After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Murders That Shocked Georgian London

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Laundress-turned-murderess, Sarah Malcolm horrified Georgian London in 1733 when she was found guilty of killing three women she worked for while they slept. For wealthy Georgians this was a nightmare come true: a servant killing the household they served. Sarah became a celebrity killer and was painted by none other than William Hogarth while she sat in jail.Anthony Delaney tells Maddy Pelling this dark history.Written by Anthony Delaney. Edited by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hello everyone, Anthony here. Listen, we have some sensitive content in this episode, so this one might not be for you. If it's not, please go back, listen to one of the earlier episodes. But if you're sticking around, we're certain that you're going to enjoy this one. It's the 4th of February 1733 and night is falling across London. Mrs Lydia Duncombe, a rich octogenarian, is preparing for bed. She's not alone in her lodgings in temple chambers just north of the River Thames. Her paid companion, 60-year-old Mrs Harrison, is in the next room. Another servant, 26-year-old Anne Price, is downstairs,

tasked with locking the doors and closing the shutters to the darkening streets outside. is tasked with locking the doors and closing the shutters to the darkening streets outside. As she does so, the bustle of tavern goers and the clink of printing presses from nearby Fleet Street dies away, leaving the house in a hushed quiet. Convinced of their own security, the three women soon drift off to sleep. What happens next will shock early Georgian London and propel those involved to infamy. By the morning and the first signs of light, Lydia Duncombe's house is transformed to a bloody crime scene. All occupants are dead, the two older women strangled in their beds, and the throat of young Anne Price has been sliced willfully and maliciously, giving her one mortal wound on the throat.

sliced willfully and maliciously, giving her one mortal wound on the throat. But strangest of all, perhaps, was that this had all occurred while the door to their home was locked from inside. Hello and welcome to After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. I'm Dr Anthony Delaney. And I'm Madeline Perling. So Anthony, we're presented with this really unpleasant scene. Yes, you're welcome. Yeah, thank you so much. It's incredibly gruesome. So how did you come to this case? So I was walking around the National Galleries of Scotland. Naturally famous for its murder scenes. Yes. And there was this one particular portrait that stuck out to me, and it was a portrait of a woman called Sarah Malcolm. And in the portrait, Sarah is sitting in a cell in Newgate, and she has her sleeves rolled up and she's sitting at a table, which was

fairly customary for people when they were depicted in prisons. Her sleeves are rolled up, her cheeks are ruddy, she's dressed in working class laundry made clothing. And I thought to myself, this is very unusual. It's very unusual to see a working class woman depicted on her own in a portrait. And what was even more fascinating is this wasn't just any artist, she was being depicted by William Hogarth. So Hogarth of course famous painter and printmaker in the 18th century so Gin Lane for example, B.S. Street those series of really famous cartoons essentially satirical prints and he was kind of I suppose one thing that I think it's interesting here is that he always has his finger on the pulse he's always always looking at the big events in the 18th century, the big questions, the big political scandals. What is he doing spending time and attention on a working class laundry maid?

Why is he painting her? Exactly. That was my question. And I didn't know the answer as I stood in the galleries. But as soon as I walked away, I was like, I need to look at this archive. I need to go on to the Old Bailey, which you can do, by the way, if you're listening, you can go on to the Old Bailey archives online and look up any of these trials, including the one that we're going to talk about today. This portrait led me down a history that I hadn't heard before, that is part murder mystery. It unveils an awful lot about working class Georgian London attitudes towards Catholic Irish people, immigrants in Georgian London, and says something about working class women that not very many sources in the 18th century can give us such firsthand

immediate accounts. So that's what drew me in. That's so interesting. And we'll get to exactly who Sarah Malcolm is in a little while. But to begin with, we're faced with this really grim opening scene. There are three women dead behind a locked door. So what happens after this point? Who discovers these bodies? Well, as far as we know, as far as the record tells us, there were visitors that were planned to visit Mrs. Duncombe the next morning. Now, as you know, 18th century visiting culture is quite prescribed. So they would have been instructed to arrive between certain hours, they would have been expected during a certain time of day, and they would have adhered to those rules. So they turn up at Mrs. Duncombe's lodging house. Now, just to give a bit of an insight into what a London lodging house looked like around this time. So we're talking about

