May 15, 2023 • 37 mins
A lot has happened to John Tawell over the past twenty years. His wife has died and her nurse is now his mistress. Sarah Hart wants more from John Tawell, the father of her two kids. When Tawell marries another woman, Sarah Appleby, Sarah Hart takes a stand. And now, her life might be in danger.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
There's some hidden back there.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah, it always happens to me.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
It changed.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I'm with Gerald and Hilary Fox and their granddaughter Meg
Edwards in Birkhamsted, England. We're exploring the grounds of the
Quaker meetinghouse, where John Tall would meet with fellow Quakers
later in his life. The small cemetery there is well kept,
but we're hoping to look at the little lawn in
the back for a small village. Berkhamsted has a lot
(00:52):
of construction today, so it's hard to talk.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
So I wonder if this is all original?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
My ELPs, what is it?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
The building was made in nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I think there was there was a shadow of something.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Maybe the eighth look like a yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I just obstruct by how modest this is compared to
the church. I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
That is the thing that click is very, very.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Simpl This meeting house and its property is so important
because John Taull would stroll these same grounds more than
one hundred and seventy years earlier. No amount of research
in an archive can replace that. But I can't always
control the environment.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
See what.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It was too noisy, so I tried to move to
another location further in the back by the bushes. But
no luck. None of this is working out. And perhaps
I've received an omen because I got my first injury
on the job.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Oh I grabbed a.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Bush over there and it oh, yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
I was trying to move for this.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
It's okay.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It's stings.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
See it's oh.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I just for something in there, see it?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Good tho, Yes, there's a there.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
You need tweezes to get it out.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I have tweezers at home, but you both sweet, thank you.
After I recovered from the thorn, I left the meetinghouse
with the Foxes and Meg. Now we need to go
back in time and actually leave the country. John Taull's
story continues in Australia in eighteen twenty three. By then,
(02:45):
John Tall, the convicted forger and suspected thief, had been
building a lovely life in a penal colony in Sydney
for almost a decade. He had established the first Quaker
house in the country. He sat on the board of
a bank. His pharmacies and various real estate deals led
to a lucrative importing exporting business, and Tall's family lived
(03:08):
in a lovely home. That year he had sent for
his wife Mary and his two sons, John and William.
Little is known about the young men, but Tall's great
great granddaughter, Hilary Fox, has done a bit of research
on their life in Australia.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
The boys were educated at Doctor Halleran Sydney Grammar School.
In eighteen twenty four, William Henry won a book prize
and John Downing a silver medal for Latin.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Five years later, the country's census gave details about John
Tall's pharmacy business and his other son, John Junior.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
In eighteen twenty eight, Ambrose Fostport the business. By the
time of that year's sinceus retired apothecary, John Tull was
living in Castlereah Street with his wife, and the seventeen
year old youngest son, William John Junior, was in England
and studying in medicine. That that was the only reference
I've ever seen for those children.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Clearly, both of the younger Tall men were bright and
their father had expected much of them. That's what their
education tells us. Tall's fourteen year prison sentence expired in
eighteen twenty eight and author Carol Baxter says he could
have taken the family back to England immediately. I asked, Carol,
when most people who were convicted of crimes were allowed
(04:29):
to leave the penal colony? Was it when they served
out their sentence.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
They had different ways of ending a sentence. Your sentence
could be time expired, in which case with a seven
year or a fourteen year sentence. Once the sentence expired,
yes you were free to do whatever you wanted, but
you would have to pay your passage back to the UK.
And most of them didn't have enough money to pay
their passage, so essentially it was a life sentence.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
But Tall did have the money to leave, and yet
he stayed for another ten years because he was so
successful in Australia. But by eighteen thirty eight it was
time to return to England. Finally, the Talls packed up
their belongings.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
And John and his family actually went back to the UK.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
For the return trip. The Tolls traveled aboard a much
nicer ship than the one John Tall had taken to
Australia two decades before. John Tall was returning to England
wealthier than before, much wealthier and more confident, but still sneaky.
(05:39):
He had become a significant figure in Quakerism in Australia
after he had been cast out by the Quakers in England.
So now the question was would he return to the
Quakers when he got home.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
He'd really only just been accepted when he was booted out.
The astonishing thing, though, is after a short time of
absence where he got over his humiliation, he licked his wounds,
so to speak, he went back, and that is extraordinary.
He went back and attended their services.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Carol Baxter is very skeptical about Toll's commitment to Quakerism.
She thinks it was just a shield against the suspicion
around his suspicious behavior.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
He continued wearing their attire because again the attire was
the mask that told everyone he was a good man,
and it hid the fact that underneath he really wasn't
so good.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
He was a classic Jeckel and Hyde character.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Really, But historian Estzala isn't so sure. She's surprised that
he continued to be committed to Quakerism.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
What I find really interesting is that you would want
to people do still in this period, move in and
out of different denominations of different religions, quite flexibly, and
you can stay with one religion for a few years
and then you change and you do something else. So
he does seem to have idea to fay very strongly
with Quakerism.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So Tall had many religions to choose from, yet he
returned to the group that had rejected him. Perhaps he
thought that his wealth would change things and his status
would be resurrected, but it wasn't. The Tolls were once
again allowed to attend meetings at the Quaker House, but
they weren't officially members. That must have been so humiliating
(07:26):
for him. But it would get so much worse. Death
was coming for the people closest to him, both from
illness and murder.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Unfortunately, it was the time of things like the cholera epidemic,
which ravaged, of course many parts of London and things.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Tuberculosis was such a problem.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Did you know that in the two hundred years between
eighteen hundred and two thousand, tuberculosis killed one billion people
in the earth's population. One seventh of the world's population
were killed by tuberculosis.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Crime historian Angela Buckley says people in Victorian England were
frightened of contracting deadly diseases like tuberculosis.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
I've been doing to working Manchester on this on quack doctors,
and the mortality rate around this time was as age eighteen.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
For working class people.
Speaker 7 (08:24):
So people were terrified about their health and terrified about
catching cholera or typhus or dysentery. You know that would
just wipe them out, wipe out communities.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Tuberculosis again, the disease was also called consumption. John Tall
had gotten it in Australia, probably at the hospital where
he worked. He had been really sick. Consumption was incredibly contagious.
