Episode 111 - Littlehampton lible - Twisted Britain

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Hello and welcome to Twister Britain, a podcast on true
crime in Britain with a sprinkling of the weird in
a cab and your hosts.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Are me Bob Dale and me Ali Downy.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
And I had muted my microphone.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
It's sorry if there's any constellation. My headphones don't work
and aren't plugged into anything.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
No, but you've still with them on your head. Yeah,
it makes me feel more professional. Not only have you
got your professional headphones on, but you're in the pub.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I know. I'm back up in the Scotland.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Which is one wonderful thing to.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Have for one night only, well for three nights, but
onely recording one.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, I was sick as a dog at the beginning
of the week so we didn't get a chance to
record on Tuesday, so it is a Thursday night recording.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
This is a bit weird, it is, And it's mellow
and quiet in the Settle on.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
The Thursday, not normally normally still in university's rock and
Metal Society, but it's nearly Christmas in it and.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
You've got a very short, tiny Christmas tale. It's a
mini case.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Many cases, almost a tiny twisted it's the tiniest novel
I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Is many pages long.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
We had to support put an extra support in on
the table for you to put your notes on it.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
I don't know why it's so many pages. It didn't
feel that long when I was writing it. I think
I've used a very big font.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
You haven't. I can see it with my eyeballs. But
never mind.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
How is down says it will be chillier up here.
I'd imagine you'd think so, but actually, with the wind
down there, it's pretty freaking cold. Ah yeah, fair enough.
Up here it may be cold, but at least the
wind is still. Well, unless you're on Shetlanders.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
The wind blow high, the wind blows low through the
streets and the kill I'll.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Go oh, the lassies shout hello.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Donald knew there was only a small amount of time
that we would get through before you were going to.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yes, we thought we were going to try and do
two recordings this evening.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
I've got one that if we get through your novella,
we will turn to and it is a I'm calling
my my Alian Aedan combo case well and alan Adan crossover. Yeah, yeah,
that's what we go with. Amazing and well you say
that you haven't heard it yet.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
It could be shocking. How long before Ai Nedine gets
our jobs.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I mean she probably already gone it. We just don't
know about it. Yeah, and in person regale. This should
negate the complaints we've had about the editing being shocking.
When we're apart.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
It's not the editing, it's the WiFi.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
That's what they all say. When you're having to put
your phone in a concrete tunnel to try and get
Wi Fi, you know you're in a wonderful position for
a remote record.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
I don't just use the excellent WiFi service available here
at the Settle end.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
And somebody forgot to put twenty pence in the meet
it's so old that's twenty pence you need to put
in it. But yeah, never mind, I have you with
no I mean you may still buffer, but that's just
real life. You. If I start seeing a spinning circle
in front of your face, I should have brought you on, Sarah.
You could have held up like a spinning circle. When
he gets confused like he's muffered. Yes, it's us and

(03:40):
us alone in the top of the pub. So let's
use this empty audience to regale in some true crime.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, it is not a short one. This week, I
apologize in advance.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Strap in everyone.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
This week, I'd like to talk about a case from
the early nineteen twenties which, despite the levity with which
we might view the crime now, at the time was
a national scandal and it led to an investigation which
would be worthy of inclusion in any of Agatha Christie's novels.

(04:19):
We do like the Gagatha we do. I came across
this story after Sarah and I watched the excellent dramatization
of the story Wicked Little Lies with Olivia Coleman and
Jesse Buckley.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
And we do love Olivia Coleman.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
That's a fact, and we're do it and she was
fabulous in it. It's a great little watch and I'd
recommend it, even though a lot of the details of
the case were changed for narrative reasons.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Tell he does that sometimes has to We just have
to accept it when we were go.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
To look at cases that you can't rely on everything
you see on the screen. Oh, it sometimes makes me angry, and.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
I don't mind it. I don't mind the stretching of
details sometimes to tell a story I'm talking about on screen,
not in a podcast obviously, but a missing plot point
or a missing fact annoys me. It's historical things for me.

(05:16):
If I watch if I watch a World War Two
film and.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
There's a tank or a plane it wasn't actually in
service until like nineteen forty seven, it grinds my gears.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
They call that a pedant. Well, how do you feel
about Outlander? Then the time traveling historial scotsman if anybodys
a big fan of Outlander films. Not far from the Settling,
Come and see as why you're here? But always be advertising, awl,
always be advertising.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, but why are we advertising Outlander.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
At the settling? That is what I was going for,
all right. I was trying to align this, align the brands.
Yeah something.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
If you watch Outlander, come and drink at the settle.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
In fuck it likely why I started black Mac State
it's brilliant and listened to Justin boun.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Anyway, Our story is going to take us to the
town of Little Hampton in the south of England, a
bustling seaside resort town at the mouth of the River Arin.
In the nineteen twenties, it was home to about eleven
thousand people and it's small port boasted a fishing fleet
as well as taking in cargo shipping from Europe. Littlehampton

(06:30):
was an idyllic little coastal town, not much serious crime,
and a very desirable place to live in the early
nineteen hundreds. In nineteen sixteen, Rose Gooding moved to the
town along with her husband Bill and her extended family.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
So you might have to do slightly better for geography
for me, I understand little Hampton. It also does sound
like an American town rather than English town.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
It's right on the south coast? Is it right right
on the south coast?

Speaker 1 (07:02):
So when you say small port would have been like
immediate sailings to France, that kind of area exactly.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Now. Rose Gooding was born in eighteen ninety three in
Lewes in Sussex, and she married Bill Gooding, who was
twelve years her senior, in nineteen thirteen, at which time
she already had a daughter, Dorothy, from a past relationship.
They rented a cottage at forty five Western Road. Her

(07:34):
sister Ruth Russell also lived with them and with her
three children, Gertrude, Albert, and William. Now Ruth's children had
all been born out of wedlock, but to avoid the
social stigma, She called herself Missus Russell and told people
that her husband had been killed in the war.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Were all the children the same father? No? No, so
Missus Russell was mister Russell. Sorry, wasn't all the children's dads? No,
there was no mister Russell.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
No.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
I understand, but I just wondered, like, she obviously hasn't
picked the surname of She's just picked a random surname.
Not the father of one of the picked a random
surname to avoid the stigma of having three children born
out of wedlock. Fair enough, given the time frame, I
kind of understand that, Yeah, this was actually.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
A very common practice for our mind brothers at the time.
It was far better to be a widow than to
be thought of as a hussy in the early nineteen hundreds, Yeah,
fair enough. Rose and Bill Gooding were very much a
lower working class family. Bill, who was originally from Kent,
had previously worked on the barges on Sussex's River Ooze

(08:42):
between New Haven and Lows in Little Hampton. He got
sporadic work at the port and on fishing boats, while
Rose Gooding kept the house at forty five Western Road
and looked after Dorothy. Soon after moving to Little Hampton,
Rose would have a son with Bill, who the couple
named William Bill Jr. Bill Junior. Yeah, they weren't original,

(09:04):
even in the nineteen twenties with the names.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
No, I mean that's it's not even common. I mean
that takes away from how often it happened sons were
named after fathers. That's just what happened. It actually always
fascinates me when you look back at like surnames. And
I know this totally off topic, but I just thought
about it. When you think the other tailors, the tailors
were all Taylors. Smiths were all blacksmiths, not all of them,

(09:29):
but or you know, I'd like all that shit, and
you can kind of understand. The way to keep the
family would have been to name them the same.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah. Now, Rose and Bill got on well enough, but
they did have frequent vocal arguments. These were often fueled
by alcohol by both parties, and conducted in the full
view or at least with an easy earshot of neighbors.
This gave the couple something of a reputation locally, more
so Rose than Bill, because it was a expected that

(10:01):
a working class man get drunk and loud on occasion,
but for a woman it was seen as not the
done thing at the time.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Well, I'd like to have fun, were they No, No,
man have fun, make money. Women stay home, makehouse.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, be quiet, demure.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
You have to be really careful. She's got really sharp
thing in her hand.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Oh no, she's got croty needles and scissors. Now. On
one occasion, Bill had actually accused Rose of having an
affair with another man while she was at sea, and
he had hit her and thrown her out of the house.
She stayed with a neighbor for a few days before
the couple reconciled. Any foundings in this claim, No, probably not.

(10:44):
It was just another angry, drunken argument and that was
what had spun it this time.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah right.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
And Rose Gooding was a character. She was a strong,
independent woman in a time when women, even working class women,
were supposed to be quiet, unassuming, and demure. She was
frequently drunk and often disorderly, and entirely unapologetic for her behavior.
She was described by one Little Hampton police constable as

(11:12):
being a rather eccentric young woman.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Not a bad label to be honest.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
No, But despite their ups and Downs Rose and Bill
Gooding were a solid couple. Bill was described by their
landlady as a sober, hard working man who was only
occasionally seen the worse for drink. And it should be
said that he adopted Dorothy Rose's daughter from a previous
relationship and treated her as if she was his own.