kind of homes of multiple occupancy. We're talking of various levels of upkeep, but these would have been pretty decent homes. We're talking about the middling class here, a lot of solicitors, lots of lawyers, you're around temple chambers. So there's, you know, the business of law is happening in and around these places. So we're not talking about a home leading straight off the street, that's a shared door, and then these different apartments are inside. So it's just to have that kind of image, people close proximity, you know. And this is all taking place in 1730s London, which is already a really bustling metropolis. in 1730s London, which is already a really bustling metropolis. There's huge building programs going on. You know, the Great Fire of London is not that many decades ago. There's this huge effort being made to pump money into a city that is being propped up by a growing empire.

And there are warships anchored in the Thames. There are new naval buildings being erected. There are new churches. It's a city that's growing in wealth and population all the time. And it's this context and this very small corner of London that we find ourselves in. Yeah, I think that's a really good image that you've kind of conjured up there. Because what we can often think when we're looking back at this time period is a very kind of ordered, twee, you know, very visually stunning time. And that's certainly part of it. But actually, it's also the time of building.

People are being surrounded by new builds all the time. There's loads of accounts in the 1730s about people wandering down the road, falling over bricks and different building materials. falling over bricks and different building materials. So all this is happening around temple chambers as the visitors come to see Mrs. Duncan in her house, but they can't gain access. And because they can't gain access and because it's causing a little bit of a ruckus within the lodging house,

other neighbours start to come out too and say, well, why are you hanging around? What's going on? You should be inside. They're starting to cause a scene, basically. Starting to cause a scene, even if they didn't really intend to. And they're left eventually with no choice but to break into Mrs. Duncan's house. And what awaits them there, I think, really, really shocks them. And rightly so. The first person they come across is the body of ann price and ann price is the servant right she is 26 years old yeah she's young she's a young housemaid she's

employed to be there and she is not a she doesn't fulfill a guard role but her bed in in that living situation her bed would very often at night time be placed by the door so that if something needed to be done quickly she could get up and she could go so i'm assuming her bed would have been in or around the door at this particular point given that she was found at the door when the bodies were discovered so they've broken in they found anne's body and throat has been slit and that is the the bloodiest section of the crime scene that they come across, which in itself would have been shocking. And you have to imagine they're going to have to step over Anne's body to then gain access to the rest of the home. And what they do discover before they, I think they just,

from the archive, it seems they just kind of clock this and then they move on. But what they notice, first of all, is that the door had been bolted from the inside, which is a really kind of key element when you're looking at the crime aspect. I think, you know, historically, in terms of the archive, that's something that you could very easily skip over. But from the crime aspect,

that door being bolted from the inside almost suggests that it was an inside job. But at the same time, that can't be possible because the three occupants are dead. The three occupants are dead. So we really are presented with a mystery. So you've got the lot door. You've got the body of Anne Price.

Presumably the people who have just broken down the door have to step over her body. So they don't know what they're going to find inside. They move into the building. What do they, what they met with? So the two older women then are discovered in their beds and they have been strangled. So the two older women then are discovered in their beds and they have been strangled. So if you think about it, if you heard something happening during the night, you would get up, you would go somewhere and potentially if somebody had broken into your house, you would have this kind of face to get them out of their beds to go and see what happened to Anne or to... Now, there's a reason for that. If we think about what the injury to Anne was, her throat was slashed.

