Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley

Lucy Worsley and Rosalind Crone are joined by Helen Lewis, author of ‘Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights.’ They discuss what it means to be a difficult woman and why the airbrushing of feminist history can be problematic.

Together they discuss four of the most difficult women across the Lady Killers series; Mary Surratt, Alice Mitchell, Mary Ann Brough and Maria Manning. Each one commits wild and unspeakable crimes. They are anti-heroines; breaking taboos around sexuality, motherhood and sexual relationships. Lucy, Ros and Helen explore the value of understanding the diversity of women's lives in the past, and how this enables us to get a little bit closer to understanding ourselves.

Produced in partnership with the Open University.

Producer: Emily Hughes.

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

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

In this episode, Lucy is joined by Alexandra Wilson, a barrister specialising in criminal and family law and author of ‘In Black and White’, to explore the case of Mary Ann Brough in 1854.

Mary Ann lives in the picturesque county of Surrey, close to London. She’s married to George, who lives and works at the stately home nearby, while Mary Ann stays at home looking after six of their children. It sounds like an idyllic family life. But there are cracks beneath the surface. George suspects Mary Ann of having an affair and even hires a private detective to follow her to see if his suspicions are correct.

After the detective reports back, George confronts Mary Ann and declares he will be starting legal proceedings to take full custody of their children. After he leaves, Mary Ann puts the children to bed, but later that evening she commits a drastic act. She slits the throats of each of her children before trying to kill herself.

She is discovered the next day still alive, fully admitting to what she did. But why did she do it? Was it a cloud of insanity that took over her in a flash? Or was it to stop her husband gaining custody of the children and taking them away?

Lucy Worsley is also joined by Professor Rosalind Crone from the Open University. Together, they visit the village Mary Ann lived in and the stately estate nearby. In the studio with Alexandra Wilson they discuss the circumstances surrounding Mary Ann’s crime and how the custody laws at the time may have impacted her actions.

Producer: Hannah Fisher

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

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

In this episode Lucy is joined by Cameron Esposito, stand-up comic, actor, writer and host of the hit podcast Queery. They investigate the case of 19-year-old Alice Mitchell who killed 17-year-old Freda Ward in Memphis, Tennessee in 1892 after a stormy and illicit relationship.

Alice and Freda plan to marry and move to St Louis, but when Freda’s family discover their relationship, she comes under enormous pressure to end it.

Alice Mitchell’s subsequent actions caused a nationwide sensation and influenced the way lesbians were perceived by the press and the public for decades.

Lucy is also joined by the historian Alexis Coe, author of Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis, who helps Lucy uncover exactly what drove Alice to kill the woman she loved.

Lucy wants to know what this case tells us about women’s lives in the southern states of America at the end of the 19th century, particularly the lives of LGBTQ+ women, and what it tells us about queer women’s lives in America now.

Today in Tennessee the LGBTQ+ community feels under increasing threat with legislation banning books in schools which portray gay or trans people and bans on drag acts. Lucy asks the drag artist and activist Magical Miss Mothie to find out more from members of the community during their annual Pride festival in the city.

The story of Alice and Freda is complex and disturbing, and it culminates in the destruction of two young lives. But it reminds us that queer people have always been there and always will be; in the teeth of opposition from everyone around her Alice refused to see why she should not live her life with the woman she loved.

Produced in partnership with the Open University

Producer: Jane Greenwood

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

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

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

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

In this episode Lucy is joined by Evy Poumpouras, former special agent with the Secret Service, where she protected five US presidents as part of the Presidential Protective Division.

Lucy and Evy investigate the case of Mary Surratt, a 42 year-old widow, mother and pious Catholic who was arrested in April 1865 for conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. He had been shot by former actor John Wilkes Booth while watching a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC. One of the most sensational trials in US history followed, with prosecutors pushing for death sentences for everyone involved in the murder.

Lucy and Evy want to find out why the authorities were so sure that Surratt was involved in the assassination. They want to know what her story tells us about the lives of women at the close of the American Civil War. And they ask what happens when women step outside the domestic sphere and dare to get involved in protest and politics?

To find out more about the background to the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, Lucy asks Dr Nikki M Taylor, Professor of History at Howard University Washington DC, to go to Ford’s Theatre and to the Surratt House Museum, formerly Mary’s Surratt’s tavern in Maryland. Mary Surratt, she discovers, was a slave-holder and, like John Wilkes Booth, was horrified by Lincoln’s intention to end slavery and enfranchise African Americans.

Mary Surratt is an elusive and divisive woman. Lucy wants to know if she was a devoted mother attempting to make her way in the world - or a hard-hearted conspirator, a slave-holder and fanatical Confederate trying to reignite the civil war.

Produced in partnership with the Open University

Producer: Jane Greenwood

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

Lucy Worsley, Professor Rosalind Crone and barrister Nneka Akudolu KC take a look behind the scenes of Lady Killers.

