March 1, 2023 • 39 mins
Eliza Fenning worked as a cook in a London household until she found herself in the middle of a poisoning accusation. Her controversial trial brought the bias of the 19th-century British criminal justice system into focus.
Research:
- “Circumstantial Evidence.” The Abilene Gazette. June 23, 1876. https://www.newspapers.com/image/367010505/?terms=eliza%20fenning&match=1
- Hempel, Sarah. “The Inheritor’s Powder.” W. W. Norton & Company. 2013.
- Hempel, Sarah. “Eliza Fenning: the case of the poisoned dumplings.” The Telegraph. June 17, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130620172222/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10117903/Eliza-Fenning-the-case-of-the-poisoned-dumplings.html
- Clarke, Kate. “Trial of Eliza Fenning.” Mango Books. May 2021.
- “Circumstantial evidence : The extraordinary case of Eliza Fenning, who was executed in 1815, for attempting to poison the family of Orlibar Turner, by mixing arsenic in yeast dumplings. With a statement of facts, since developed tending to prove her innocence of the crime.” https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/pdf/b21051732
- Watkins, John. “The important results of an elaborate investigation into the mysterious case of Elizabeth Fenning: being a detail of extraordinary facts discovered since her execution, including the official report of her singular trial, now first published, and copious notes thereon.” London. William Hone. 1815. Accessed online: https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/pdf/b2840807x
- MARSHALL, TIM. “Not Forgotten: Eliza Fenning, ‘Frankenstein’, and Victorian Chivalry.” Critical Survey, vol. 13, no. 2, 2001, pp. 98–114. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41557107
- “The Story of Eliza Fenning.” The Wells Journal. August 8, 1857. https://www.newspapers.com/image/812381127/?terms=eliza%20fenning&match=1
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today we are
going to talk about a very controversial trial. If you
(00:22):
have ever been frustrated by the criminal justice system, this
is not going to help, but it may at least
offer the knowledge that the problems that many people experience
in that system, and how biased and unfair it can be,
particularly to people who are not wealthy, have always been around.
This is the story of a poisoning and a trial
(00:44):
and a whole lot of bias in that trial. We
are talking about Eliza Fenning, who worked as a cook
in a London household until she found herself in the
middle of a very serious poisoning accusation. So Elizabeth Fenning,
who went by Eliza, was born on June tenth, seventeen
ninety three to William and Mary Fenning. William was a
(01:07):
soldier and was stationed on the Caribbean island of Dominica.
That's where Eliza was born. The Fennings had nine other
children in addition to Eliza, but she was the only
one of the ten to survive to adulthood. In the
late seventeen nineties, William's regiment moved to Dublin, and then
in eighteen o two he was discharged and the family
(01:28):
moved to London. William got a job selling potatoes, Mary
worked as an upholsterer, and Eliza started working when she
was fourteen. In March of eighteen fifteen, so at the
age of twenty one, Eliza was working as a cook
in the home of Robert Gregson Turner. She had not
been there long. Her higher date was January thirtieth of
(01:49):
that year. Robert Turner is described as a law stationer,
and while some accounts of this whole story have kind
of misinterpreted this to suggest that he practiced law, it
actually means that he sold and provided the kinds of
supplies that legal offices and lawyers would need, like the
various forms and log books, etc. Robert and his wife
(02:11):
Charlotte Turner lived at number sixty eight Chancery Lane, with
a housemaid named Sarah Pierre, two apprentices named Roger Gadsden
and Thomas King. Robert's father, or Labar Turner, was Robert's
business partner, and he was often in the home as
well as were two part time clerks, and this was
overall a very young household. Robert was only twenty four,
(02:36):
Charlotte was twenty three, and those two apprentices were just
eighteen and sixteen. That misinterpretation amuses me a little bit,
because to me, it's very obvious that a law stationer
who would be someone who sells supplies or law. On
(02:56):
March twenty first, Eliza prepared dinner for the turn nurse
that included Roger, Charlotte and Orlabar, and according to Orlabar's account,
they had rump steak, potatoes and yeast dumplings. Before dinner
was over, Charlotte Turner excused herself to her room, where
she experienced what she told her husband and father in
law was a quote violent sickness. Robert and Orlabar were
(03:20):
soon very sick as well. The father in law stated
later that he quote vomited dreadfully. A Princess Gadsden and
Eliza were also sick. The family's doctor, Henry Ogilvie, was
called to help. He arrived at five o'clock and several
hours later, at around eight thirty pm, he asked a colleague,
(03:40):
surgeon John Marshall, to also come and give an opinion.
Marshall believed Robert Turner might actually die. All of the
affected members of the household were prescribed fluids in great
quantities in the hopes that what the doctor believed to
be poisoned would be flushed out of their systems, and
over the course of several days they did all improve.
(04:02):
But from the very first or Labar suspected that Eliza
had poisoned them all. Eliza was arrested on March twenty third,
which was a Thursday. Police officer William Thistleton found her
still quite sick when he arrived to take her into custody.
That day, she was charged with attempted murder. She was
held in an infirmary ward at Clarkenwell Prison for four
(04:25):
days before being brought before the Hatton Garden Magistrates to
determine if her case would go to trial. Witness testimony
was included. Roger Gadsden, one of Turner's apprentices, stated that
he had wandered into the kitchen where Eliza was as
the dinner was being cleared. He had seen the dumplings
and had tried to take some and as a quick aside,
(04:47):
here there are lots of foods that are called dumplings
in different cultures and even different regions within the same culture.
So just so you understand, the dumplings that we're talking
about here are a type traditionally made with flower and wit,
kind of formed into little a dough that's then cut
into little pieces their seasonings, and then those pieces are
poached in a stalker a stew. But though Gadsden thought
(05:10):
these dumplings looked appealing, according to his testimony, Eliza tried
to shoo him away from them, saying that they were
cold and heavy, But he did eat some and he
became ill, just as the Turners had. But Eliza also
ate some of those leftover dumplings, and she also, as
we mentioned, got sick. Oral of our Turner was suspicious
(05:32):
of the fact that everyone got sick, so he searched
the house for arsenic. He did not find any, but
there actually was some in the house, and that was
not unusual for any household at the time. Arsenic was
the primary way to handle rats and mice. The parcel
of arsenic in the Turner home was kept in an
office drawer, and it was there to make sure that
(05:54):
none of his documents got gnawed on by unwanted pests. Yeah,
we'll talk about whether that arsenic was there or not
in just a bit. But according to or Labar Turner,
he examined the pan where the dumplings had been mixed
and he found what he thought was a suspicious powder
on the bottom when questioned about this dish in court.
(06:17):
And we're using some various terms interchangeably throughout this, in
terms of dish, pan and bowl, because they all get
used interchangeably, and it's unclear exactly what the actual vessel was.
But just so you know, but when she was questioned
about this dish, Eliza stated she had been the only
one to mix the dumplings in it. Or Labar kept
(06:38):
the dish and its contents so that it could be
examined by the two doctors, John Marshall and Ogilvie. When
John Marshall arrived at the Turner house after being called
the day of the poisonings, he found Eliza conscious but
quite limp, on the stairs. She said she had been
vomiting a great deal. Marshall checked on all the sick
family members, as well as Eliza and Gadsden, and determined
(07:02):
that they had likely all been poisoned, and he also
determined that there was indeed arsenic in the bottom of
the pan that Eliza had been using. If you knew
anything about poisoning history, you know that that was not
an exact science in terms of identifying arsenic at this point.
So just remember that as we go through this well,
(07:26):
by having made dumplings, I'm like, could it have been flower?
It will come up on the stand. The Charlotte Turner
gave testimony that made it clear she believed that Eliza
had poisoned the family. She told the court that three
weeks before the arsenic in the dumplings, as it was believed,
she and Eliza had gotten into an argument. Charlotte stated
(07:49):
that Eliza had some quote indelicacy in her conduct and
she was thinking of firing her, but took pity on her.
