27. Sarah Bird - Cruel Employer

Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley

BBC

Personal Journals, True Crime, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 908 Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 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.

Lucy Worsley travels to Buckland Brewer, Devon, to investigate the death of a young servant girl on a remote farm. Far from bucolic idyll with roses around the door, this is the location of a grizzly crime where a teenage girl, Mary-Ann Parsons, is found dead, her emaciated body horribly bruised and battered.

Guest Detective Baroness Helena Kennedy, a leading barrister and expert on human rights and modern slavery, joins Lucy to examine the crime. The alleged Lady Killer is Sarah Bird, a young farmer’s wife and the mother of four children. Could she really be capable of this brutal murder?

Together with Lady Killers’ in-house historian Professor Rosalind Crone, the team examines how Mary-Ann Parsons comes to work as a Parish Apprentice at Gawland Farm, and how a toxic culture of abuse becomes the norm. With a wealth of experience in modern slavery, Baroness Helena Kennedy unpicks how people become trapped in domestic servitude today and what it takes to turn someone into an enslaver.

Produced in partnership with the Open University.

Producer: Emily Hughes Readers: Clare Corbett 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	Before this BBC podcast kicks off, I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy.
0:05.0	My name's Will Wilkin and I Commission Music Podcast for the BBC.
0:08.0	It's a really cool job, but every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs, moments and movements,
0:14.7	stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous.
0:19.1	And the BBC's position at the heart of British music means we can tell those stories like no one else.
0:24.6	We were, are and always will be right there at the center of the narrative.
0:28.6	So whether you want an insightful take on music right now or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and
0:34.4	infamous moments in music check out the music podcasts on BBC Sounds.
0:38.6	BBC Sounds music radio podcasts.
0:44.0	Welcome to Lady Killers with me, Lucy Worsley from BBC Radio 4. Join me and an all-female team of detectives as we travel back in time to revisit the crimes of some of the
1:04.8	most notorious murder arrests of the 19th and 20th centuries from Britain, Australia and
1:10.1	the USA. Today we're taking you to a lonely farmhouse in rural Devon.
1:17.0	Now this isn't the pretty English countryside you might imagine with cottages and roses
1:21.9	around the door. It's a creepy, lonely spot with
1:26.4	knee-deep mud and many mouths to feed. On the 4th of January, 1850, a 15-year-old servant, Mary Ann Parsons, lies in bed in one of the upper rooms of Gauland Farm.
1:40.0	She's dead. Her emaciated body is horribly battered and bruised.
1:47.0	I heard Sarah Bird scolding the girl about the pigs me.
1:51.0	After which I heard blows and the girl crying. As she turned, I saw blood running down from her head.
1:58.0	I think Molly's dead. She's so quiet.
2:02.0	I saw that the legs had been lashed with a small birch, more especially below the knees.
2:08.0	The flesh on both of the legs was torn. There were 40 or 50 cuts on the calves and front part of the legs and the
2:19.0	marks were as they produced by a pin or knitting needle.
	...

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