September 2, 2025 • 28 mins
When Martha Ray was 18, she met the Earl of Sandwich. The married Earl took Martha as his mistress, and they spent years living together as husband and wife. But their arrangement wasn't without friction, and in the end, their story would be a tragedy neither could have imagined.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio, and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener discretion advised. The evening
of April seventh, seventeen seventy nine was playing out just
like any other typical night in Covent Garden. The post
(00:24):
theater crowd was filled with London socialites, there to see
and be seen, and maybe taken a little entertainment along
the way. There had been a benefit that evening at
the Royal Opera House that included a performance of Love
in a Village, a comic opera about mistaken identities and
(00:45):
the follies of young love. A lovely woman in her
mid thirties was there, dressed in a fine silk gown
and adorned with jewels. In the bustling crowd, the woman
and her friend chatted with acquaintance. This is while they
searched for the woman's carriage to take them home. Suddenly,
an agitated young man appeared. He approached the woman, grabbing
(01:10):
at her. Before anyone could understand what was happening, the
young man raised a gun to the woman's head and
delivered a fatal shot. He raised a second gun to
his head and tried to take his own life, but
the gun missed. A would be murder suicide turned into
(01:31):
regular old murder. The man was a lovesick soldier turned priest.
And what about the woman whose night at the theater
had just taken a deadly turn. She was Martha Ray,
a skilled performer in her own right, as well as
a kept woman who had been through plenty of romantic
(01:55):
drama of her own. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is
noble blood for Martha Ray. Life began and ended in
Covent Garden, the vibrant London neighborhood where art and commerce
intersected and where people from all classes rubbed elbows on
(02:19):
a daily basis. In between her humble beginnings and her
untimely end, Martha scaled the social ladder, gaining access to
upper class life and to creative outlets that would not
normally have been available to the daughter of working class parents.
She was beloved and respected by the upper classes, if
(02:43):
never quite accepted as one of their own. One admirer
in particular found her to be quote a lady of
elegant person, great sweetness of manners, and a remarkable judgment
and execution in vocal and instruments mental music. That same
admirer would be the one to later end her life,
(03:07):
setting off a media frenzy that capitalized on the era's
obsession with criminality and sentimentality in equal measure. Not much
is known about Martha's young life. She was born around
seventeen forty two, although some sources say it was as
late as seventeen forty five. Her father made stays for corsets,
(03:31):
her mother was a servant in a noble household. Around
the age of fourteen, Martha began to apprentice as a cloakmaker,
setting her up for a working class life in a
respectable if humble profession. That would have set her up
well for a respectable marriage and decent life. After all,
(03:52):
she was smart, charming, and a gifted singer. No doubt
one of her father's patrons would take her for a wife,
But once a certain noblemen took notice of her, no
one else stood a chance. John Montague was ten years
old when he became the fourth Earl of Sandwich, inheriting
(04:14):
the title but little else from his grandfather. He was
worldly and well educated, and he spun his title and
background into a long, albeit rocky career in political life.
He was generally well liked, with a taste for the
finer things and a fondness for beautiful women. The time
(04:37):
of his meeting Martha Ray is estimated at around seventeen sixty,
when Martha would have been eighteen, and the Earl of
Sandwich around forty two. For clarity's sake, let's call him
Sandwich going forward, because how often do we get to
do that. Sandwich was instantly taken with more and with
(05:01):
her father's blessing, he took the young woman as his mistress.
By this point, Sandwich had been separated from his wife,
Dorothy for several years. Dorothy suffered from poor mental health
and was later declared a word of the state in
seventeen sixty seven. Was it possible her condition was exacerbated
(05:22):
by watching her husband build a new life with a teenager.
We'll never know, but I can't imagine it helped things.
Noblemen taking young mistresses was far from a rare occurrence,
but the relationship between Sandwich and Martha Ray was notable
for both its tenure and depth of quality. They had
(05:44):
nine children together, five of whom survived to adulthood, and
the two of them pretty much conducted themselves as husband
and wife. Sandwich loved their children and cared for them
as if they had been quote legitimately and in public,
he treated Martha as his legal partner. He also made
(06:06):
sure she received a full education, including musical training by
top tier instructors. Sandwich gave Martha her own residence in London,
and she was also welcomed into hinchingbrook House, the Sandwich
family country estate, as its rightful mistress. There they threw
(06:26):
epic concerts every Christmas, drawing on their shared obsession with music.
Thanks to Sandwich's expert tutelage, Martha developed into an outstanding
singer and entertained the elite guests that flocked each year
to Sandwich's estate with her soaring soprano solos, often with
(06:47):
her lover playing drums off to the side. But even
though the pair was well matched emotionally, Martha's humble roots
and lack of security began to place a strain on
the relationship. Sandwich was still married and Martha had no
legal ties to his title or money. Such a precarious
(07:10):
setup was bound to fall apart. Eventually fall apart, it did,
but probably not in the way either of them would
have expected. For nearly eighteen years, Martha Ray and the
Earl of Sandwich lived an unconventional version of common law domesticity.
