Rosalind Crone, historical consultant on the BBC series Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley, reveals what six murder cases tell us about women\u2019s lives in the 19th century <\/p>

The mark of a murderer<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

Swiss maid Maria Manning was convicted for the killing of a former lover. But might she have been the victim of gender stereotyping?<\/h3>\n
It was a stain between two flagstones that gave the game away. On 17 August 1849, two policemen were conducting a search for a missing customs officer named Patrick O\u2019Connor. For days they had been collecting information about O\u2019Connor\u2019s last known movements, and this had led them to a house in Bermondsey, London.<\/p>\n
At first the officers found nothing. In fact, they were about to leave the house when Constable Barnes noticed the damp mark. The stain suggested that the flagstones in the kitchen had recently been re-laid, and so the policemen started digging. When they got 18 inches down, Barnes \u201cdiscovered the loins of a man\u2026 it was lying on the belly, and the legs were brought back and tied up round the haunches with a strong cord\u2026 it was quite naked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nowhere to be seen<\/h3>\n
Dental records confirmed the body was Patrick O\u2019Connor. On 9 August, O\u2019Connor had been invited to dine with the occupants of 3 Miniver Place: Frederick Manning and his Swiss wife, Maria. O\u2019Connor had met Maria when she was a lady\u2019s maid for the Duchess of Sutherland\u2019s daughter. They began a relationship but, when he was slow to propose, Maria married Frederick, a guard on the Western Railway. Tough times had brought Maria and Frederick to London, and Maria had rekindled her affair with the well-off O\u2019Connor. But on 17 August, Maria and Frederick Manning were nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n
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Read more | Gangs and knife-crime fears: how has Britain responded through history?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The police launched a massive manhunt. Maria was captured in Edinburgh trying to sell railway shares belonging to O\u2019Connor. Frederick, who had made it to Jersey, was recognised by an old acquaintance. Both were brought back to London to stand trial.<\/p>\n

When the police got 18 inches down, they found \u201cthe loins of a man… it was lying on the belly… and it was quite naked <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
They appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey on 25 and 26 October 1849, each intent on blaming the other. Maria\u2019s barrister claimed that Frederick killed O\u2019Connor in a jealous rage. Speaking for Frederick, Sergeant Wilkins deployed prominent gender stereotypes. He argued that, while history showed that women could display higher levels of virtue than men, \u201conce she gives way to vice she sinks far lower than our sex. My hypothesis is that the female prisoner\u2026 premeditated, planned and concocted the murder; and that she made her husband her dupe\u2026 for that purpose.\u201d\nThe jury condemned them both. Maria raged against the verdict. \u201cI am a foreigner, and I have been denied justice\u2026 I have not been treated like a Christian, but like a wild beast of the forest.\u201d But to no avail. She and her husband were hanged, side-by-side, on the roof of Horsemonger Lane Gaol on 13 Novem- ber 1849 before a crowd of perhaps 50,000 spectators, among them Charles Dickens<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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A terrible secret<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Fear of the stigma of an illegitimate child led Jane Boyd to commit a horrific crime<\/h3>\n
Historians have suggested that infanticide might have been a weekly event in mid-19th-century Ireland. In many of these cases, it was a means of dealing with illegitimacy at a time when fatherless babies were stigmatised and brought great financial hardship to mothers.<\/p>\n
And so, on 26 October 1861, when Ann Boyd \u2013 an unmarried teenager from Ballykeel who had recently returned home from a spell as a domestic servant \u2013 went into labour, her mother, Jane, panicked.<\/p>\n

