The Workhouse Path Murder — South Wales, 1902 | A Fatal December Evening
News of the Times | Episode 597 | 1902
Southeast Wales, 1902.
A woman runs bleeding down a narrow workhouse path, four children behind her screaming “Murder!” into the cold December air.
Moments earlier, she was walking with the man who had vowed she would never have another home.

Today we uncover one of the most chilling and deeply human domestic murder cases of Edwardian South Wales — a tragedy witnessed entirely by children, shaped by poverty, jealousy, alcohol, and the harsh realities of the workhouse system.

This episode explores:
• The world of the lodging houses and the Bedwellty Workhouse
• The final walk up the walled footpath
• Eyewitness testimony from neighbours and children
• Medical evidence and early forensic interpretation
• The attempted defence of delirium tremens
• The Edwardian court and the rapid machinery of justice
• The social pressures that gave rise to the crime

It is a case that shocked the valleys — not for mystery, but for its stark inevitability.

Join us as we retrace the final hours of Hannah Shea, and the violent jealousy that ended her life on a cold winter evening beneath the shadow of the workhouse.

🕯️ FURTHER PARTICULARS
Today’s end of episode lighter (and explosively cautionary) tale comes from Belfast, where a Christmas pudding met its untimely end via a tin of petrol mistaken for syrup.

The results? Flaming dessert, melted gas pipes, and a moral lesson for us all...

👤 Narrated by Robin Coles 

Other episodes you may like:
1867: The Malthouse Murder | Wolverton’s Burning Secret (1867) |  EP564
https://youtu.be/FQKaaNrDD9k
1867: The Limehouse Mystery — The 1867 Case That Divided Victorian London |  EP565
https://youtu.be/36DqA1p_W7s
 
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