in the same space as Guy Fawkes and it kind of inserts him into a broader English history and brings some of that complication to it actually. We found out

so much about him Misha through your research, you've managed to uncover his voice, something of his person, something of his personality even. Do we know what happens to him in the end? and something of his personality even. Do we know what happens to him in the end? GWEN So this is the part of the history that is, I guess, most in some ways opaque and confusing and something that continues to interest scholars as well because it does raise particular questions about Edward's legal status but also the legal status of other enslaved people in England at this time. So unfortunately, the records for the Old Bailey, so he does go to trial at Old Bailey, but those records for those few months when he's tried haven't survived. So there's no chance that they are ever going to be recovered. They're not lost, they haven't survived. But we do know that Edward

is released after a few months with a fine of only 10 groats. This seems very lenient considering that potentially he's been put on trial for attempted murder, but we actually don't know what he is tried for. I've spoken to other scholars about this. Why may he have been released with only a fine? How was he able to pay that fine? Who paid that fine? It's likely that this does come down to who paid that fine. It's likely that this does come down to this grey area in English law at the time of whether Edward is a person or whether Edward is property. Can property commit crime? I think these are the kinds of questions that people have been grappling with at the time, which sounds so odd to us today. The truth is we may never get a very clear answer about why he was released and he wasn't punished in the way that we might expect an English person to be punished

at this time, but it does clearly have something to do with his enslaved status. In terms of what may have happened to him next, I think there are a certain number of outcomes. He may have been sent back to the Dimmock household. Thomas Dimmock may have punished him. Thomas Dimmock may have decided to sell Edward, perhaps put him on a ship for a Caribbean plantation, for example, where his life would have been very different. He would have still been enslaved, but he would have faced very different outcomes. But the fact is, at this moment in time,

we just don't know. For me and for others who have been interested in picking up his story, he just seems to disappear from the historical archive. This story leaves us with different questions, I think. It's so unique in a way, but perhaps can open up more complicated ways of understanding the status that enslaved people had in English law at this time as well. Will Barber- Well, frustrating and difficult and all as it is for him to disappear in that way. I'm so glad he was determined and resilient and forceful enough to appear in the first place because essentially he does push himself into the record. It's through transgression that he makes his presence known, you know,

350 years later, and I'm just really glad that he gave the bastard's hell, that he just really tried to be troublesome and that he tried to stake a claim on his own life and not let this stupid silver collar determine who he was going to be. And I'm really aware, actually, as we're talking, that there's a very good likelihood that Edward Francis is not called Edward Francis at all. It's not necessarily the name that he would have recognized or called himself by. But by God, I'm so glad that he pushed himself into that archive.

It seems like a real, it seems like the only thing he could do. Misha, this has been an absolute eye-opening history for me. This is not a history that I knew about. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing. And I'm sure the listeners will respond in the same way. Of course, if you've enjoyed this episode of Misha's, go back and listen to any of the others that she has had on After Dark, including the Mysteries of Roan that she has had on After Dark, including the mysteries of Roanoke and our episode on Virginia Dare, which was quite recent. Otherwise, we will leave you to think about this incredible history and maybe the next time you visit the Tower of London, you'll see the place in a whole new light. Until next time, happy

listening. you