Every cough emitted a spray of the disease which was
targeting another host. And now tuberculosis was spreading across England.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
TV was a big part of John's John's youngest son, William,
got TB and succumbed to it.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Just like that, William was gone. His father seemed devastated,
and then just a few months after returning from Australia,
John Toll's wife, Mary and John Junior also developed that
same cough and chest pain and fever.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
His wife Mary also had TB and his eldest son
at some point acquired TB and the doctors advised them
to return to Australia because the environment was better for.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
A TB patient.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
So they came out to Australia and they were back
in New South Wales.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
But despite the change in climate, Mary continued to struggle
with TB, as did Toll's son. Toll seemed to care
for them both deeply, as illustrated by his willingness to
return to Australia. He could be loving at times, but
other times he was terrible. John Junior was still struggling
(10:03):
with tuberculosis when he had a conflict with his father,
and John Tall reacted.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Cruelly his eldest son.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
He treated in many ways quite appallingly. So the guy
was suffering from TV and he went to his father's
place to plead for money or whatever, and they found
him actually out in the street, on the ground, literally
on the ground. His father wouldn't let him in, so
he was a very hard man.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
It didn't help his mood that the Australian climate seemed
to have little effect on Mary and their son's illness.
Soon John Junior died. It was a dark time for them,
and Tall no longer had his businesses in Australia, so
he and Mary decided to return to England once again
(10:53):
for the second time in less than a.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Year, started to sell everything.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
He'd sold his pharmacy before this, back in the late twenties,
and he started to sell everything up with the idea
of returning to the UK and not coming back.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
The Tolls traveled back home with their family even smaller.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
John returned to London and they rented.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Out a very exclusive property near Madam to Sawords.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Tuberculosis could have killed John Toll. It had taken the
lives of both of his children, and now back in England,
his wife continued her battle with the disease. He began
treating Mary with medicines. Remember he was an excellent druggist.
I told Meg Edwards that I thought this was a
(11:54):
pretty big sacrifice for Tolldamke because t B was so
contagious and he risked getting sick again, But she didn't
quite see it that way.
Speaker 8 (12:04):
Again, this is another thing of I think it probably
made sense to him, whether it's convenience, whether it's.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
Maybe a little bit of arrogance.
Speaker 8 (12:11):
He probably thought he was the best person for the
job to look after her.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
He knew what he.
Speaker 8 (12:15):
Was talking about to an extent. He certainly knew where
to find particular medicines. He looked after her to the
point of where it made sense to bring in other people.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
John Tall's wife seemed to be dying and he continued
to oversee her treatment. Eventually, her illness would set off
a chain of events that would end in murder. But
it's definitely not what you think. John Tall needed to
(12:51):
make an income in London and he couldn't afford to
catch tuberculosis from Mary, so he made a decision that
would change the direction of his life. He asked a
friend for a recommendation for some professional help.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
They brought in a nursemaid to look after his wife.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Meg Edwards says the woman was bright and reliable.
Speaker 8 (13:12):
He brings in Sarah Hart, who is a young nurse
who's been recommended to him.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Sarah would take care of Mary as she struggled with TV,
allowing John to work. This might seem like a cliche setup,
a man bringing in a younger woman to help his
dying wife. It doesn't sound like it'll go very well,
but Carol Baxter says Sarah didn't seem to have any
ulterior motives.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
She wasn't the gold digger type at all, fluttering her eyelashes.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
I think she was just a sweet person.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So I just got the sense of her as being
a genuinely nice, caring person who was the ideal person
to act as a nurse.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
And though he was about thirty years her senior, John Hall,
was attractive. He had a nice house, a good income,
and he seemed kind. He would make an excellent husband.
But still at this point it seemed innocent on both
their parts. Carol Baxter thinks that too.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
I had no sense of him having cheated on his wife,
and I can't imagine that Sarah would have done that either.
I thought she had morality and integrity, so I think
she was a decent human being.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
It was late eighteen thirty eight, just a few months
after the Tolls had returned from Australia for the second time.
Sarah Hart cared for Mary Tall while her husband gave
his wife medicine. Caring for someone with TB was a
dangerous job for both of them. Medical researchers in the
early eighteen hundreds didn't quite understand how tuberculosis worked.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
The problem was, in those days, they didn't realize that
TB was a bacterial infection. So they didn't realize that
every cough or sneeze sent sprays of millions of TV
into the air. Western medicine really only came into its
own from probably the eighteen fifties onwards.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
There was a lot of herbal medicine in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Through herbs and other things, they did manage to solve
a lot of medical problems.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
With the development of Western medicine.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
They started to understand germ theory, and they understood how
tuberculosis was passed on from one person to another. So
there probably wasn't the same sense of contracting it as
a nurse because they didn't understand how it was transmitted.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Sarah Hart took diligent care of Mary, but eventually tuberculosis
proved to be too much for Mary's body. She died
in December of eighteen thirty eight. John seemed to mourn
his wife's death. Despite the prevalence of death from disease
(16:06):
in Victorian England, it still felt like a shock. Just
a short while before, he had been a family man,
and now he was without a wife and without both
of his sons. So after Mary died, John Tall did
what so many people do when they find themselves drifting
through life alone, he turned to the closest person to him.
(16:31):
He and Sarah Hart, his wife's nurse, soon began an
affair that lasted for years.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
So I think was probably in the aftermath of Mary's death,
where John was probably very lonely because he was a
convict returned to England with wealth and money.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Tall had been respected in Australia, but in England he
wasn't high society anymore like he had hoped to be.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
The Quakers were letting him in, but he still wasn't
accepted as a Quaker that the people he associated with
from a business point of view, knew his background. His
financial situation was heavily tied up with the import export business,
and to do that he needed to go down to
the coffee shops where he got the newspapers, and he
(17:21):
met with the shipping agents, and of course they all
knew he was a transported convict.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
So he had that indelible stain on him.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
So you think he was lonely.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And Sarah was probably lonely too, and Sarah was available,
and things just happened. From the dates of birth of
the children, I got no sense of anything.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Possibly happening beforehand.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
What did Sarah Hort see in John Tole?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
She was probably so sweet, and perhaps she saw John
in the aftermath of his wife's death, where she stayed
on as his housekeeper. Perhaps she saw him as stepping
stone to marriage.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So they ended up in a period of what two years,
where they have these two children or is it even
longer than that?
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Not much more than two years, so we're pretty close.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
One after another, a boy, Alfred and then a little
girl Sarah.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
This wasn't a flang. This relationship, if you could call it,
that went on for seven years. But if Sarah Hart
were thinking of marrying John Tall, it was wishful thinking.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
I can't possibly see that he would ever have considered
marrying Sarah.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
She didn't offer him anything.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
He wanted to succeed professionally and with the Quakers, and
she wasn't the sort of person who offered him money,
opportunity or anything else. So no, I cannot possibly see
him as ever having wanted to marry her.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Sarah was attractive and kind, but she had no standing
in the community. She could do nothing to elevate him
with the Quakers. Would never marry her, But John Tall
did provide for Sarah and their two children.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
He started off with them being in London and he
moved them around a couple of places in London.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Tall didn't abandon them as many men would, but that's
not saying much. Though he did visit them regularly and
had meals with them. He and Sarah Hart carried on
their affair, but Sarah was told to stay quiet about
their relationship. She and the kids had to remain a secret.