(07:32):
She hosted grand parties at his country estate, accompanied him
to London social events, and traveled with him to naval
ceremonies that Sandwich had to attend thanks to his tenure
as the head of the Admiralty, the government department in
charge of the British Royal Navy. To the untrained eye,
(07:52):
they behaved like any other aristocratic couple, But beneath the surface,
cracks were beginning to show. Martha's position as Sandwich's long
term mistress put her in a kind of social limbo.
She could play hostess at hinchingbrook House, but it was
(08:13):
never truly her home. She could perform at private concerts
and local churches, but the grand stages of London's opera
houses remained out of her reach. At the end of
the day, she could act as Sandwich's wife in every
way that mattered, but with his wife still alive and
(08:34):
banished to a mental hospital, Martha could never actually become
Sandwich's wife. Inevitably, as she grew older, the situation began
to take its toll. Martha was trapped between two worlds,
too elevated for her working class origins but never fully
(08:55):
accepted by the aristocracy. She had given Sandwich the best
year of her life and five children, yet she had
no legal claim to his fortune nor any protections for
her future. For his part, the Earl had a long
habit of living beyond his means, racking up debts while
(09:16):
refusing to give up his lavish lifestyle. Despite his clear
affection for Martha, he consistently rejected her pleas for financial security,
unwilling to tie up his assets in any formal settlement.
Tensions between Martha and Sandwich continued to rise. They argued
(09:37):
constantly about money, hashing out each other's spending habits, from
household expenses to luxury goods to beer. Anything could become
a new source of friction. Martha claimed that Sandwich did
not give her a big enough housekeeping allowance, which forced
her to dip into her own personal funds. At one point,
(10:00):
Sandwich discovered that Martha had made an attempt to secure
some public singing engagements. He was furious and felt betrayed
by her deception. Martha fired back in a letter asking
the earl how exactly she was supposed to secure her future.
She had been told repeatedly that she had the talent
for a career on the stage. Was she supposed to
(10:22):
stay trapped in domestic o limbo forever? As she wrote
to him, I am not a slave, nor will I
suffer myself to be treated as such, though of late
not much better. In her letters to Sandwich, Martha alternated
between declarations of love and outright resentment, but she never
(10:42):
forgot that he held the ultimate position of power in
the relationship. Their pattern of explosive fighting followed by reconciliation
continued for years. They were the eighteenth century version of
that couple in the friend group you wish would just
go ahead and break up already. After a few years
(11:04):
of this back and forth, this toxic relationship got just
the thing to liven things up, a hot new bombshell
in the form of a young officer named James Hackman. Sandwich,
who enjoyed entertaining military men at Hitchinbrook, invited Hackman as
(11:25):
part of a recruiting party sometime around seventeen seventy five.
The twenty somethingter lieutenant was everything Sandwich was not young
passionate and singularly focused on Martha. There was an immediate
attraction between Martha and Hackman, and before long they found
(11:47):
themselves in the throes of an affair. He was smitten
by her beauty and musical talent, while she no doubt
enjoyed his intense devotion for the young soldier. It wasn't
just a casual romance. It was an all consuming obsession.
He proposed marriage many times, and each time Martha turned
(12:10):
him down. It's unclear whether Martha was ever genuinely in
love with Hackman or she was simply enjoying the all
consuming attention of a younger man. The only thing we
can say with certainty is that Martha found herself in
an impossible situation. As volatile as things were with Sandwich,
(12:32):
he was the most stable presence in Martha's life. Leaving
Sandwich would mean not just abandoning what financial security she had,
but it might also threaten her relationship with their children.
The affair with Hackman was at best a fun ego
boost and at worst an ill fated love connection. But
(12:55):
either way, there simply wasn't a scenario where Martha could
leave Sandwich feelings aside. Hackman had neither the wealth nor
the social standing to support Martha in the manner to
which she had become accustomed. When Hackman's regiment received orders
to deploy to Ireland in early seventeen seventy six, he
(13:18):
made one final desperate marriage proposal. Martha's answer didn't change.
Did his refusal to take no for an answer finally
give Martha the ick? Was she trying to make a
clean break to protect her own heart? Did she worry
that Sandwich would catch them and kick her out? Will
(13:39):
never know why exactly, but whatever her reasons, Martha ended
the affair and distance herself from Hackman. The rejection sent
Hackman into a spiral. Not content with a recent promotion
to lieutenant, he opted instead for a total career change,
(14:00):
leaving the military and entering the clergy. By February of
seventeen seventy nine, he had been ordained as a priest
in the Church of England and had been given a
parish in Norfolk. But rather than settle into life as
a country priest and try to start a new chapter,
Hackman returned to London with renewed determination to win Martha back.
