After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Tragic Execution of a Victorian Murderess

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

In 1856, Martha Brown was led to the scaffold and hanged for the murder of her abusive husband. Her execution was clearly an injustice, even at the time. While Martha was condemned, multiple other female killers were spared the noose. In this episode, Anthony talks with Dr Rose Wallis from the University of West England Bristol about the societal implications of Martha's fate.Edited by Hannah Feodorov. Produced by Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer was Freddy Chick.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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In August 1856, thousands gathered outside Dorchester jail to watch Martha Brown hang for the murder of her husband. But she shouldn't be here. Because they'd figured out after her trial that she wasn't guilty in the way they thought she was, but the authorities had now refused to listen. Her execution was driven more by politics and public anxiety than the tragic crime itself. This is an intriguing case and a history that gets to the heart of the darks of Victorian England. Welcome to After Dark. Hello and welcome to After Dark. My name is Anthony, and today we are taking you into the darker side of the Victorian justice system. It is 1856.

We are meeting a woman called Martha and she has ended the life of her husband John. Now, what unfolds after that is a Victorian trial and investigation that you might be be surprised to find the different twists and turns. So inspiring was it, even at the time that Thomas Hardy had taken some of the elements from Martha's trial and put it into one of his novels. So we're going to see some pretty heightened elements of Victorian society here. And who better to walk us through some of these dark twists and turns than Professor Rose Wallace of the University of West England, Bristol. And Rose is Professor of British Social History and is Associate Director of the Regional History Centre.

Welcome to After Dark Rose. Thank you very much, Anthony. Again, there's some people that come on this, and I'm like, how has it taken us this long to have you on here? Because your work so feeds into everything that is After Dark, so we're delighted to have you in. This, Freddie and I were talking before this morning, just about all the episodes.

And one of the things that struck me about this is, you know, the way sometimes there's, like, modern-day re-investigations of crimes. And they do a whole podcast on it. And they're like, actually, there's been a conviction here and it looks like this. But now we're going to go back in and we're going to. You've done this with this particular trial. And there was a reinvestigation at the time almost or a secondary part of the investigation. But without giving too much of the details away, because we'll get into that.

What was it specifically about this crime and the outcome of this crime that kind of drew you in? and now has had you discover some new threads to it? I think, well, firstly, to kind of move away from the Hardy connection, actually, because that seems to be what has thrown Martha into the spotlight, and there is so much more going on here. But I suppose the other thing was, when I was researching this case, people would say to me, you know, well, you know, why didn't she say stuff before? before, like, you know, why was she lying? And I was just like, you're not thinking about her

experience. There's so much, there's so many layers of judgment here that I kind of wanted to unpick it and to really, the impossible task of recovering a voice that's not there, but recovering an experience, I suppose. Yeah. There is also something here, which I think, and again, we'll get to, sorry to give you teasers at the top of the episode, but actually, that's what we do nowadays. why am I apologising. But we have a way of looking at domestic violence in the 19th century that we're pretty set on, actually, in the way we communicate and talk about historic domestic violence in the 19th century. But actually, I think this is fascinating what you've discovered and the primary source material that you've come across in this. But we'll get into all of that.

Before we do, let's introduce us to, who ends up being Martha Brown, but give us an insight into this woman called Martha and her life to begin with. So Elizabeth Martha Brown, always known pretty much as Martha. Dorset, born and raised, from fairly modest kind of agricultural background. She's married at the age of 20 to a nice guy called Bernard Burn. Good man, Burners. Yeah. Bernard Burn, yeah. She's about 20 when they get married. They have two kids, both of these kids die in infancy, really sadly and weeks apart as well. And then again a few years after that, Bernard dies as well. So Martha is widowed and she goes to work for a guy called John Sims, who's quite important and is his housekeeper for 10 years on a farm in Purbeck where she meets her second husband, John Brown.

