A young wife collapses in agony inside her Warminster cottage, and within minutes she is gone. Arsenic in the house, strychnine in the chemist’s shop, and whispers of fear and family tension stirred a scandal that gripped Victorian England. In this episode, we follow the final hours of Elizabeth Pearce, a 25-year-old newlywed whose sudden death in 1886 set off one of the era’s most troubling poisoning investigations.

With conflicting witness accounts, uncertain forensic evidence, and a household divided by suspicion, the question remains:

Was this a deliberate poisoning, a tragic accident, or a catastrophic failure of Victorian justice?

Join us as we trace the case from Elizabeth’s last meal to the inquest room, examining the powders, testimonies, and courtroom drama that still raise questions nearly a century and a half later.

If you enjoy these deep dives into Victorian and Edwardian true crime, you can find bonus episodes, early releases, and our full archive on Patreon — a lovely way to explore more cases with us at your own pace.

The spring of 1911 brought one of Britain’s most disturbing domestic mysteries into the ancient walls of Lancaster Castle. Three members of the Bingham family died suddenly, each showing the same violent gastric symptoms. As whispers of arsenic poisoning spread, suspicion fell upon the last surviving daughter, Edith Agnes Bingham — a quiet woman already viewed by neighbours as “simple” and vulnerable.

In this episode, we return to the original Edwardian newspaper reports to follow the case exactly as it unfolded: the baffling medical testimony, the exhumations at dawn, and the courtroom drama that gripped the country. Was this truly a triple poisoning, or a tragic sequence of illnesses misinterpreted by early forensic science?

We also look at what became of Edith after the verdict — a fate far quieter, and far sadder, than the headlines suggested.

Plus: today’s Further Particulars brings a musical disturbance from Leamington Spa, where The Blue Danube echoed through a street in the middle of the night… despite no one owning a piano.

If you enjoy these deep dives into Britain’s historical true crime, you’re warmly invited to join us on Patreon, where you’ll find weekly exclusive episodes, early ad-free releases, and our full archive of members-only content.

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A quiet Sunday in the Liverpool suburbs took a shocking turn in 1882 when a young maid, Mary Cremen, was found shot in the scullery of a respectable Crosby home. Her employer, Arthur Golding, immediately presented himself at the police station, insisting the death was a tragic accident. But as investigators examined the revolver, questioned the household, and uncovered a tangle of jealousies and clandestine relationships, the tidy façade of middle-class respectability began to crumble.

Was this truly a mishap with a six-shooter? Or was someone in the Golding household hiding far more than they revealed?

In this episode, we explore the forensic puzzle that troubled Victorian investigators, the shifting testimonies, and the domestic tensions that set the stage for one of Crosby’s most perplexing inquests.

And in this week’s Further Particulars, we turn to an extraordinary 1880s insurance tale involving a widow, a policy form, and a husband who managed to exit the world before completing the paperwork.

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Step back into Victorian Wales, where quiet lanes and morning mist concealed one of the era’s most disturbing disappearances. In 1874, Susan Gibbs — a hardworking Cardiff housekeeper — travelled to St Mellons to meet her young husband, James, a butler with ambition and secrets to protect. Three weeks later, her body was discovered beneath a tangle of briars, so hidden and decomposed that even the cause of death was uncertain.

What followed was a landmark investigation built not on forensics, but on behaviour: unanswered letters, midnight movements, missing belongings, and a chain of lies that revealed far more than any single piece of evidence.

Tonight we explore the life Susan hoped for, the double life James was living, and the extraordinary inquiry that led to one of Wales’s most chilling convictions. And in our Further Particulars, we lighten the gaslamps for a brief detour into Victorian chaos—this time involving a hotel, a missing parrot, and entirely too much commotion in Bath.

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In the winter of 1879, the quiet Somerset parish of Knowle St Giles was shaken by a death that seemed, at first glance, to be nothing more than a tragic household accident. Eighty-three-year-old Samuel Churchill was found burned beside his hearth, his wife insisting he had fallen into the fire during a fit.