(14:27):
It's possible that Hackman thought that his new career had
transformed him into a more suitable husband, or it's possible
he was just a deranged stalker incapable of letting her go.
Either way, Martha wanted nothing to do with him, and
Hackman could not handle it. He grew paranoid and became
(14:50):
convinced Martha had taken a new lover. Martha had started
rejecting his letters and sent him one of her own,
asking him to to end his mad pursuit. Soon after,
Hackman did put an end to the affair, but certainly
not in the way Martha had hoped. On the evening
(15:11):
of April seventh, seventeen seventy nine, Martha attended the theater
with a woman named Katerina Golly, a close friend and
fellow singer. Earlier that evening, Hackman had approached Martha at
her home. When she refused to tell him where she
was going, he decided to follow her. At the theater,
(15:32):
Hackman spotted Martha in conversation with Lord Coloring, a wealthy
Irish nobleman. Whether or not there was ever anything that
ever happened between the two is unknown, but for Hackman,
seeing the two of them together was all of the
proof he needed. He stormed out of the Covent Garden theater,
(15:52):
picked up two pistols, and made his way to a
nearby coffeehouse. He sat there for hours, writing he believed
would be his final letter, a suicide note addressed to
his brother in law, Frederick Booth. In the letter, he
poured out his anguish. I have strove against it as
long as possible, but it now overpowers me. My having,
(16:16):
by some means or other, lost her affections, has driven
me to madness. As the performance ended, theatergoers congregated outside
in the night air, Martha and Katerina among them. In
that bustling post theater scene, no one could have predicted
the horror about to unfold. Suddenly, Hackman emerged from the crowd.
(16:41):
He grabbed Martha's cloak and spun her around to face him.
Before anyone could react, he raised one of his pistols
to her forehead and fired. Martha Ray collapsed dead by
her former lover's hand. The crowd erupted in chaos and screams,
but Hackman wasn't finished. He raised his second pistol to
(17:05):
his own head and pulled the trigger, but the shot
went wide. Only grazing his skull. Frantic and bleeding, Hackman
began beating himself with both pistols until horrified bystanders managed
to restrain him. Within minutes, both Martha's body and Hackman
(17:26):
were carried to the nearby Shakespeare Tavern. Hackman asked to
see Martha, apparently not realizing that she was dead. When
officers searched his pockets, they found two letters, the suicide
note to Frederick Booth and a desperate final plea to
(17:47):
Martha that she had rejected just days before. The letter
to Martha revealed the depth of his delusion. He was
convinced they had agreed to Mary, that she was simply
being stubborn, that he could win her back still if
he could just make her understand his devotion. But it's
(18:08):
a line from the letter to Frederick Booth that hints
at the sinister events that were about to unfold. May
Heaven protect my beloved woman, and forgive this act, which
alone could relieve me from a world of misery I
have long endured. Hackman had come prepared not just to kill,
(18:31):
but to die. This was meant to be the ultimate
romantic gesture. If he couldn't have Martha in life they
would be united in death. But when his own suicide failed,
his dreams of becoming Romeo and Juliet devolved into plain,
old fashioned, gruesome murder, and for that he would have
(18:56):
to answer to the hangman. Just nine days after murdering Martha,
Ray James Hackman found himself standing trial. His initial plan
was to plead guilty, after all, dozens of witnesses had
seen him shoot Martha in the head outside Covent Garden Theater.
(19:16):
But when the moment came, something made him change his mind.
Perhaps it was a final flicker of self preservation, or
maybe his legal counsel convinced him that he had nothing
to lose. Whatever the reason, Hackman entered a plea of
not guilty. His defense strategy was ambitious but desperate, an
(19:38):
insanity plea. His lawyers argued that the killing was completely unpremeditated,
the product of a mind unhinged by obsessive love. They
pointed to the letters found on his person, filled with
desperate declarations and threats of suicide. Surely this was the
(19:58):
work of a man man, not a calculated killer. But
Justice Blackstone, presiding over the trial, wasn't buying it. He
pointed to Hackman's letter to his brother in law Frederick Booth,
written hours before the killing. The letter's tone, Blackstone observed,
showed quote a coolness and deliberation which no ways accorded
(20:23):
with the ideas of insanity. The jury agreed after deliberating,
they returned a verdict of guilty, and Hackman was sentenced
to hang. On April nineteenth, seventeen seventy nine, just twelve
days after the incident, James Hackman was hanged for the
(20:45):
murder of Martha Ray. Witnesses reported that Hackman faced his
execution with remarkable fortitude, showing no signs of fear, completely
resigned to his fate. But the real story of this
case wasn't confined to the courtroom. As historian John Brewer
(21:06):
explores in his fascinating book A Sentimental Murder, Love and
Madness in the eighteenth Century, the murder ignited a media
sensation that revealed as much about eighteenth century culture as
it did about the crime itself. Despite pressing news about
the failing war with American colonists and political battles at home,
(21:30):
London newspapers devoted enormous amounts of space to the killing.