(11:38):
So a good man, then he was a good man. Yeah.
Next Door to the Goodings lived another family, the good
Man Gooding, No, the Swans, but it was the good
Man Gooding next door. It was the good Man. The
Swans stayed at forty seven Western Road, right next door
with a shared yard. Edward Swan, who was a house painter,

(12:00):
and Mary An Swan had both been residents of Littlehampton
for many years, and they had actually raised no less
than thirteen children at the house. Fuck yeah, I think
two is bad. It is thirteen's worse. By nineteen twenty,
when the events and crimes that were looking at take place,

(12:20):
all of Edward and Mary's children were grown and most
of them had left home. Two of their sons and
one daughter still live with their parents. In nineteen twenty,
the men, now thirty nine and forty years old, shared
one bedroom and Edward and Mary shared another bedroom with
their thirty year old daughter Edith. So tricky set up.

(12:44):
It's a lot of folk under one room. But when
you've had thirteen kids at once in the house, I
suppose they're probably.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Used to it anyway. Yeah, but it's still isn't Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
I always make the joke that we're never having any
more children because.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
We've run out of bedrooms. They've proved that wrong entirely.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
The Swans were, in many ways everything the Goodings weren't.
That is to say, fine, upstanding members of the local community.
They were active members of the local church, and they
were well thought of by most of the townspeople. Edith
had been born in eighteen ninety and raised as a good,

(13:22):
god fearing Christian. She was well behaved and for her station,
well educated as a young girl. By nineteen twenty, Edith
was engaged to a bricklayer, Bert Boxel, from nearby Horsham,
who had joined the army and was currently serving in Mesopotamia.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Sounds like a darks player, Bert Boxel, bird Boxhol. He
only hits the boxes on the board.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
One hundred and ninety As I say, it's all oars.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
I've been watching a lot of the world champions that
they did seventeen year old. That's playing is just a
fucking superman. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah, he's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Now. Edith worked as a lawn dress and she was
very well regarded by those who knew her, although many
did think her a little bit of a busybody. Despite
the differences, the Swans and the Goodings got on fairly
well for many years. After Rose and Bill moved to
Littlehampton in nineteen sixteen, Edith was kind and ingratiating to Rose,

(14:19):
lending Rose various items, including clothes, cooking utensils, and a bathtub.
Edith Swan also wrote out recipes and knitting patterns for
her neighbor. You're pinging a rather a.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Dyllic picture of this tiny little hamlet.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah. Well, the amicable relationship between the two families, and
more importantly, the two women wasn't going to last forever.
It continued until about the fourth of April nineteen twenty.
It was Easter Sunday, and after attending the usual church service,
Edith allegedly witnessed Rose mistreating one of her sister Ruth's
children outside their house. Whether this incidant what ever, actually

(15:00):
took place is unclear. However, a few weeks later, at
the beginning of May, Edith Swan wrote a letter to
the National Society for the Prevention of Cruel Teat's Children
reporting Rose Gooding for child abuse.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
And that was a thing the.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
NSPCC. I shouldn't tell you when they were founded, but
now that could I actually, But they were definitely around
the nineteen twenties.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Well there you go, so they're over one hundred years old. Yeah,
it was probably after the abolition of like child labor.
It would make sense for it to come in after that.
But yeah, I'm spitballing.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Entirely regarding the actually incident. In a later statement to
Little Hampton police, Edith recalled Bill Gooding took the baby
away from Rose because she had been beating her sister's
baby with a cane. He said he would not allow
her to hit it with the cane, and she Rose
accused mister Gooding of being the father of her sister's
last baby. Now getting back to the story, an NSPCC inspector,

(16:05):
a man from Chichester called Ac Bailey, was sent to
interview Rose Gooding, her husband, Bill, and many of the
neighbors and none of the people questioned corroborated Edith Swan's claim,
so the investigator reported that he found the home to
be spotlessly clean and the children in a perfect state
in every way, nailing it. Nailing it. So no further

(16:29):
action was taken by the NSPCC and the report was dismissed.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Seems a fairly reasonable outcome given the inspection exactly.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
However, Rose Gooding was understandably vexed at her neighbor, Edith Swan,
for making the false report.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
Ah yes, I forget that it was the neighbor who
was being a bell.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
The amical relationship between the two women deteriorated after this,
with Rose vocally and publicly admonishing Edith for making the
false claim. Fight Also, shortly after the visit by the
NSPCC inspector, on the fourteenth of May, a letter was
posted through the door of the Swan family at forty
seven Western Road. The letter was addressed to Edith Swann

(17:14):
and signed RG. The entire content of the letter has
sadly not been recorded, but from later court transcripts we
know that it contained the words you bloody old cow,
mind your own business and there would be no more Rows.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
I mean for one bit to survive. I think that's
a good summary of what the letter probably contained.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
It's a good bit.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
And this was the beginning of what would become known
as the Little Hampton libels or the Little Hampton poisoned
pen scandal. Have you got a poisoner but a poisoned ink? Exactly?
The poison here is metaphorical. Ah. Over the next few weeks,
letters are at the doors of many people connected to

(18:02):
Edith Swan. Her butcher, her fish smonger, the dairy, the
local general store all received them. These letters stated that
Edith Swan was a prostitute and that her family were
drunkards and thieves. This is fucking escalade. It has now.
All of the letters were signed R or RG or

(18:24):
with miss Gooding's compliments, and in at least one case
missus R. E.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Gooding.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
A letter was also sent to Edith Swan's fiance, who, remember,
was a serving soldier in Mesopotamia. This letter accused Edith
of conducting a relationship with a lance constable who lived
down the street at forty nine Western Road, and that
she was carrying his bastard child.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
There's a lot of she shacked him and this is
so far now.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Burt Boxel broke off the engagement shortly after receiving a
letter because she shocked them. A postcard was also sent
to the Beach Hotel where Edith Swan's brother Ernest worked.
It accused him of stealing from the hotel. Now, many
of these libelous letters were written on postcards, which had

(19:16):
the effect that anybody who handled them could see what
their content was. Ernest Swan's manager didn't believe the letter
because he'd always been an exemplary employee.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
With a wonderfully strong name, Ernest Swornest Swan, I enjoy
that one.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Bill Gooding Rose's husband received a postcard at his place
of work on the Littlehampton Docks which read, ask your
wife who she was with on Tuesday afternoon on the common. However,
by far the most common recipient of the poison pen
letters was Edith Swan herself, who had received many by
post or slipped through her door over the months of

(19:57):
May and June of nineteen twenty. So she'd refused, refused,
she'd received.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Loads, yeah, loads, But the people you've mentioned so far,
Ernest and the others had just the one or two. Yeah,
they received just one or two. So whoever RG is
is stirring the pot.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yes, so it would seem, And it wasn't just the
liable nature of the notes that caused such controversy. The
expletive language used in the letters was considered as shocking
as the lies themselves. In June of nineteen twenty, Edith
Swan received a letter which read, Dear Edith, you foxy

(20:40):
ass old whore. You really are a tricksy old fucker.
You belong in Hell probably, and you're a sad stinking
bitch as well. Give me the tricksy a bit again.
Dear Edith, you foxy ass old who You really are
a tricksy old fucker and you belong in Hell probably,
and you're a sad stink bitches. This is the weirdest

(21:02):
hard on I've had in a while, Allie. Another note
contained the words you foxy arse old fucking whore. You
want spiking in the nose, you big smelly bitch.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Definitely taking the E button for explicit for this episode,
I think.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Edith Swan publicly and frequently accused Rose Gooding of sending
the letters. It made sense the two women had fallen
out and Rose was an outspoken young woman known to
use similar language when drunk.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
I'm not sure it does makes can the question your
choice of words? That makes sense?

Speaker 2 (21:37):
The tricks the old fox. The Rose fervently denied ever
writing any of the letters, and along with her husband Bill,
she visited many of the recipients to protest her innocence.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
I'm not a tricksy old fox exactly. I'd get a
T shirt made. The letters get better? Oh good, I
enjoy this so far two and a half pages into
twenty eight Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
On the fifth of July nineteen twenty, Edith Swan and
her mother went to the Justices of the Peace and
consulted solicitor Arthur Shelley. Mister Shelley wrote to the Goodings
to inform them that legal proceedings might be brought against Rose.
The letters, however, continued, and now Arthur Shelley himself began

(22:22):
receiving them as well. These notes, including statements like her Majesty,
Miss Swan sucks ten cocks a week minimum. You great,
big fucking onion, You great big.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Fucking onion is my new favorite of everything.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Also, Edith Swan takes it up the swannee, and she
loves it more than Christmas Day, but more than Christmas
shicks the old flocks? M was she suck noki? No?