In the weeks between the argument and the poisoning, Ali,
she said, had been telling Missus Turner that she made
wonderful dumplings and that the Turners must allow her to
make some for dinner. On Monday, March twentieth, Eliza told
(08:11):
Charlotte that she had received an order of yeast from
the brewer, which she had procured so she could make
dumplings for dinner the following night. Charlotte also stated that
she had seen the dumpling dough and thought that it
looked suspicious, describing it as flat, black and heavy. Sarah Pierre,
the housemaid, was also called and she stated that she
(08:32):
heard Eliza say after her argument with Missus Turner that
she would quote never like them anymore. With all this testimony,
prosecutors got their committal. Eliza was given three choices. She
could be set free on bail with two sureties each
in the amount of fifty dollars, She could do a
year of incarceration at Clarkenwell, or she could stand trial.
(08:54):
She opted for the trial because she didn't want to
burden her parents financially and she thought it would be
the fastest solution. Her trial bait was set for April
eleventh at the Old Bailey. Yes, so all of this testiment,
why we've talked about up to this point, is essentially
her arraignment. Some of it will repeat a little bit
when we get to the trial, but just fy so
you don't become confused. During all of this, Eliza had
(09:18):
a sweetheart, a young man named Edward. We don't have
a lot of information about him beyond that, but we
do know that Eliza wrote him letters while she was
in custody. The first of these explains her situation, as
well as a degree of embarrassment about the whole thing.
She wrote quote, Dear Edward, you may be truly surprised
(09:38):
at me for not writing or sending to you, But
no doubt you have heard what has happened to me.
For I now lay ill in the infirmary, sick ward
at the New Clarkenwell Prison, for on last Tuesday week
I had some yeast dumplings to make, and there was
something in which I cannot answer for, And they made
four of us, including myself, dangerously ill. As an side,
(10:00):
there were actually five, but I'm not sure why she
maybe didn't count Gadsden, I don't know. And because I
made them, they suspect me that I have put something
in them, which I assure you I am innocent of.
But I expect I shall be cleared on Thursday. If
in case I can't attend, I shall never be right
or happy again to think I was ever in prison.
(10:22):
Eliza's mother visited her several times a day in the
infirmary to help take care of her, and as it
fell to the Fennings to pay the prison to cover
the costs of Eliza's incarceration, they had to sell a
lot of their possessions to do so. We'll get into
the particulars of Eliza Fenning's trial after we pause for
a sponsor break. Mister John Kearney, King's counsel, was the
(10:55):
prosecutor in Eliza's case, and a barrister named Peter Ali
was her defense. Charlotte Turner was once again called to testify,
and she was asked about that time that she had
scolded Eliza. She was asked, quote, what was the reason
that you reproved her? Charlotte's answer was, quote, I observed
her one night go into the young men's room partly undressed.
(11:17):
I said it was very indecent of her to go
into the young men's room undressed. Charlotte Turner also stated
that after this, Eliza was generally sullen and disrespectful. She
also stated that even though she did not like to
trouble the brewer for yeast, preferring to get ready made
dough from the baker, Eliza had gone ahead and gotten
the yeast from him anyway. Charlotte also stated that she
(11:41):
had instructed Eliza how to make the dumplings, and also
to make a beefsteak pie for the apprentices to have
for dinner that same day. Missus Turner also told the
court that Sarah Pierre had been busy on March twenty
first and had not been in the kitchen with Eliza.
She also said that though the dough for the dumplings
had been set in its pan before the fire to rise,
(12:03):
it never did. Of Eliza's dough, Charlotte said, quote, I
observed it never did rise. I took off the cloth
and looked at it. My observation was it had not risen,
and it was in a very singular position, in which
position it remained until it was divided into dumplings. It
was not put into the pan as I have seen dough.
(12:23):
Its shape was singular. It retained that shape till the last.
I am confident it never was meddled with after it
had been put there. Just the longest way to say,
the dough looked weird to me. Yeah. Charlotte then described
for the court the way that she had begun to
feel sick after eating just a small piece of dumpling.
(12:46):
She estimated she had only eaten a quarter of one.
She described being quote affected in the stomach, very faint,
and an extreme burning pain which increased with every minute
she was She told the court surprise that no one
came to check on her, but then when she made
her way downstairs about half an hour after she had retired,
(13:06):
she found that her husband and father in law were
also quite sick. When or Labar Turner was brought to
the stand as a witness, he stated he had become
sick within three minutes of eating Eliza's dumplings. He said
that he barely made it into the yard before throwing up,
and that quote I felt considerable heat across my stomach
and chest and pain. He said he had not seen
(13:29):
Eliza eat any of the dumplings, and he immediately suspected arsenic.
He mentioned that they kept arsenic in the house and
that Eliza would have had access to it. He also
stated that the last time he recalled seeing the arsenic
in the office drawer was on March seventh. Or Labar
Turner also asked Eliza what prejudicial ingredients she had put
(13:50):
into the dumplings, and she stated that she thought it
had not been the dumplings, but a pail of milk
brought in by Sarah Peer that had made them all sick.
Milk had been used in the sauce, yes, and that
sauce was not made by Eliza. We'll get to that.
When called as a witness, Roger Gadsden also gave the
(14:10):
March seventh eight as the last time that he had
seen the Arsenic in the office. Gadsden also repeated the
story about Eliza urging him not to eat the dumplings,
and that he had eaten what he described as a
walnut size amount with sauce. He stated quote, in consequence
of the distress the family were in, I was sent
off to Missus Turner, the mother. I was very sick
(14:33):
going and coming back. I thought I should die. He
also told the court that Eliza had made dumplings for
the household staff the night before she made them for
the Turners, and that they had been quite different and
no one had gotten sick. The Missus Turner, Gadsden was
mentioning here was Margaret Turner, Roger's mother and Orlabar's wife.
(14:54):
She stated that immediately she went to the house and
found everyone Ill, including Eliza, immediately thought it must be
the dumplings. But she told the court that Eliza told
her quote, not the dumplings, but the milk. Ma'am. Eliza
said that Roger Gadsden hadn't had much dumpling at all,
but quote had licked up three parts of a boat
of sauce with a bit of bread. That sauce had
(15:17):
been mixed not by Eliza but by Charlotte Turner. Seems
like there was a bit of friction between Eliza and Sarah.
Eliza made clear that Sarah had been the one to
bring the milk. So after this sauce issue was brought up,
other members of the household were asked before the judge
whether they had eaten any of the sauce. Robert Turner
(15:39):
said that he had not eaten any sauce, but he
did have dumplings. Sarah Peer, who had not eaten the
dumplings but had eaten some of the beefsteak pie that
had a crust that had been made with the very
same flour, had not gotten sick. One of the pieces
of evidence introduced into the trial was the family's table
(16:00):
from the dinner in question. The knives and forks had tarnished.
They were described as being black or turning black, and
John Marshall testified that arsenic could cause that, but Marshall
had also searched for scientific proof. He cut open the
remaining dumplings and found what he described as white particles throughout.
He put a portion on a polished coin and then
(16:22):
set that coin on a knife blade to hold it
over a candle flame. It smelled of garlic when he
did this, and left a white residue on the metal
after burning, both of which Marshall said were signs of arsenic.
He performed additional tests, burning the white powder that he
found in the dumplings, and once again found that they
smelled of garlic and left the white residue. Eliza's barrister,
(16:46):
Peter Alley, was to be frank kind of a dud.
He didn't ask many questions of the witnesses or try
to reframe anything they said with a simple explanation, or
point out any discrepancies that came up between their arraignment hearing.
In the trial, Eliza was put on the stand to
defend herself. She told the judge and jury quote, I'm
(17:08):
truly innocent of the whole charge. As God is my witness.
I am innocent. Indeed I am. I liked my place.