And its aftermath. Between the night of Martha's murder and
Hackman's execution, daily coverage appeared in many newspapers, quickly escalating
the situation into a cultural phenomenon that tapped into the
era's obsession with sentiment and sensibility. Sentimental literature was everywhere
(21:57):
filled with stories of virtue and distrust, lovelorn youth, and
tragic passion. As Brewer notes, it wasn't difficult to present
the tragedy of Hackman and Ray as a sentimental story
designed to provoke sympathy from readers. This cultural context helps
(22:18):
explain why James Hackman attracted far more public sympathy than
Martha Ray. He could easily be cast as a romantic
hero destroyed by unrequited love. Martha was mostly cast in
a sympathetic light, but she was often seen as the
architect of her own downfall, a woman whose refusal to
(22:42):
return Hackman's devotion had driven him to madness. Behind the scenes,
there was a deliberate effort to shape public opinion. Both
Sandwich's allies and Hackman's supporters worked to present versions of
events that cast the respective figures in the most favorable light.
(23:04):
The Earl's circle wanted to downplay the financial tensions and
quarrels that had marked his relationship with Martha, while Hackman's
defenders promoted the image of a gentle clergyman driven to
temporary insanity by overwhelming passion in death as in life.
Despite being at the center of this triad, Martha had
(23:28):
the least agency of it all. The Earl of Sandwich
was shattered by Martha's murder. Though he continued in public
life for a few more years, he was never the same.
His political career, already marked by accusations of incompetence and corruption,
fizzled out unceremoniously. Contemporaries often said of him, seldom has
(23:52):
any man held so many offices and accomplished so little.
He lived until seventeen ninety two, out lived by his
erstwhile wife, Dorothy, who was still living as a ward
of the state. Ironically, Sandwich's most enduring legacy has nothing
to do with his naval administration or political maneuvering, or
(24:15):
even the scandalous murder of his longtime mistress. The modern Sandwich,
that humble workhourse of meals, bears his name a lasting legacy. Indeed,
although it's unclear whether he invented it because he was
too busy working or gambling to step away for a
(24:36):
proper meal. Allegedly, over the centuries, each generation has rewritten
Martha's story to reflect their own values and anxieties. In
seventeen eighty, just a year after the murder, a young
writer named Herbert Croft rushed out in a pistolary novel
(24:57):
called Love and Madness, at first first claiming erroneously that
it was based on actual letters between Martha and James Hackman,
then later admitting he invented it whole cloth. The book
was a sensation, proving that as a species, we've always
had a taste for some juicy true crime. The victorians
(25:21):
turned Martha Ray into a cautionary tale about aristocratic decadence
and the dangers of living outside conventional morality. By the
nineteen twenties, she had been reimagined as a chaste victim
of male dominance and privilege. Modern historians, like Brewer have
(25:41):
tried to rescue Martha from these competing mythologies, recognizing her
as a woman trapped by circumstances largely beyond her control,
but still a human woman. Nonetheless a full, three dimensional person.
Mar was buried in a vault beneath Saint Nicholas Church
(26:03):
in the village of Elstree. In eighteen twenty four, during
church renovations, her remains were moved to an unmarked grave
in the churchyard. It wasn't until nineteen twenty that George Montague,
the ninth Earl of Sandwich, had a proper tombstone erected
over her grave. It was a final, belated gesture of
(26:26):
respect for a woman who lived a life dictated by
the men who surrounded her, sometimes for better, but in
the end for far worse. That's the story of Martha
Ray and her murder. But keep listening after a brief
sponsor break to hear a little bit more about her
(26:49):
theatrical legacy. Martha Ray was a poor, working class woman
from Covent Garden whose life was completely transformed when she
caught the eye of an older gentleman from a higher
(27:10):
social class. He educated her, refined her, and molded her
into a cultured lady who could hold her own in
aristocratic society. Another man fell desperately in love with her
and wanted to take her away, but she refused, choosing
to stay with the complicated nobleman who had changed her
(27:31):
life sound a little familiar. Over a century before George
Bernard Shaw would write Pigmalion, a much darker version was
playing out in the very same London neighborhood where Martha
met her end, and when Lerner and Lowe eventually adapted
(27:51):
it into the hit musical My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle
was given a lilting soprano singing voice. Ironically, it's a
part that Martha Ray would have sung beautifully.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio, and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener discretion advised. The evening
of April seventh, seventeen seventy nine was playing out just
like any other typical night in Covent Garden. The post
(00:24):
theater crowd was filled with London socialites, there to see
and be seen, and maybe taken a little entertainment along
the way. There had been a benefit that evening at
the Royal Opera House that included a performance of Love
in a Village, a comic opera about mistaken identities and
(00:45):
the follies of young love. A lovely woman in her
mid thirties was there, dressed in a fine silk gown
and adorned with jewels. In the bustling crowd, the woman
and her friend chatted with acquaintance. This is while they
searched for the woman's carriage to take them home. Suddenly,
an agitated young man appeared. He approached the woman, grabbing
(01:10):
at her. Before anyone could understand what was happening, the
young man raised a gun to the woman's head and
delivered a fatal shot. He raised a second gun to
his head and tried to take his own life, but
the gun missed. A would be murder suicide turned into
(01:31):
regular old murder. The man was a lovesick soldier turned priest.