And he's a shepherd. She's the housekeeper. They get married in 1852 and moved to this tiny village hamlet called Birdsmoregate, again in Dorset, near Broadwinser, and she sets up a little shop, and he works as a trance or a carter, so he has a horse and carton carries stuff around. And I suppose, I mean, this again bothers me, there's so much that bothers me. There's quite a significant age difference between Martha and John. It's about 18, maybe 19 years, And when the trial comes, this is drawn attention to. This is like some kind of portent of what was to come, that there was something wrong with this sort of relationship.

No, it's unusual, perhaps for an older woman and a younger man, then and indeed now with that sort of age difference to get together. But that's not what's wrong with this relationship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not where we go wrong. The age difference is not there. No, and I mean, it's not inconceivable that they fancied each other. Yeah.

You know, and there are people saying, I really wanted her money because she had a bit of money from her previous marriage, from her own work. There were other people saying, well, she was a very handsome woman for, you know, someone in her early 40s, cheers. Like, they may have had, you know, a properly romantic relationship to begin with. But obviously, these sorts of already little kind of social transgressions, breaches of conventions start kind of, yeah, putting this weird poll over the case. We're going to hurtle right towards it, actually, because there's a lot to talk about after the crime and the trial itself. So we'll get to the heart of this straight away. It is the 6th of July, 1856.

This is the night of the murder. Talk us through what we know, what we think we know, what Martha tells us. Okay. So Martha's version of what happens is John has been at work on the 5th. He's been out all day. He gets back about 2 a.m., she says. on the 6th of July, she hears this noise outside the window. She goes out, finds him kind of collapsed, and he whispers to her, the horse.

So she's like, oh my God, he's been injured by the horse. She says she drags him through into their kind of main living room, where he clutches hold of her so tightly in this kind of death grip that she can't physically move to get him help with his head injuries until about 5 o'clock in the morning. when she says he lets her go and she goes straight round to near neighbour and cousin

John's cousin Richard Damon's house gets Richard Damon and says oh my God I think John's dying and that's her version of events which she sticks to the issue being and it's noted in the coroner's inquest

it's noted by all the friends and neighbours who come to the house that she calls to her aid effectively there's no blood outside there's no kind of evidence of her dragging him through. All the blood is in the room in which his body's found. And then the coroner's inquest confirms that it's highly unlikely, known possible that a horse would have inflicted the head injuries he found,

which they go into an incredibly graphic detail in the trial about this, and then it was probably caused by a blunt instrument. Right. Okay. So we have a story that she has delivered, possibly fabricated. She is reaching out to a wider network, a familial network that is around her. We certainly have a husband returning home

from somewhere at some point and something very dramatic and traumatic and life ending is definitely happening. We have that version of events up front. Spoiler alert, another version that Martha herself provides does emerge at some point in this story and actually maybe just talk us through that version.

What's the time space between those two things? Do we know? So, well, this is the interesting thing. So this happens on the 6th. Martha's committed between 9th to 10th of July, her trials on the 21st. And up until this point, she is sticking to this story. She doesn't speak at her own trial. The defence don't really talk about the horse three,

but they try and posit all sorts of other things about why she wouldn't have been able to do it. eventually she confesses and up until fairly recently it appeared that she confessed to the prison chaplain and the prison governor on the 8th of August so the day before she's due to be executed she confesses this is her official confession but the material that I've found she confesses earlier than that she doesn't disclose any of this during the trial but after the trial. As the appeal process is being started, she confesses to her solicitors that what in actual fact has happened is that John's come in at two o'clock in the morning, steaming drunk, and they have a huge row. And he beats her. And this isn't the first time he's beaten it. And it's a really vicious

attack. He kicks the chair out from under her. He kicks her again. He pulls a horse whip down off the wall and it's making all sorts of threat and is violent against her and she just loses it. She lashes out. He bends down to undo his boots and she picks up the little kind of, it's a blunt hatcher that she's been using to break coals to keep the fire up and smashes him round the head with it. And she says as soon as she'd done it, she regretted it, like absolutely. immediately. And that's, yeah, ultimately, kind of the version of events that we feel is true.

Yeah. So we have these two version of events, as you say, and historians lean now more heavily towards that second confession that is then repeated later on. And as you say, you have discovered that this came actually earlier in the process than we thought. But in a moment, when we come back from this short break, we're going to rewind a little bit, look at the trial and see how we get to that confession that's coming up right after this break. Right, Rose, it's now 21st of July, 1856.