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Was she sucking ten clocks a day? Because it was
like the skin, the skins of an onion. She's just
peeling another one back, include for another cock. She is
a trick to the old fox.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Rose Gooding was summoned to a police court hearing, which
took place in September of nineteen twenty. Edith Swan had
brought a witness who swore that he had seen Dorothy Gooding,
Rose's daughter post a letter. Edith herself claimed that she
had seen Rose Gooding drop off one letter. So Rose
was committed for trial and offered bail of fifty pounds. However,

(23:36):
there was no way that the Goodings could hope to
raise that much money, so Rose was sent to Portsmouth
jail for twelve weeks while she awaited trial.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
I sentenced the Rose, you massive Tomshay, to twelve weeks
in jail while you think about the dicks you suck,
You fucking onion, big fucking onion, big fucking onion. Rose
good appeared at the loser sizes in December of nineteen
twenty with Alexander Rosch as presiding judge. The case for

(24:08):
the prosecution was circumstantial at best, and the prosecution provided
no handwriting analysis to connect the letters to Rose Gooding,
which Judge Rosch did criticize them for. However, despite this
and Rose Gooding's persistent statements of innocence, the jury found
her guilty and she was sentenced to fourteen days imprisonment

(24:28):
in Portsmouth.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
Jail for writing rude things. For writing rude things, This
conviction was made on circumstantial, irrelevant and non existent evidence.
Edith claimed that she saw Rose post a letter which
may or may not have been one of the poison
pen letters. The same can be said for the witness
who saw Rose's daughter Dorothy post a letter. There was

(24:52):
no evidence that either of these were one of the
libel letters in question. What influenced the jury to bring
back a guilty verdict was the witnesses to Rose's character.
Some of these were officers of the Littlehampton Police, and
they testified that Rose Gooding was frequently drunk and disorderly,
and that she frequently used foul language in public, including

(25:14):
specific phrases which were found in the letters, mostly referring
to Edith Swan.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
So they we've heard of say shit like this before,
so it's not a surprise to us that she's calling
folk onions exactly.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
But it was also noted by the prosecution during the
trial that during the twelve weeks before the trial, when
Rose was in jail, no letters were received by anyone.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Okay, so let's just run back because a lot I
think I lost my mind slightly in the middle there
when you started reading now about the cocks and the onions,
loads of notes, all signed RG. Rose Gooding got a trial.
Everyone said, sounds like her. She's got a jail four
fourteen days. Yeah, during that period we get no more

(26:04):
onion letters exactly. Sounds like it was her.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Also during the two weeks that she was in prison
after the trial, So during the fourteen weeks that Rose
was incarcerated, no more poison pen letters were received by
anybody in Littlehampton, and this served to galvanize public opinion
against Rose, many people who previously thought that she might
have been innocent, because if she had written the notes,
then why sign her own name on them?

Speaker 1 (26:32):
I suppose there is the argument there that she's if
she was she was, like, oh, but why would I
the argument double bluffing?

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Almost yes, But they changed their minds when no more
notes were received while Rose was in jail, and this
was reinforced when within weeks of Rose's release from Portsmouth
Prison the letters started up again.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
So either somebody knows exactly when she's in jail or
she's been.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Doing it yes now before Edith Swan was the main
target of these, and she passed many of the letters
on to Little Hampton police. One read dear miss Swan,
you bloody fucking old sack of chicken piss you want
fucking in the nose holes, you old beetle. Another stated,
you fucking steaming bag of wet leaking shit. Your arse

(27:20):
is bigger than the moon, and your cat wants a
good burning too. I reckon you, big stupid stinker. Differentiation between.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Fucking her in the nostril and calling someone a big
stupor stinker stinker. Sorry, fuck it, pick a levels. She's
not gonna pick a level. She's gonna do all levels,
you stinker. I'll fuck you in the nose.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
The police, who still believed that Rose was responsible for
the notes, informed Edward one Up and William Smith, who
were rose goodings solicitors. Mister Smith visited the Goodings to
inform them that more letters had been said, and in
an attempt to clear was his name. She secretly went
to Lose for two weeks and stayed with her mother

(28:06):
in law, and the Gooding family pretended that she was
in the house. During that time. Rose posted letters to
her own house at forty five Western Road as proof
of her absence. Since the envelopes would be marked with
the Loos postmark, it should prove.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Where she was, so she sticked matters in her own hands. Yes,
this isn't me. Look, I promise she's not me exactly now.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
During Rose's absence, more letters were received by Edith and
other residents of Littlehampton. The Mitchell family received one which
read to the old bastard Mitchell's, you elf skinned country
Whore's you belong in a cave? You foxy rabbit fuckers.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Fox, Yes, rabbit fucker might be better than your big
fucking onion.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Who or missus Pagwell received a postcard which read, dear
missus Pagwell, you are sucker. Call that a chin. There's
nothing fucking there. It's just rude. What was on the postcards?
It's like a donkey on the beach. Yeah it was.
There were like tourist postcards amazing. Despite Rose's two week absence,

(29:14):
during which time letters were sent and received in Little
Hampton letters which it was physically impossible for her to
have posted. On the fifteenth of February, Rose Gooding was
arrested for a second time and charged with sending the
Little Hampton poison pen letter.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
I was gonna say, like, what is it? I know
you is this case is about liable. So this is
basically like she's being charged with. They're not stop saying
it is that? Is that the basis of this more
or less?

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yes, but you could also be charged under the Post
Office Act of sending offensive things through the post.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Okay, so I suppose it's the same as you can
get done for posting things on social media these days.
It's that same kind of thing. It's just much funnier
when it's on a donkey post.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah. Now. The second trial was held in March in Lews,
with Judge Horace Avery presiding. The evidence the prosecution presented
was against circumstantial at best, and the defense should have
had a far better case this time, since Rose was
literally not in Littlehampton for a two week period when

(30:21):
some of the letters were sent and received.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
And the postmarks would be something that you can absolutely
nail down like.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
They should be.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
However, two things worked against Rose during this second trial.
The first was that the charade during her absence that
had been so well maintained that neither the jury nor
the judge, Horace Avery, actually believed that she had been
in Lews for those two weeks, so.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
She double bluff or double bluff, yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
And the second was that it was undeniable that the
same hand was behind the new letters as the last letters,
and Rose had already been found guilty in a court
of law of set and then the first letters.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
I suppose they compare the handwriting and go, we've already
proved these ones were you.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Exactly, even though the original handwriting had never been compared
to Rose Gooding's handwriting.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
They hadn't even gone, could you write down doctor Deck
on this piece of paper so we can compare it?

Speaker 2 (31:15):
No fucking idiots. So, after eight minutes of deliberating, the
jury did return and request a sample of Rose Gooding's
handwriting so that a comparison could be made. But Judge
Avery refused, as the defense and the prosecution had both
rested their cases and no new evidence could be entered.
As a result, the jury brought back a second verdict

(31:37):
of guilty and Rose Gooding was sentenced to a further
twelve months in prison with hard labor penal service.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yes, Giggody goes with the goes with the letters. Something
can write a letter about how are their pemal service now?
Now I'm to stab in the dark here alistair just
based on the way you're now arrative has gone so
far that we don't think Rose was actually writing these letters.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
At this point. She definitely wasn't.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
But due to the nature of the law system, it
was a continuation almost of the previous crime, so it
wouldn't have taken much to convict her the second time.
This kind of a scary fact of the way the
judicial system works.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
It is and it's not really the way the judicial
system should work.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
It does absolutely, I mean, at best, a handwriting example
of just her name in comparison should have even if
it showed up in the water, it's quite similar.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
It doesn't matter that it should have been done. Rose
Gooding's first conviction could possibly be thought of as a
reasonable mistake. The evidence was circumstantial, but it was at
least conceivable that she could have sent the letters initially.
This second conviction is staggering and it shows a number
of systemic problems with the justice system at the time.

(33:00):
Obviously there is a certain amount of prejudice and bias
at work. The local authorities are biased against Rose in
this case due to her class and her previous public behavior.
Officers appeared as character witnesses for the prosecution at Roses trials.
But we also now see the police and the court
refusing to accept evidence that doesn't fit their perceived version

(33:23):
of events and disregarding it like Rose's two week absence,
and we see a refusal to seek evidence which might
compromise a previous court decision.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
The covering the Roan arses here, then it is basically
a case of them going, if we don't find ou
guety this time, it means we'd fucked up the first
time exactly.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
So let's just sh this away exactly. But this is
obviously not how the justice system should work, even back
in nineteen twenty so the Director of Public Prosecutions at
the time for Archibald Bodkin Great he's not an onion.