(19:33):
Tall couldn't risk his other life being exposed to the Quakers.
He had recently been invited back, not as a member,
but he was welcome to attend meetings despite his dubious past.
So Tall agreed to keep Sarah and the children in
a secret home. He paid her child support, which was
a modest amount one pound a week, but he was
(19:55):
very clear she must stay silent. Discretion was exp and
disobedience would not be tolerated. Away from Sarah Hart and
(20:19):
the children, John Tall searched for a new life.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I mean they say most men marry within a year
of their wife's death, because I'm never quite sure whether
it's for sex, or whether it's for a cook, or
whether it's just they're not capable of being on their own.
I'm not quite sure women seem to not have that
same need to marry, and so maybe in a sense, Sarah,
because she was his housekeeper, she provided all those means,
(20:46):
you know, the bed and board sort of things. She cooked,
she cleaned, she filled his bed.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
After Mary's death, Tall's affair with Sarah Hart wouldn't stop
him from marrying someone other than her. He needed someone
who could help him both financial and in the Quaker society.
The year following his first wife's death, he found her.
Despite secretly sleeping with his former nurse, Sarah Appleby was attractive,
(21:12):
kind and bright, and a birthright Quaker. They met in Birkhamsted,
where I've been visiting with Hillary and Gerald and Meg.
I asked crime historian Angela Buckley about that area in
the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
It would be quite rural, Yeah, absolutely, mostly farming communities,
small market towns, so quite big difference. Actually, if you've
been successful building pharmacies, you know, creating a chain or
creating a business, to go back to Birkhamsted will be
quite sleepy.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Sarah Appleby might have lived a simple life away from London,
but she had higher ambitions.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
She was a very smart, capable woman, and she met
his intellectual aspiration. She was also a Quaker, so she
met his Quaker aspirations as well. She would help him
get back into the fold, so to speak.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
She was very respectable.
Speaker 8 (22:09):
She was from a very good quote unquote Quaker family,
Quaker home.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I asked Carol Baxter why such a seemingly wonderful woman
would marry John Tall. I didn't understand why that would happen.
He's been disowned, he's been sent to a penal colony,
he's struggling financially. She doesn't know about Sarah number one.
But what would possess a woman who clearly brings something
(22:36):
to the table to take this man when there are
probably other nice Quaker men around.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
You're right, there must have been something for him to
appeal to that sort of a person. Again, I guess
he must have had that that mask, because she clearly
loved him. I mean, we've got letters and things to him,
and they were clearly devoted to each other.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
So he really did have two sides.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
I guess he was split, you know, very much split
in terms of who he was the Jekyl and Hyde character,
the doctor Jekyl is the nice side of him, and
that was the Doctor Jekyll's side that saw and appealed
to Sarah Appleby. It was the Mistress Hyde side that
was the Sarah Hart side.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Meg Edwards says, there might be a simpler explanation.
Speaker 8 (23:30):
You know, she's been married before, and she has a
child that certainly aunt an interesting element of Perhaps that's
why she it wasn't quite so big of a leap
to marry a Quaker who was out of favor.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Sarah Appleby also had ambitions when she met John Toll
in eighteen thirty nine, she was teaching young girls to
help them become self sufficient women.
Speaker 8 (23:51):
She was setting up a school at the time for
young girls for women.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Women's education in the early nineteenth century was not a given.
Speaker 8 (24:01):
I think that's one of the things that attracted her
to John was that he had similar values of championing
women's education. Yeah, so she was clearly an interesting time
in her life setting up the school in berkhams Stead,
and that's when they met and they got married. He
was very much flip flopping in and out of the
(24:21):
Quaker church, in and out of the Quaker favor.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Sarah Appleby's school in Birkhamsted was a boarding school in
a day school. Historian Angela Buckley says Appleby was a
pioneer in the area of women's education.
Speaker 7 (24:37):
Well, nobody was required to be educated until eighteen seventy,
you know, it wasn't statutory to eighteen seventy anyway. And
if usually if anybody was educated, it would be boys.
And the kind of things that will be open for
girls would be things like industrial schools or places where
girls you know, who perhaps live a precarious existence, or
younger married mothers, those kind of girls that not usually
(24:58):
a boarding school unless it was again for profit.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
And John Tall seemed very supportive of his wife's venture.
Speaker 8 (25:05):
His values were on the surface at least, very in
line with the Quaker values of philanthropy and giving and education,
particularly women's education, which is where he came into his
wife Sarah's life. When she was setting up the school
in Berkhamsted.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The Talls lived in a building which still stands. It
was called the Red House, it's now the Red and
White House. Hillary and Gerald and Meg took me there
during our tour of Birkhamsted. So tell me where the
history this is where Tall?
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Well, yes, this is where Sarah tool had her school,
and I think he must have decided she would be
a very good prospect to marry. He ingratiated himself in
the town. He liked the respect he was getting walking
about in the.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Quaker garb have this entire house. But do you know what, Yes,
I think.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
So, because it was a business.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I was impressed with its size. Well, this is a
much bigger house than I thought it would be. I'll
take some pictures here in the mint. Yes, because this
is this is very large. I mean children that they
have when they lived in this house.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Sarah had her daughter from her previous marriage, and Lisa,
and then they had two of their own, and then
they had all the boarders and the day pupils up.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
To twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
They were, so it was a big concern.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Was that a successful business?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yes, I believe so.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It's clear from the size of the Red House that
Sarah Appleby must have been successful with her school because
her husband was not especially successful with his import export business.