We are still, as you said, it was the 8th of August that we initially thought that that counter confession comes out. So we're still in a world where she's maintaining, Martha's maintaining innocence at this point. Walk us through the trial. How does it, how does it play out? I can imagine, but I'm going to hope that I'm not. I'm not getting ahead of myself here, but I have a feeling it doesn't go well. It doesn't go well. Oh, great.

And it's not just because of the evidence against Martha or the fact that she's maintaining her innocence in this context. So the prosecution only have circumstantial evidence. There's a lot of it, and it's fairly compelling, and everyone suspects that it was Martha. But they still have to make that case. So they bring in the entirety of Martha's community, all her family, her friends, her neighbours. All of them are made to come and be prosecution witnesses. They all testify to the forensic evidence that that was.

There's little, and again, we are dealing with kind of newspaper reports rather than depositions that have been lodged in the archives, because of the archive. But there's obviously a clear line of questioning from the prosecution that this is about the kind of. on it, forensic evidence and that nothing else, there was no other explanation for this crime. Also, people testifying to John's good character as well. And one, the curate, local curate, the Reverend de la Fos, who makes special mention of the fact that, you know, everybody is incredibly moved by John's death.

His mother has fainted away and Martha is unmoved. Right. She's cold and unfeeling. Martha's then got to try and make a defence. and she does have solicitors, she does have defence counsel, which not all working people would have had. This is paid for by her lovely former employer, John Sims, of Perbeck. Absolute legend. But the solicitors were briefed 24, 36 hours before the trial started.

And then, as they themselves said, they had just almost no time to get the kind of evidence statements that had been given to the magistrates and then hand them over. to the Defence Council. So there is no proper defence at all. And so, you know, and half the witnesses that were brought by the prosecution hadn't made statements before the magistrate. So the Defence Council didn't even know what they were going to say. Really horrendously impossible position. So his defence is, firstly, kind of procedural. This is impossible for us to defend this case.

Then he tries to sort of suggest that, you know, he uses the same. some sorts of tropes that will see repeated time and time again that Martha couldn't have done it because she's a woman. A woman wouldn't smash someone over the head. If they were going to kill their husband, they would have poisoned. Sure, because that's the only way women know how to do it. And also, this is a time when there's been a lot of poisoning going on. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, two male poisoners convicted and executed in 1856 men, actually. Anyway, you know, she couldn't have done it. I suppose one of the important things they do point out is the fact that why would she kill him because he, you know, they are financially dependent on one another and she herself said,

you know, why would I kill him and end up losing my home and having to sleep under a hedge? You know, they kind of labour this point. There's also the accusation that the prosecution make is that Martha was motivated by jealousy because. Oh, yes, I remember this. There's a potential other woman. There's a potential other woman, a woman closer to John's age, of course, called Mary Davis. And then the defence's like, well, she's an older woman.

She's not going to be motivated by jealousy. This is someone who has, you know, life experience and things like that. And then there's like, oh, maybe he got robbed on the way home. Because, you know, they're kind of clutching at straws here. And they call one witness. The defence do. One witness. And that's lovely John Sims.

The man who owned the house, yeah. Who is just there to testify to Martha's good character. And he says she's nice, basically. And just said she's amazing, you know, as inoffensive and lovely a woman as I'd ever met in my life. And he has no... But everybody else that she knew had been brought in as a prosecution. Right. So there is this stacking of evidence against her.

There's no time really to prepare a proper defence, even in terms... Even in the context of 19th century legal procedure. I'm imagining the outcome's not good. No, the outcome is not good. I mean, the jury clearly are concerned because it takes them nearly four hours. Does it? Yeah. So they go out about 6pmish and they're called back by the judge at around 10pm.