So immediately that leaves her unable to scream and it's dealt with really quickly. So whoever's done this, if they've come in through the front door,'ve killed on first potentially oh well it seems that way right yeah but what it also suggests is there may be more than one person involved here because surely if they had gone into one of the two rooms it would still have caused a commotion and the other older lady might have woken up and made her way into the other room but no both old ladies are found both older ladies are found in their beds strangled to death so you're saying there's more than one culprit here it seems to be the case and that is that is kind of one of the things that people are speculating at the time on the ground but there is a lot of speculation happening there they're not sure what's happened they're not sure who's been been in. There was a question at one time if Anne Price herself was involved, but that proved to not be

the case. But they just couldn't understand what had occurred that would have left these three people in the situation that they were found, but with the door locked from the inside. That was the thing that was baffling them. Then on further investigation, as people started to, I mean, there was no crime scene preservation happening in these days. People were literally walking all over this apartment. So the entire place is completely contaminated. Yeah, yeah. It just wouldn't meet any standards of, you know, modern crime scene etiquette at all. But on looking into things, the strong box has been opened. So obviously a strong box would be where people are keeping their valuables, be that money, jewellery, whatever it might have been.

That's been opened. Money has been taken. And one of the things that they notice missing is a silver tankard. So we would imagine that if somebody has robbed those things, obviously the money is for themselves and the tankard might be to pawn or to sell or whatever. And so as all these discussions are unfolding, one of the things that starts to really take people's interest is who could have done, who could have committed these crimes. Yeah, we need a suspect or suspects. So we've got the strong box that's been opened. We've got things missing, possibly money, possibly a silver tankard. How does one go about finding a suspect in what is presumably a very tight-knit community? People are living really on top of each other in quite a small space in a busy city. How are we going to find who's done this? I think what you said about that tight-knit

space is interesting because you'll be looking probably for somebody who knows the area. Somebody has gained access to this building, so it's somebody who knows how to access these buildings. Typically, if we're looking at the stats for early Georgian crime, you're looking at a male, you're looking at a youngish male. Particularly for this violent type of crime, right? Absolutely. So if we're trying to get together a profile of a suspect, that's the direction we're heading in at this particular point. OK. Prove me wrong. Panic at Temple Chambers quickly turns to a hunt for the killer,

as neighbours begin to look inwards and suspect one another. In rooms close to the murder scene lives one Mr Carroll, a lawyer who, according to some reports, supplies a small room to an Irish laundress, Sarah Malcolm. Malcolm is employed to wash the linens of several households in the vicinity, including Mrs Duncan's. On the night of the murders, Carroll is surprised to find her in his rooms, stoking the fire. He remarks on the lateness of the hour and tells her to go to bed. When,

the next day, he discovers a silver tankard and blood-soaked linen in his lodgings, he immediately accuses the laundress of the murders of his neighbours. The watch is called, and she is arrested and taken to Newgate Prison to await trial. There, Sarah Malcolm adamantly denies any knowledge of the killings. However, she admits to having used the cover of night

to allow three accomplices access to the house so that they may rob Mrs Duncan. So this is a huge advancement in the case. We have a suspect, we have potential means how the murder was carried out or murders and maybe something of a motive. So who is this Sarah Malcolm?

She's Irish, she's a laundress. What else do we know about her? So it's interesting because when it starts to unravel, it starts to unravel quickly. They're not waiting for days or weeks to find this out. It's happening within a few hours, which is kind of beneficial to the case, I guess. Yeah, Sarah Malcolm, as you say, is Irish. She was a laundress. So she was a laundress and a charwoman. So what did that mean? Basically, she would go between houses within the vicinity, certainly most likely within that particular lodging house, but potentially others around the area area too she would have access to a lot of those homes where she would clean out the fireplace

she would do some she would take some laundry away or carry out the laundering within the house depending on what needed to be done if there were repairs she might take them away and bring them back and so she had access to a lot of these you know middle, middle class houses. She was born to Irish parents in Durham. And then with her parents, they moved back to Dublin when she was young, but she had returned to London by the time she was in her teens. And her Irishness is important here, I think, in that one of the things to remember about being Catholic more so than Irish, but the two went hand in hand to a certain extent in the 18th century, but was that there was a great sense of mistrust of Catholics at this time. And for a person who had the access that Sarah Malcolm had to be going in and out of people's homes, based on the fact that she was a Catholic, potentially could have already have aroused people's suspicions, as well, of course, as her class.