And what about the woman whose night at the theater
had just taken a deadly turn. She was Martha Ray,
a skilled performer in her own right, as well as
a kept woman who had been through plenty of romantic
(01:55):
drama of her own. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is
noble blood for Martha Ray. Life began and ended in
Covent Garden, the vibrant London neighborhood where art and commerce
intersected and where people from all classes rubbed elbows on
(02:19):
a daily basis. In between her humble beginnings and her
untimely end, Martha scaled the social ladder, gaining access to
upper class life and to creative outlets that would not
normally have been available to the daughter of working class parents.
She was beloved and respected by the upper classes, if
(02:43):
never quite accepted as one of their own. One admirer
in particular found her to be quote a lady of
elegant person, great sweetness of manners, and a remarkable judgment
and execution in vocal and instruments mental music. That same
admirer would be the one to later end her life,
(03:07):
setting off a media frenzy that capitalized on the era's
obsession with criminality and sentimentality in equal measure. Not much
is known about Martha's young life. She was born around
seventeen forty two, although some sources say it was as
late as seventeen forty five. Her father made stays for corsets,
(03:31):
her mother was a servant in a noble household. Around
the age of fourteen, Martha began to apprentice as a cloakmaker,
setting her up for a working class life in a
respectable if humble profession. That would have set her up
well for a respectable marriage and decent life. After all,
(03:52):
she was smart, charming, and a gifted singer. No doubt
one of her father's patrons would take her for a wife,
But once a certain noblemen took notice of her, no
one else stood a chance. John Montague was ten years
old when he became the fourth Earl of Sandwich, inheriting
(04:14):
the title but little else from his grandfather. He was
worldly and well educated, and he spun his title and
background into a long, albeit rocky career in political life.
He was generally well liked, with a taste for the
finer things and a fondness for beautiful women. The time
(04:37):
of his meeting Martha Ray is estimated at around seventeen sixty,
when Martha would have been eighteen, and the Earl of
Sandwich around forty two. For clarity's sake, let's call him
Sandwich going forward, because how often do we get to
do that. Sandwich was instantly taken with more and with
(05:01):
her father's blessing, he took the young woman as his mistress.
By this point, Sandwich had been separated from his wife,
Dorothy for several years. Dorothy suffered from poor mental health
and was later declared a word of the state in
seventeen sixty seven. Was it possible her condition was exacerbated
(05:22):
by watching her husband build a new life with a teenager.
We'll never know, but I can't imagine it helped things.
Noblemen taking young mistresses was far from a rare occurrence,
but the relationship between Sandwich and Martha Ray was notable
for both its tenure and depth of quality. They had
(05:44):
nine children together, five of whom survived to adulthood, and
the two of them pretty much conducted themselves as husband
and wife. Sandwich loved their children and cared for them
as if they had been quote legitimately and in public,
he treated Martha as his legal partner. He also made
(06:06):
sure she received a full education, including musical training by
top tier instructors. Sandwich gave Martha her own residence in London,
and she was also welcomed into hinchingbrook House, the Sandwich
family country estate, as its rightful mistress. There they threw
(06:26):
epic concerts every Christmas, drawing on their shared obsession with music.
Thanks to Sandwich's expert tutelage, Martha developed into an outstanding
singer and entertained the elite guests that flocked each year
to Sandwich's estate with her soaring soprano solos, often with
(06:47):
her lover playing drums off to the side. But even
though the pair was well matched emotionally, Martha's humble roots
and lack of security began to place a strain on
the relationship. Sandwich was still married and Martha had no
legal ties to his title or money. Such a precarious
(07:10):
setup was bound to fall apart. Eventually fall apart, it did,
but probably not in the way either of them would
have expected. For nearly eighteen years, Martha Ray and the
Earl of Sandwich lived an unconventional version of common law domesticity.