Now, this is in a time when jury's could come back in 20, 30 minutes. They might as well just turn around and have a little huddle, huddle. No, no, no. These guys are out for nearly four hours and they come back in and they still haven't reached a verdict. And they want to recall one of the medical experts. that are testified and to check that none of the head wounds could have been exacerbated by moving the body and all the post-mortem process. So they check that. Then they have a quick kind of huddle deliberation and then they do come back with the verdict.

And they find Martha guilty. And bear in mind, she's been found guilty of murder. Likelihood is the sentence is going to be and is indeed. Death? Yeah. Sergeant Channel, who's the justice presiding over these proceedings, puts on the little black cap and does the full kind of theatrical. He completely agrees with the jury and explains how, you know, this is an aggravated form of murder. It's not just a murder.

It's your husband. It's the man you promised to love, honor and obey. And it's kind of really drawing on that sort of inheritance of kind of petty treason and the idea that this is a totally. you know, it's not just your regular crime against humanity. Indeed. Yeah, exactly that, in version of the social order. Yeah. So we have a situation where she's gone to trial.

She's been found guilty. She's been sentenced to death. And this is what I found unusual about this, that that's kind of when the real investigation in the defence starts to a certain extent. And am I right in thinking, because I have the testimony here that she supposedly gives in relation to what. actually might have happened that night. Is it your understanding that with the new material that you found that this kind of emerges around this time during that investigation?

Yeah, almost immediately after trial, there's a kind of popular public appeal to have her sentence commuted. So they're not suggesting that Martha didn't do it. They haven't suddenly gone, well, actually, we believe the story about the horse now. But what they're saying is it's not premeditated. So, you know, this isn't murder. This is someone who, in a violent passion, lashed out and that she'd been really seriously provoked. So you've got petitions coming in from all over Dorset, lots of the abolitionist movement there getting involved. But there's lots of local ones. There's one from Broadwinser, her home parish that's signed by the overseers of the poor, the local gentry, and pretty much everybody who'd been a prosecution witness. Yeah? There's

like 115 signatures on this petition. There are hundreds of others signatures on the other petitions. And it's quite unusual. It is. I haven't encountered this before. And, you know, again, this is like another side thing we could go into finding out this is, yeah,

how unusual this is. Her solicitors are so concerned about how poorly her trial went because they'd had so little time and because of this disadvantage around not being able to see any of the evidence to actually kind of, build a case for her, they decide to go back to Birdsmoregate after she's confessed to them

around about the like end of July and go and sort of what I think they talk about testing the truth of kind of what she said. So they go back to Birdsmoregate and interview everybody they can find who knew Martha and John and get sworn notarised statements that they compile together and then send to the Home Secretary to say, look, there is absolutely new evidence. They explain the situation about the defence and ask him to consider this and to consider commuting the sentence. I want to read her new confession that kind of emerges at this time where she sets up the context of what may really have happened. Just a warning for listeners, this does contain a description of domestic violence. So you may want to skip forward about a minimum.

or so if you don't want to stick around for this part of it. But she has said, he struck me a severe blow on the side of my head, which confused me so much that I was obliged to sit down. Supper was on the table and he said, eat it yourself and be damned. At the same time, he reached down from the mantelpiece, a heavy horse whip with a plain end and struck me across the shoulders with it three times, each time I screamed out. I said, if you strike me again, I will cry a murder. He retorted, if you do, I will knock your brains through the window. He then kicked me on the left side, which caused me great pain, and he immediately stooped down to untie his boots.

I was such enraged and in an ungovernable passion on being so abused and struck, I directly seized a hatchet, which was lying close to where I sat, I struck him several violent blows on the head. I could not say how many. He fell at the first blow on his head, with his face towards the fireplace.

He never spoke. or moved afterwards. What I find fascinating about that? Many things. But you are getting, you are being invited in, behind a closed door into a home,

a 19th century, a mid-19th century home where this woman is describing a repeated pattern and to her an identifiable pattern of emotional, verbal, physical abuse. and it is rare, I think.

I mean, you can speak to this significantly better than I can. It's rare that she is able to do that even after the trial. And I know what you're saying earlier about people being like, why didn't she say something before? But like, we hear this even now. Like, well, why didn't you say at the time, right? It's, this is a complex thing, but what I find interesting about it, As you mentioned before I read that out about the neighbours, that they re-approached the neighbours.