So this kind of distrust of Catholics and Catholicism was very much linked to Irishness. And that has this really deep history in London in particular, right? That, you know, 50, yes, 50 years earlier, roughly, you know, in the 1680s, we have the Glorious Revolution and we have this fear that even the king has turned Catholic and he is dethroned because of it and, you know, literally flees to Europe. And you have William and Mary taking over, who, of course, are Protestant. And there's all this paranoia at street level in London about Catholics, about them plotting to overthrow the throne, to overthrow Britain's stability,

economically, religiously, all of these things. And I think what we see maybe here is that Sarah Malcolm as an Irish Catholic is, I mean, there's pretty damning evidence. The silver tankard and the blood is there. But I wonder if she is an obvious target, an obvious choice for the suspect because of who she is in this society. I'm not sure if it's a case that she's obvious just because she's an Irish Catholic. But what it does is it exacerbates the accusation, I think.

I mean, obviously, the bloodied linen is quite damning. It's a bit of a giveaway. It's not exactly working in her favour. But it's certainly, but I mean, if we were to look at it, if we were to look at this from, this is now a true crime podcast, and we need to solve this case. Does she have the means? Well, we know she does because of her status as a tar woman and a laundry maid. She has access into all these houses. So she has the means. Does she have the opportunity?

Yes, she has to go in there all the time. So she has the opportunity to carry out this crime at a certain point. And does she have the motive? I mean, that becomes a little bit trickier, right? But a motive for a working class Irish woman, a working class immigrant, I guess, could well be poverty. Presumably she's not making that much money as a child. And it's I suppose it's a job that's fairly ubiquitous in the 18th century city, probably doesn't garner that much respect. She's quite invisible, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But that also adds to that kind of opportunity,

right? That invisibility can become something she can harness, which I actually think, well, we'll get to that, but I actually think does come into it that she harnesses that invisibility. So the means, the opportunity and the motive are there, as we've said. Her trial, when it begins on the 23rd of February, 1733, lasts only five hours. Now, look, that's not unusual in terms of 18th century trials. One of the fascinating things I think about the Old Bailey is that the jury was on either side of the defendant and they could just shout things willy nilly as they saw fit. So this is not the kind of staid, precise...

It's a spectator's sport, really, isn't it? It's open to the public. It is. As a matter of fact, at this point as well, one side of the Old Bailey was totally open to the elements. So people could come into the yard and watch from out there. The actual reason for the side of the building being open was they didn't want disease to spread within the Old Bailey itself. But it also made for basically a spectator arena

where people could look in as well as then the juries. And there was also obviously the galleries upstairs where people could go. But that didn't hold as many people as the yard could. But basically, people are watching and people are looking. You know, even though we think of Sarah as potentially having murdered three people or to have at least contributed to this crime,

you can't help but feel a bit sorry for her. Yeah, I guess the opportunity that arises for us as historians is that we get to hear her words because of the trial, which is so rare for a working class woman, a working class immigrant woman, that her words survive in these trial records. And there is something very kind of defiant in there. She admits to being involved in the robbery, but again, she denies during the trial the fact that she murdered the owner and the two servants. But she points the finger at her accomplices, who were Martha, Tracy, James and Thomas Alexander, and they were brothers. She said that she was going to wait outside in the stairwell. She gave them access. So she's claiming there are other people involved in this. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they and they are they have given evidence to well, some of them have absconded. The boys have absconded. But Martha was questioned and it was found that she denied a lot of this. They were putting the blame back on to Sarah Malcolm. And she defends herself quite well. But it's going in a pretty it's not going in her favor. Generally, the generally. The atmosphere in the room is not on Sarah's side. But when Carol's evidence comes in of the tankard and the bloodstained clothing, it's case over. And of course, Carol is a reliable witness. He's a lawyer or training to be a lawyer.