After my sister screamed, I heard the sound of a child… It did not cry very long. It gave three cries <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Living in a small cottage in a tightly knit community, it was difficult to hide what was happening. Ann\u2019s brother James, who had just come home for his dinner, noticed the commotion. \u201cI sat in the kitchen and heard my sister screaming,\u201d he later testified. \u201cThen, after my sister screamed, I heard the sound of a child\u2026 It did not cry very long. It gave three cries.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Read more | 6 notorious unsolved crimes from history<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Around one o\u2019clock, neighbours James and Mary Hill saw Jane digging a hole. \u201cIt\u2019s a strange time to be digging in a garden,\u201d Mary remarked to Jane. Other neighbours and extended family who called on the Boyds that afternoon noticed that Ann was very ill and told Jane to call a doctor.<\/p>\n
Dr Dunlop, the parish medical officer, came the next day. After examining Ann, and finding that she had recently given birth, he sent for Constable Waters of the Holywood Barracks. Confronted by the two men, Jane, who had insisted that her daughter had suffered a miscarriage, cracked. \u201cThere was a child,\u201d she con- fessed, \u201cand it was buried in the garden. The child was dead, born dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maximum penalty<\/h3>\n
At the foot of an elm tree, Waters and Dunlop recovered the body of a baby girl, in a shallow grave hidden underneath some large cabbages.<\/p>\n
Following an inquest, Jane was charged with murder and was sent, with Ann, to Downpatrick Gaol to await trial. At the 11th hour, a deal was struck. Jane and Ann pleaded guilty to concealment of birth and the prosecution dropped the charge of murder. Ann was sentenced to six months\u2019 imprisonment with hard labour. The judge was entirely convinced that Jane had killed the baby, and so gave her the maximum penalty: two years\u2019 imprisonment with hard labour.<\/p>\n
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Missionary violence<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Marie Christensen\u2019s brutal treatment of a child of Aboriginal descent exposed the iniquities of Australia\u2019s policies towards Indigenous people<\/h3>\n
In 1896, a girl called Cassey was sent to the reformatory school at Myora Mission in Moreton Bay, Queensland. Cassey \u2013 who was described as being about five years old and \u201chalf caste\u201d \u2013 was a weak child, suffering ill health as well as, in the words of the mission superintendent, being \u201cdull and not in as good spirits as the others\u201d.<\/p>\n
She was far from the only child to make such a journey. In late 19th-century Australia, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were forced to live on reserves and missions, where they were segregated from white settler communities. Policies of assimilation enabled the author- ities to remove children of Aboriginal descent from their parents and send them to reformatory schools where they were trained to enter white society as domestic servants and farm labourers. All this was done under the guise of \u2018protection\u2019. But for Cassey, protection was in short supply.<\/p>\n
On 14 September, the mission matron, Marie Christensen, took Cassey to the tidal springs at the bottom of the hill to bathe. When the child refused, Christensen forced her into the water. Budlo Lefu, a First Nations woman who lived on the mission, watched the matron \u201cducking the child up and down in the sea\u201d. When the matron dragged the child back up the hill, beating her with a stick and kicking her, Budlo \u201ccame to stop her and she told me I had nothing to do with it [so] I went away\u201d. Christensen hurried Cassey into the dormitory where she continued the beating. Five days later, Cassey died.<\/p>\n
Recording Indigenous voices<\/h3>\n
The refusal of the attending doctor to issue a medical certificate triggered an inquest \u2013 at that time a rare event on the death of an Indigenous person. In another unusual twist, the local justice of the peace, William North, collected testimony from Indigenous women who lived on the mission, committing their voices to the historical record.<\/p>\n
Christensen was charged with manslaugh- ter. In return for a guilty plea, the prosecution spoke on her behalf, claiming she was \u201cof imperfect brain development\u201d. She received a suspended sentence, and the Myora Mission (indeed, the whole system) escaped serious scrutiny. The reformatory school was quickly shut down, and Cassey\u2019s peers were moved on. The Myora Mission continued until 1942.<\/p>\n
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Killing in the name of love<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Alice Mitchell\u2019s vicious attack on a childhood sweetheart challenged contemporary attitudes towards female same-sex relationships<\/h3>\n
In the eyes of most residents of 19th- century Tennessee, female same-sex love was abnormal. Though some young, unmarried women had close, even openly affectionate friendships with female peers, hardly anyone thought for a second that there would be any kind of sexual element to these relationships. Such assumptions were dramatically challenged in early 1892 by two teenage girls: Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward.<\/p>\n
Alice and Freda had become close friends after meeting at Higbee School for Young Ladies in Memphis. In 1891, when Freda moved to the town of Golddust on the Mississippi river to live with her older sister and widowed father, Alice and Freda were able to sustain their relationship through visits and letters. When they stayed together, they shared a bed, as expected. When apart, the girls declared their love for each other in writing. Alice even bought Freda an engagement ring and proposed marriage, declaring that she would live as a man, \u2018Alvin J Ward\u2019, to make their union possible.<\/p>\n
Jealous rage<\/h3>\n
Freda, however, was keeping her options open. In Golddust, she began to entertain male suitors, in particular a man called Ashley Roselle. Alice was enraged. \u201cI love you Fred, and would kill Ashley before I would see him take you from me,\u201d she warned in one letter.<\/p>\n
In August 1891, the girls devised a plan to elope, but it was discovered by Freda\u2019s sister, who became determined to end the relationship.<\/p>\n
Freda returned Alice\u2019s engagement ring. Alice, however, could not accept that the relationship was over. When, in January 1892, Freda visited Memphis to stay with a friend, Alice tried writing to her once more. But her letters were returned unopened and, when they met in the street, Freda refused to acknowledge her. To explain her actions, Freda wrote Alice one final letter: \u201cI love you now and always will but I have been forbidden to speak to you and I have to obey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just days later, Alice stabbed Freda to death as she tried to board the steamer back to Golddust. In her confession, Alice explained that she \u201cresolved to kill Freda because I loved her so much that I wanted her to die loving me\u201d.<\/p>\n
A verdict of insanity ensured that Alice avoided the gallows, and society could continue to define female same-sex relationships as an aberration.<\/p>\n
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Victims of the \u201cblack cloud\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
In 1841, Mary Ann Brough secured the illustrious position of wet nurse to the Prince of Wales. But a marital dispute sent her life spiralling out of control<\/h3>\n
In 1834, George Brough, a groundsman at Claremont House, a royal residence in Esher, married one of the domestic serv- ants, Mary Ann. In 1841, shortly after the birth of her fourth child, Mary Ann secured the illustrious position of wet nurse to the queen\u2019s first son, Bertie (later Edward VII). Victoria herself remembered Mary Ann from visits to Claremont. Just months later, though, Mary Ann was dismissed, allegedly for drunkenness.<\/p>\n
At home in Esher, she went on to have yet more children \u2013 10 in total, though only seven survived infancy. There were difficul- ties in her marriage with George, too. By the early 1850s, George had become a house servant at Claremont, often staying on site. His wife began an affair.<\/p>\n

