Okay. And can you say to me the book is called blah blah blah?

God, it's like being blood out of the stone, isn't it? The book is called, I'll do it again.

The book is called their darkest materials and it's about the dark side of textile history and material culture.

Wow. That's Penelope Hemingway. She's a textile historian and you may remember her from

our last episode, the one about the Donner Party. She also has a book coming out. It's called

Their Darkest Materials. And like today's podcast, it's full of murder, mayhem and knitting.

And I discovered that knitting a stocking in 19th century UK was a really dangerous occupation.

Growing up, I consumed a steady diet of BBC corset dramas in Victorian novels.

I've always had a fascination for the era, but especially the clothing. It's sumptious and complicated with a thousand dressmaking details.

But pull back that curtain of silk and embroidery, and you'll find something darker.

You're listening to FiberNation.'m your host, Alison Kourleski.

In this episode, we look at the darker side of fiber history with a surprising twist,

because in Victorian England, newspapers were filled with stories of murder victims, suspicious deaths, and tragic ends.

And we'll learn why, at the heart of so many

of those lurid stories, was a woman knitting. The words knitting and murder rarely appear in the

same sentence, but that wasn't always the case. Today, I want to look at two separate murder

mysteries in 19th century England.

Two women killed in different cities, at different times, and with different motives.

But in each crime, it was a hand-knit stocking that cracked the case.

Our first story, the Eskric murder, is a tale of tawdry romance, domestic strife, and cold-blooded

killing. It's also a story about sock knitting. It begins in 1841 in the sleepy Yorkshire

village of Eskrick. The body of a farmwife named Ellen Taylor was found lying headfirst in her

...