(34:04):
A later said that he thought Judge Avery's decision to
refuse the request about handwriting was astonishing, giving that this
was a case which, from its commencement to the end
of it was a case of handwriting.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
It's nothing else other than wonderful slurs. Just like I
know you'll probably get to what's happened and things, but
I would like to tip my cap to the writing
of those letters.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yes, it's excellent swearing, top notch. Now. In April, Rose
Gooding tried to appeal the verdict, but the application was
dismissed because there was no new grounds. Bill Gooding wrote
several times to the Home Secretary requesting that the case
be reopened, and Rose even protested to the prison governor
that she was innocent, but their attempts made no real

(34:53):
headway in either obtaining her release or a further trial.
This is even more astonishing when we think that Rose
Gooding was imprisoned straight after the second trial, and this
time the letters didn't stop.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
To me, that is, it's not all the evidence you need,
because we've had enough evidence so far to overturn this trial,
but that in itself that's everything.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
It should be and further evidence which should have exonerated
Rose Gooding turns up later in that same month, April
nineteen twenty one, two notebooks, which both contained what were
described as filthy expressions and in the same handwriting as
the letters, were found in Littlehampton, both quite close to
Edith Swan's home address. Inspector Thomas sent both of these

(35:38):
books to Sir Archibald Bodkin, who concluded that with Rose
in prison, it was unlikely that they came from her.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Unlikely doesn't need to do much lifting in that sentence. There,
I'm going to go with it wasn't from her.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
They definitely weren't from her, So Sir Archibald Bodkin passed
them on to the Home Office lawyer Sir Ernleigh Blackwell,
who noted, I have very little doubt that this woman
has twice been wrongfully convicted. Despite this, though West Sussex
Police remain unwilling to entertain the possibility that Rose might

(36:17):
not be responsible. They investigate with a Rose and a
Quote has so arranged when imprisoned on the latter occasion,
that the Torn Book and the Red Book should be
discovered so as to give rise to the observation that
somebody else was responsible and not she herself. She thinks

(36:38):
they have them. The police think that she had them
planted after she was put in prison to try and
throw them off the scent.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
Oh, she'd say so. She's not had them like post
date posted, just she sneaked, got them snuck in, or
sneaked them in herself, sneaked in filthy onion.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Another thing that West Sussex Police will consider is that
Edith Swan might have been the one sending the letters
all along. Superintendent Peel of West Sussex Police reports the
Chief Constable Williams. Did she say, Peel? Yes? Is he
an onion? He was an onion, A big fucking, big
fucking officer onion.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
He said.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
I have made inquiries respecting the character of miss Swan,
and I find that she bears a very good character. Indeed,
she is a very hard working woman, and what I
have seen of her, I do not think that she
would write such things about herself and send them through
the post on postcards for everyone to see. Meanwhile, Miss
Gooding and her sister both have illegitimate children. They're fucking

(37:46):
rollins exactly, they did.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
They are robins.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
However, entirely unsatisfied with the West Sussex Police investigation, Sir
Archibald Bodkin decided to bring in an impartial investigator and
requested the assistance of the Criminal Investigations Department of Scotland.
Yard they send Inspector George Nichols to look at the case.
Inspector Nichols is everything that West Sussex Police appear not

(38:15):
to be, diligent, thorough and most importantly, untainted by any
preconceptions concerning the case. He travels to Lose and confirms
that Rose was indeed there for the two weeks when
she claimed to be, and hadn't left to say post
some letters at any point. He also interviews twenty nine

(38:37):
people in Littlehampton and speaks to many more connected with
the case. Most of these people had no issue with
Rose Gooding prior to the letters, although many did remark
that Edith Swan was a judgmental, busybody who frequently put
her nose where it didn't belong, like other people's pumps. Yes,

(38:59):
in other people's business, as I would have said.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Oh okay, So Inspector Nichols did police work.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
He did.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
This is the big thing that's been lacking in this
case so far is police work.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
But will I help him?

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Oh? I mean, based on what you've told me so far,
he's going to get a letter tell him and he's
a fucking camel's cocksack or something.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
I don't think he did receive any letters on which
is a shame. He seems the perfect recipient to the Inspector.
Nichols also interviewed Edith Swan herself, but the impression he
comes away with is very different from the one West
Sussex Police have of the woman. He later described Edith
as not only a peculiar woman in appearance and behavior,

(39:44):
but would seem to have a remarkable memory, especially for
filthy phrases. For she has apparently got these letters by
heart and is enabled to reel them off without any hesitation.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
She's written them.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah. Following this, Inspector Nichols has three suspects, Edith Swan,
her father Edward, and Ruth Russell Rose's sister.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Oh roses been in jail, didn't do the letter's sister?

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah, okay? But he obtains handwriting samples from all three
a good idea and compares them to the Little Hampton letters.
Ruth and Edwards don't come close to matching Edith Swan's
was a close but not precise match. He also searches
the Swan's house and the grieving's house, and he found

(40:36):
some blotting paper in the Swan house which contained writing
which did exactly match the letters. The practice letters. Yes there.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
I was watching the John Manny Ramsay documentary recently, and
there's a huge thing about the notepad in that one
having a practice letter in it. And I know, obviously
we're going to go on, hopefully possibly solve this case.
In the jumpin a one was will it ever be salted?
We don't actually know. But that practice letter thing, that's
not like it's such a I was going to say amateurish,

(41:10):
but who's a professional at this? Like it's such an
easy wait, there goes the notebook, Burnett, and your evidence
is gone. It's just such a simple thing to not
leave there as a wild case. Though, oh yeah, I'm
not even get started on It's one I'll never touch.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Inspector Nichols reported back to Sir Archibald Bodkin that neither
Rose Gooding's handwriting or spelling matched the letters, but he
held off suggesting that Edith herself was responsible for them.
Yet in July of nineteen twenty one, an appeal was
heard before the Court of Criminal Appeals. Travers Humphries was
the barrister appearing on behalf of Rose Gooding. Sorry, did

(41:50):
you say that?

Speaker 1 (41:51):
Edward Swan's handwriting was compared as well and it was
found to be not right? So I'm we have a
definite no, definitely for Edward and Russell close match to Edith.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
It's not exactly the same, but it's consistent with someone
trying to disguise the way they actually write things.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
So it was conceivably a writing that you would do
to make it not look like yours.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Exactly right, He've got it exactly right.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Now.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
He tells the court that he was appearing having been
personally instructed by the Attorney General, and that the appeal
had the approval of the Home Secretary. So the court
quashed both of Rose Buding's convictions without hearing any of
the events, and she was awarded two hundred and fifty
pounds in compensation.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
I mean good that he got quashed. She still spent
a year in year and a quarter in jail.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Almost she only served nine months of her one year sentence,
but she served fourteen weeks, just over a year, just
over a year for something that she never did. Yeah,
and two hundred and fifty quid. Probably not done the maths,
but I didn't do the math this time.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
I'm going the guest ten tennis grand some of that. Yeah,
not a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
It's not a lot of money. And the letters continued.
Do these letters still exist? Yes? They do. Yes. Are
they in a museum somewhere? Yes? Yes, carry on. Constable
George May and his wife Violet moved into the cottage
at forty nine Western Road in September, and then they

(43:28):
too quickly began receiving notes. One read to fucking old
whore May, forty nine Western Road, You and your fucking
whole neighbor can throw as many geers as you like,
but God will punish you, you foxy piss country whoors.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Thought that it was so formal at the beginning, and
it just dissolves right the girl.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Another read, you bloody, fucking flaming piss country Woors, go
and fuck yourselves. It's your drain that stinks, not our
fish box. You fucking dirty sods. You're as bad as
your hooor neighbors.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
What I mean, they're still losing their minds to these
letters as well.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
You fucking fish box, Yes, you fucking dirty sods. It's
like the original fucking Malcolm Ducker. It's brilliant, it's great.
Edith Swan told Violet May that Rose was responsible. The
Violet doubted that this was true. Edith herself had often
handled the notes to the Maze, claiming that she had
found them in their yard or in the garden of

(44:34):
forty nine Western Road.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Oh that's interesting. So they weren't being royal mail delivered.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Every time about half and half half of them were
royal mail delivered. Half of them were just posted through
or underdoors letter boxes.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Some sneaky bastards come up and put it in anyway, Yeah, isn't.
I only ask because it's interesting because we talked about
the postmark there, so you could say that she was
definitely lose because of the postmarks. But if some of
them didn't go through the postal system, she could have
just sneaky, sneaky got and done it.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
But she'd have had to sneaky sneaky get out of
lose and travel all the way back to Littlehampton.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah, I'm not suggesting that's what happened, but like if
the prosecution of this example was looking for a bit there,
then there's always that there is.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Now Sussex Police now a sign WPC Gladys Moss to
investigate the case. Now, I know this is already a
lengthy episode, but I think it's well worth talking about
WPC Moss for a moment. She was an incredible woman
doing incredible things at a difficult time for women. MS

(45:44):
Moss started with the Women's Police Service, which was made
up during the First World War a home Guard esque exactly.
She served with the Ministry of Munitions at one of
Her Majesty's filling factories at Hereford from nineteen seventeen right
up until the end of the war, and during this
time she featured in one prominent police course case after

(46:07):
she found a half burned cigarette in the Explosis factory,
which resulted in a fine of two.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Pound to the young woman involved and Who's smoking the
Melbourne Complacent Country pissbag.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Following the war, Gladys Moss went back to her previous
job as a governess, but in nineteen nineteen she replied
to an advert in the Worthing Gazette and became one
of the first female police officers in the UK after
the war. Well done, Gladys, and the only one in Sussex.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Well Gladys.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
She received her hat and baton on the fifteenth of
November nineteen nineteen. PC Gladys Moss lived and normally worked
in Worthing, but due to the nature of her role
dealing with cases involving women or children, she traveled all
over the county and was the first motorcycle train female
officer in the UK. She was also trained in jiu

(47:04):
jitsu and a crack shot with a small rifle. You
sure she's real. I'm sure she's real. She's not like
Wonder Woman, She's a real person.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
Just says like the fucking start to an action movie.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
She received several commendations during her career before retiring in
nineteen forty one after twenty one years on the force.
A blue plaque in her honor was unveiled at Worthing
Police Station in Chatsworth Road in November of twenty fifteen
to mark one hundred years of women in policing. You
know how much I enjoy a blue plaque?