But the scene told a different story.

There was blood on the walls.

Defensive wounds on Samuel’s hand.

A bill-hook hidden beneath a chair.

And the very morning he died, Samuel had dressed in his best clothes to change his will.

In this episode, we trace the investigation from the first suspicious observations to the Taunton trial that followed. Using contemporary newspaper accounts and inquest testimony, we explore the forensic limitations of the 1870s, the conflicting statements that defined the case, and the chilling question at the heart of it all:

Was this truly an accident—or a murder carefully staged by fire?

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In 1927 County Durham, a miner calmly declared that his wife had taken her own life.
But from the moment police stepped inside the cramped kitchen of 2 Lumsden Buildings, nothing about his story made sense.

A rope that didn’t fit.
A noose too small to pass over the victim’s head.
A bed he claimed to have slept in—yet had never been touched.
And the quiet, devastating testimony of a child who heard far more than any child ever should.

This episode unravels the forensic evidence, contradictions, and courtroom drama that ultimately exposed the truth behind Ada Dunn’s death. Drawing entirely from period newspaper coverage, we reconstruct how investigators dismantled Thomas Dunn’s account piece by piece—culminating in one of the era’s most striking murder trials.

In Further Particulars, we travel far from County Durham to 1959 Papua New Guinea, where a remarkably sensible priest documented one of the most politely perplexing UFO encounters ever recorded.

If you enjoy historically grounded true crime with strong investigative detail, this is an especially gripping case.

For listeners who’d like to explore more deeply researched episodes and exclusive historical series, you can find our growing archive on Patreon.

The Meader Case (1922) is one of those rare British true-crime stories where everything feels uncertain: a troubled marriage, a blind ex-soldier, a fatal struggle behind a closed door — and a courtroom battle led by the legendary Sir Edward Marshall Hall.

Was Mabel Meader the victim of murder?A tragic accident?
Or did early 20th-century medical science misunderstand a death that hinged on a single, extraordinary detail?

In this episode, we explore:• The Meaders’ strained post-war marriage• Alfred Meader’s blindness, trauma, and desperate decisions• A dramatic suicide attempt that exposed a far deeper tragedy
• The inquest that shocked the public• Medical testimony that changed the course of the trial• And the Old Bailey verdict that continues to raise questions today

This is a story of post-WWI Britain: shifting gender roles, silent trauma, legal assumptions, and a nation still learning how to understand domestic tragedies.

✨ Further ParticularsStay with us to the end for two wonderfully eccentric pieces of British legislative history — including why Parliament once became preoccupied with girls' hairstyles, and how London nearly went to war with its own pigs. Truly.

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true crime 1922, British true crime, Edwardian crime, Marshall Hall, Old Bailey trials, historical crime podcast, post-war Britain, vintage crime stories, strangulation cases, London history

In 1829, English law allowed for a remarkable—and troubling—possibility: a person could be condemned for murder even when the victim survived.

This week we explore the case later known as The One-Penny Wife, a story in which domestic hardship, early forensic science, and a deeply unusual legal statute entwined to produce one of the strangest verdicts of the late Georgian era.

Mary Jardine lived on a starvation allowance of a single penny a day. When she collapsed after drinking her morning tea, her symptoms were unmistakable. Proving arsenic poisoning, however, was far from straightforward. Investigators had only the earliest forms of the stomach pump, inconsistent chemical tests, and a medical profession still decades away from reliable toxicology.

The result is a case that sits at the uneasy intersection of intent, law, survival, and the limits of early forensic practice—a case in which the courts treated an attempted poisoning as if it were wilful murder.

In Further Particulars, we leave the dangers of arsenic behind for a very different peril of Victorian life: a breach-of-promise scandal that shows how even a broken engagement could spiral into a courtroom drama.

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