I was very comfortable. As to my master saying I
did not assist him, I was too ill. I had
no concern with the drawer at all. When I wanted
a piece of paper, I always asked for it. Eliza
(17:30):
defended herself against all of the accusations and claims that
were made against her, even the claim that she had
been partly undressed in the room of the apprentices, which
is what had led to Charlotte's scolding of her several
weeks before the poisonings. Her explanation there was that she
had needed a light in the night and had gone
to their room still dressed, and that the boys, as
(17:53):
she called them, had tried to take liberties with her,
so she had called for Missus Turner. But by the
time Charlotte Turner got to the hall, Eliza was back
in her own room and had started to undress there,
and Missus Turner made assumptions. Yeah, there are some discrepancies
in various statements, even that Charlotte Turner gave that sometimes
(18:16):
she claimed she had seen Eliza in her own room
and other times she said that she had seen her
undressed in the apprentices room, so there's some inconsistency. As
for the day that the fateful dinner was cooked, there was,
according to Eliza, a period she was out of the
kitchen because Charlotte Turner had sent her to the butcher.
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That was part of telling her to make a beefsteak pie.
And Eliza stated that she had seen Thomas King, that
is the other apprentice that we haven't really talked about
much yet, leave the kitchen, but he had not answered
her when she asked why he was there, and he
just left. The defense then had five character witnesses testify
to Eliza's good nature, but when one of them stated
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that Eliza had told him just a few days before,
in March twenty first, that she was quite happy with
her work and her employers, that testimony was struck down
by the judge is inadmissible. Similarly, a written statement from
Eliza's father, William Fenning, was not allowed to be introduced
to the court. It stated that he had stopped by
(19:22):
the Turner home on March twenty first, the day of
the poisonings, to say hello to his daughter, but was
told by Sarah Peer that Eliza was out on an errand,
and reality Eliza was there, had already eaten the foul
dumplings and was sick at the time. Eliza wanted to
have Thomas King brought to the stand, but the court
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was only willing to produce Roger Gadsden. The trial, the verdict,
and the sentence all took place on the same day.
When all of the testimony was done and the judge
began to address the jurors, Eliza's barrister just got up
and left. He didn't even stick around. The jury deliberated
for mere moments before returning a guilty verdict, and Eliza
(20:05):
was sentenced to death. It wasn't until Friday, April fourteenth
that the sentence was formally issued. That's because the session
of the court would record all sentences from the week
on the same day, so that Friday, Eliza and fourteen
other people who had been tried that week formally received
their sentences. Eliza waited in Newgate Prison, hoping that her
(20:27):
verdict could be overturned. When it seemed that no reprieve
was coming, Eliza wrote to Edward, telling him that she
was making her peace with God and that arrangements were
to be made for Edward to visit, but Eliza also
wrote him that she wanted him to find someone else,
quote when I am no more. Perhaps having taken her
(20:49):
words too hastily to heart, Edward was a no show.
When his May fourth visitation day came, Eliza wrote to
him again, this time clearly hurt to have been a band. Meanwhile,
the entire case had become the main focus of all
of England, it seemed, as her trial was reported on
the papers. The way the entire thing had been handled
(21:11):
came under suspicion. Sir John Sylvester, the judge in the case,
was known to form opinions on defendants and then steer
the proceedings in the way he chose. The fact that
the Turners worked in legal circles led people to question
whether things had been slanted against Eliza from the beginning.
There were also detractors who believed the testimony of the
(21:34):
Turners and their apprentice Gadsden, and thought that Eliza was
a cold blooded killer thwarted only by the work of
surgeon John Marshall. As for Eliza's own illness, the explanation
that kind of went around these circles was that she
must have poisoned herself just a little to try to
avoid suspicion. We'll talk more about how people debated Elia's
(21:57):
innocence or guilts, and how pleased for a pre were
made both by her and on her behalf after we
hear from the sponsors that keep stuffy miss in history
class going. Soon reporters were clamoring to meet with Eliza
(22:19):
so that they could share with readers how innocent or
guilty she seemed to them, although most really did seem
to find her to be very unlikely of attempting to
murder anyone. Pamphlets were written pointing out the various holes
in the case. Why would a poisoner take the poison herself,
Why would she not wash the pan that the poison
(22:40):
had been mixed in, Why would she have opted to
go to trial confident that it would be the fastest
way to put the matter behind her, And why was
any positive testimony about Eliza not admitted in court? Why
was Thomas King not called similarly? Why not Sergeant Ogilvie,
who was with the family and Eliza for several hours
(23:01):
before getting John Marshall involved in an effort to bolster
an appeals case, a medic named Thomas William Windsborough performed
his own experiments with arsenic to show that it would
not blacken knives in the way that had been claimed
in the court. Wansborough wrote up his results and sent
them to the Secretary of State, Lord Sidmus. As spring
(23:23):
stretched into early summer, Eliza wrote to the Secretary of
State herself, begging him to intervene. She also wrote to
the High Chancellor of Great Britain, Lord Eldon, similarly requesting
his help and pointing out inconsistencies in the testimony of
Charlotte Turner and the huge gap in the record that
resulted in not calling Thomas King to the stand. She
(23:46):
wrote to the Turners and asked them to save her life.
She wrote to the examine Or to thank the press
for their kindness to her, and to assert her innocence
publicly one more time. The Turners did visit Eliza in
prison at Eliza's request. She also told them that she
wanted Thomas King to come with them, and it seemed
(24:07):
that they believed she was going to confess, but she
did the opposite and once again proclaimed her innocence unwavering.
It kind of seemed like she was hoping that having
all of them there together might prompt someone to actually confess,
because she told them that she hoped the real culprit
would be identified. There was a lot of public support
(24:30):
for Eliza, and quite a few prominent people tried to
advocate on her behalf. A banker named Corbin Lloyd went
to Sir John Sylvester to beg for her execution to
be held off until additional investigations could be completed. There
just was not enough evidence to conclusively prove her guilt
in the eyes of Lloyd and many others, but Sylvester
(24:52):
was really having none of it. A bookseller named J. M.
Richardson's similarly worked to get the attention of Lord Sidmouth
and Sir John Sylvester after a visitor to his home
told him that a member of the Turner household had
been seen in a moment of seeming public madness, threatening
to poison his entire household. That particular piece of information
(25:14):
went from what seemed like a hazy sort of rumor
to a very clear picture when a mister Gibson, who
worked at Corbin and Company, chemist and druggist, went on
record with details about very unsettling statements made in his
place of work by Robert Turner. Gibson recounted the following
quote about the month of September or October last, to
(25:37):
the best of my recollection, mister Turner Junior called at
our house, and, appearing in a wild and deranged state.
I invited him into a back room, where I detained him,
whilst mister Crockford went to his father's. In this interval,
mister Turner Junior used the most violent and incoherent expressions,
such as, my dear Gibson, do for God's sake, get
(25:59):
me secured and confined. For if I am at liberty,
I shall do some mischief. I shall destroy myself and
my wife. I must and shall do it. Something from
above tells me I must do it, and unless I
am prevented, I shall certainly do it. Gibson also stated
that he had, after Eliza's arrest, gone to Orlabar Turner
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and asked him not to proceed in trying to have
Eliza prosecuted. Part of the reason was that he believed
if she was executed and Robert was allowed to walk
freely in the world, Robert posed a very great danger,
but once again there was no shift in their position
on this matter. Thomas Winsborough appealed directly to the Turners,
(26:43):
showing them the experiments he had done that called John
Marshall's scientific evidence. It's a question. Allegedly, the family seemed
almost on the verge of considering signing a reprieve request,
but then Marshall and Sylvester, who arrived at the Turner
home as Winsborough was planning his efforts, dismissed all of it.
They suggested to the Turners that if they signed any
(27:06):
document helping Fenning, it would cast doubt on their family. Additionally,
Sylvester told men who spoke out in support of Eliza
Fenning they were only doing it because she was young
and pretty. None of their efforts made a difference. Yeah,
there's some speculation about how magically John Marshall and Sylvester
(27:28):
just churned up at the house while someone was refuting
Marshall's evidence, and their suspicion that someone else in the
household went and told them that he was there, but
we don't know for sure. The judge reported the pending
cases to the Prince Regent on July twentieth, with recommendations
for the carrying out of the sentences. The Prince Regent
(27:48):
was George the Fourth, who ruled as regent from eighteen
eleven to eighteen twenty after King George the Third was
deemed mentally unstable. George the Fourth was crowned as king
in eighteen twenty when George the Third died. So this
step of the judge reporting to the Prince Regent is
sort of like checking in to see if any of
the sentenced would be pardoned or given a stay of execution.