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah? I do enjoy a blue plaque. It's always tiny
little snippets of history that are you know, they're very
twisted Britain a blue plaque. They are tiny snippets of
history that could easily have just been lost. Yeah, I
love them and I would like to see this one.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
It's a good one. Also. The first female police officer
ever in the UK was Edith Smith nineteen fifteen during
the war, first ever off a female officer with full
powers of arrest.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Working for his mad her, his Majesty's his master's fucking
help up. You can tell her bill this week. His
message is pleased for so she was not just part
of like the just an auxiliary. She was the first
official and her name was against her Daith Smith, Edith Smith,
thank you. But getting back to the little Hampton letters,

(48:26):
PC Gladys Moss suspected this sworn of being the author
of these notes, and she began a surveillance operation from
a shed which overlooked the yard area of the May's house.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
She went properly eighties movie steakhout. Yeah it was nice.
She had her popcorn and a dog called Hooch. Oh
my god, I'll turn her on. Hooch.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Yeah, I know you did.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
On the twenty seventh of September, she witnessed Edith Swan
dropping a letter into the yard. This was also witnessed
by Violet May herself from a window. PC Gladys Moss
quit Edith's wan immediately, but Edith denied having handled the
letter at all. PC Moths took the note straight to
the police station to log at as Evans, but ten

(49:10):
minutes later Edith arrived at the station to change her story.
She now claimed that she had seen the note in
the shared yard, picked it up and then, seeing that
it was another poison pen letter, immediately threw it back
on the ground, But then when an inspector arrived, she
changed the story again, stating that she had seen the
letter and moved out of her way, but never noticed

(49:31):
any of the writing on it. Wasn't he mely a
big point? Done it? Run away?

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Yeah? Yeah? Fuck off.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
However, on the eighth of October nineteen twenty one, sorry
fuck off your big fucking onion think. Eighth of October
nineteen twenty one, accompanied by Chief Inspector Williams, PC Gladys
Moss travels to London and meets with Sir Archibald Bodkin
and Inspector George Nichols. Following this meeting, Inspector Nichols returns

(49:59):
to Littlehampton and conducts a further investigation. Violet May and
her husband George are interviewed, along with many others. Nichols
then compiles a report for Sir Archibald Bodkin, which included
all the witness statements, along with the evidence he himself
gathered in its previous investigation and the evidence from PC
Gladys Moss's surveillance. This report led to Edith Swann being

(50:23):
charged on the twenty first of October with obscene libel
for unlawfully writing and publishing certain false, scandalous and defamatory libel.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
So obvious question, I think, can you cause libel on yourself?

Speaker 2 (50:42):
No, but she.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Was the victim and the perpetrator. Lots of other people
had received them as well.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
She was never charged with sending letters to herself because
technically you can send letters to yourself if you want.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
I suppose it would still be in the contravection the
postal act that you talked about.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
You're still send You're still sending ob seeing things because
they were on postcards that anybody could read, which is
mad because you actually you think about when you go
on holiday now and litter say, every second postcard in
Malaga is just a wang.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
So they would probably fall under that same act that
we're talking about now. No, I only asked some obviously,
you said earlier on when we were talking about it.
She got dozens in comparison to other people's ones and twos.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yes, but they still count obviously, yes. Yeah. Now. Following
our committal hearing on the twenty seventh of October, Edith
Swan was held in custoday until the eighth December, when
she stood trial at the loser sizes, with Sir Judge
Clement Bellhashie presiding.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
A lot of very good names in this but Bell
Hashi Hashi what bell short for so know.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Bell Ward Bell ringer stuff.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Sorry, well, end, you've said enough. You said too many
rude words this episode, Alistair, I have.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Said quite a few.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
A filthy potty mind today.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
The insult tittickler was in another of the notes as well.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
I beg your pardon, TI tickler, the tic tickler, tickler,
tits tickler, you filthy tickler. That's I'm sorry for doing this.
What was that hand motions my tittickling well appartly are
geting fat these days.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Now, my mom says, So that's the saddest thing of
this whole podcast. My mommy says I'm fat, but momy
says I'm fat. Do He was gonna get me a
waistcoat for Christmas, but she said I can't get him
one because.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
He's too fat, because he looked like a fucking hour glass.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Sad face. Now, Unlike either of the two trials of
Rose Gooding, the prosecution in this case had far more
than circumstantial evidence to convict Edith. One. There was the
blotting paper found in her house with handwriting that matched
the letters exactly. There was the two notebooks found in
Little Hampton close to her address, which contained expletive language

(53:08):
and also handwriting which matched the letters. Edith Swan's own
handwriting was compared to the letters and found to be
a close match, not exact, but consistent with somebody trying
to disguise their penmanship. There was the testimony of Violet May,
who had seen Edith drop one of the letters in
her yard, and the testimony of PC Gladys Moss, who

(53:28):
had witnessed the same thing There was the report of
Inspector Nichol's investigation, which cast suspicion on Edith for various reasons,
including the odd fact that she could recite the letter's
verbatim from memory.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
I mean, I suppose you could argue that if you'd
been sent those things in the post, you would know
what they said. But I'm presuming by all of you
mean all of the letters. Yeah, and I'm picturing her.
The notebooks that were found were like a teenage girl's notebook.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
They were with all scribbles, you just like, yeah, bitch
next door, fuck the little look donkey dick.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
I don't know any teenage girls that ever wrote but
donkey dick in the notebooks. But there we are.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
That was my notebook, wasn't it. It was I wrote
it in your notebook. However, despite all this evidence, you'll
be surprised, as I was, to learn that Edith was
found not guilty by the jury.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
You're right, I am surprised by that.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
The main reason for this was the testimony of Edith
Swan in her own defense. She appeared on the witness
stand the very paragon of quiet, womanly virtue. When asked
whether she had ever used the kind of language found
in the letters, She replied, never during the whole of
my life, either in writing or talking. Never. Her testimony

(54:52):
was delivered masterfully, and the jury and judge Sir Clement
bel Hesche bought it. They simply couldn't believe that the shy,
demure woman who was quietly speaking could be responsible for
such foul language.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
What did her husband do?

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Again? Her husband was a well gereff fiance serving soldier
in Mesopotamia.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
So he was serving in the forces. And they don't
think that she was capable of such language. She could
leave that right there on the table.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
The judge and the jury weren't alone in thinking Edith
Swann capable of such things. Many people in the local
community felt the same way, and some still believe that
Rose Gooding was responsible. In early nineteen twenty two, after
edithwan had been released following the verdict of not guilty,
the letters resumed. Now recipients included many of the people

(55:44):
who had been involved in the trial. The magistrate, court officials,
the police all began receiving letters alongside members of the community.
In October nineteen twenty two, Caroline Johnson received a postcard
calling her a prostitute, and she was so sure that
it must have come from Rose Gooding that she assaulted
Rose in the street, pulling her hair and striking her

(56:06):
in the face so hard that she not be innocent,
woman unconscious. And this is like after she'd been admonished
of all the this is after she'd been exonerated. But
I suppose that the public opinion at the time when
she would have been trial would have been much bigger
than the the public reaction, sorry, the coverage that goes
with it is much bigger at the time of the

(56:27):
trial than that I'm sorry. Yeah, ever actually did it?
It's always a twelve words at the end of a
paragraph footnote, yeah, exactly. On the seventeenth of October, Caroline
Johnson was fined one pound for the assault. Bill Gooding
was actually present at the hearing, and he overheard Deputy

(56:48):
Superintendent Fred Peel saying that he still believed that Rose
was responsible for the letters, despite all the evidence that
clearly pointed to Edith Swan po woman's had her life
fucking ruined. She has. The letters continued until finally in
mid nineteen twenty three, so that's about three years after

(57:08):
they began. Authorities enlisted the help of one organization that
at the time you didn't want to mess with Thunderbirds. No,
Edith had pulled the wool over the eyes of the public,
the police, and the courts. She had lied, prevaricated, dissembled
and obfuscated her way out of an investigation by Scotland

(57:29):
yard she had throwed three separate juries and three judges.
But now she was up against the General Post Office.
And if I know anything from Pratchet, don't fuck with
the Post office exactly. And they were efficient then this
was pre Horizon computer system.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
I hopelly you might leave that alone. But okay, carry on,
let's not get yourselves fucking liable.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
The GPO dispatched two detectives to resolve the case. They
actually had postal detectives, but I know that was the
whole Horizon thing. They called them special investigation clerks in so.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
In Scotland they didn't have the right to prosecute within
the post office themselves. But in England for the whole
of this the Alan Bates Horizon scandal. And it wasn't
just him, but he's the famous name that goes with it.
The Post Office itself could prosecute y very good.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
That is mad wild, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Like? I understand them doing their own investigation like any
big company would, but then surely hand it over to
the cops, let them do their job.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
No, not the post office. Not the post office. That
the two GPO detectives devised a brilliant strategy to catch
Edith Swan red handed and obtain unequivocal and undeniable evidence
that she was the culprit behind the libel letters. First,
the local subpost office nearest to Edith's house was placed
under surveillance, along with the postbox that thought to be