The area around Temple Meads is traditionally the place where the lawyers are living and and training so he's kind of in his element and a well-respected figure i guess we can say he is and despite and i kind of again it's hard isn't it because she malcolm's on trial for murder but she puts up even an evidence here where she says fine yeah you did see me with the tankard you did see me with the blood-stained uh linen but that's actually not Anne Price's blood that's my menstrual blood wow so she she she basically goes and it's interesting because you just gasped there and that was my reaction to and I think that's what she was trying to do I think she was trying

to say don't ask me about this anymore she's. Yeah. I'm going to use my womanhood to stop this line of questioning right now. Because that presumably would have been a relatively shocking thing to say in the 18th century to reference menstruation in any way. And to use it in a court of law and to offer it up as evidence. In such a public forum. And evidence that's not, you know, it would be a very intimate thing to establish whether or not that was true. And it's quite difficult to prove. Yeah. So is she incredibly clever? I think so. Is she wanting to just shock the men in the jury? Yeah. What's going on? I mean, think about the hundreds of people that are gathered around her and she's saying, that's actually my menstrual blood. So I think she's

wily. I think she's using. It's a bold move. Yeah. I think she's using what she has to make her defence. Doesn't work though. There's no defence that's going to come to her rescue, I'm afraid. The jury did retire. It only took them 15 minutes. Again, not all that unusual for the 18th century. And when they came back, they had found her guilty and she was sentenced to hang. and when they came back, they had found her guilty and she was sentenced to hang. Malcolm maintained her innocence for the duration of her stay in the dark, dingy recesses of Newgate Prison as she awaited her execution. There, she was visited by numerous men who were convinced they could extract a confession and then could sensationalise it and sell it.

Murder was big business, even in the 18th century. But Malcolm remained resolute. She was not guilty of the murders. And it was at this point she was visited by renowned artist William Hogarth in prison. Catherine of Aragon Anne Boleyn Jane Seymour Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives.

I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. now i find this so interesting because i people probably know a relative amount about hogarth his work's very recognizable you think of gin lane beer street and we know that he visited prisons he visited mental hospitals like Bedlam, for example, and sketched some of the inmates there. So he had this kind of interest. We know that about him. But why is he going to see Sarah Malcolm in particular? Why is she someone who

attracts his attention? I think throughout this case, for contemporaries, and I think it rings true for us now, I think Sarah's womanhood is key in that this female murderess is easy to sensationalize it is also women are not supposed to be carrying out these types of violent acts you know violence in general is on the decline in the 18th century across the the century um having come out of a more bloody 17th century including wars and just you know kind of social violence so we're coming into the 18th century which is apparently far more civilized and enlightened quote-unquote quote-unquote but here we have this working-class Irish Catholic

immigrant who has access to Mrs. Duncan's house and other people's houses. And she has reputedly committed or helped to commit three murders in their own homes. It's, you know, it's such a betrayal on many levels. She's kind of upturning those hierarchies, isn't she? She is undermining

the Enlightenment world from beneath, basically. It feels like, again, keeping in mind that she killed people potentially she's up she's she it feels like she's doing everything she can to take some ownership of her life her time her space in history even if she's not quite aware of her space in history but it feels like she's using everything at her disposal to advance if she can there's a sense of a rebellious person, someone resisting the circumstances

that she is living and working in. Just looking at the painting that Hogarth produces of her, because he does paint her and then that painting is translated into print and it's circulated and sold, I imagine fairly widely. It was probably a very popular image.

She became a celebrity in her own time. Like this was Sarah Malcolm. If you can look up Sarah Malcolm's trial, you can look up newspaper reactions to what was happening at the time. She captured the public imagination and it was in no small part to this image by Hogarth that that happened.

And I think this image, it's so powerful because it gives a sense of a real human being. Hogarth is in the prison face-to-face meeting her. And it's quite a sympathetic portrait. I don't know what you think. I think so, yeah. So the portrait is kind of split into two halves. On the right-hand side in the background,

you can see this really dark, heavy door of Newgate Prison. And I think one, if not two of the doors from the prison survive today in the Museum of London. You can go and see them. And there are these absolutely enormous, thick wooden objects that are covered in metal studs and these big, huge locks. And they're really scary, imposing things. And it gives you a sense. Newgate itself, of course, doesn't exist anymore.