Speaker 8 (26:49):
What is amazing is that she clearly was the more
successful one of the two, or she was certainly self
sufficient to an extent, and under the backdrop of nineteenth
century England.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Incredible successful for a woman.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And he was bringing money to Sarah Hart and their
kids every six weeks, which continued to be a financial
strain once Tall married Sarah appleby Sarah Hort and their
children became a bit more worrisome. But John Tall kept
more than a few secrets from his wife.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
So she didn't realize they were the financial problems. And
the financial problems really only started around this time there
was an economic depression in Australia. Well, most of his
finances were tied up with land over there and import exporting, and.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Of course if you've got a drought, which is typical of.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Our problems, there are issues then with the sheep and
cattle and making money off them because because they die
because they haven't got any fodder. For what years he
started as the early forties continue probably about forty two
forty three. That was when he really started to have
financial problems. And he married the second wife in eighteen
(28:03):
forty one.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
John Toll was sneaky, subtly sneaky. Even with his new wife.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
She didn't know he was struggling financially.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
She made a very good prenup agreement that benefited her
and her daughter.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
They had prenup agreements.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Not described in that way. I mean, essentially we're looking
at the old Dowies sort of situation.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
He agreed in writing.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
To support them blah blah blah, but in fact he
never actually acted on it.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
He was going to protect his money.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Tall was having problems with his business. He owed money
in England, His new wife, Sarah Appleby, was supporting them financially,
and his mistress and their two children were becoming more
expensive living in the city. Tall soon decided that Sarah,
Hart Alfred and Little Sarah needed to move to the
countryside and away from London where he might be spotted
(28:56):
by business associates. With his marriage to Sarah Appleby, John
Tall had a lot to lose. They had children together too,
and now the financial pressure pressed on him.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
He eventually decided that there were some risks of having
them in London, and that's when he sent her out
to Slough initially and then out to Salt Hill, which
is not far from Slough and Slough, for those who
don't know, is not far from Windsor Castle.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Tall rented Sarah and the children a cottage in the
village of Slough in the district of Salt Hill, just
like in London. He would occasionally come to visit, even
after he married Sarah Appleby. I asked Carol Baxter how
he got away with this for years? Were neighbors not suspicious?
Speaker 3 (29:54):
People didn't know that he was the father because Sarah's
story was that he was her old master and she
had married his son, and his son had gone abroad.
So the son used to send money back to his father,
the Quaker John Tall, who would then bring it out
to her every six weeks or so to help her
(30:17):
support herself and the children. And of course the man
turned up every time dressed in his Quaker gear.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
And he was an older man.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I mean, he was about thirty years older than Sarah,
So there wasn't any Perhaps people had their suspicions, but
I never even got that idea that they really had
the suspicions that he might have been the father of
the children.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
But there was clearly strain. Sarah Hart and John Tall
argued she knew he had married someone else, He wasn't
affectionate to the children. In fact, they had no idea
who he really was.
Speaker 8 (30:56):
From the accounts of what Little Alfred said or was
over heard saying about John Tool, doesn't sound like they
were familiar with him at all, doesn't sound like they
saw him as a father figure or someone.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
He was just someone who dropped in, gave money, and left.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
So this was not his second family. He was not
a kind father.
Speaker 8 (31:18):
Little Alfred says is overheard saying something along the lines
of you're a very bad man. You're a very naughty man.
So I don't think he saw it as you know,
his family on the side. I think he saw it
as his mistress and perhaps his two mistakes.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
And John Tall always wore the Quaker garb on those
visits everywhere. Really, that point is important for later I
asked historian Estrazala about the clothing, what exactly made Quaker
clothes unique?
Speaker 6 (31:48):
So in the time of Tall, so the Quaker garb
is not it's not as specific uniform, it's not as
distinct as like maybe Orthodox or for Orthodox Jews were
dressed today. But it would be a dark colors, nothing flashy.
Again like his definition saying no ribbons nor whatever, like
it doesn't really mean very much to us.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
No adornments, no.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
Adornments, Yeah right, so just simple, dark, modest.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
In the early eighteen forties, John Tall dressed the part
of the pious Quaker, which included the clothing. Gerald Fox
says that for a while, Tall seemed to be heading
in a positive direction.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
He was on the straight and narrow path.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
He didn't need to do criminal things.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
He didn't need to do fraud or anything.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
It established himself.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Gerald's granddaughter, Meg Edwards, is a little less generous.
Speaker 8 (32:34):
I think I have a bit of a different opinion
to my grandpa about the kind of person that he was.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
It's obviously very hard to get.
Speaker 8 (32:42):
An accurate depiction of someone in the nineteenth century, but
I think he was clearly very driven.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
I think he was very intelligent. I think he was
an opportunist.
Speaker 8 (32:52):
I don't think he was necessarily as scheming as a
lot of people would suggest, but I think he definitely
was seeing things that he wanted to better himself in life.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
Higher positions, more money.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Men keeping mistresses is obviously nothing new. Historian Angela Buckley
says it was almost the norm in Victorian England.
Speaker 7 (33:15):
It was very common, particularly for hy and men with
high positions in society, to have a mistress's and to
keep them out of the way. So he's behaving fairly typically,
I would say, from a middle class Victorian gentleman. I
guess that's how he's styling himself.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
Isn't he.
Speaker 7 (33:31):
They kept her Sarah out the way by moving her
to Slough because it's quite a distance, but.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
John Tall continued to visit Sarah Hart. They continued to
have their affair. He controlled everything, including her name. Carol
Baxter says that Sarah Hart wasn't her real name. So
back to this is Sarah Lawrence, right, do you say
Lawrence or Heart or do you go back and forth.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Or look, I just call it Sarah Hart. Her initial
name was Lawrence, and then her mother married a handler,
so she became a headler and the Heart name was
a name attached by John Tall to hide her true identity.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
John Tall clearly cared mostly about himself, and it seems
that Sarah Hart wanted more from him. But it wasn't
his love she was demanding. It was his money. And
John Tall was very angry.
Speaker 8 (34:32):
I think he saw Sarah as increasingly inconvenient to him.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
It's not just the anger that's concerning Meg. Edwards says
Tall might have felt like he was above the law
for much of his life.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
He was probably quite arrogant, thought he was above the law.
Speaker 8 (34:49):
Those fourteen years in Australia or those that he was
sentenced to anyway, didn't do much to dissuade him from
committing further crimes.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And that put the people closest to him in a
lot of danger. On the next episode of tenfold more
Wicked on exactly right.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Suddenly Sarah had gone from being a pawn to being
almost a queen.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
She had started to have a voice, and she made.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
That voice clear in her decision to ask him for money,
and that was when she became a threat. So that
was when everything started to unravel.
Speaker 8 (35:40):
Basically, he gets onto a train from Puttington Station and
goes to Salt Hill.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Gets off the train and he walks to Sarah's place.