(58:51):
used most often by Edith. In the post it was
not in the post box. Unfortunately, they had a periscope
mirror that let them look in side the postbox.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Is that right? That's a that's actually probably better than
just some dude squatting in a post.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
You're like a midget, though inside the postbox. I think
we say vertically challenged. A vertically challenged person. Don't be
a onion inside the postbox. You have to peel a
lot of layers off of an onion before we get
it in the postbox. That's all I'm saying, sen Gray,
though peered Dinklage could have played him in the TV
drama The TV dramatization of It with peered Enklish.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
For like a cameo roll, one of this nation's great
actors and you're ramming them in a postbox.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Hey, you got to take any gig you can get
means must.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
Next, the staff in the post office were given special
stamps to sell to Edith the next time she bought any.
These stamps were identical to normal stamps, except that they
were marked with invisible ink, which would reappear when treated
with a chemical. I really like that.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
That's clever as fuck, brilliant in it, Like you're what
was the like the dye that goes off when you
rob money so that you can rule the money marks
you forever exactly. I like all that kind of like
it almost feels like early high school magic science. Yeah

(01:00:20):
you know what I mean, Like you could buy that
kit from the back of the beano or something like
here's your invisible ink pen that's only available if you
put some heat under it, or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
I like all that shit. So on the twenty third
of June, Edith Swan bought a book of stamps and
was given the marked ones as planned. The following day,
she was seen posting two letters by the General Post
Office detectives, and the Postmaster General retrieved them from the postbox.
One of these letters was a normal letter to Edith's sister,

(01:00:50):
but the other was an expletive letter to a local
sanitary inspector. Both had stamps marked with the invisible ink.
The Post Office detectives went to Edith Swan's house immediately
and brought her back to the post Office. Edith was
cautioned by the detectives, who had full arrest powers, and

(01:01:11):
then shown the letters and the mark stamps, and told
that she had been witnessed by multiple post office staff
posting the letters. When asked to account for this, she replied,
I have no explanation to offer other than that I
am not guilty either of writing or posting any letters
to the Senatory.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
But she did happily say that she'd posted one to
her sister though, yeah to go Andnri in the same
handwriting with the same stamps. Yeah, but I didn't do
that one. That's her claim, right, Okay, I mean it's stin.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
A Few days later, on the fourth of July, Inspector
Thomas from Littlehampton and Deputy Police Superintendent Fred Peel went
to forty seven Western Road and charged Edith under Section
sixty three of the Post Office Act with attempting to
send a postal packet which had their on words of
an indecent, obscene and grossly offensive character.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
What do we know what was in this one? We
don't know what was in this one, because it feels
to me like we've got to the pinnacle of her
writing at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
I know, but I don't know what was in that one.
There's like a Lemour's ass sack or something in this one.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
I'm sure there were.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Hundreds of letters and I managed to read about a
finder about twelve of them in various places. Did you
did you have a moment reading them?

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Obviously. I don't know why I needed to ask. I
have so much fun about you did.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Honestly, no matter what you told me before we came
in to do this podcast, I did not think you
were going to call any of a big fucking onion.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
But one of my most enjoyable statements everyone on the
fudcast it absolutely is. Edith Swan's second committal hearing was
held on the eleventh of July, and it was decided
that she would stand trial at the next assizes and lose,
which was seven days later on the eighteenth. The presiding
judge was Horace Avery, again the same judge who had

(01:03:06):
presided over Rose Gooding's second trial. When he refused the
jury's request for a handwriting comparison.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
I was going to say, I don't rate him highly
at all.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
No, I don't rat him by the end of it either.
But fortunately it's the jury, not the judge that true
passes verdict. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Well, I mean they are led by the judge in
most cases. They weren't they they are, and he wasn't
a great leader in the court room. I would have said, nope.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
And he was definitely Edith Swan biased even in this trial.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Okay, which is interesting because he's I suppose he's doubling
down again. He's doubling down on doubling down.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
He is doubling down on doubling down because the evidence
against Edith Swan was undeniable this time, including everything from
the previous trial, plus the testimony of the General Post
Office detectives and the letters posted using the stamps marked
with invisible ink, which Edith was proven to have posted. Nonetheless,
Edith protested her innocence throughout the trial and again testified

(01:04:05):
in her own defense. Justice Avery seemed to have had
great difficulty in believing that Edith could be guilty. During
his thirty minute summary at the end of the trial,
he directed the jury to consider whether it was conceivable
that she could have written this document given that her
demeanor in the witness box was that of a respectable,

(01:04:26):
clean mouthed woman. He then finished by asking the jury
whether there might possibly be some mistake. No, no, there isn't.
But this is a mark of just how good I
my manipulator, Edith Swan was.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
I was going to say that her ability to produce
that American viction in her I'm gonna go out there
and say lies they are, Yeah. Is It's quite something
to be able to just like go fucking nope for
this am I the time? I know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Mister Humphries, who led the prosecution for both of Edith's trials,
later wrote in his memoirs that Edith Swan was the
perfect witness, neat and tidy in appearance, polite and respectful
in her answer, with just that twinge of feeling to
be expected in a person who knows herself to be
the victim of circumstance. However, as I said, the evidence

(01:05:24):
this time was undeniable, and the jury brought back a
verdict of guilty. Edith Swan was sentenced to twelve months
in prison, although when delivering the sentence, Judge Avery did
say that it was his duty to pass sentence whether
he agreed with the verdict or not. I don't rate
him at all, doesn't say them a great judge. Surely

(01:05:47):
the is not coming across. Well, no, they like.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
The definition of what a judge should be doing is
staying impartial. Yes, here both like that is literally the
base of our law system is that a judge is impartials.
So we have a jury to make a decision. Now
they are there too because they know the law better
than anybody else. But to make a statement that is, sorry,

(01:06:12):
what did you say that whether he agrees with it
or not. Yeah, it's his duty to pass sentence whether
he agrees.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
With the verdict or not. Well, that's him clearly disagreeing
with the verdict.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
That is like, you might as well say it. Fuck off,
you massive fucking onion.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
You're gonna run with that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
Now I might I'm getting a T shirt twisted Britain.
You big fucking on your T shirt. You just you
big fucking onion on the front, thank you, love you
buy on the back done, I love it. Tidy print
that just says a country piss hole or whatever it was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
Country. Edith Swan served her full sentence despite appealing the verdict,
and after her release she's stayed in Little Hampton. And however,
by nineteen thirty nine she was living in a mental
institution in Worthing, which gives credence to the theory that
Edith may have been suffering from some kind of mental
illness which could explain the apparent pathological nature of her behavior.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
It could, yeah, it could, which I suppose we spoke
very briefly there about her absolute conviction to be able
to lie.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
You could pass that off as one of two things.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
I suppose it's either unequivocal sureness that you can convince
anybody of what you are doing, which seems to be
in the case with the judge. I would suggest, or
a level of mental insecurity, for lack of a better term,
that maybe she really believed herself that she wasn't that's

(01:07:50):
a brain juggle.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
Yeah, you know what I mean, Like I know, I mean,
we're talking about emotives or what I think hermotives might
be a little bit of the end. Edith died died
in a council run residential home in nineteen fifty nine,
when she was sixty eight years old. Rose Gooding never
fully recovered from her ordeal. She suffered from insomnia for
the rest of her life, and her husband Bill later

(01:08:14):
said that she was a changed woman after her experiences.
Even after Edith was convicted, Rose Gooding continued to be
harassed and marginalized by the local community. The Goodings moved
to a sorry The Goodings moved to the center of Littlehampton,
where Bill passed away in nineteen forty seven. After this,

(01:08:34):
Rose moved in with her daughter Dorothy and lived with
her in the small village of East Dean until her
death in December of nineteen sixty eight. So really sad
couple of paragraphs there, alistair.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
It is because.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
The woman had done nothing wrong. Rose did nothing wrong
apart from the outspoken and a little bit belligerent occasionally.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Which is who hasn't been It's literally my day to
day life. But I haven't spent over a year in
jail because of that, and then had everything completely wiped
from my record. But I think, as I said earlier,
it's that easy tabloid instinct that covering a woman writing

(01:09:20):
letters of that kind of Britain depravity is really good
headline compared to going.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
Oh, she never done it, by the way, so that
bit doesn't get the same media attention.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
No, so as far as the locals or the wider
community concerned, she's still this bad bitch that rote letters exactly.
That's really fucking horrible.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
Man, It is a shame. Now. That's nearly it for
the story of the Little Hampton Libels. A dispute between
neighbors and one woman writing letters shocked the nation, and
before she was finally brought to account, took up more
police time and investigation than more murderers. It needed four
separate trials for the truth to be discovered. Edith Swan's

(01:10:07):
presentation of herself as the wronged victim fooled the public
and Sussex police and led to an innocent woman, Rose Gooding,
being convicted twice. She defeated an investigation by Scotland Yard
and pulled the wool over the eyes of three separate
juries and three separate judges. It was only through some

(01:10:27):
incredible investigative work by the General Post Office, which included
invisible Ink, that the truth finally came to light.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Postman Pat goes fucking DII amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
Oh I've watched CSI Postman Pat Greendale, CSI Green Dali Greendale. Yeah,
you're welcome. Now I'd like to discuss briefly what Edith
Swan's motive could have been for writing those literally hundreds
of letters. But first, for anyone who wants to learn
more about this case or other similar cases, I'd like

(01:10:59):
to recommen the book Penning Poison, A History of Anonymous
Letters written by the social historian Emila Cocaine, which looks
at many libel letter cases from seventeen sixty through to
nineteen thirty nine. Also The Little Hampton Libels, A Miscarriage
of Justice and a Mystery about Words by Christopher Hillard,

(01:11:22):
which uses the Little Hampton case to illuminate wider questions
of social life in Britain between the wars, from ordinary
people's experience of a legal system to the way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
They wash their sheets. I can don't check my sheets,
two wonderful pieces of literature. They have two very good
reference books. Do you own and have read them? Yeah?
Is what was I going to ask? Is it similar
to is it like a collection of letters or are

(01:11:55):
they books about people who've written?