It stood on the site that is now the Old Bailey. And these doors kind of survive as this evocative evidence of them. So you have that in the painting. And then in the foreground to the left, you have Sarah Malcolm. And she's sat to a table, which is a fairly traditional depiction of prisoners. Particularly in Newgate, you see this quite a lot in other portraits of criminals. And she has her arms folded. You can see her forearms are bare. And she has this quite a lot in other portraits of criminals and she has her arms folded you can see her forearms are bare and she has this quite plain dress on she's wearing

a cap and an apron and she has these quite ruddy cheeks she's not looking at the artist she's looking away I don't know how I meant to interpret that is it that she is I don't know, sorry for her crimes in some way? Is she resisting his gaze because she doesn't feel she needs to meet it and she's still being disobedient in some way? I don't know quite how to read it, but I think it gives such a clear sense of a real human being. You can see the blood flushed in her cheeks. Hogarth is really interested in her as a person and her i guess her psychology and what we would now term her psychology i suppose he wouldn't necessarily have that vocabulary but i think there's a sense of a person who has been found guilty of a crime but she is more than that i think it's also interesting because she looks ready to work

doesn't she the sleeves are rolled up she can launder if you need her to launder right now. But equally on the table in front of her are the rosary beads. So her Catholicism is right there, essentially front and center with her. So it's Hogarth's depiction of her as doing a lot of work. And of course, as well, the rosary beads there indicating that she is praying before she dies. It's a reminder that death is coming. from the condemned cell, they are able to speak to people on the outside world. Their families and friends can come to them and talk to them and see if they need anything or just talk them through their final days or weeks, depending on how long it is until their hanging day, which brings us to the next part of Sarah's tumultuous history. On Wednesday the 7th of March, 1733,

Sarah Malcolm was led by the hangman John Hooper to Fetter Street, not far from Temple Chambers, where, as one newspaper had it, her heinous crimes were committed. Anxiously, she surveyed the crowd, aware that she was likely being watched by the very people she had lived and worked amongst. Finally, as the noose was slipped round her neck, the cart that carried her there pulled away, leaving her to fall to her fate at the end of a rope.

Later, after the crowds dissipated, her body was cut down, returned to Newgate and buried without ceremony in the churchyard of St Sepulchre's. It's such an evocative and tragic end to this woman's life, even if she is guilty of aiding in the murder of three other people. There's something quite sort of pathetic about it really and really quite sad. But what would the atmosphere have been like on the hanging day? Would the 18th century people who maybe were witnessing this feel sympathy for her? What was the atmosphere? No, they would not. They just, I mean, we talked about her kind of celebrity status, right? The hanging day would certainly have endorsed that status. So we will start in the morning and the condemned will be taken from their cells. Then they'll pass by. All of the bells in the area will ring out to let people know that the condemned are on their way to hang.

to let people know that the condemned are on their way to hang. They will stop at certain taverns along the way as well, just to kind of dull their anticipation, their fear, their dread of what was eventually waiting for them. So the criminals, alleged criminals, convicted criminals going to be hanged, are they having drinks in these taverns? Yes, yeah, yeah. So by the time they arrive, they're quite drunk. They could be very drunk by the time they arrive.

And there was a lot of contemporary criticism about this where they were saying no we need them to feel what they have done the consequences of what they have done but the the practice did continue one of the most kind of poignant things almost again most haunting things for me is it was often a custom that at the steps of saint sepulchres children would stand on the steps and throw posies to the condemned flowers. And it's just, I don't know, there's just something very striking about that as they pass by and acknowledging that they're on their way to die. Then once they get to the hanging site, and there was a couple of those, Tyburn is the most famous one, I guess, but we're on Fetter Lane

here. They would often have rented out windows in the upper levels of homes or buildings that surrounded. So people could literally pay a ticket price to go up and sit up there to watch in comfort. So obviously people who had a bit more money would be doing that. But there was also stands erected often. Now that's Tyburn more so than here, but they would sometimes put up temporary stands for people to come and watch. So there are accounts of up to 100,000 people attending some of these executions in the 18th century. People are getting very rich

off the back of events like this. So you talked about how there was this need in the public imagination, in the public sort of mentality for the criminal to feel what they'd done and to feel guilt, I guess, or to feel the weight of their crime. So is that something that we see in this scene?