(07:32):
She hosted grand parties at his country estate, accompanied him
to London social events, and traveled with him to naval
ceremonies that Sandwich had to attend thanks to his tenure
as the head of the Admiralty, the government department in
charge of the British Royal Navy. To the untrained eye,
(07:52):
they behaved like any other aristocratic couple, But beneath the surface,
cracks were beginning to show. Martha's position as Sandwich's long
term mistress put her in a kind of social limbo.
She could play hostess at hinchingbrook House, but it was
(08:13):
never truly her home. She could perform at private concerts
and local churches, but the grand stages of London's opera
houses remained out of her reach. At the end of
the day, she could act as Sandwich's wife in every
way that mattered, but with his wife still alive and
(08:34):
banished to a mental hospital, Martha could never actually become
Sandwich's wife. Inevitably, as she grew older, the situation began
to take its toll. Martha was trapped between two worlds,
too elevated for her working class origins but never fully
(08:55):
accepted by the aristocracy. She had given Sandwich the best
year of her life and five children, yet she had
no legal claim to his fortune nor any protections for
her future. For his part, the Earl had a long
habit of living beyond his means, racking up debts while
(09:16):
refusing to give up his lavish lifestyle. Despite his clear
affection for Martha, he consistently rejected her pleas for financial security,
unwilling to tie up his assets in any formal settlement.
Tensions between Martha and Sandwich continued to rise. They argued
(09:37):
constantly about money, hashing out each other's spending habits, from
household expenses to luxury goods to beer. Anything could become
a new source of friction. Martha claimed that Sandwich did
not give her a big enough housekeeping allowance, which forced
her to dip into her own personal funds. At one point,
(10:00):
Sandwich discovered that Martha had made an attempt to secure
some public singing engagements. He was furious and felt betrayed
by her deception. Martha fired back in a letter asking
the earl how exactly she was supposed to secure her future.
She had been told repeatedly that she had the talent
for a career on the stage. Was she supposed to
(10:22):
stay trapped in domestic o limbo forever? As she wrote
to him, I am not a slave, nor will I
suffer myself to be treated as such, though of late
not much better. In her letters to Sandwich, Martha alternated
between declarations of love and outright resentment, but she never
(10:42):
forgot that he held the ultimate position of power in
the relationship. Their pattern of explosive fighting followed by reconciliation
continued for years. They were the eighteenth century version of
that couple in the friend group you wish would just
go ahead and break up already. After a few years
(11:04):
of this back and forth, this toxic relationship got just
the thing to liven things up, a hot new bombshell
in the form of a young officer named James Hackman. Sandwich,
who enjoyed entertaining military men at Hitchinbrook, invited Hackman as
(11:25):
part of a recruiting party sometime around seventeen seventy five.
The twenty somethingter lieutenant was everything Sandwich was not young
passionate and singularly focused on Martha. There was an immediate
attraction between Martha and Hackman, and before long they found
(11:47):
themselves in the throes of an affair. He was smitten
by her beauty and musical talent, while she no doubt
enjoyed his intense devotion for the young soldier. It wasn't
just a casual romance. It was an all consuming obsession.
He proposed marriage many times, and each time Martha turned
(12:10):
him down. It's unclear whether Martha was ever genuinely in
love with Hackman or she was simply enjoying the all
consuming attention of a younger man. The only thing we
can say with certainty is that Martha found herself in
an impossible situation. As volatile as things were with Sandwich,
(12:32):
he was the most stable presence in Martha's life. Leaving
Sandwich would mean not just abandoning what financial security she had,
but it might also threaten her relationship with their children.
The affair with Hackman was at best a fun ego
boost and at worst an ill fated love connection. But
(12:55):
either way, there simply wasn't a scenario where Martha could
leave Sandwich feelings aside. Hackman had neither the wealth nor
the social standing to support Martha in the manner to
which she had become accustomed. When Hackman's regiment received orders
to deploy to Ireland in early seventeen seventy six, he
(13:18):
made one final desperate marriage proposal. Martha's answer didn't change.
Did his refusal to take no for an answer finally
give Martha the ick? Was she trying to make a
clean break to protect her own heart? Did she worry
that Sandwich would catch them and kick her out? Will
(13:39):
never know why exactly, but whatever her reasons, Martha ended
the affair and distance herself from Hackman. The rejection sent
Hackman into a spiral. Not content with a recent promotion
to lieutenant, he opted instead for a total career change,
(14:00):
leaving the military and entering the clergy. By February of
seventeen seventy nine, he had been ordained as a priest
in the Church of England and had been given a
parish in Norfolk. But rather than settle into life as
a country priest and try to start a new chapter,
Hackman returned to London with renewed determination to win Martha back.