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
Second one, Little Hampton Ribels by Christopher Hillard is a
book just about this case.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Yes, okay, and he uses it to.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
Illuminate the social constraints that women were under at the time,
and we'll talk about how that could be a motive
in a second. Whereas Penning Poison by Emily Cocaine looks
at anonymous letters throughout history.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
Why people write them, the kind of motive behind exactly
the premise to why somebody would do it. Yeah, that's
some really interesting do you know before you started calling
people Cammell's nut sacks tonight, it's not something I'd really
thought about, Like the anonymous letter is it's not harmless

(01:12:46):
because obviously a concused cause, whose amount of anxiety and
psychological damage and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
But he kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
In the realms of the stuff that we normally talk about,
the art, snick poising, the blatant murder behind closed doors,
it feels a bit I'm not saying it is, but
it feels a bit films in comparison, but like it's affected.
This woman has affected Rose's life massively to the point

(01:13:16):
that she was probably not the same woman by the
end of it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
She wasn't. And it's taking up more police time than
most murderers would do.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
You know what that was the bet I was just
thinking when you went through that as four trials and
the beating defeated everybody but the post office, which is
a mad sentence to say out loud. But it's not
just taking up jurors time and court space that could
have been put to better place. The actual investigative hours
put into.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
This problem massive. It's just insane.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
For no reason other than I'm gonna go with I
know you're gonna get on to spite is probably when
I'm at here.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
Yep, spite, it's definitely in there. Both of the books
I mentioned go into more detail different aspects of the
Little Hampton libels, and both have interesting theories on the
reasoning behind them. Edith Swan never admitted to writing the
letters even after she was found out and convicted, so
all we can do really is speculate on her motive,

(01:14:14):
which is tough because it's such a weird thing to do.
The understanding why she might have done it is in
many ways harder than understanding the motives of say, a
murderer who kills in passion.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
And this is not the first time we've said this,
and we will say it again again, but ninety let's
go with the ninety six ninety seven percent of the
crimes that we talk about. You can boil down to
lust or money. Yeah, and that's I think something that
you and I quite firmly believe. It is certainly in
the cases that we've talked about. I don't see where
this one falls in there.

Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
No, this isn't lust or money.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
So this is one of those four percent full of
three percent, whatever percentage's going to choose cases. It's not
motiveless that we've talked recently as well. I can remember
the case that you did recently there was a motiveless one,
but it just seems so petty in comparison to a
lust or money case.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
It is, and in Wicked Little Letters with Olivia Coleman,
there is an undercurrent of racial discrimination suggested as Edith's motive,
but that was definitely not actually the case. In real life.
For one thing, in real life, there was no racial
difference between the families.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
I can say when you said racial, there was that.
I don't remember you saying that one of them was
from a different society or they weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
They were all upper lower class or lower lower class
white Caucasians.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
They were English people of the time frame they were
living in, exactly of the township that they were living.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
I think because of the lack of understandable motive, it
was easy for the drama to insert a slightly more
understandable motive and also then that let them cast African
American actors. Okay, not that we're passing anything across this.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
Societally, so if we take away from the fact that
the television casting and things like that, but societally, would
people of the time that we're reading about this in
contemporary newspapers and things like that have seen a difference
between these women. I just wondered because when you did
the one of a description of their families and the
households living next door to each other, and I keep

(01:16:27):
doing the two households, both the like and dignity, it's
very you know, in fair what is it little Hampton.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Really fair Verona, where we really are seen, on fair.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Little Hampton, where we really are seen. They didn't seem
very different in terms of.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
Where they are. They're both I suppose the Goodings are
lower lower class. They are working, working class. The Swans
are upper lower class. They're still trades men. But either
one receive a far better education than Rose Gooding, and

(01:17:07):
they were members of the church.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
A better incomebent to the family, just a more comfortable situation. Right, Okay,
that doesn't seem enough to me to put onto it.
A slur that goes alongside there. Different though, because boiling
down than the same living in the.

Speaker 2 (01:17:25):
Same street, boiling right down to the same their next
door neighbors. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Emily Cocaine and Christopher Hurd both talked fairly extensively about
the social constraints applied to women at the time. In
the early nineteen hundreds and throughout history, women have been
very constrained, not just in terms of employment or human rights,
but in terms of self expression. Today, if we're angry

(01:17:53):
or frustrated, we can take the social media invent that
frustration by unleashing a tirade of trolling directed at anyone
who doesn't share our views, which is entirely what's wrong
with society. But carry on, it is and there are
other more constructive ways of dealing with your feelings. But
the point is that historically women didn't have many ways

(01:18:13):
of venting their feelings. Women had very few avenues for
self expression. Men could go to the pub, get drunk,
and have a loud argument in the street without anybody
raising an eyebrow, but women couldn't. It was seen as
terrible behavior for a woman to be seen shouting in
the street, let alone using profanity. And this was very
still the view in the nineteen twenties when we see

(01:18:35):
Rose Gooding persecuted and marginalized by the community because she
deviated from the way women should behave.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
It is mental to think that we sit here as
nearly middle aged. I'm going to go hang on to
that nearly bit quite quite hard. That literally our grandparents
is the time frame that you're talking about. You know,
my parents were born in the late well my father
was born in the late forties, so his father would

(01:19:05):
have borne somewhere around about nineteen ten. So you know,
my grandfather probably on both sides actually would have been
alive in the time period were the time period we're
talking about, and then you'd literally skip down to that
is little. What I'm trying to say is that's like
living memory human beings to be able to be able

(01:19:26):
to reach out and touch that in your memory, and
then think about how we would perceive that as almost.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
I mean beyond Victorian. Yeah, but right up until the
nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, nineteen forties, it was still happening.
But could this constraint of self expression contribute to Edith
Swan's motive? Maybe? Sarah and I have talked about Edith
reasoning quite a lot. Why did she start sending the letters?
And why couldn't she stop? Her motive? Was her motive

(01:20:00):
for starting was clearly in part, at least to implicate
Rose Gooding. She signed all of those notes as if
Rose had sent them, and she was the first to
accuse Rose publicly. But why target Rose? Was it simple
revenge after Rose called Edith out for reporting her to
child protection services, which she did in the first place.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
She did in the first place, So that, to me
is not a reason because you started that?

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
Or was Edith already jealous of Rose in some way?
Rose was a woman who unashamedly broke social norms and
never worried about how she expressed herself. Edith was raised
a good Christian girl, forbidden from shouting, swearing, or standing
up for herself. Edith's life had always been regimented, and

(01:20:48):
she had to maintain the good behavior and the deference
expected of a good woman. Rose, meanwhile, was able to
curse profusely in the street without apparent consequences that might
have seemed unfair to Eaedith.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
Is this almost then, literally going off the back of
what we were just saying, taking this two paragraphs in
your story forward, Is this the difference between an older
style women and a newer age women of the timeframe?
Obviously it very much is.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
This is a period of transitioning for women. For one thing,
just post World War One, women had been given a
degree of freedom during World War One that they never
had before. They were able to do jobs that normally
only men could do. They were in positions of authority

(01:21:41):
that normally only men would have occupied. And suddenly the
end of the war came and they were no longer
allowed to exercise the same rights and the same authority
that they were allowed to do during the war. And
they pushed back, allowed me to be educated you because
you will know better than me.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
But is the kind of time period that we're talking
about here, This is the birth of the suffragets area.
That's we're not quite at the pankar stowing herself in
front of horses yet, but this is the the.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
Baby steps that became that. Yes, absolutely is.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
And Rose was an example of those baby steps in
that ride direction, whereas Edith was very much a Victorian woman. Yeah,
so that I can get on not get on board
with that. I can almost understand the difference when you're
talking about familial differences between the women. It wasn't so
much there. I'm going to say the word cast rather

(01:22:40):
than working class, you know, because it's so minutia within
that that it was one was a new age, one
was an old age. Is where we're at.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
But jealousy or revenge can't have been all that motivated Edith,
though otherwise she could have achieved her goal with just
a few.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
But the addiction of the fame that she gets from
doing that, I think it quickly becomes something pathological.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
Was it the attention that she got from family, friends,
and the police and the community, as she played the
victim a sort of literary Munchausen syndrome.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
She's almost creating her own bubble that she can blow
up any time that she wants. That says, look at me,
defend me.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
Yep. And then as the narcissism factor as well, did
you grow to love the power of knowing things that
others didn't, the thrill of the puppet master as they
manipulate the world that is at their control. Or was
it the release of writing and sending the letters that
kept Edith doing it to express views that she normally

(01:23:53):
couldn't voice, using profanity that she wasn't allowed to speak.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
It rings almost kind of similar to the poisoners that
we've talked about that gave small doses that kept somebody
ill and watched it happen, And it was that level
of power over somebody, But actually her level of power
was over herself. Rather than keeping somebody as ill as

(01:24:20):
they wanted until they killed them, hers was keeping herself
as victimized and defended and loved. And to me, that
feels like the same process.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
Yeah, So any combination or all of these motives could
have contributed to the Little Hampton libels. If anybody has
any other ideas on Edith Swan's possible motives, please let
us know on the Facebook page. I'd love to know
your thoughts. And if you don't want me to know
your thoughts, then message us on one of our other
social media platforms that I've never monitored.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
Literally, message him on anything except the Twisted Britain discussion group.