At Salt Hill, people see him. It's January, so yes,
it's dark, but there are lights around the railway station.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
He is distinctive. He's seen. He heads to Sarah's place.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
If you love a good real ghost story, my audio
book The Ghost Club is available wherever you get your
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(36:33):
check out my book All That Is Wicked, which is
a deep dive into the criminal mind. This has been
an exactly right Tenfold War Media production producers Jason Whaling,
Alexis Emirosi and Natalie Wrinn. Editors Jason Whaling and Kate
Winkler Dawson, researcher Kate Winkler Dawson, sound designer Eric Friend,
(36:56):
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Karen Kilgarriff and Daniel Kramer. Follow us on Instagram and
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(37:17):
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This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
There's some hidden back there.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah, it always happens to me.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
It changed.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I'm with Gerald and Hilary Fox and their granddaughter Meg
Edwards in Birkhamsted, England. We're exploring the grounds of the
Quaker meetinghouse, where John Tall would meet with fellow Quakers
later in his life. The small cemetery there is well kept,
but we're hoping to look at the little lawn in
the back for a small village. Berkhamsted has a lot
(00:52):
of construction today, so it's hard to talk.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
So I wonder if this is all original?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
My ELPs, what is it?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
The building was made in nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I think there was there was a shadow of something.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Maybe the eighth look like a yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I just obstruct by how modest this is compared to
the church. I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
That is the thing that click is very, very.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Simpl This meeting house and its property is so important
because John Taull would stroll these same grounds more than
one hundred and seventy years earlier. No amount of research
in an archive can replace that. But I can't always
control the environment.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
See what.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It was too noisy, so I tried to move to
another location further in the back by the bushes. But
no luck. None of this is working out. And perhaps
I've received an omen because I got my first injury
on the job.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Oh I grabbed a.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Bush over there and it oh, yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
I was trying to move for this.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
It's okay.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It's stings.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
See it's oh.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I just for something in there, see it?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Good tho, Yes, there's a there.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
You need tweezes to get it out.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I have tweezers at home, but you both sweet, thank you.
After I recovered from the thorn, I left the meetinghouse
with the Foxes and Meg. Now we need to go
back in time and actually leave the country. John Taull's
story continues in Australia in eighteen twenty three. By then,
(02:45):
John Tall, the convicted forger and suspected thief, had been
building a lovely life in a penal colony in Sydney
for almost a decade. He had established the first Quaker
house in the country. He sat on the board of
a bank. His pharmacies and various real estate deals led
to a lucrative importing exporting business, and Tall's family lived
(03:08):
in a lovely home. That year he had sent for
his wife Mary and his two sons, John and William.
Little is known about the young men, but Tall's great
great granddaughter, Hilary Fox, has done a bit of research
on their life in Australia.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
The boys were educated at Doctor Halleran Sydney Grammar School.
In eighteen twenty four, William Henry won a book prize
and John Downing a silver medal for Latin.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Five years later, the country's census gave details about John
Tall's pharmacy business and his other son, John Junior.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
In eighteen twenty eight, Ambrose Fostport the business. By the
time of that year's sinceus retired apothecary, John Tull was
living in Castlereah Street with his wife, and the seventeen
year old youngest son, William John Junior, was in England
and studying in medicine. That that was the only reference
I've ever seen for those children.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Clearly, both of the younger Tall men were bright and
their father had expected much of them. That's what their
education tells us. Tall's fourteen year prison sentence expired in
eighteen twenty eight and author Carol Baxter says he could
have taken the family back to England immediately. I asked, Carol,
when most people who were convicted of crimes were allowed
(04:29):
to leave the penal colony? Was it when they served
out their sentence.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
They had different ways of ending a sentence. Your sentence
could be time expired, in which case with a seven
year or a fourteen year sentence. Once the sentence expired,
yes you were free to do whatever you wanted, but
you would have to pay your passage back to the UK.
And most of them didn't have enough money to pay
their passage, so essentially it was a life sentence.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
But Tall did have the money to leave, and yet
he stayed for another ten years because he was so
successful in Australia. But by eighteen thirty eight it was
time to return to England. Finally, the Talls packed up
their belongings.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
And John and his family actually went back to the UK.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
For the return trip. The Tolls traveled aboard a much
nicer ship than the one John Tall had taken to
Australia two decades before. John Tall was returning to England
wealthier than before, much wealthier and more confident, but still sneaky.
(05:39):
He had become a significant figure in Quakerism in Australia
after he had been cast out by the Quakers in England.
So now the question was would he return to the
Quakers when he got home.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
He'd really only just been accepted when he was booted out.
The astonishing thing, though, is after a short time of
absence where he got over his humiliation, he licked his wounds,
so to speak, he went back, and that is extraordinary.
He went back and attended their services.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Carol Baxter is very skeptical about Toll's commitment to Quakerism.
She thinks it was just a shield against the suspicion
around his suspicious behavior.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
He continued wearing their attire because again the attire was
the mask that told everyone he was a good man,
and it hid the fact that underneath he really wasn't
so good.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
He was a classic Jeckel and Hyde character.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Really, But historian Estzala isn't so sure. She's surprised that
he continued to be committed to Quakerism.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
What I find really interesting is that you would want
to people do still in this period, move in and
out of different denominations of different religions, quite flexibly, and
you can stay with one religion for a few years
and then you change and you do something else. So
he does seem to have idea to fay very strongly
with Quakerism.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So Tall had many religions to choose from, yet he
returned to the group that had rejected him. Perhaps he
thought that his wealth would change things and his status
would be resurrected, but it wasn't. The Tolls were once
again allowed to attend meetings at the Quaker House, but
they weren't officially members. That must have been so humiliating
(07:26):
for him. But it would get so much worse. Death
was coming for the people closest to him, both from
illness and murder.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Unfortunately, it was the time of things like the cholera epidemic,
which ravaged, of course many parts of London and things.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Tuberculosis was such a problem.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Did you know that in the two hundred years between
eighteen hundred and two thousand, tuberculosis killed one billion people
in the earth's population. One seventh of the world's population
were killed by tuberculosis.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Crime historian Angela Buckley says people in Victorian England were
frightened of contracting deadly diseases like tuberculosis.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
I've been doing to working Manchester on this on quack doctors,
and the mortality rate around this time was as age eighteen.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
For working class people.
Speaker 7 (08:24):
So people were terrified about their health and terrified about
catching cholera or typhus or dysentery. You know that would
just wipe them out, wipe out communities.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Tuberculosis again, the disease was also called consumption. John Tall
had gotten it in Australia, probably at the hospital where
he worked. He had been really sick. Consumption was incredibly contagious.
Every cough emitted a spray of the disease which was
targeting another host. And now tuberculosis was spreading across England.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
TV was a big part of John's John's youngest son, William,
got TB and succumbed to it.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Just like that, William was gone. His father seemed devastated,
and then just a few months after returning from Australia,
John Toll's wife, Mary and John Junior also developed that
same cough and chest pain and fever.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
His wife Mary also had TB and his eldest son
at some point acquired TB and the doctors advised them
to return to Australia because the environment was better for.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
A TB patient.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
So they came out to Australia and they were back
in New South Wales.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
But despite the change in climate, Mary continued to struggle
with TB, as did Toll's son. Toll seemed to care
for them both deeply, as illustrated by his willingness to
return to Australia. He could be loving at times, but
other times he was terrible. John Junior was still struggling
(10:03):
with tuberculosis when he had a conflict with his father,
and John Tall reacted.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Cruelly his eldest son.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
He treated in many ways quite appallingly. So the guy
was suffering from TV and he went to his father's
place to plead for money or whatever, and they found
him actually out in the street, on the ground, literally
on the ground. His father wouldn't let him in, so
he was a very hard man.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
It didn't help his mood that the Australian climate seemed
to have little effect on Mary and their son's illness.