(14:27):
It's possible that Hackman thought that his new career had
transformed him into a more suitable husband, or it's possible
he was just a deranged stalker incapable of letting her go.
Either way, Martha wanted nothing to do with him, and
Hackman could not handle it. He grew paranoid and became
(14:50):
convinced Martha had taken a new lover. Martha had started
rejecting his letters and sent him one of her own,
asking him to to end his mad pursuit. Soon after,
Hackman did put an end to the affair, but certainly
not in the way Martha had hoped. On the evening
(15:11):
of April seventh, seventeen seventy nine, Martha attended the theater
with a woman named Katerina Golly, a close friend and
fellow singer. Earlier that evening, Hackman had approached Martha at
her home. When she refused to tell him where she
was going, he decided to follow her. At the theater,
(15:32):
Hackman spotted Martha in conversation with Lord Coloring, a wealthy
Irish nobleman. Whether or not there was ever anything that
ever happened between the two is unknown, but for Hackman,
seeing the two of them together was all of the
proof he needed. He stormed out of the Covent Garden theater,
(15:52):
picked up two pistols, and made his way to a
nearby coffeehouse. He sat there for hours, writing he believed
would be his final letter, a suicide note addressed to
his brother in law, Frederick Booth. In the letter, he
poured out his anguish. I have strove against it as
long as possible, but it now overpowers me. My having,
(16:16):
by some means or other, lost her affections, has driven
me to madness. As the performance ended, theatergoers congregated outside
in the night air, Martha and Katerina among them. In
that bustling post theater scene, no one could have predicted
the horror about to unfold. Suddenly, Hackman emerged from the crowd.
(16:41):
He grabbed Martha's cloak and spun her around to face him.
Before anyone could react, he raised one of his pistols
to her forehead and fired. Martha Ray collapsed dead by
her former lover's hand. The crowd erupted in chaos and screams,
but Hackman wasn't finished. He raised his second pistol to
(17:05):
his own head and pulled the trigger, but the shot
went wide. Only grazing his skull. Frantic and bleeding, Hackman
began beating himself with both pistols until horrified bystanders managed
to restrain him. Within minutes, both Martha's body and Hackman
(17:26):
were carried to the nearby Shakespeare Tavern. Hackman asked to
see Martha, apparently not realizing that she was dead. When
officers searched his pockets, they found two letters, the suicide
note to Frederick Booth and a desperate final plea to
(17:47):
Martha that she had rejected just days before. The letter
to Martha revealed the depth of his delusion. He was
convinced they had agreed to Mary, that she was simply
being stubborn, that he could win her back still if
he could just make her understand his devotion. But it's
(18:08):
a line from the letter to Frederick Booth that hints
at the sinister events that were about to unfold. May
Heaven protect my beloved woman, and forgive this act, which
alone could relieve me from a world of misery I
have long endured. Hackman had come prepared not just to kill,
(18:31):
but to die. This was meant to be the ultimate
romantic gesture. If he couldn't have Martha in life they
would be united in death. But when his own suicide failed,
his dreams of becoming Romeo and Juliet devolved into plain,
old fashioned, gruesome murder, and for that he would have
(18:56):
to answer to the hangman. Just nine days after murdering Martha,
Ray James Hackman found himself standing trial. His initial plan
was to plead guilty, after all, dozens of witnesses had
seen him shoot Martha in the head outside Covent Garden Theater.
(19:16):
But when the moment came, something made him change his mind.
Perhaps it was a final flicker of self preservation, or
maybe his legal counsel convinced him that he had nothing
to lose. Whatever the reason, Hackman entered a plea of
not guilty. His defense strategy was ambitious but desperate, an
(19:38):
insanity plea. His lawyers argued that the killing was completely unpremeditated,
the product of a mind unhinged by obsessive love. They
pointed to the letters found on his person, filled with
desperate declarations and threats of suicide. Surely this was the
(19:58):
work of a man man, not a calculated killer. But
Justice Blackstone, presiding over the trial, wasn't buying it. He
pointed to Hackman's letter to his brother in law Frederick Booth,
written hours before the killing. The letter's tone, Blackstone observed,
showed quote a coolness and deliberation which no ways accorded
(20:23):
with the ideas of insanity. The jury agreed after deliberating,
they returned a verdict of guilty, and Hackman was sentenced
to hang. On April nineteenth, seventeen seventy nine, just twelve
days after the incident, James Hackman was hanged for the
(20:45):
murder of Martha Ray. Witnesses reported that Hackman faced his
execution with remarkable fortitude, showing no signs of fear, completely
resigned to his fate. But the real story of this
case wasn't confined to the courtroom. As historian John Brewer
(21:06):
explores in his fascinating book A Sentimental Murder, Love and
Madness in the eighteenth Century, the murder ignited a media
sensation that revealed as much about eighteenth century culture as
it did about the crime itself. Despite pressing news about
the failing war with American colonists and political battles at home,
(21:30):
London newspapers devoted enormous amounts of space to the killing.