A psychiatrist noted that mothers could experience bouts of insanity when under significant stress <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Suspecting as much, in the summer of 1854 George hired a private detective, who reported that Mary Ann had spent time with a man from Esher in a \u201cquestionable house\u201d in London. Angry and upset, on 6 June George left the family home. The next day, when he returned to collect his nightcap, he declared: \u201cI intend to see a solicitor to start legal proceedings and to get full custody of the children.\u201d<\/p>\n
In mid-19th century England, a mother found guilty of wrongdoing \u2013 such as adultery \u2013 could lose all contact with her children. Mary Ann now faced the real prospect of being separated from them.<\/p>\n
Two days later, on the evening of 9 June, Mary Ann slit the throats of the six children who lived with her, aged between 21 months and 12 years, before attempting to kill herself. She made a full confession to the police, claiming that a \u201cblack cloud\u201d had come over her. But to the woman who was nursing her, she said: \u201cHe left me with no money and was going to take the children away from me. I was not going to allow him to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pain and bleeding<\/h3>\n
At Mary Ann\u2019s trial on 9 August, the jury accepted her plea of insanity. Neighbours and her doctor testified that she was a loving mother who had suffered ill health \u2013 pain\nin the head, bleeding from her nose and a suspected stroke \u2013 following the birth of her youngest child. The eminent psychiatrist Forbes B Winslow recognised her account of \u2018\u201dthe black cloud\u201d, explaining that mothers could experience bouts of temporary insanity when under significant stress.<\/p>\n
Insanity also provided contemporaries with a way to explain the unexplainable: a mother who killed her six children. Mary Ann was sent to Bethlem Asylum, where she died on 18 March 1861 from paralysis and apoplexy.<\/p>\n
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Plotting to kill the president<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Mary Surratt\u2019s warning that \u201csomething is going to happen\u201d to Abraham Lincoln helped secure her an unwanted place in history<\/h3>\n
When we think of the murder of Abraham Lincoln, we tend to remember his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, who fired the deadly shot at Ford\u2019s Theatre in Washington DC on 14 April 1865. Booth was himself later shot dead by troops at a barn in northern Virginia \u2013 yet he wasn\u2019t the only conspira- tor to die in the fallout to the murder. Four people were hanged for their role in the assassination of America\u2019s 16th president \u2013 and one of them was a woman.<\/p>\n
Mary Surratt was a devout Catholic convert, an enslaver and a supporter of the Confederacy who, following the death of her alcoholic husband in 1862, was thrust into the world of business. She managed the family farm and tavern in Maryland until, in the autumn of 1864, she moved to Washington with two of her children, and set up a boarding house there.<\/p>\n
Mary\u2019s new address soon became a hive of activity. Confederate agents were frequent lodgers and visitors, among them Booth. Mary\u2019s son, John Surratt Jr, was a close friend of Booth, whose charisma won over both Mary and her daughter, Ann.<\/p>\n
In March 1865, on the eve of Lincoln\u2019s inauguration as president for a second term, Mary made a fateful comment that one of her boarders remem- bered: \u201cSomething is going to happen to Old Abe, which will prevent him from taking his seat.\u201d Mary, it seems, not only knew of the plans to assassinate Lincoln but likely aided and abetted the conspirators by hiding and passing on firearms.<\/p>\n
Assisting an assassin<\/h3>\n
Following the assassination, while Booth was still on the run, Mary was arrested along with seven male suspects. Mary was charged with the murder of Abraham Lincoln, attempting to kill the vice president and secretary of state, and assisting Booth in the assassination and his subsequent escape.<\/p>\n
Following a trial by a military tribunal, Mary and the seven male conspirators were found guilty. Four of the men received prison sentences but, controversially, Mary was condemned \u201cto be hanged by the neck until she be dead\u201d. Despite desperate pleas for clemency, the sentence was carried out on 7 July 1865. Mary was the first woman to be executed by the US federal government. Her story is a reminder that women\u2019s political engagement could take many forms \u2013 even at a time when women were officially excluded from the political sphere. Yet Mary Surratt\u2019s involvement in Lincoln\u2019s assassina- tion did untold damage to the campaign for other women \u2013 particularly black Americans \u2013 to win political rights of their own.<\/p>\n
Rosalind Crone is professor of history at the Open University, and author of Violent Victorians (Manchester University Press, 2012) and Illiterate Inmates (Oxford University Press, 2022)<\/p>\n
The new series of Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley<\/em>, for which Rosalind Crone is the historical consultant, begins on 10 January. You can listen to previous episodes <\/a><\/strong>via BBC Sounds<\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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