Soon John Junior died. It was a dark time for them,
and Tall no longer had his businesses in Australia, so
he and Mary decided to return to England once again
(10:53):
for the second time in less than a.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Year, started to sell everything.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
He'd sold his pharmacy before this, back in the late twenties,
and he started to sell everything up with the idea
of returning to the UK and not coming back.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
The Tolls traveled back home with their family even smaller.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
John returned to London and they rented.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Out a very exclusive property near Madam to Sawords.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Tuberculosis could have killed John Toll. It had taken the
lives of both of his children, and now back in England,
his wife continued her battle with the disease. He began
treating Mary with medicines. Remember he was an excellent druggist.
I told Meg Edwards that I thought this was a
(11:54):
pretty big sacrifice for Tolldamke because t B was so
contagious and he risked getting sick again, But she didn't
quite see it that way.
Speaker 8 (12:04):
Again, this is another thing of I think it probably
made sense to him, whether it's convenience, whether it's.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
Maybe a little bit of arrogance.
Speaker 8 (12:11):
He probably thought he was the best person for the
job to look after her.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
He knew what he.
Speaker 8 (12:15):
Was talking about to an extent. He certainly knew where
to find particular medicines. He looked after her to the
point of where it made sense to bring in other people.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
John Tall's wife seemed to be dying and he continued
to oversee her treatment. Eventually, her illness would set off
a chain of events that would end in murder. But
it's definitely not what you think. John Tall needed to
(12:51):
make an income in London and he couldn't afford to
catch tuberculosis from Mary, so he made a decision that
would change the direction of his life. He asked a
friend for a recommendation for some professional help.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
They brought in a nursemaid to look after his wife.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Meg Edwards says the woman was bright and reliable.
Speaker 8 (13:12):
He brings in Sarah Hart, who is a young nurse
who's been recommended to him.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Sarah would take care of Mary as she struggled with TV,
allowing John to work. This might seem like a cliche setup,
a man bringing in a younger woman to help his
dying wife. It doesn't sound like it'll go very well,
but Carol Baxter says Sarah didn't seem to have any
ulterior motives.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
She wasn't the gold digger type at all, fluttering her eyelashes.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
I think she was just a sweet person.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So I just got the sense of her as being
a genuinely nice, caring person who was the ideal person
to act as a nurse.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
And though he was about thirty years her senior, John Hall,
was attractive. He had a nice house, a good income,
and he seemed kind. He would make an excellent husband.
But still at this point it seemed innocent on both
their parts. Carol Baxter thinks that too.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
I had no sense of him having cheated on his wife,
and I can't imagine that Sarah would have done that either.
I thought she had morality and integrity, so I think
she was a decent human being.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
It was late eighteen thirty eight, just a few months
after the Tolls had returned from Australia for the second time.
Sarah Hart cared for Mary Tall while her husband gave
his wife medicine. Caring for someone with TB was a
dangerous job for both of them. Medical researchers in the
early eighteen hundreds didn't quite understand how tuberculosis worked.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
The problem was, in those days, they didn't realize that
TB was a bacterial infection. So they didn't realize that
every cough or sneeze sent sprays of millions of TV
into the air. Western medicine really only came into its
own from probably the eighteen fifties onwards.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
There was a lot of herbal medicine in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Through herbs and other things, they did manage to solve
a lot of medical problems.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
With the development of Western medicine.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
They started to understand germ theory, and they understood how
tuberculosis was passed on from one person to another. So
there probably wasn't the same sense of contracting it as
a nurse because they didn't understand how it was transmitted.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Sarah Hart took diligent care of Mary, but eventually tuberculosis
proved to be too much for Mary's body. She died
in December of eighteen thirty eight. John seemed to mourn
his wife's death. Despite the prevalence of death from disease
(16:06):
in Victorian England, it still felt like a shock. Just
a short while before, he had been a family man,
and now he was without a wife and without both
of his sons. So after Mary died, John Tall did
what so many people do when they find themselves drifting
through life alone, he turned to the closest person to him.
(16:31):
He and Sarah Hart, his wife's nurse, soon began an
affair that lasted for years.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
So I think was probably in the aftermath of Mary's death,
where John was probably very lonely because he was a
convict returned to England with wealth and money.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Tall had been respected in Australia, but in England he
wasn't high society anymore like he had hoped to be.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
The Quakers were letting him in, but he still wasn't
accepted as a Quaker that the people he associated with
from a business point of view, knew his background. His
financial situation was heavily tied up with the import export business,
and to do that he needed to go down to
the coffee shops where he got the newspapers, and he
(17:21):
met with the shipping agents, and of course they all
knew he was a transported convict.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
So he had that indelible stain on him.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
So you think he was lonely.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And Sarah was probably lonely too, and Sarah was available,
and things just happened. From the dates of birth of
the children, I got no sense of anything.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Possibly happening beforehand.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
What did Sarah Hort see in John Tole?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
She was probably so sweet, and perhaps she saw John
in the aftermath of his wife's death, where she stayed
on as his housekeeper. Perhaps she saw him as stepping
stone to marriage.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So they ended up in a period of what two years,
where they have these two children or is it even
longer than that?
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Not much more than two years, so we're pretty close.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
One after another, a boy, Alfred and then a little
girl Sarah.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
This wasn't a flang. This relationship, if you could call it,
that went on for seven years. But if Sarah Hart
were thinking of marrying John Tall, it was wishful thinking.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
I can't possibly see that he would ever have considered
marrying Sarah.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
She didn't offer him anything.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
He wanted to succeed professionally and with the Quakers, and
she wasn't the sort of person who offered him money,
opportunity or anything else. So no, I cannot possibly see
him as ever having wanted to marry her.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Sarah was attractive and kind, but she had no standing
in the community. She could do nothing to elevate him
with the Quakers. Would never marry her, But John Tall
did provide for Sarah and their two children.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
He started off with them being in London and he
moved them around a couple of places in London.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Tall didn't abandon them as many men would, but that's
not saying much. Though he did visit them regularly and
had meals with them. He and Sarah Hart carried on
their affair, but Sarah was told to stay quiet about
their relationship. She and the kids had to remain a secret.
(19:33):
Tall couldn't risk his other life being exposed to the Quakers.
