21. Maria Manning - 'Lady Macbeth of Bermondsey'

Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley

BBC

Personal Journals, True Crime, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 908 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lucy Worsley travels back in time to revisit the unthinkable crimes of 19th century murderesses from the UK, Australia and North America.

This episode sees Lucy traverse London, hot on the heels of Maria Manning, the so-called Lady Macbeth of Bermondsey, a woman who confounds expectations of respectable Victorian England.

Maria shocked the nation in 1849, when she conspired with her husband to kill her lover, before stealing the dead man’s money and making a break for freedom on the all-new intercity rail network. She’s the inspiration for a key character in Charles Dickens' famous proto-detective novel Bleak House and her fate leads to a pivotal change in the law.

To untangle this remarkable story, Lucy is joined by international literary superstar Kate Mosse, author of historical fiction novels including the Joubert Family Chronicles and founder-director of The Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Lucy also visits the scene of the crime and recreates Maria’s escape across the capital with Lady Killers’ in-house historian Professor Rosalind Crone from the Open University. They uncover a bizarre trail of evidence, including the huge stash of belongings Maria deposited at London Bridge Station as she fled London, which included 28 pairs of stockings, 11 petticoats, a teapot, an apron and several items of bloodstained clothing.

Together, the team ask why the buttoned-up Victorians had such an appetite for grisly tales of lust, crime and punishment. Are the same impulses behind today’s fascination with true crime? Can we respect Maria’s independent spirit and sharp mind, despite what she did? Does she deserve her place in history?

Produced in partnership with the Open University

Producer: Sarah Goodman Readers: Meena Rayann and Jonathan Keeble Sound design: Chris Maclean Series Producer: Julia Hayball

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4

New episodes will be released on Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. But if you’re in the UK, listen to the latest full series of Lady Killers first on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds - Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley - Available Episodes: http://bbc.in/3M2pT0K

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the shocking moment English football has been dreading.
0:05.0	My name is Moses Swaybu and I used to be a professional footballer.
0:08.5	But then I got in deep with organised crime and became a match fixer operating in the English League.
0:14.0	A match fixing investigator has highlighted two matches he says appear to have
0:19.0	suspicious betting patterns.
0:21.0	How honesty are you going to be with me?
0:22.3	This is 100%.
0:23.0	Join me. Sports Strangers Crimes presents. Confessions of a match fixer.
0:27.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio podcasts.
0:34.8	Hello, you're about to hear series free of Lady Killers.
0:38.2	New episodes will be released weekly, but if you're in the UK and you can't wait, you can hear the whole series now.
0:44.6	First on BBC Sounds.
0:50.6	Welcome back to a new series of Lady Killers with me Lucy Worsley from BBC Radio 4.
0:57.0	I'm once again joined by an amazing team of female detectives to reinvestigate crimes from the past.
1:08.0	We're traveling back in time and across the world to Australia and America,
1:12.0	as well as to Britain, to meet 19th and 20th century
1:15.2	murders. In this episode we're investigating a case known as the Berman Z
1:20.6	horror. It's a story just bursting with Victorian melodrama.
1:26.0	We've got terrible confessions.
1:29.0	We beat him dreadfully upon the floor. We washed our hands in his crimson gore.
1:36.0	Courtroom theatricals.
	...

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