On a cold November night in 1930, a small saloon car was found blazing on a quiet Northamptonshire lane. Inside lay the charred body of a man, burned beyond recognition. But when police traced the registration number, the supposed victim walked into a London police station — very much alive.

So began one of the most extraordinary investigations of the early 20th century.

Tonight, we follow the case of Alfred Rouse, the travelling salesman with a tangled private life, mounting financial pressures, and a so-called “harem” of women who believed themselves promised marriage. As detectives pieced together witness accounts, petrol traces, and forensic testimony from Sir Bernard Spilsbury himself, a grim picture emerged — one that shocked the nation.

But at the heart of the story lies a question that has haunted true-crime historians ever since:
Who was the man in the car?

Join us as we explore the investigation, the trial, and the final confession, delivered only when the gallows were being prepared.

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In March 1872, a quiet domestic tragedy in Boston, Lincolnshire became one of the most consequential moments in British criminal justice. When William Horry shot his estranged wife, Jane, the case was tragic enough — but what followed would transform the future of capital punishment in Britain.

This episode explores how Horry’s crime became the first test of William Marwood’s new “long drop” method, a calculated attempt to make executions swift, scientific, and far less agonising than the old short-drop approach. It was a turning point that reshaped British practice for more than a century.

We trace:

• the collapse of William and Jane’s marriage and the jealousies that spiralled out of control

• the inquest, trial, and evidence that left the jury with little doubt

• Marwood’s debut on the gallows — and why officials were desperate for change

• how a private tragedy became a national moment of reform

• and the Victorian press reaction that helped cement this case in history

Our Further Particulars this week takes us to Cambridge, where a particularly delicate publican refuses to serve lady cyclists in “rational dress” — proving that in 1898, nothing caused moral panic faster than women in trousers.

Settle in for a story where domestic heartbreak meets legal transformation, and where a single moment on the scaffold marked the beginning of Britain’s modern execution era.

A landmark case that reshaped Victorian justice

In the spring of 1868, Britain crossed a threshold it could never uncross. For centuries, executions had been public events — spectacles that drew tens of thousands, shaped moral debates, and filled the columns of Victorian newspapers. But with the passing of the Capital Punishment Amendment Act, everything changed. For the first time, a condemned prisoner would die behind the closed gates of a prison, witnessed only by officials.

The case that carried Britain into this new era began not in London or a notorious criminal underworld, but at Dover Priory Station, where an unsettled young railway worker would commit a murder that shocked the country.

When 18-year-old carriage cleaner Thomas Wells shot his stationmaster, Edward Adolphus Walshe, the crime seemed at first merely tragic. But the circumstances were so stark, the evidence so immediate, and the public sentiment so charged that the case quickly became the test through which the new law would be judged.

This episode follows the story step by step: Wells’s growing resentment, the tense confrontation in the cramped station office, and the moments leading to a single violent act that ended a respected man’s life. We explore the swift investigation that followed, the testimony from railway workers and townspeople, the courtroom atmosphere thick with expectation, and the public’s uneasy fascination with the new manner in which justice was to be carried out.

As Wells faced the gallows inside Maidstone Gaol, the nation confronted something larger than the crime itself:
What does justice look like when removed from the public gaze?
Is a hidden execution more humane — or simply more palatable?
And what does it mean when the first man to be hanged privately is barely out of boyhood?

⭐ This episode includes:
• A railway dispute that spiralled into an unprecedented murder case
• A remarkably airtight chain of evidence from witnesses at the station
• Wells’s unsettling calmness — and how Victorians interpreted it
• How the press framed Britain’s first private execution
• What officials behind the prison walls actually saw
• And in Further Particulars: a Norfolk ferret incident so chaotic and so darkly comic that even Dickens would have raised an eyebrow

Through archival detail, atmospheric reconstruction, and careful historical context, we trace how one violent moment on a railway platform reshaped the entire future of British executions.

This is more than a true crime story — it is the moment Victorian Britain stepped into a new age of justice, reluctantly, awkwardly, and under the shadow of a single gunshot at Dover Priory.

Settle in for a vivid journey into a pivotal turning point in British legal history.

In 1845, Britain witnessed a murder investigation unlike anything seen before.
When Sarah Hart died suddenly in the quiet village of Salt Hill, suspicion fell upon a seemingly respectable Quaker gentleman, John Tawell. What followed became the first manhunt in history conducted through the electric telegraph, racing ahead of a fleeing suspect along the Great Western Railway line.

In this episode, we explore the extraordinary case that blended poison, secrecy, telegraph wires, and Victorian morality, uncovering how a single message sent from Slough changed the future of policing.

