Whether the reader actually gets to read about it on the page or not, detective fiction

is usually aimed in one very specific direction. The moment when an accused gets to their

feet in a courtroom and waits to hear whether they have been found guilty or not guilty

of the crime at issue. Everything the detective has done in their investigation leads up to

this, the gathering of evidence, the interviewing of witnesses, the ruling out of suspects. Finally,

a jury decides if the prisoner in the dock actually done it, and there's the only verdict

that matters, the one that will determine everything that comes next. But what happens when

there is a third option available? Neither guilty nor not guilty, but something else. What

might the story look like then? Today we're going to bear witness to the trials of Madeline Smith.

Welcome to She Done It, I'm Caroline Crampton.

Madeline Smith was in many ways a very lucky girl. She had been born in Glasgow on the 29th of March 1835

to parents who both belonged to families on the rise. Her two grandfathers were both in the

building trade and had achieved great success during Glasgow's late Georgian expansion from a bustling

port city to an elegant neoclassical metropolis with new arcades, museums, squares and banks at its

heart. She grew up spending her winters in spacious apartments in the centre of the city and her

summers at the country house her father had designed and built overlooking the river Clyde. She was

educated at home and at the age of 16 she was sent south for a couple of years to attend the

boarding school near London. When she returned home she was a young lady from a prosperous middle class

family and was expected to make an advantageous marriage to further bolster their fortunes,

think, Bridgerton but Scottish essentially. Back in Glasgow Madeline spent her time

promenading, shopping, attending lectures and concerts and otherwise participating in the city's

social season. She and her younger sister Bessie frequently went out together to look at the shops

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