Talk us through what new evidence they managed to gather from the neighbours, because this seems to corroborate what she's saying there. And I think this is a significant thing. And again, in reflecting on the case, I mean, I kind of feel like we shouldn't have to have these statements for her confession to be believed. But we do now have this kind of corroborating evidence. So when Garland and Fear, the solicitors go back to Birdsmorgate and they talk to everybody, pretty much everybody says, yeah, John used to get drunk. John was probably having it away with Mary Davis or behaving improperly anyway, and that he mistreated physically, emotionally, psychologically mistreated. Martha, and I think probably the most poignant is when they, the statement that's given by Susan Damon, who is Richard Damon's wife.

They both were prosecution witnesses. Richard Damon was John's cousin. And they're very close. And she's clearly an intimate friend of Marthas. And she talks about how Martha had been sitting in her kitchen and had pulled down like the sleeve of the dress and shown her the bruises on her body. And they remember John.

threatening to go and kill Martha. And they actually kind of got him to stay in their kitchen for a couple of hours and just like, just John like, calm. And they held onto him so that he didn't go and beat her. So they're managing this as well as being aware of it. They're kind of actively involved in trying to protect Martha. And there's another one of the statements that says they're pretty sure that the screams they heard that night. the small hours of the 6th of July were masters and not jumps. God, that's quite chilling actually, isn't it? It brings to mind, again, this living in

close proximity with other people that you are part of their everyday life to a certain extent. And that goes from good to bad to ugly to where you're hearing this woman's scream at night. But it also highlights something else. And I think this is where this is quite radical in some because we have an idea, whether it's orally received or whatever it is, that actually when we encounter domestic abuse situations in the 19th century, and even well into the 20th century, actually, that is like, well, of course, we knew it was going on, but it was not our place to get involved. We'll stay out of that now, and they can manage, he can manage his own home,

and if he needs to do whatever he needs to do. We are told, even still, historians will say that that's how domestic violence was viewed and managed. Something else has happened here. No, and I think this is the thing, as we know now, I think, hopefully, and again, maybe not enough. It's so much more complicated than that, about that relationship between knowledge and action and the personal relationships that underpin all this. And it's not, there is such condemnation of this sorts of behaviour, but there are also all sorts of more complex or nuanced reasons why people didn't immediately try and kind of send him off to the magistrates or get the police involved

because it's it is their relationship but it's a question of what happens if you then try and get you know john punished does she face further physical reprisals how does she maintain herself if he's banged up you know this is pre 1878 matrimonial causes act there's no financial settlements for separations, you know, there's the fact that you would have to expose yourself and your husband, who you may in fact still love, despite the fact, he's an absolute bastard, that you don't want to expose yourself or your relationship, that you love him, that his family members are supporting you. Yeah.

That complexity of relationship around, clearly they don't want Martha to be hurt, but it's also their cousin. You know, it's such a complex situation, but it does. I hope nuance some of that understanding around, you know, whether it's acceptable or not. Increasingly, I don't think it is acceptable in Victorian society. But it's much more complex. And I think, you know, people had much more kind of human and rational feelings than we give them credit for around this, you know. Yeah, yeah.

I also think like there's something, sure, they're not running to the magistrate straight away, or they're not involving some kind of, you know, force or legal procedure straight away. But it also does seem like there's some form of community management system that they are utilizing in order to try and blunt the edges of this. For her benefit and his benefit, probably by some of the sounds of that, because, you know, they're sitting with him. They're telling him to calm down. They're not necessarily running to her and be like, get out quickly because this guy's on the way. They're trying to manage him there, but keep him away from her at the same time.