He had recently been invited back, not as a member,
but he was welcome to attend meetings despite his dubious past.
So Tall agreed to keep Sarah and the children in
a secret home. He paid her child support, which was
a modest amount one pound a week, but he was
(19:55):
very clear she must stay silent. Discretion was exp and
disobedience would not be tolerated. Away from Sarah Hart and
(20:19):
the children, John Tall searched for a new life.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I mean they say most men marry within a year
of their wife's death, because I'm never quite sure whether
it's for sex, or whether it's for a cook, or
whether it's just they're not capable of being on their own.
I'm not quite sure women seem to not have that
same need to marry, and so maybe in a sense, Sarah,
because she was his housekeeper, she provided all those means,
(20:46):
you know, the bed and board sort of things. She cooked,
she cleaned, she filled his bed.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
After Mary's death, Tall's affair with Sarah Hart wouldn't stop
him from marrying someone other than her. He needed someone
who could help him both financial and in the Quaker society.
The year following his first wife's death, he found her.
Despite secretly sleeping with his former nurse, Sarah Appleby was attractive,
(21:12):
kind and bright, and a birthright Quaker. They met in Birkhamsted,
where I've been visiting with Hillary and Gerald and Meg.
I asked crime historian Angela Buckley about that area in
the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
It would be quite rural, Yeah, absolutely, mostly farming communities,
small market towns, so quite big difference. Actually, if you've
been successful building pharmacies, you know, creating a chain or
creating a business, to go back to Birkhamsted will be
quite sleepy.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Sarah Appleby might have lived a simple life away from London,
but she had higher ambitions.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
She was a very smart, capable woman, and she met
his intellectual aspiration. She was also a Quaker, so she
met his Quaker aspirations as well. She would help him
get back into the fold, so to speak.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
She was very respectable.
Speaker 8 (22:09):
She was from a very good quote unquote Quaker family,
Quaker home.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I asked Carol Baxter why such a seemingly wonderful woman
would marry John Tall. I didn't understand why that would happen.
He's been disowned, he's been sent to a penal colony,
he's struggling financially. She doesn't know about Sarah number one.
But what would possess a woman who clearly brings something
(22:36):
to the table to take this man when there are
probably other nice Quaker men around.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
You're right, there must have been something for him to
appeal to that sort of a person. Again, I guess
he must have had that that mask, because she clearly
loved him. I mean, we've got letters and things to him,
and they were clearly devoted to each other.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
So he really did have two sides.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
I guess he was split, you know, very much split
in terms of who he was the Jekyl and Hyde character,
the doctor Jekyl is the nice side of him, and
that was the Doctor Jekyll's side that saw and appealed
to Sarah Appleby. It was the Mistress Hyde side that
was the Sarah Hart side.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Meg Edwards says, there might be a simpler explanation.
Speaker 8 (23:30):
You know, she's been married before, and she has a
child that certainly aunt an interesting element of Perhaps that's
why she it wasn't quite so big of a leap
to marry a Quaker who was out of favor.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Sarah Appleby also had ambitions when she met John Toll
in eighteen thirty nine, she was teaching young girls to
help them become self sufficient women.
Speaker 8 (23:51):
She was setting up a school at the time for
young girls for women.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Women's education in the early nineteenth century was not a given.
Speaker 8 (24:01):
I think that's one of the things that attracted her
to John was that he had similar values of championing
women's education. Yeah, so she was clearly an interesting time
in her life setting up the school in berkhams Stead,
and that's when they met and they got married. He
was very much flip flopping in and out of the
(24:21):
Quaker church, in and out of the Quaker favor.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Sarah Appleby's school in Birkhamsted was a boarding school in
a day school. Historian Angela Buckley says Appleby was a
pioneer in the area of women's education.
Speaker 7 (24:37):
Well, nobody was required to be educated until eighteen seventy,
you know, it wasn't statutory to eighteen seventy anyway. And
if usually if anybody was educated, it would be boys.
And the kind of things that will be open for
girls would be things like industrial schools or places where
girls you know, who perhaps live a precarious existence, or
younger married mothers, those kind of girls that not usually
(24:58):
a boarding school unless it was again for profit.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
And John Tall seemed very supportive of his wife's venture.
Speaker 8 (25:05):
His values were on the surface at least, very in
line with the Quaker values of philanthropy and giving and education,
particularly women's education, which is where he came into his
wife Sarah's life. When she was setting up the school
in Berkhamsted.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The Talls lived in a building which still stands. It
was called the Red House, it's now the Red and
White House. Hillary and Gerald and Meg took me there
during our tour of Birkhamsted. So tell me where the
history this is where Tall?
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Well, yes, this is where Sarah tool had her school,
and I think he must have decided she would be
a very good prospect to marry. He ingratiated himself in
the town. He liked the respect he was getting walking
about in the.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Quaker garb have this entire house. But do you know what, Yes,
I think.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
So, because it was a business.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I was impressed with its size. Well, this is a
much bigger house than I thought it would be. I'll
take some pictures here in the mint. Yes, because this
is this is very large. I mean children that they
have when they lived in this house.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Sarah had her daughter from her previous marriage, and Lisa,
and then they had two of their own, and then
they had all the boarders and the day pupils up.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
To twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
They were, so it was a big concern.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Was that a successful business?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yes, I believe so.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It's clear from the size of the Red House that
Sarah Appleby must have been successful with her school because
her husband was not especially successful with his import export business.
Speaker 8 (26:49):
What is amazing is that she clearly was the more
successful one of the two, or she was certainly self
sufficient to an extent, and under the backdrop of nineteenth
century England.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Incredible successful for a woman.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And he was bringing money to Sarah Hart and their
kids every six weeks, which continued to be a financial
strain once Tall married Sarah appleby Sarah Hort and their
children became a bit more worrisome. But John Tall kept
more than a few secrets from his wife.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
So she didn't realize they were the financial problems. And
the financial problems really only started around this time there
was an economic depression in Australia. Well, most of his
finances were tied up with land over there and import exporting, and.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Of course if you've got a drought, which is typical of.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Our problems, there are issues then with the sheep and
cattle and making money off them because because they die
because they haven't got any fodder. For what years he
started as the early forties continue probably about forty two
forty three. That was when he really started to have
financial problems. And he married the second wife in eighteen
(28:03):
forty one.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
John Toll was sneaky, subtly sneaky. Even with his new wife.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
She didn't know he was struggling financially.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
She made a very good prenup agreement that benefited her
and her daughter.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
They had prenup agreements.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Not described in that way. I mean, essentially we're looking
at the old Dowies sort of situation.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
He agreed in writing.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
To support them blah blah blah, but in fact he
never actually acted on it.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
He was going to protect his money.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Tall was having problems with his business. He owed money
in England, His new wife, Sarah Appleby, was supporting them financially,
and his mistress and their two children were becoming more
expensive living in the city. Tall soon decided that Sarah,
Hart Alfred and Little Sarah needed to move to the
countryside and away from London where he might be spotted
(28:56):
by business associates. With his marriage to Sarah Appleby, John
Tall had a lot to lose. They had children together too,
and now the financial pressure pressed on him.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
He eventually decided that there were some risks of having
them in London, and that's when he sent her out
to Slough initially and then out to Salt Hill, which
is not far from Slough and Slough, for those who
don't know, is not far from Windsor Castle.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Tall rented Sarah and the children a cottage in the
village of Slough in the district of Salt Hill, just
like in London. He would occasionally come to visit, even
after he married Sarah Appleby. I asked Carol Baxter how
he got away with this for years? Were neighbors not suspicious?