And its aftermath. Between the night of Martha's murder and
Hackman's execution, daily coverage appeared in many newspapers, quickly escalating
the situation into a cultural phenomenon that tapped into the
era's obsession with sentiment and sensibility. Sentimental literature was everywhere
(21:57):
filled with stories of virtue and distrust, lovelorn youth, and
tragic passion. As Brewer notes, it wasn't difficult to present
the tragedy of Hackman and Ray as a sentimental story
designed to provoke sympathy from readers. This cultural context helps
(22:18):
explain why James Hackman attracted far more public sympathy than
Martha Ray. He could easily be cast as a romantic
hero destroyed by unrequited love. Martha was mostly cast in
a sympathetic light, but she was often seen as the
architect of her own downfall, a woman whose refusal to
(22:42):
return Hackman's devotion had driven him to madness. Behind the scenes,
there was a deliberate effort to shape public opinion. Both
Sandwich's allies and Hackman's supporters worked to present versions of
events that cast the respective figures in the most favorable light.
(23:04):
The Earl's circle wanted to downplay the financial tensions and
quarrels that had marked his relationship with Martha, while Hackman's
defenders promoted the image of a gentle clergyman driven to
temporary insanity by overwhelming passion in death as in life.
Despite being at the center of this triad, Martha had
(23:28):
the least agency of it all. The Earl of Sandwich
was shattered by Martha's murder. Though he continued in public
life for a few more years, he was never the same.
His political career, already marked by accusations of incompetence and corruption,
fizzled out unceremoniously. Contemporaries often said of him, seldom has
(23:52):
any man held so many offices and accomplished so little.
He lived until seventeen ninety two, out lived by his
erstwhile wife, Dorothy, who was still living as a ward
of the state. Ironically, Sandwich's most enduring legacy has nothing
to do with his naval administration or political maneuvering, or
(24:15):
even the scandalous murder of his longtime mistress. The modern Sandwich,
that humble workhourse of meals, bears his name a lasting legacy. Indeed,
although it's unclear whether he invented it because he was
too busy working or gambling to step away for a
(24:36):
proper meal. Allegedly, over the centuries, each generation has rewritten
Martha's story to reflect their own values and anxieties. In
seventeen eighty, just a year after the murder, a young
writer named Herbert Croft rushed out in a pistolary novel
(24:57):
called Love and Madness, at first first claiming erroneously that
it was based on actual letters between Martha and James Hackman,
then later admitting he invented it whole cloth. The book
was a sensation, proving that as a species, we've always
had a taste for some juicy true crime. The victorians
(25:21):
turned Martha Ray into a cautionary tale about aristocratic decadence
and the dangers of living outside conventional morality. By the
nineteen twenties, she had been reimagined as a chaste victim
of male dominance and privilege. Modern historians, like Brewer have
(25:41):
tried to rescue Martha from these competing mythologies, recognizing her
as a woman trapped by circumstances largely beyond her control,
but still a human woman. Nonetheless a full, three dimensional person.
Mar was buried in a vault beneath Saint Nicholas Church
(26:03):
in the village of Elstree. In eighteen twenty four, during
church renovations, her remains were moved to an unmarked grave
in the churchyard. It wasn't until nineteen twenty that George Montague,
the ninth Earl of Sandwich, had a proper tombstone erected
over her grave. It was a final, belated gesture of
(26:26):
respect for a woman who lived a life dictated by
the men who surrounded her, sometimes for better, but in
the end for far worse. That's the story of Martha
Ray and her murder. But keep listening after a brief
sponsor break to hear a little bit more about her
(26:49):
theatrical legacy. Martha Ray was a poor, working class woman
from Covent Garden whose life was completely transformed when she
caught the eye of an older gentleman from a higher
(27:10):
social class. He educated her, refined her, and molded her
into a cultured lady who could hold her own in
aristocratic society. Another man fell desperately in love with her
and wanted to take her away, but she refused, choosing
to stay with the complicated nobleman who had changed her
(27:31):
life sound a little familiar. Over a century before George
Bernard Shaw would write Pigmalion, a much darker version was
playing out in the very same London neighborhood where Martha
met her end, and when Lerner and Lowe eventually adapted
(27:51):
it into the hit musical My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle
was given a lilting soprano singing voice. Ironically, it's a
part that Martha Ray would have sung beautifully.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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