(28:10):
But no such grace was given, and the execution list
was approved by the Prince Regent. On July twenty sixth,
eighteen fifteen, just three short months after the whole ordeal began,
Eliza Fennings stood on the hangman's scaffold. Despite the fact
that it was a rainy day, A large crowd had
turned out to watch this horrific spectacle. One of the
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last things Eliza did was whisper into the ear of
the chaplain who stood next to her, which a number
of witnesses believed to be a last minute confession. It
was not. She had turned to the religious leader to
assert one more time that she was innocent. She had
chosen a white muslin dress as a symbol of her innocence,
and according to witness accounts, her last words were I
(28:55):
am innocent. Eliza was buried on July thirty first at
George the Murder Church in the churchyard. Her parents had
to pay fourteen shilling sixpence in executioner's fees before their
daughter's body was released to them for burial. While Eliza
had been laid out for visitation prior to being interred,
a number of visitors, seeing how poor her parents were
(29:18):
and how they had been completely taxed by this whole process,
gave her father money as they passed through. As Eliza's
body was carried from her parents house to her final
resting site, a crowd of thousands is said to have
formed behind the processional. After Eliza's death, her entire story
continued to play out in the press, with journalists speculating
(29:39):
about whether she had or hadn't done it, and there
were plenty of people who held her case up as
an example of the problems with Britain's legal system. Writer
John Watkins became deeply invested in the story and what
he believed, as many did, was a miscarriage of justice.
He made the case that there was no way the
(30:00):
amount of arsenic the doctor had claimed to have found
in the bowl was plausible. There was only a tiny
amount of dough residue left in the bowl, but it
had produced a half teaspoon of arsenic per the doctor's estimation.
A half teaspoon sounds like a very little amount, but
just a few grains of arsenic are enough to kill
a person, So if there had been a half teaspoon
(30:22):
in the leftover dish residue, Watkins calculated that there would
have been about eighteen hundred grains of arsenic in the
dumplings that were consumed. Everyone involved should have been dead
and would not have been able to recover. No matter
how much fluid was prescribed. Just a bite of a
dumpling would have easily killed multiple people. So things just
(30:42):
did not add up. Watkins asserted that the arsenic had
to have been added after the dough was made, suggesting
that someone other than Eliza had sprinkled the arsenic on
the dough after she had mixed the ingredients. For a
brief moment in eighteen twenty nine, seemed that the truth
of what had happened at sixty eight Chancery Lane had
(31:03):
at last come to light. A pamphlet published that year
by the firm of Cowie and Strange was titled Circumstantial
Evidence The Extraordinary Case of Eliza Fenning, who was executed
in eighteen fifteen for attempting to poison the family of
Erlabar Turner by mixing arsenic in yeast dumplings, with a
statement of facts since developed tending to prove her innocence
(31:26):
of the crime. This pamphlet was sold for a penny,
and in its introduction states quote years passed away without
there appearing to be any reason to doubt the justice
of the verdict. But fresh interest has been lately given
to the subject by a report that has been circulated,
charging another with the dreadful deed. So the pamphlet goes
(31:48):
on to state that quote. Within the last few weeks
a paragraph has appeared in many of the newspapers stating
that the son of mister Turner had died lately in
the hospital after confessing that he had mixed the poison
in the food prepared by Eliza Fenning, and was consequently
guilty of the offense for which she suffered but it
(32:08):
also states that no one can verify this information. While
this story started to appear in other papers as well,
in June of eighteen twenty nine that Essex Herald printed
a note that this information was false and that Robert
Turner was in fact still alive. While Eliza's story is
one that evidences biases of class and a very broken
(32:31):
justice system, one of the results is that it actually
got a lot more people thinking about the criminal justice
system and about what would eventually be called forensic science.
In eighteen twenty eight, John Gordon Smith, a former Army surgeon,
became the first professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the University
of London. That was the beginning of forensics education in
(32:54):
the country, and he used Eliza's case in lectures and
provided demonstrations that showed that so called expert testimony was
not always correct. The blackened cutlery issue with something Gordon
Smith was particularly interested in. He used knives soaked in
different substances as examples for his class. One that he
(33:15):
had soaked in arsenic for ten hours showed no signs
of discoloration, but one that he had set in pickled
walnuts for the same period did indeed turn black. The
frustrating story of Eliza Femming. I have much less frustrating
(33:38):
and delightful listener mail oh good. As you may recall,
on a recent episode, I had mentioned that I had
run into one of our listeners at my specialty vet, Tabitha,
and I said, Tabitha resend that because I cannot find it.
I don't know if it just went into the ether
or what, but she did resend it done as an update,
her kiddie's doing very well, and she also mentions that
(34:02):
she makes one of the drinks on Criminalia regularly and
people love it, which makes me very happy in my
dark little heart. But her initial email reads hello ladies.
Over the holidays, I was talking on my eighty five
and a half year old aunt in law and she
was reminiscing about her childhood cat, Totem, adopted in nineteen
forty two, whose tail looked like a Totem pole. She
(34:24):
told me how very many kittens Totem had, all of
which were adopted out to other families. We were contrasting
this idea with our neighborhood Mama Cat, who has gifted
the neighborhood and my house with many lovely kittens, but
we are trying to catch her to retire her kitten
making days. So far we have only caught and spay, neutered, released,
or adopted some of her kittens. Then we started wondering
(34:46):
at what point in the USA people switched from simply
expecting kittens to spaying and neutering their cats. I feel
like all my life, from the seventies until now, there
has been a campaign to spay neuter your pets. Obviously,
it used to be different when who figured out how
to spain, neuter or pets safely. I've heard mention of
(35:06):
horses being a gelding in old novels, but never other
animals being retired from reproduction in ways other than isolation.
This seemed like a research topic you might enjoy looking into.
And then Tabitha shared beautiful pictures of her kiddies who
are just adorable, and I did get to meet her
one of her kiddies while we were at the vet together,
so I'm so glad that he's doing well and all
(35:28):
of these kiddies are beautiful. One thing I wanted to
mention I didn't go into researching all of the neutering stuff,
but I did specifically want to look at because I
can answer it pretty quickly. Trap neuter release programs or
you'll sometimes also see them as trap neuter return programs
or TNVR, which is trap neuter vaccinate programs, which basically,
(35:54):
for anyone that doesn't know what that is, if you're
somewhere where there is a population of feral cats, it's
like cats that are not ever really going to socialize
to be somebody's pet. A lot of people have started
these efforts to capture those cats, get them spade or neutered,
get them vaccinated if possible, and then they release them again.
(36:14):
And in some places this is a really good like
rodent control approach. There are lots of companies that will
do this with animals on their property, etc. There are
lots of people that just do like grassroots efforts. But
it's a cool thing, and it actually has not been
around all that long, so I know there are people
that will argue about it and don't like these programs.
(36:36):
I am obviously not one of them, but just step YI.
This started actually in Great Britain in the nineteen fifties,
where they realize that if they culled a feral population
like if you kill the cats that are there that
you think are a nuisance, or if you just had
them carted away, other cats just move in. But if
you fix them, they'll stay in their territory. They have
(36:59):
population roll and as we said, they'll get rid of
rodents and other pests. So great Britain did this in
the fifties, Denmark started doing it in the nineteen seventies,
and then somewhere in the late seventies or early eighties,
it's estimated, people started trying it here in the US,
although it really didn't become a big thing in the
(37:19):
US until the nineteen nineties, and now it is really
common in a lot of particuliarly a lot of cities
in the US, but all over. I'm a big fan
of the t in Our program. Have tried to do
my best to help some of those out now and again.
One of my favorite cats in the world is a
(37:39):
t in Our failure who my dear friend took pity
on when she was kind of getting mistreated by other cats,
took her inside. She didn't wanted to be touched by
anybody until she hit about fourteen, and then she wanted
to be hugged and petted by every single person she met.