They shine a light on the detective work required to build the cases of these infamous murderesses, how evidence is pieced together, and how we can hear what these Victorian women are really trying to tell us about their lives.

Nneka shares insights into her work specialising in complex crimes: murder, drug trafficking and serious sexual offences, and how she uses evidence to build a case in the courtroom.

Produced in partnership with the Open University.

Producer: Emily Hughes

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

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

In this episode, Lucy is joined by Dr Gwen Adshead, for many years a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist at Broadmoor Hospital.

They investigate the case of Frances Kidder, a 25-year-old woman unhappily married to a much older man, who is accused of murdering her stepdaughter Louisa in Kent in 1867.

We all know the stories of Cinderella and Snow White – evil stepmothers badly treating their innocent stepdaughters. So when, one evening in August 1867, Louisa Kidder fails to return from a walk with her stepmother Frances across the lonely wetlands of Romney Marsh, Frances has some explaining to do.

Lucy is also joined by historian Rosalind Crone, Professor of History at the Open University. She has uncovered numerous reports from local magistrates’ courts which reveal the violence and discord of the Kidder household. Lucy and Rosalind travel to Hythe in Kent where Frances married her violent husband, to Romney Marsh where Louisa disappeared, and to Maidstone Gaol where Frances awaited trial.

Lucy wants to know what actually happened to Louisa on that August evening. Is Frances a wicked stepmother or herself the victim of a troubled and violent home?

Produced in partnership with the Open University

Producer: Jane Greenwood

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

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

In this episode Lucy is joined by the Right Honourable Dame Siobhan Keegan, the Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, who was one of the first women High Court judges in Northern Ireland.

They explore the case of mother and daughter Jane and Ann Boyd, from a poor family living in Holywood near Belfast, whose lives are turned upside down when 19-year-old Ann is dismissed from her job as a domestic servant because she is pregnant and unmarried.

We worry a lot about lack of privacy today, about the invasiveness of social media, but Lucy discovers that in mid 19th century rural Ireland, in a very religious community, there was absolutely no privacy. The Boyd’s neighbours and extended family were in and out of each other’s houses all day, observing every detail of each other’s lives.

So when Ann goes into labour in the Boyd’s cottage, there is no way that Jane is going to be able to keep her daughter’s baby a secret.

Lucy is also joined by historian Rosalind Crone, Professor of History at the Open University. They travel to the Ulster Folk Museum near Holywood and discover the awful truth about how the shame of illegitimacy drove hundreds of Irish women every year to desperate measures to conceal their unwanted pregnancies.

Lucy wants to know what it was like trying to deal with an illegitimate pregnancy in a highly religious, judgemental society. How did the mid 19th century criminal justice system deal with women like Jane and Ann Boyd, and what might happen to women in a similar situation today?

Produced in partnership with the Open University

Producer: Jane Greenwood

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

It’s the 14th September 1896, just a short distance from Brisbane, on Australia’s east coast, and the sun is rising on Minjerribah Island, the ancestral land of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait ‘Quandamooka People’. It’s an area rich in Aboriginal culture. It’s also a colonised area, steeped in racism and division, and this is where the murder of six year old ‘Cassey’ takes place.

To investigate this tragic crime and its contemporary resonances, Lucy Worsley is joined by Guest Detective Vanessa Turnbull Roberts. Vanessa is a proud Bundjalung Widubul-Wiabul First Nations woman, a Law Graduate and recipient of the Australian Human Rights Medal for her work around the adoption laws and forcible removal of First Nations children.

Lucy hears that our case begins at ‘Myora Mission School’, an institution set up by white settlers who wish to establish a ‘reformatory’ for Aboriginal children. In reality, it’s part of a wider ‘management’ system aimed at controlling the First Nations population. The children are being trained in domestic duties to work as servants for white families. There’s also evidence that some of the children – including six-year-old Cassey - have been forcibly taken from their homes.

Whilst the children are under the supervision of their matron – a Danish settler called Marie Christensen – Cassey is killed. Marie’s cruel and fatal actions are witnessed by First Nations women Budlo Lefu, Topsy Mcleod and Polly Roberts who bravely speak out on Cassey’s behalf.

Professor Rosalind Crone from the Open University travels to Australia to visit the site of the Mission School and meet local tribal elders.

As the tragic murder unfolds, Vanessa explains that the subject which really underpins everything in this case, is Australia’s ‘Stolen Generations’, the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and communities. Although this began during the earliest days of white settlement, Vanessa – herself, a survivor of the ‘Family Policing System’ – reveals, it is not a thing of the past.

Produced in partnership with the Open University.

Producer: Nicola Humphries

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4

With thanks to The Minjerribah Moorgumpin Elders-In-Council and North Stradbroke Island Museum on Minjerribah

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.

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

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