Look, it's not a glowing recommendation of this is exactly handled in the perfect way. It's not that. But it does nuance what we think we know about. Well, that's happening behind their closed door. I can hear it, but I'm not doing anything about this. This idea that it's, you know, the private sphere and therefore it has nothing. It's no. And I think generally, and again, we only get to this through court records.

when either, you know, the victim has come forward or something even worse has happened. Yeah, yeah. But people say, no, I did know, and I tried to manage it like this, you know. And yes, it's not glowing, but again, and I'm pretty sure if you spoke to lawyers and police now, it is not straightforward now,

that this complexity, particularly around people's personal relationships and financial position and feelings, mean it is not simply a question of arrest and monocam up. Yeah. On the surface of it at least now, we have some compelling evidence to support the fact that, I mean, they didn't have a concept of this in the 1850s, but that there is an element of self-defense here. There are other mitigating circumstances, shall we say,

that led to the death of John. On paper, at least you were getting quite confident that this might mean, okay, Martha's probably going to remain in jail, but we'll probably have the death sentence commuted. Stick around after this short break though because that's not how this pans out. Right, it's looking better. It's looking up for Martha now

and you can imagine a world in which things get ironed out a little bit more, as I say, probably going to stay in jail but we might continue to live. Bizarrely, this is not what happens. No. Why? Oh, this is where this case really starts

playing into something bigger. Now, I'm not suggesting that what wasn't happening to Martha and that community wasn't the life-aultery community-a-year-ya-ya. But this is where it plays into a much kind of bigger national picture. So at this point, you're right. Most women, with this sort of evidence, they would have their sentence commuted. They would face penal servitude for life, potentially.

But it's becoming a really hot topic. So just a few months before Martha, is tried April May time two things are happening first of all there is the trial of Celestina Summer

the old Bailey in April 1856 and she is tried for absolutely brutal murder of her 10 year old daughter again this is really graphic but it is material she takes her daughter

into the cellar and cuts her throat and the maid who's trying to sleep or failing to sleep upstairs. Here's the whole thing. So it's fairly kind of open and shut in terms of what happens. And Celestina Summer is found guilty and sentenced to death. Another woman around the same time is also,

Elizabeth Ann Harris is also found guilty for the murder of her two children much younger. And she's alleged to have drowned them. And this is very much bound up with her situation of being unable to financially support them. But she's found guilty also sentenced to death. So at this point, end of April, you've got two women in Newgate who might be facing the death penalty. This is unprecedented execution scheduled, huge popular appeal for Harris's campaign. There are some petitions sent for Celestina Summer. And Sir George Gray, who's the home secretary, grants a reprieve for both of them. At the same time, there's a House of Lord Select Committee sitting,

which is being headed up by Samuel Wilberforce, who's the Bishop of Oxford. And the concern of this select committee is the operation of capital punishment. The depraving effect is having on people who watch public executions is their big thing. But also the fact that there's no consistency that people keep getting let off. Their sentences keep being commuted. They keep being given a reprieve, particularly women. and that this is kind of basically stopping the deterrent effect of public executions. And it's kind of getting all bound up with kind of the masses and the way they behave.

You know, they're obviously much, you know, they're always the ones watching. There's loads of people watching. It's not. But the working people are the concern. But the impact this could be having on female criminality is something that starts becoming part of the discussion. And Celestina Summers' case, because it is so clearly, or considered to be such a clearly abominable crime. keeps getting brought up as this look, you know, you're not even going to hang a woman like her.

There's been an abolitionist movement in Britain since at least the kind of, you know, 1780s. It's kind of formalised in the 1840s. And they've been kind of quiet around trying to get the death penalty ended in the 1850s because there's so much concern about an increasing violent crime. But they seize on this moment. And in June 1856, William Ewart, who's, the leading abolitionist MP in Parliament says, right, we need a common select committee because look, this is what the Bishop of Oxford is coming up with. Look at Celestina Summer in this case.