We don't know what happened there, but she's a diet
our cat's mother was a TNR. I don't think they
(38:00):
that was necessarily where they were planning to go with
her at the shelter, but she was clearly not thriving
in the shelter and as a result, her kittens were
not thriving in the shelter, and so she was returned
back to her feral community. And now you have the
babies now have so they're very spoiled at love. They're
(38:23):
very spoiled. Anyway, that was probably a long listener mail segment.
I feel very strong about trabue release programs. So thanks
for coming along for the ride if you stuck around
for it. And again, Tabitha, thank you for resending that email.
If you would like to email us about this or
something else, you can do so at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on Instagram, Twitter,
(38:47):
basically all the all of the interweb socials as missed
in History. And if you would like to subscribe to
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thing ever. You can just do that on the iHeartRadio app,
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Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(39:09):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today we are
going to talk about a very controversial trial. If you
(00:22):
have ever been frustrated by the criminal justice system, this
is not going to help, but it may at least
offer the knowledge that the problems that many people experience
in that system, and how biased and unfair it can be,
particularly to people who are not wealthy, have always been around.
This is the story of a poisoning and a trial
(00:44):
and a whole lot of bias in that trial. We
are talking about Eliza Fenning, who worked as a cook
in a London household until she found herself in the
middle of a very serious poisoning accusation. So Elizabeth Fenning,
who went by Eliza, was born on June tenth, seventeen
ninety three to William and Mary Fenning. William was a
(01:07):
soldier and was stationed on the Caribbean island of Dominica.
That's where Eliza was born. The Fennings had nine other
children in addition to Eliza, but she was the only
one of the ten to survive to adulthood. In the
late seventeen nineties, William's regiment moved to Dublin, and then
in eighteen o two he was discharged and the family
(01:28):
moved to London. William got a job selling potatoes, Mary
worked as an upholsterer, and Eliza started working when she
was fourteen. In March of eighteen fifteen, so at the
age of twenty one, Eliza was working as a cook
in the home of Robert Gregson Turner. She had not
been there long. Her higher date was January thirtieth of
(01:49):
that year. Robert Turner is described as a law stationer,
and while some accounts of this whole story have kind
of misinterpreted this to suggest that he practiced law, it
actually means that he sold and provided the kinds of
supplies that legal offices and lawyers would need, like the
various forms and log books, etc. Robert and his wife
(02:11):
Charlotte Turner lived at number sixty eight Chancery Lane, with
a housemaid named Sarah Pierre, two apprentices named Roger Gadsden
and Thomas King. Robert's father, or Labar Turner, was Robert's
business partner, and he was often in the home as
well as were two part time clerks, and this was
overall a very young household. Robert was only twenty four,
(02:36):
Charlotte was twenty three, and those two apprentices were just
eighteen and sixteen. That misinterpretation amuses me a little bit,
because to me, it's very obvious that a law stationer
who would be someone who sells supplies or law. On
(02:56):
March twenty first, Eliza prepared dinner for the turn nurse
that included Roger, Charlotte and Orlabar, and according to Orlabar's account,
they had rump steak, potatoes and yeast dumplings. Before dinner
was over, Charlotte Turner excused herself to her room, where
she experienced what she told her husband and father in
law was a quote violent sickness. Robert and Orlabar were
(03:20):
soon very sick as well. The father in law stated
later that he quote vomited dreadfully. A Princess Gadsden and
Eliza were also sick. The family's doctor, Henry Ogilvie, was
called to help. He arrived at five o'clock and several
hours later, at around eight thirty pm, he asked a colleague,
(03:40):
surgeon John Marshall, to also come and give an opinion.
Marshall believed Robert Turner might actually die. All of the
affected members of the household were prescribed fluids in great
quantities in the hopes that what the doctor believed to
be poisoned would be flushed out of their systems, and
over the course of several days they did all improve.
(04:02):
But from the very first or Labar suspected that Eliza
had poisoned them all. Eliza was arrested on March twenty third,
which was a Thursday. Police officer William Thistleton found her
still quite sick when he arrived to take her into custody.
That day, she was charged with attempted murder. She was
held in an infirmary ward at Clarkenwell Prison for four
(04:25):
days before being brought before the Hatton Garden Magistrates to
determine if her case would go to trial. Witness testimony
was included. Roger Gadsden, one of Turner's apprentices, stated that
he had wandered into the kitchen where Eliza was as
the dinner was being cleared. He had seen the dumplings
and had tried to take some and as a quick aside,
(04:47):
here there are lots of foods that are called dumplings
in different cultures and even different regions within the same culture.
So just so you understand, the dumplings that we're talking
about here are a type traditionally made with flower and wit,
kind of formed into little a dough that's then cut
into little pieces their seasonings, and then those pieces are
poached in a stalker a stew. But though Gadsden thought
(05:10):
these dumplings looked appealing, according to his testimony, Eliza tried
to shoo him away from them, saying that they were
cold and heavy, But he did eat some and he
became ill, just as the Turners had. But Eliza also
ate some of those leftover dumplings, and she also, as
we mentioned, got sick. Oral of our Turner was suspicious
(05:32):
of the fact that everyone got sick, so he searched
the house for arsenic. He did not find any, but
there actually was some in the house, and that was
not unusual for any household at the time. Arsenic was
the primary way to handle rats and mice. The parcel
of arsenic in the Turner home was kept in an
office drawer, and it was there to make sure that
(05:54):
none of his documents got gnawed on by unwanted pests. Yeah,
we'll talk about whether that arsenic was there or not
in just a bit. But according to or Labar Turner,
he examined the pan where the dumplings had been mixed
and he found what he thought was a suspicious powder
on the bottom when questioned about this dish in court.
(06:17):
And we're using some various terms interchangeably throughout this, in
terms of dish, pan and bowl, because they all get
used interchangeably, and it's unclear exactly what the actual vessel was.
But just so you know, but when she was questioned
about this dish, Eliza stated she had been the only
one to mix the dumplings in it. Or Labar kept
(06:38):
the dish and its contents so that it could be
examined by the two doctors, John Marshall and Ogilvie. When
John Marshall arrived at the Turner house after being called
the day of the poisonings, he found Eliza conscious but
quite limp, on the stairs. She said she had been
vomiting a great deal. Marshall checked on all the sick
family members, as well as Eliza and Gadsden, and determined
(07:02):
that they had likely all been poisoned, and he also
determined that there was indeed arsenic in the bottom of
the pan that Eliza had been using. If you knew
anything about poisoning history, you know that that was not
an exact science in terms of identifying arsenic at this point.
So just remember that as we go through this well,
(07:26):
by having made dumplings, I'm like, could it have been flower?
It will come up on the stand. The Charlotte Turner
gave testimony that made it clear she believed that Eliza
had poisoned the family. She told the court that three
weeks before the arsenic in the dumplings, as it was believed,
she and Eliza had gotten into an argument. Charlotte stated
(07:49):
that Eliza had some quote indelicacy in her conduct and
she was thinking of firing her, but took pity on her.
In the weeks between the argument and the poisoning, Ali,
she said, had been telling Missus Turner that she made
wonderful dumplings and that the Turners must allow her to
make some for dinner. On Monday, March twentieth, Eliza told
(08:11):
Charlotte that she had received an order of yeast from
the brewer, which she had procured so she could make
dumplings for dinner the following night. Charlotte also stated that
she had seen the dumpling dough and thought that it
looked suspicious, describing it as flat, black and heavy. Sarah Pierre,
the housemaid, was also called and she stated that she
(08:32):
heard Eliza say after her argument with Missus Turner that
she would quote never like them anymore. With all this testimony,
prosecutors got their committal. Eliza was given three choices. She
could be set free on bail with two sureties each
in the amount of fifty dollars, She could do a
year of incarceration at Clarkenwell, or she could stand trial.
