98. The Dandelion Poisoner

Murder They Wrote with Laura Whitmore and Iain Stirling

BBC

True Crime, Comedy

4.3 • 922 Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The infamous tale of Herbert Rowse Armstrong, a 20th-century solicitor accused of murdering not only a professional rival – but also… his own wife.

Murder They Wrote with Laura Whitmore and Iain Stirling is available twice a week on BBC Sounds. Subscribe now so you never miss an episode. Email us at lauraandiain@bbc.co.uk

Details of help and support with suicide and feelings of despair are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.0	My Christmas Mix is pure 90s festive nostalgia.
0:11.1	You know, the Christmas songs you listen to on repeat.
0:14.0	Ho!
0:14.3	Ho! Ho! No, no, no.
0:17.5	I'm all about the big hitting Christmas anthems.
0:20.4	Come on, guys. What about those tunes that really slay? It's Christmas kitchen disco season, surely.
0:26.4	Give me hip-hip-christmas bangers every day. Those Christmas tracks that are straight out of Lapland.
0:30.9	Get all kinds of Christmassy. Just search Christmas music on BBC Sounds.
0:36.8	The year is 1929 and 14-year-old Margaret Armstrong is looking forward to an exciting day out.
0:44.0	It's the school holidays and she's on a day trip to London.
0:48.2	The city is a far cry from her home in rural Wales where she lives with her aunt.
0:53.7	They're smog in the air and the streets are bustling with people
0:56.4	as Margaret and her sister, Eleanor, make the way of Marlebone Road.
1:00.6	They have one destination in their sights, Madam Two Soads.
1:04.8	They're eager to see the life-size waxwork figures they've heard so much about.
1:09.7	The sisters queue at the entrance surrounded by other excited
1:12.5	visitors. But there's an air of tension between Eleanor and Margaret. Everyone in the queue is
1:17.7	talking about the Chamber of Horrors, but Eleanor has told Margaret that she isn't allowed into
1:21.4	that bed of the museum. Apparently, it's just too scary. The Chamber of Horrors is filled with some of the most infamous people in the country.
1:30.7	There are lifelike waxworks of some of the UK's most notorious killers,
1:35.0	like Dr. Crippin and Charles Pease.
	...

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