We're not hanging women anymore. And if we're not hanging women anymore, how can we be hanging men? So they seize on this as a kind of opportunity to push for abolition. George Gray gets up in Parliament and he's like, no, no, no. I don't want, I think the phrase, or any erroneous rumours to get abroad that we don't hang women anymore. And he says, you know, of course, he pays very careful attention to any special circumstances that come across his desk. He will think about public opinion as well because it is important to take it into account because, you know, the law has to be seen to be just. If people don't, you know, buy into it, this isn't good. But if there's no reason why, there's no kind of point at law, why, why.

a sentence to be commuted, it will start. Awesome, yeah. Yeah. So as soon as Martha Brown is hanged, the beginning of August, you see this flurry of correspondence straight in to the newspapers. It's across the Times, everything. And people saying Martha Brown was hanged because Celestina Summer was let off. And that this is Sir George Gray putting right his...

error. And I think there's something in it. That it's almost an administrative or political maneuvering to demonstrate that women are still subject to the death penalty. And actually, there are other cases that are happening. Can I just ask? It's just occurring to me. And this is my own ignorance now, but you mentioned the name Celestina there. What's the class difference between the women who got off and the Well, this is really interesting. And I think if you look at the calculations that are made and class is part of it between Celestina and Martha, this is where I think there was absolutely something to be said. It's not, and it wasn't just abolitionists saying this is you putting, you know, things right.

People who thought he was correcting, you know, a potentially dangerous precedent, you know, agreed with him were writing it. So Celestina Summer, her father was a silversmith and her husband's an ingratiated. She was a music teacher and I think performers. So she's not necessarily particularly... Aristocratic or anything, no. But she's married, certainly a different class to the Browns. She keeps a maid servant as well. But if you look at...

We've got Gray's annotations on her file. And he explains kind of his reasoning and he says that there's no... legal reason to let Celestina Summeroff. None. But he is concerned about the effect on public opinion of hanging a young, she's in a 20s, good-looking woman who, through the course of trial is understood to have been seduced when she was kind of in her mid-teens. That's the daughter is the product of this seduction, that she's, you know, otherwise supported this child, that she was misdemeanor. treated by her husband. And he's like,

if we execute her, it's going to be a shit show. You know, everyone's going to think we're horrendous. And he makes this calculation, writes it down. And, you know,

it's not completely unreasonable. In his first tenure, his home secretary, and there was another woman hanged, I think, in Berry St. Edmonds in 1840s. And the crowd was so incensed. by it, they were shouting shame and murder

her execution. So, you know, he doesn't want to kind of involve himself in this. Whereas Martha, you know, obviously he's completely wrongheaded. People are like, how could you let this horrendous monster of a woman off? She cut a 10-year-old daughter's throat. Yeah. Like, they're incensed by it.

But Martha's not like that. She's older. Yeah. She's working class. She's been, she's not vulnerable. Or her vulnerability isn't obvious. Whereas Celestina Summer is this petite, young, fair woman who sits and is clearly agitated all the way through her trial. Martha is repeatedly described as being incredibly stoic that she just sits there. And I'm like, I say stoicism, she's probably terrified in that courtroom.

She's on trial for her life. Everybody she knows, everyone in County Society is watching. the courtroom was packed. These blokes are making these decisions about what's going to happen to. She just sits there rigid. That counted against her. Her marriage counted against her.

The fact that they were married in a registry office and not in church was counted against her. The vicar of Broadwinser actually writes to their home secretary and says, you mustn't listen to these people who want to let her off because we need to send a message to the whole community. because they're a lawless bunch. She talks about being full of arsonists and thieves

and his words, prostitutes, you know, that she's an appropriate candidate to make this point with. Well, that's good. I think, well, it's terrible, but it's like appropriate candidate. That's a really key element to this, I think. And I just cannot help, you know, Gray's response to all of that evidence

that is sent to him by Garland and fear, he gets his under secretary Horatio Waddington to write a note to them saying George Gray, thank you very much, regrets to say that there is no basis here. Sticking to it and that's it. And it's like, but you've got really clear evidence of provocation. Really clear evidence of provocation. And again, there is this huge backlash. Everybody who's concerned about it makes the comparison.

you've let this woman off who cut a daughter's throat and you've hanged this woman who on being attacked by her drunk and dissipated husband lashed out. It was a crime of passion. It was not premeditated murder and those comparisons are made publicly. We've saved until the end

but I think this is how I am and sadly aware of Martha Brown's cases because of the link with Hardy. That's how I would have And it's peripheral. It's very, but it's the name I know because of Hardy. Yeah, absolutely. What is that link, though?