(08:54):
She opted for the trial because she didn't want to
burden her parents financially and she thought it would be
the fastest solution. Her trial bait was set for April
eleventh at the Old Bailey. Yes, so all of this testiment,
why we've talked about up to this point, is essentially
her arraignment. Some of it will repeat a little bit
when we get to the trial, but just fy so
you don't become confused. During all of this, Eliza had
(09:18):
a sweetheart, a young man named Edward. We don't have
a lot of information about him beyond that, but we
do know that Eliza wrote him letters while she was
in custody. The first of these explains her situation, as
well as a degree of embarrassment about the whole thing.
She wrote quote, Dear Edward, you may be truly surprised
(09:38):
at me for not writing or sending to you, But
no doubt you have heard what has happened to me.
For I now lay ill in the infirmary, sick ward
at the New Clarkenwell Prison, for on last Tuesday week
I had some yeast dumplings to make, and there was
something in which I cannot answer for, And they made
four of us, including myself, dangerously ill. As an side,
(10:00):
there were actually five, but I'm not sure why she
maybe didn't count Gadsden, I don't know. And because I
made them, they suspect me that I have put something
in them, which I assure you I am innocent of.
But I expect I shall be cleared on Thursday. If
in case I can't attend, I shall never be right
or happy again to think I was ever in prison.
(10:22):
Eliza's mother visited her several times a day in the
infirmary to help take care of her, and as it
fell to the Fennings to pay the prison to cover
the costs of Eliza's incarceration, they had to sell a
lot of their possessions to do so. We'll get into
the particulars of Eliza Fenning's trial after we pause for
a sponsor break. Mister John Kearney, King's counsel, was the
(10:55):
prosecutor in Eliza's case, and a barrister named Peter Ali
was her defense. Charlotte Turner was once again called to testify,
and she was asked about that time that she had
scolded Eliza. She was asked, quote, what was the reason
that you reproved her? Charlotte's answer was, quote, I observed
her one night go into the young men's room partly undressed.
(11:17):
I said it was very indecent of her to go
into the young men's room undressed. Charlotte Turner also stated
that after this, Eliza was generally sullen and disrespectful. She
also stated that even though she did not like to
trouble the brewer for yeast, preferring to get ready made
dough from the baker, Eliza had gone ahead and gotten
the yeast from him anyway. Charlotte also stated that she
(11:41):
had instructed Eliza how to make the dumplings, and also
to make a beefsteak pie for the apprentices to have
for dinner that same day. Missus Turner also told the
court that Sarah Pierre had been busy on March twenty
first and had not been in the kitchen with Eliza.
She also said that though the dough for the dumplings
had been set in its pan before the fire to rise,
(12:03):
it never did. Of Eliza's dough, Charlotte said, quote, I
observed it never did rise. I took off the cloth
and looked at it. My observation was it had not risen,
and it was in a very singular position, in which
position it remained until it was divided into dumplings. It
was not put into the pan as I have seen dough.
(12:23):
Its shape was singular. It retained that shape till the last.
I am confident it never was meddled with after it
had been put there. Just the longest way to say,
the dough looked weird to me. Yeah. Charlotte then described
for the court the way that she had begun to
feel sick after eating just a small piece of dumpling.
(12:46):
She estimated she had only eaten a quarter of one.
She described being quote affected in the stomach, very faint,
and an extreme burning pain which increased with every minute
she was She told the court surprise that no one
came to check on her, but then when she made
her way downstairs about half an hour after she had retired,
(13:06):
she found that her husband and father in law were
also quite sick. When or Labar Turner was brought to
the stand as a witness, he stated he had become
sick within three minutes of eating Eliza's dumplings. He said
that he barely made it into the yard before throwing up,
and that quote I felt considerable heat across my stomach
and chest and pain. He said he had not seen
(13:29):
Eliza eat any of the dumplings, and he immediately suspected arsenic.
He mentioned that they kept arsenic in the house and
that Eliza would have had access to it. He also
stated that the last time he recalled seeing the arsenic
in the office drawer was on March seventh. Or Labar
Turner also asked Eliza what prejudicial ingredients she had put
(13:50):
into the dumplings, and she stated that she thought it
had not been the dumplings, but a pail of milk
brought in by Sarah Peer that had made them all sick.
Milk had been used in the sauce, yes, and that
sauce was not made by Eliza. We'll get to that.
When called as a witness, Roger Gadsden also gave the
(14:10):
March seventh eight as the last time that he had
seen the Arsenic in the office. Gadsden also repeated the
story about Eliza urging him not to eat the dumplings,
and that he had eaten what he described as a
walnut size amount with sauce. He stated quote, in consequence
of the distress the family were in, I was sent
off to Missus Turner, the mother. I was very sick
(14:33):
going and coming back. I thought I should die. He
also told the court that Eliza had made dumplings for
the household staff the night before she made them for
the Turners, and that they had been quite different and
no one had gotten sick. The Missus Turner, Gadsden was
mentioning here was Margaret Turner, Roger's mother and Orlabar's wife.
(14:54):
She stated that immediately she went to the house and
found everyone Ill, including Eliza, immediately thought it must be
the dumplings. But she told the court that Eliza told
her quote, not the dumplings, but the milk. Ma'am. Eliza
said that Roger Gadsden hadn't had much dumpling at all,
but quote had licked up three parts of a boat
of sauce with a bit of bread. That sauce had
(15:17):
been mixed not by Eliza but by Charlotte Turner. Seems
like there was a bit of friction between Eliza and Sarah.
Eliza made clear that Sarah had been the one to
bring the milk. So after this sauce issue was brought up,
other members of the household were asked before the judge
whether they had eaten any of the sauce. Robert Turner
(15:39):
said that he had not eaten any sauce, but he
did have dumplings. Sarah Peer, who had not eaten the
dumplings but had eaten some of the beefsteak pie that
had a crust that had been made with the very
same flour, had not gotten sick. One of the pieces
of evidence introduced into the trial was the family's table
(16:00):
from the dinner in question. The knives and forks had tarnished.
They were described as being black or turning black, and
John Marshall testified that arsenic could cause that, but Marshall
had also searched for scientific proof. He cut open the
remaining dumplings and found what he described as white particles throughout.
He put a portion on a polished coin and then
(16:22):
set that coin on a knife blade to hold it
over a candle flame. It smelled of garlic when he
did this, and left a white residue on the metal
after burning, both of which Marshall said were signs of arsenic.
He performed additional tests, burning the white powder that he
found in the dumplings, and once again found that they
smelled of garlic and left the white residue. Eliza's barrister,
(16:46):
Peter Alley, was to be frank kind of a dud.
He didn't ask many questions of the witnesses or try
to reframe anything they said with a simple explanation, or
point out any discrepancies that came up between their arraignment hearing.
In the trial, Eliza was put on the stand to
defend herself. She told the judge and jury quote, I'm
(17:08):
truly innocent of the whole charge. As God is my witness.
I am innocent. Indeed I am. I liked my place.
I was very comfortable. As to my master saying I
did not assist him, I was too ill. I had
no concern with the drawer at all. When I wanted
a piece of paper, I always asked for it. Eliza
(17:30):
defended herself against all of the accusations and claims that
were made against her, even the claim that she had
been partly undressed in the room of the apprentices, which
is what had led to Charlotte's scolding of her several
weeks before the poisonings. Her explanation there was that she
had needed a light in the night and had gone
to their room still dressed, and that the boys, as
(17:53):
she called them, had tried to take liberties with her,
so she had called for Missus Turner. But by the
time Charlotte Turner got to the hall, Eliza was back
in her own room and had started to undress there,
and Missus Turner made assumptions. Yeah, there are some discrepancies
in various statements, even that Charlotte Turner gave that sometimes
(18:16):
she claimed she had seen Eliza in her own room
and other times she said that she had seen her
undressed in the apprentices room, so there's some inconsistency. As
for the day that the fateful dinner was cooked, there was,
according to Eliza, a period she was out of the
kitchen because Charlotte Turner had sent her to the butcher.
(18:38):
That was part of telling her to make a beefsteak pie.