Speaker 3 (29:54):
People didn't know that he was the father because Sarah's
story was that he was her old master and she
had married his son, and his son had gone abroad.
So the son used to send money back to his father,
the Quaker John Tall, who would then bring it out
to her every six weeks or so to help her
(30:17):
support herself and the children. And of course the man
turned up every time dressed in his Quaker gear.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
And he was an older man.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I mean, he was about thirty years older than Sarah,
So there wasn't any Perhaps people had their suspicions, but
I never even got that idea that they really had
the suspicions that he might have been the father of
the children.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
But there was clearly strain. Sarah Hart and John Tall
argued she knew he had married someone else, He wasn't
affectionate to the children. In fact, they had no idea
who he really was.
Speaker 8 (30:56):
From the accounts of what Little Alfred said or was
over heard saying about John Tool, doesn't sound like they
were familiar with him at all, doesn't sound like they
saw him as a father figure or someone.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
He was just someone who dropped in, gave money, and left.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
So this was not his second family. He was not
a kind father.
Speaker 8 (31:18):
Little Alfred says is overheard saying something along the lines
of you're a very bad man. You're a very naughty man.
So I don't think he saw it as you know,
his family on the side. I think he saw it
as his mistress and perhaps his two mistakes.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
And John Tall always wore the Quaker garb on those
visits everywhere. Really, that point is important for later I
asked historian Estrazala about the clothing, what exactly made Quaker
clothes unique?
Speaker 6 (31:48):
So in the time of Tall, so the Quaker garb
is not it's not as specific uniform, it's not as
distinct as like maybe Orthodox or for Orthodox Jews were
dressed today. But it would be a dark colors, nothing flashy.
Again like his definition saying no ribbons nor whatever, like
it doesn't really mean very much to us.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
No adornments, no.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
Adornments, Yeah right, so just simple, dark, modest.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
In the early eighteen forties, John Tall dressed the part
of the pious Quaker, which included the clothing. Gerald Fox
says that for a while, Tall seemed to be heading
in a positive direction.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
He was on the straight and narrow path.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
He didn't need to do criminal things.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
He didn't need to do fraud or anything.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
It established himself.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Gerald's granddaughter, Meg Edwards, is a little less generous.
Speaker 8 (32:34):
I think I have a bit of a different opinion
to my grandpa about the kind of person that he was.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
It's obviously very hard to get.
Speaker 8 (32:42):
An accurate depiction of someone in the nineteenth century, but
I think he was clearly very driven.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
I think he was very intelligent. I think he was
an opportunist.
Speaker 8 (32:52):
I don't think he was necessarily as scheming as a
lot of people would suggest, but I think he definitely
was seeing things that he wanted to better himself in life.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
Higher positions, more money.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Men keeping mistresses is obviously nothing new. Historian Angela Buckley
says it was almost the norm in Victorian England.
Speaker 7 (33:15):
It was very common, particularly for hy and men with
high positions in society, to have a mistress's and to
keep them out of the way. So he's behaving fairly typically,
I would say, from a middle class Victorian gentleman. I
guess that's how he's styling himself.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
Isn't he.
Speaker 7 (33:31):
They kept her Sarah out the way by moving her
to Slough because it's quite a distance, but.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
John Tall continued to visit Sarah Hart. They continued to
have their affair. He controlled everything, including her name. Carol
Baxter says that Sarah Hart wasn't her real name. So
back to this is Sarah Lawrence, right, do you say
Lawrence or Heart or do you go back and forth.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Or look, I just call it Sarah Hart. Her initial
name was Lawrence, and then her mother married a handler,
so she became a headler and the Heart name was
a name attached by John Tall to hide her true identity.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
John Tall clearly cared mostly about himself, and it seems
that Sarah Hart wanted more from him. But it wasn't
his love she was demanding. It was his money. And
John Tall was very angry.
Speaker 8 (34:32):
I think he saw Sarah as increasingly inconvenient to him.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
It's not just the anger that's concerning Meg. Edwards says
Tall might have felt like he was above the law
for much of his life.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
He was probably quite arrogant, thought he was above the law.
Speaker 8 (34:49):
Those fourteen years in Australia or those that he was
sentenced to anyway, didn't do much to dissuade him from
committing further crimes.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And that put the people closest to him in a
lot of danger. On the next episode of tenfold more
Wicked on exactly right.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Suddenly Sarah had gone from being a pawn to being
almost a queen.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
She had started to have a voice, and she made.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
That voice clear in her decision to ask him for money,
and that was when she became a threat. So that
was when everything started to unravel.
Speaker 8 (35:40):
Basically, he gets onto a train from Puttington Station and
goes to Salt Hill.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Gets off the train and he walks to Sarah's place.
At Salt Hill, people see him. It's January, so yes,
it's dark, but there are lights around the railway station.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
He is distinctive. He's seen. He heads to Sarah's place.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
If you love a good real ghost story, my audio
book The Ghost Club is available wherever you get your
audio books. I can't wait to tell you the real
story about the world's most famous ghost hunter, who was
the head of the world's most famous ghost club and
how he investigated England's most famous haunted house. Please also
(36:33):
check out my book All That Is Wicked, which is
a deep dive into the criminal mind. This has been
an exactly right Tenfold War Media production producers Jason Whaling,
Alexis Emirosi and Natalie Wrinn. Editors Jason Whaling and Kate
Winkler Dawson, researcher Kate Winkler Dawson, sound designer Eric Friend,
(36:56):
composer Curtis Heath, artwork by Nick Toga. Executive producers Georgia Hartstark,
Karen Kilgarriff and Daniel Kramer. Follow us on Instagram and
Facebook at tenfold war Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold War.
And If you know of a historical crime that could
use some attention, especially if it happened in your family,
(37:17):
email us at info at Tenfoldwarwicked dot com
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
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