You’ll hear about:
• The hidden life behind Tawell’s quiet exterior• Prussic acid and the Victorian obsession with poisons• How the telegraph outpaced a murderer for the first time• The dramatic arrest in a London coffee house• A sensational trial that gripped the nation• Tawell’s final confession — and the truth it revealed

And in Further Particulars, we close with a chaotic vignette from the 1880s involving a German labourer, a lover’s quarrel, and an improvised breakfast melee.

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London, 1829.
A city of industry, elegance, poverty, and hidden brutality.

In this episode, we uncover the shocking case of Frances Colpit, a ten-year-old parish apprentice sent to learn tambour embroidery — and instead drawn into a household where overwork, starvation, and violence were woven into everyday life. When the child’s suffering finally came to light, the courts uncovered a pattern of cruelty that stunned the nation.

At the centre of the scandal stood Esther Hibner, whose trial at the Old Bailey revealed not only the tragic fate of Frances, but the wider exploitation of impoverished children across early-19th-century London. Her conviction led to one of the most discussed executions of the decade — and marked William Calcraft’s first execution of a woman, a moment that would shape the reputation of Britain’s most notorious hangman.

Using contemporary court testimony, medical reports, and Victorian press accounts, we explore:

• the hidden world of parish apprenticeships• the booming demand for tambour embroidery and the children who powered it• the conditions uncovered at Platt Terrace• the forensic evidence presented at trial• the public response to Hibner’s execution• and the lingering questions the case forced Victorian Britain to confront

This is a story of poverty, exploitation, legal theatre, and the beginning of a national reckoning with child protection.

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In 1868, a cramped labourer’s cottage in the village of Stickney, Lincolnshire became the centre of one of Victorian Britain’s most dramatic murder cases. When farm labourer Richard Biggadike suddenly fell violently ill after tea and shortcake prepared by his wife Priscilla, suspicion spread through the community with astonishing speed. What followed was a tangle of marital resentment, rumours of impropriety, forensic certainty — and a legal outcome that made national history.

This episode explores the poisoned marriage of Richard and Priscilla Biggadike, the presence of arsenic in overwhelming quantities, and the inquest that relied heavily on the findings of leading forensic toxicologist Dr Alfred Swaine Taylor. His analysis, combined with Priscilla’s own contradictory statements, led to one of the most significant executions of the century: the first private execution carried out in the city of Lincoln, following Britain’s newly passed legislation ending public hangings.

Along the way, we examine Victorian forensic science, rural domestic life, legal practice, and the intense social pressures inside a one-room household shared by a husband, wife, three children, and two lodgers. Was the verdict secure? Was justice served? And how did this case shape the early years of private execution in Britain?

Further Particulars:
We also travel to County Mayo for a remarkable 1867 discovery — a forgotten subterranean chamber, bricked up for nearly a century, containing two mysterious skeletons dressed in the fashions of George II. A true Victorian gothic moment that captured the imagination of readers across the UK.

If you enjoy educational, archival true crime from the Victorian and Edwardian eras, this is an episode rich in atmosphere, forensic detail, and historical insight.

News of the Times
Victorian and Edwardian true crime, brought to life through original archival research and historical storytelling.

The Parcel of Death: How a Handwriting Clue Solved a Victorian Murder (1873)

Horfield, near Bristol, 1873 — a small parcel arrives at a cottage, addressed in a neat feminine hand. Inside: a polite note, a shilling’s worth of stamps, and three teething powders marked Steedman’s. Within minutes of taking one, a healthy ten-month-old child is dead.

What followed became one of Victorian Britain’s most unsettling murder investigations: a case of postal deception, disputed toxicology, forged identities, and a deadly plan undone by the smallest of human details — the choice of stationery, a familiar turn of phrase, and a handwriting expert who spotted what others had missed.

This is the story of how an ordinary envelope unravelled the lives of a Bristol shoemaker and the woman who aided him, ending in one of the last double executions in British history.

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The Clerkenwell Explosion: The Outrage That Shocked Victorian Britain (1867)

A quiet December afternoon in 1867 — and then a blast so powerful it shattered windows for half a mile, reduced homes to rubble, and sent shockwaves through Victorian London. What unfolded at Clerkenwell was far more than an attempted prison rescue. It became one of the most notorious tragedies of the era, triggering public panic, political fury, and the final public execution in British history.

In today’s episode, we explore:
• What really happened outside Clerkenwell Prison
• How a rescue attempt by Fenians spiralled into catastrophe
• Why the investigation became frantic, emotional — and deeply flawed
• The trial of Michael Barrett, and the lingering question: was the right man convicted?

We trace the explosion, the crowded neighbourhood it destroyed, the conflicting witness accounts, and the extraordinary political pressure that shaped the outcome.

And in Further Particulars, we leap back to 1814 for the unforgettable tale of a woman who somehow accumulated three husbands simultaneously, leaving a magistrate — and all three gentlemen — thoroughly bewildered.

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Settle in, take a steadying breath… and step with us into the streets of 1867.