Why, is it just because of all those arguments that come out in the paper that he suddenly latches onto this? No, not at all. No. And I mean, well, he was latterly aware of those newspaper accounts. Some years later, and we're talking like, you know, well after Tess has been written and published in the 1890s, in the 1920s, it's kind of where we can cite this clear evidence, is that, He recalled to his great friend, Hester Pini, who lived at Race Down, just very near where Martha lived. He recalled to her watching her execution when he was about 16 years old.

Right. And he's one of three, four thousand people who stood outside Dorchester Jail. And he writes to her the most, I have so many issues with them. Go on, do you have us? Do you have the next? Okay, go on. He wrote to Hester Piny, he said, and he talks about, you know, the shame of having gone to public execution. By the time he's writing, they've public execution to start.

And he said, I remember what a fine figure she showed against the sky as she hung in the misty rain. And how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half round and back. Yeah, all right, Tom. Chill yourself out there now, good man. I just, and it's not sympathetic. It's horribly. Foyeuristic. It's eroticized and objectifying her.

And he says very clearly, you know, that Martha's case, you know, inspired Tess of the Derbils, that experience. And obviously there's that clear connection there in terms of, you know, Tess kills her abuser. And dies at the end, right? And die. And she's executed. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But is, yeah, is executed. So there's a very clear parallel that. You could argue there's a clear parallel and weird sexualisation of the two women as well. But that's what he says in remembering the execution and that inspired Tess.

But that's what he said to Hest-opinney about the execution. I think what it does as well, and it probably is a good place to maybe leave this on as well, it reminds us to reject that eroticisation of that death scene because some people may make an argument that it makes her this heroin figure almost that she suffered in this way

and so we will lord her because of that yes she ended this man's life but actually there was a whole lot of other circumstances and it's viewed through this lens of holding her up to be something else but actually the lens through which is doing that is a little quite a bit dark in his approach to it.

Whereas actually what I think is far more compelling and far more human and useful to us as historians is that testimony of John's cousin's wife if I'm going through all the different stages where she's saying she sat at my table and she showed me the mark on her back. Isn't that like so compelling? That's a person with a person

like letting them into their most private And then in turn, she and John's cousin try to manage that scenario for them. That says something to me about community. It says something to me about how communities are managing crime. It says something about how women are coming together at this time to try and manage this with the help of some of their husbands. That's more compelling, I think. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

And it's that, you know, aside from the machinations of all these horrendous parliamentarian. actually that investigation by Garland and Fear gives us this amazing window like you say into that really intimate relationships, that network of people, you know, who lived together and loved each other and supported each other and it is, no, it's, that's what kind of really strikes me.

That's what I want to try and bring out of this. It's where the life is, right? It's where we get as close as we possibly can to trying to experience that. that is such a compelling case. We come across a lot of historic crime or I was like, people always say like historic true crime or true crime. I'm like, what's a

false crime? But then I did have a solicitor won't say to me. Actually, there is something that's a false crime. I can't remember what she told me it was now, but she definitely did explain it to me. But it is, there is something very human about this that's amidst the sensationalism.

There's something about real lives shared over a dinner table or, you know, the main table in the house. That's that's very, very compelling. So thank you, Rose, for sharing that with us. Rose, where can people find you on socials or wherever if they want to know a little bit more? Instagram at Dr. Rose Wallace. That's about the only social place I hang out. Listen, it's enough. It's enough. I can't be doing with all of them anymore. I've closed half of them down. I'm just left with Instagram now myself. Thank you for listening and watching if you're watching on YouTube

this episode. Let us know your thoughts in the comments. If you're just listening on a on a podcast platform, go over to YouTube, have the conversation in the comments underneath that episode about what you've heard today. And if there's any new pieces of light that you have seen in terms of domestic violence in the 19th century, women's lives, how this community is working. There's certainly a lot of food for thought there for me. So I'm really, really compelled by this one. If you have any other 19th century or indeed any other century crimes that you'd like us to have a look at, then you can email us at After Dark at Historyhit.com. Do not forget to leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcast, because why.

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