Do we get a sense of Sarah being remorseful in any way? No, she's defiant till the end. One of the interesting things about this in terms of that, in terms of how she's treated afterwards, of how she's treated afterwards. It was very common for bodies to become the focus of a kind of a tug of war after the hanging had taken place because surgeons would look,

criminal bodies could have been handed over to surgeons. So when I read in the archive that the body had, Sarah's body had been taken back to Newgate and buried, that did happen. I was just surprised.

It wasn't that regular an occurrence. And often if the surgeons didn't get the body, the family wanted it. So that says to me that there was potentially no family there because we know her parents were still in Ireland. And obviously the accomplices had, by this stage, all of them had fled. So she's very much left on her own, but she would be surrounded by her people and by people she would have known and worked amongst but nobody's coming forward by the looks of it

to claim Sarah Malcolm's body so again that says something about her class and her position in society And also the damage she's potentially inflicted at the heart of that community as well that she's not trusted anymore people don't want to necessarily put her to rest And it's shocking right

because everybody has, well, all the middle classes will have a Sarah Malcolm. They will have a laundress that has access to their house, who can come and go as they please, who has a reason to be there, means, opportunity, motive. And all of those laundromates will, for a certain period of time, have come under suspicion because of Sarah Malcolm. Yeah, that's so interesting. Now, period of time have come under suspicion because of Sarah Malcolm. Yeah, that's so interesting. Now, because we are the After Dark podcast, we like to think about night time and how that was experienced in the past. Something that really strikes me about this case is the fact that these murders take place at night. Do you think that's relevant? Could they have taken place in the day?

Would they have been so notorious if they had taken place during the daytime? I think setting's important in any history slash story, right? So setting of the nighttime is just, in terms of its appeal to the listener, nighttime becomes an interesting setting. But equally, it gives Sarah and her accomplices the cover of darkness within which to carry these things out. They don't say, let's go at midday, even when they could be out, which is interesting, right? They could have,

Sarah will have known when the house would have been empty. But that's not something that she directs either herself or her accomplices to do. They especially chase after the loot at night time. That's such an interesting point. And I think as well, it's such a point of anxiety for people in the 18th century, because one thing that we see in this period is night time, especially in urban areas and towns and cities, particularly in London. There's an anxiety around the security of the home. There's a big ritual involved in locking the house up, right? And trusting servants as well to do that for you, to lock the shutters, to lock the front door. On country estates, you know, you have people setting guard dogs loose

on the lawn at night and things like that. There's all these kind of mechanisms in place for safety. To me, this case kind of cuts through all of that. It proves that it is, you are able to violate those systems if you put your mind to it. I think that's why it's so scary.

She breaks a social contract, right? She says, I'm not going to adhere to this. And that's, you know, that's the whole appeal of Sarah. It's the culmination of all those things. A working class Irish laundry maid who has access to these middle class houses under the cover of night. She and her accomplices go to Mrs. Duncombe's house. They take the money. They take the silver tankard. They're discovered by Carol or she's discovered by Carol. And this trial and subsequent hanging ensues. I'm going to put our, she possesses this strength, this determination, whether she's a murderer or not. I don't know. But I think she's really compelling. I can't help, like Hogarth, I can't help but be sort of fascinated by her.

That means Maddie gets to keep her historian credentials because she sided on neither side. I won't commit. She's just like, yes, it could be everything. and could be nothing. I'm going to commit. I think she did it. I think she planned it. I think she manipulated or instructed the other three to do what they had to do. I think she was the mastermind behind it. I think she tried to use her celebrity. And I think she was an incredibly clever, calculating person who did something that she hoped she would get away with. I think she's kind of devilishly brilliant in that way. Obviously, we are not condoning what she did.

But what she does afterwards, I think, is there's a spark of genius in it. It kind of, yeah, scary genius. She cultivates her own celebrity. Well, thank you, Anthony. That is a truly unsettling case. Sleep well. Yeah. Great point to end on. Thank you very much for listening to After Dark. You can follow us anywhere you get your podcasts.

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