And Eliza stated that she had seen Thomas King, that
is the other apprentice that we haven't really talked about
much yet, leave the kitchen, but he had not answered
her when she asked why he was there, and he
just left. The defense then had five character witnesses testify
to Eliza's good nature, but when one of them stated
(19:01):
that Eliza had told him just a few days before,
in March twenty first, that she was quite happy with
her work and her employers, that testimony was struck down
by the judge is inadmissible. Similarly, a written statement from
Eliza's father, William Fenning, was not allowed to be introduced
to the court. It stated that he had stopped by
(19:22):
the Turner home on March twenty first, the day of
the poisonings, to say hello to his daughter, but was
told by Sarah Peer that Eliza was out on an errand,
and reality Eliza was there, had already eaten the foul
dumplings and was sick at the time. Eliza wanted to
have Thomas King brought to the stand, but the court
(19:43):
was only willing to produce Roger Gadsden. The trial, the verdict,
and the sentence all took place on the same day.
When all of the testimony was done and the judge
began to address the jurors, Eliza's barrister just got up
and left. He didn't even stick around. The jury deliberated
for mere moments before returning a guilty verdict, and Eliza
(20:05):
was sentenced to death. It wasn't until Friday, April fourteenth
that the sentence was formally issued. That's because the session
of the court would record all sentences from the week
on the same day, so that Friday, Eliza and fourteen
other people who had been tried that week formally received
their sentences. Eliza waited in Newgate Prison, hoping that her
(20:27):
verdict could be overturned. When it seemed that no reprieve
was coming, Eliza wrote to Edward, telling him that she
was making her peace with God and that arrangements were
to be made for Edward to visit, but Eliza also
wrote him that she wanted him to find someone else,
quote when I am no more. Perhaps having taken her
(20:49):
words too hastily to heart, Edward was a no show.
When his May fourth visitation day came, Eliza wrote to
him again, this time clearly hurt to have been a band. Meanwhile,
the entire case had become the main focus of all
of England, it seemed, as her trial was reported on
the papers. The way the entire thing had been handled
(21:11):
came under suspicion. Sir John Sylvester, the judge in the case,
was known to form opinions on defendants and then steer
the proceedings in the way he chose. The fact that
the Turners worked in legal circles led people to question
whether things had been slanted against Eliza from the beginning.
There were also detractors who believed the testimony of the
(21:34):
Turners and their apprentice Gadsden, and thought that Eliza was
a cold blooded killer thwarted only by the work of
surgeon John Marshall. As for Eliza's own illness, the explanation
that kind of went around these circles was that she
must have poisoned herself just a little to try to
avoid suspicion. We'll talk more about how people debated Elia's
(21:57):
innocence or guilts, and how pleased for a pre were
made both by her and on her behalf after we
hear from the sponsors that keep stuffy miss in history
class going. Soon reporters were clamoring to meet with Eliza
(22:19):
so that they could share with readers how innocent or
guilty she seemed to them, although most really did seem
to find her to be very unlikely of attempting to
murder anyone. Pamphlets were written pointing out the various holes
in the case. Why would a poisoner take the poison herself,
Why would she not wash the pan that the poison
(22:40):
had been mixed in, Why would she have opted to
go to trial confident that it would be the fastest
way to put the matter behind her, And why was
any positive testimony about Eliza not admitted in court? Why
was Thomas King not called similarly? Why not Sergeant Ogilvie,
who was with the family and Eliza for several hours
(23:01):
before getting John Marshall involved in an effort to bolster
an appeals case, a medic named Thomas William Windsborough performed
his own experiments with arsenic to show that it would
not blacken knives in the way that had been claimed
in the court. Wansborough wrote up his results and sent
them to the Secretary of State, Lord Sidmus. As spring
(23:23):
stretched into early summer, Eliza wrote to the Secretary of
State herself, begging him to intervene. She also wrote to
the High Chancellor of Great Britain, Lord Eldon, similarly requesting
his help and pointing out inconsistencies in the testimony of
Charlotte Turner and the huge gap in the record that
resulted in not calling Thomas King to the stand. She
(23:46):
wrote to the Turners and asked them to save her life.
She wrote to the examine Or to thank the press
for their kindness to her, and to assert her innocence
publicly one more time. The Turners did visit Eliza in
prison at Eliza's request. She also told them that she
wanted Thomas King to come with them, and it seemed
(24:07):
that they believed she was going to confess, but she
did the opposite and once again proclaimed her innocence unwavering.
It kind of seemed like she was hoping that having
all of them there together might prompt someone to actually confess,
because she told them that she hoped the real culprit
would be identified. There was a lot of public support
(24:30):
for Eliza, and quite a few prominent people tried to
advocate on her behalf. A banker named Corbin Lloyd went
to Sir John Sylvester to beg for her execution to
be held off until additional investigations could be completed. There
just was not enough evidence to conclusively prove her guilt
in the eyes of Lloyd and many others, but Sylvester
(24:52):
was really having none of it. A bookseller named J. M.
Richardson's similarly worked to get the attention of Lord Sidmouth
and Sir John Sylvester after a visitor to his home
told him that a member of the Turner household had
been seen in a moment of seeming public madness, threatening
to poison his entire household. That particular piece of information
(25:14):
went from what seemed like a hazy sort of rumor
to a very clear picture when a mister Gibson, who
worked at Corbin and Company, chemist and druggist, went on
record with details about very unsettling statements made in his
place of work by Robert Turner. Gibson recounted the following
quote about the month of September or October last, to
(25:37):
the best of my recollection, mister Turner Junior called at
our house, and, appearing in a wild and deranged state.
I invited him into a back room, where I detained him,
whilst mister Crockford went to his father's. In this interval,
mister Turner Junior used the most violent and incoherent expressions,
such as, my dear Gibson, do for God's sake, get
(25:59):
me secured and confined. For if I am at liberty,
I shall do some mischief. I shall destroy myself and
my wife. I must and shall do it. Something from
above tells me I must do it, and unless I
am prevented, I shall certainly do it. Gibson also stated
that he had, after Eliza's arrest, gone to Orlabar Turner
(26:21):
and asked him not to proceed in trying to have
Eliza prosecuted. Part of the reason was that he believed
if she was executed and Robert was allowed to walk
freely in the world, Robert posed a very great danger,
but once again there was no shift in their position
on this matter. Thomas Winsborough appealed directly to the Turners,
(26:43):
showing them the experiments he had done that called John
Marshall's scientific evidence. It's a question. Allegedly, the family seemed
almost on the verge of considering signing a reprieve request,
but then Marshall and Sylvester, who arrived at the Turner
home as Winsborough was planning his efforts, dismissed all of it.
They suggested to the Turners that if they signed any
(27:06):
document helping Fenning, it would cast doubt on their family. Additionally,
Sylvester told men who spoke out in support of Eliza
Fenning they were only doing it because she was young
and pretty. None of their efforts made a difference. Yeah,
there's some speculation about how magically John Marshall and Sylvester
(27:28):
just churned up at the house while someone was refuting
Marshall's evidence, and their suspicion that someone else in the
household went and told them that he was there, but
we don't know for sure. The judge reported the pending
cases to the Prince Regent on July twentieth, with recommendations
for the carrying out of the sentences. The Prince Regent
(27:48):
was George the Fourth, who ruled as regent from eighteen
eleven to eighteen twenty after King George the Third was
deemed mentally unstable. George the Fourth was crowned as king
in eighteen twenty when George the Third died. So this
step of the judge reporting to the Prince Regent is
sort of like checking in to see if any of
the sentenced would be pardoned or given a stay of execution.
(28:10):
But no such grace was given, and the execution list
was approved by the Prince Regent. On July twenty sixth,
eighteen fifteen, just three short months after the whole ordeal began,
Eliza Fennings stood on the hangman's scaffold. Despite the fact
that it was a rainy day, A large crowd had
turned out to watch this horrific spectacle. One of the
(28:32):
last things Eliza did was whisper into the ear of
the chaplain who stood next to her, which a number
of witnesses believed to be a last minute confession. It
was not. She had turned to the religious leader to
assert one more time that she was innocent. She had
chosen a white muslin dress as a symbol of her innocence,
and according to witness accounts, her last words were I
(28:55):
am innocent. Eliza was buried on July thirty first at
George the Murder Church in the churchyard. Her parents had
to pay fourteen shilling sixpence in executioner's fees before their
daughter's body was released to them for burial. While Eliza
had been laid out for visitation prior to being interred,
a number of visitors, seeing how poor her parents were
(29:18):
and how they had been completely taxed by this whole process,
gave her father money as they passed through. As Eliza's
body was carried from her parents house to her final
resting site, a crowd of thousands is said to have
formed behind the processional. After Eliza's death, her entire story
continued to play out in the press, with journalists speculating
(29:39):
about whether she had or hadn't done it, and there
were plenty of people who held her case up as
an example of the problems with Britain's legal system. Writer
John Watkins became deeply invested in the story and what
he believed, as many did, was a miscarriage of justice.
He made the case that there was no way the
(30:00):
amount of arsenic the doctor had claimed to have found
in the bowl was plausible. There was only a tiny
amount of dough residue left in the bowl, but it
had produced a half teaspoon of arsenic per the doctor's estimation.
A half teaspoon sounds like a very little amount, but
just a few grains of arsenic are enough to kill
a person, So if there had been a half teaspoon
(30:22):
in the leftover dish residue, Watkins calculated that there would
have been about eighteen hundred grains of arsenic in the
dumplings that were consumed. Everyone involved should have been dead
and would not have been able to recover. No matter
how much fluid was prescribed. Just a bite of a
dumpling would have easily killed multiple people. So things just
(30:42):
did not add up. Watkins asserted that the arsenic had
to have been added after the dough was made, suggesting
that someone other than Eliza had sprinkled the arsenic on
the dough after she had mixed the ingredients. For a
brief moment in eighteen twenty nine, seemed that the truth
of what had happened at sixty eight Chancery Lane had
(31:03):
at last come to light. A pamphlet published that year
by the firm of Cowie and Strange was titled Circumstantial
Evidence The Extraordinary Case of Eliza Fenning, who was executed
in eighteen fifteen for attempting to poison the family of
Erlabar Turner by mixing arsenic in yeast dumplings, with a
statement of facts since developed tending to prove her innocence
(31:26):
of the crime. This pamphlet was sold for a penny,
and in its introduction states quote years passed away without
there appearing to be any reason to doubt the justice
of the verdict. But fresh interest has been lately given
to the subject by a report that has been circulated,
charging another with the dreadful deed. So the pamphlet goes
(31:48):
on to state that quote. Within the last few weeks
a paragraph has appeared in many of the newspapers stating
that the son of mister Turner had died lately in
the hospital after confessing that he had mixed the poison
in the food prepared by Eliza Fenning, and was consequently
guilty of the offense for which she suffered but it
(32:08):
also states that no one can verify this information. While
this story started to appear in other papers as well,
in June of eighteen twenty nine that Essex Herald printed
a note that this information was false and that Robert
Turner was in fact still alive. While Eliza's story is
one that evidences biases of class and a very broken
(32:31):
justice system, one of the results is that it actually
got a lot more people thinking about the criminal justice
system and about what would eventually be called forensic science.
In eighteen twenty eight, John Gordon Smith, a former Army surgeon,
became the first professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the University
of London. That was the beginning of forensics education in
(32:54):
the country, and he used Eliza's case in lectures and
provided demonstrations that showed that so called expert testimony was
not always correct. The blackened cutlery issue with something Gordon
Smith was particularly interested in. He used knives soaked in
different substances as examples for his class. One that he
(33:15):
had soaked in arsenic for ten hours showed no signs
of discoloration, but one that he had set in pickled
walnuts for the same period did indeed turn black. The
frustrating story of Eliza Femming. I have much less frustrating
(33:38):
and delightful listener mail oh good. As you may recall,
on a recent episode, I had mentioned that I had
run into one of our listeners at my specialty vet, Tabitha,
and I said, Tabitha resend that because I cannot find it.
I don't know if it just went into the ether
or what, but she did resend it done as an update,
her kiddie's doing very well, and she also mentions that
(34:02):
she makes one of the drinks on Criminalia regularly and
people love it, which makes me very happy in my
dark little heart. But her initial email reads hello ladies.
Over the holidays, I was talking on my eighty five
and a half year old aunt in law and she
was reminiscing about her childhood cat, Totem, adopted in nineteen
forty two, whose tail looked like a Totem pole. She
(34:24):
told me how very many kittens Totem had, all of
which were adopted out to other families. We were contrasting
this idea with our neighborhood Mama Cat, who has gifted
the neighborhood and my house with many lovely kittens, but
we are trying to catch her to retire her kitten
making days. So far we have only caught and spay, neutered, released,
or adopted some of her kittens. Then we started wondering
(34:46):
at what point in the USA people switched from simply
expecting kittens to spaying and neutering their cats. I feel
like all my life, from the seventies until now, there
has been a campaign to spay neuter your pets. Obviously,
it used to be different when who figured out how
to spain, neuter or pets safely. I've heard mention of
(35:06):
horses being a gelding in old novels, but never other
animals being retired from reproduction in ways other than isolation.
This seemed like a research topic you might enjoy looking into.
And then Tabitha shared beautiful pictures of her kiddies who
are just adorable, and I did get to meet her
one of her kiddies while we were at the vet together,
so I'm so glad that he's doing well and all
(35:28):
of these kiddies are beautiful. One thing I wanted to
mention I didn't go into researching all of the neutering stuff,
but I did specifically want to look at because I
can answer it pretty quickly. Trap neuter release programs or
you'll sometimes also see them as trap neuter return programs
or TNVR, which is trap neuter vaccinate programs, which basically,
(35:54):
for anyone that doesn't know what that is, if you're
somewhere where there is a population of feral cats, it's
like cats that are not ever really going to socialize
to be somebody's pet. A lot of people have started
these efforts to capture those cats, get them spade or neutered,
get them vaccinated if possible, and then they release them again.
(36:14):
And in some places this is a really good like
rodent control approach. There are lots of companies that will
do this with animals on their property, etc. There are
lots of people that just do like grassroots efforts. But
it's a cool thing, and it actually has not been
around all that long, so I know there are people
that will argue about it and don't like these programs.
(36:36):
I am obviously not one of them, but just step YI.
This started actually in Great Britain in the nineteen fifties,
where they realize that if they culled a feral population
like if you kill the cats that are there that
you think are a nuisance, or if you just had
them carted away, other cats just move in. But if
you fix them, they'll stay in their territory. They have
(36:59):
population roll and as we said, they'll get rid of
rodents and other pests. So great Britain did this in
the fifties, Denmark started doing it in the nineteen seventies,
and then somewhere in the late seventies or early eighties,
it's estimated, people started trying it here in the US,
although it really didn't become a big thing in the
(37:19):
US until the nineteen nineties, and now it is really
common in a lot of particuliarly a lot of cities
in the US, but all over. I'm a big fan
of the t in Our program. Have tried to do
my best to help some of those out now and again.
One of my favorite cats in the world is a
(37:39):
t in Our failure who my dear friend took pity
on when she was kind of getting mistreated by other cats,
took her inside. She didn't wanted to be touched by
anybody until she hit about fourteen, and then she wanted
to be hugged and petted by every single person she met.
We don't know what happened there, but she's a diet
our cat's mother was a TNR. I don't think they
(38:00):
that was necessarily where they were planning to go with
her at the shelter, but she was clearly not thriving
in the shelter and as a result, her kittens were
not thriving in the shelter, and so she was returned
back to her feral community. And now you have the
babies now have so they're very spoiled at love. They're
(38:23):
very spoiled. Anyway, that was probably a long listener mail segment.
I feel very strong about trabue release programs. So thanks
for coming along for the ride if you stuck around
for it. And again, Tabitha, thank you for resending that email.
If you would like to email us about this or
something else, you can do so at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on Instagram, Twitter,
(38:47):
basically all the all of the interweb socials as missed
in History. And if you would like to subscribe to
the podcast and you haven't, I promise it's the easiest
thing ever. You can just do that on the iHeartRadio app,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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