Speaker 2 (01:25:00):
I'll never fucking see it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
Yeah, we're on instant, Grand instant, Graham, it's how you
used to buy your drugs. No, I would be interested
to see what because, like I'm now questioning my own
statement when I said I think it's spiked.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
I don't think it's spike. I think it's jealousy. Yeah,
I think it's jealousy too. We came up with jealousy.
I think it's that. Okay, Sarah came up with jealousy,
and I agreed with her.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
I think it's it's not all. It's also the fear
of change. It's not just jealousy that this woman was
living a different life to her. It was almost her
inability to see her being able to live that life
that was being protected in front of her, which she
had the opportunity to do because I don't get the
opinion that her other half would have been against her

(01:25:49):
being a forward thinking woman.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
He wasn't there at the time, was he. So there
was nobody there to oppress her. Her father. Her father, Okay,
she controlled old school and very regimented.

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
Okay, then maybe not. I was just thinking like, if
she'd have been a woman on her own while her
fiance was away at CEO or abroad or whatever, then
actually Rose could have been role models not the right word,
but like an inspiration to her, whereas she's just gone
the other way and gone, fuck this shit, I'm gonna

(01:26:28):
make your life hell by making my life look better and.

Speaker 2 (01:26:33):
By playing the victim. Yeah, that's what I mean by literally,
But I also gave her an astonishing level of control.
Although she was engaged to Burt Boxel in Mesopotamia before
he signed on to the army, The Darks player The
Darks player Burt Boxel in Mesopotamia before he even joined
the army and was sent to Mesopotamia. There was rumor

(01:26:56):
in the local community that it wasn't happy playing. I
wouldn't go as far as arranged marriage, but Edith certainly
wasn't happy with the pairing.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
Again, very old school and coming off the end of
that era where and we've talked about it in several
episodes where people married four convenience shit, that's the word
I was looking for there. I was trying to think
it is literally like we talked about, can't what was
the case we talked about really recently where the man
was in love with her, the poisoning of the dumpling. Yes,

(01:27:28):
and she just went, I, all right, that'll do. And
that's that same time period, within what thirty years of
each other. It's literally within very years, eighteen nineties and
nineteen twenties.

Speaker 2 (01:27:40):
Yeah, I'm going with jealousy.

Speaker 1 (01:27:45):
I don't know if you could hear what Sarah just
said there, but basically Sarah's just said probably the one
thing that Ali and I haven't said that that is
actually the difference between these two women was Edith was
at home on her own, possibly with it with her parents,
and Rose had a loving husband, supporting our whatever happened,

(01:28:08):
and she was looking forward and all these things and
that level of general say that then goes with that
extends beyond that. I want what she's got. It's just
I can't have what she's got. It it's beyond that
I want, it is that I can't have, and that
is actually and I don't need to send sorry, sorry,
or sorrowful for Edith. But she was stuck in a

(01:28:31):
bubble of time almost as long as that, as well
as that bubble that you talk about about her crane,
that victim ship for herself. She's stuck in a bubble
of time frame where if she had stayed where she was,
she'd have been happy and looked after and everything. But
she saw the rose tinted windows of next door, which
could have been one hundred miles away, but it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
It was ten. It was ten yards away.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
That doesn't excuse what she did, but it does put,
I think, maybe be a mind set, mind frame into
what she could have been thinking. We will never know
what she was thinking, because she was completely adamant that she.

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
Never sent any of them, even though she definitely get
even during her time in jail, even during her time
in trail, even after she was released, when it would
have made no differences.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
That pathologicalness in it isn't it, She's just she'd do
you think she convinced herself that she had or did
she know she was just lying?

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
I think she knew she was lying.

Speaker 1 (01:29:30):
The bit that baffles me the most is the continuation
to send them when roses in jail the second time, Yeah,
because she could have bought herself even more evidence than
it was Rose by stopping. It was a pathological problem
by then at that point. It's about victimship. It's about
making yourself feel better, isn't it. It was damn the

(01:29:53):
rest of the world look at me, which is a
sad thing to say about somebody. But she had some
wonderful language. Of the letters you read, your favorite insult.

Speaker 2 (01:30:07):
My favorite has to be her majesty, Miss Swan sucks
ten cocks a week minimum. You great, big fucking onion.

Speaker 1 (01:30:14):
I mean, it's going to be the next T shirt,
isn't it. We might have to put some asterisks or
some twisted Britain logos in some of those words, but
you big onion is a wonderful teasut. I'll get you
up bandana for your Christmas that says you big fucking
onion in front of it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
I want that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
I know you will.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
I know you will.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
When I was walking up the hill tonight, Alistair, it's
been a lot of the old couple of weeks for me,
between working full time and doing panto last week, being
rather ill on Monday and Tuesday this week, the school
fair tonight, and then suddenly realizing that putting all the
podcast stuff together for the two of us to record
together in person is more than just chucking my laptop
and a microphone in the bag.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
Your phone still don't work.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
Neither of us have had needforence this, even don't worry
about that. I couldn't be more happy that you led
with a story that is now in the region of
an hour and forty minutes that includes the phrases you
big fucking onion, you country wise piss bag, you dripping
pile of manure shit sucked on her.

Speaker 2 (01:31:24):
Ass, leaking bag of shit, you foxy Asshold, who are
you fucking old, steaming bag of wet, leaking shit.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
Your arse is bigger than the moon, you stupid big stinker.
Leave it at your stupid big stinker. I think that's
the perfect place to leave it. I feel sorry for
both women, if I'm being perfectly honest. Time and circumstance
and geography played a big part in that. I think

(01:31:55):
doesn't excuse what happened. Nobody died, but at the same
time a woman went to jail. That shouldn't have done twice.
Fuck yeah twice. However, fucking wonderful story.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
I thought you like it? Yeah, really, I've been saving
that one up down in MoMA because I was like,
if I'm doing this, I'm doing it. I want to
do it in person, in front of Bob.

Speaker 1 (01:32:19):
We were going to do two this evening. It's now
eleven o'clock and mine now. To give you an idea,
Allie's hour and forty minutes was nineteen pages. I've written
about four and a half thousand words, and Ali will
tell anybody that if I've written four and a half
thousand words, that's an hour and a bit anyway, because
I don't write all the words down. I'm not good
at the word writing, so we don't. We genuinely don't

(01:32:43):
have time to do mine this evening.

Speaker 2 (01:32:45):
Sorry, bum, but I loved that story.

Speaker 1 (01:32:48):
I'm so glad that we started with yours, because I
wouldn't have heard that she sucks at least at least
ten cox a week minimum. That is the strong words
are and minimum in that sentence, How powerful was her jaw?
What I want to know? Well, that's a good point Alston.

(01:33:09):
Were they all at the same time or was it
in a row? Because I've heard of having ten ducks
in a row. Ten councion arrows are very different nursery, right,
do you know what I've getten?

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
None else to say, No, I'm done, absolutely done. Follow
us on Facebook everyone, or Instagram or tweeter or x
Gonna give it to you speaker.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
If you are listening, Thank you very much for hosting us.
And I'm very sorry about the words, but Alistair was quoting,
quoting through it. I was, yeah, thanks very much for
listening everybody. I'm sorry it's not been as many episodes
out recently at the end of this year as there
has been normally. It's just the life circumstance and bit

(01:33:57):
some pieces have gotten the way of that. Ali and
I are comor the ball with the fact that we
will continue recording and releasing into the future, beyond the horizon,
and you will inevitably hear our voices longer than you
want to, and that's something we will continue to promise you.
We tried to record well, The plan was to record

(01:34:17):
earlier this week, but when I spoke to Ali, he
sent me two ninety nine a minute for the way
I was talking to him, and we couldn't have done
a podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:34:25):
It was far, far too gravety and sexy. But we're back.

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):
Sadly, we don't have you in the Settle from other
than tonight. Hopefully we'll have you back again in the
new year, but until then we'll just continue with our
online recordings. We love that you guys listen, and we
would like you to follow us on social media. And
I've got nothing else for this evening, Alistair, do you no.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
I've faoroughly enjoyed this evening on so many levels. Everybody,
Thank you, love you bye.

Speaker 1 (01:34:56):
And I thank you, love you bye.

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
Thank clause your Fewbye.

Speaker 1 (01:35:02):
I can't hear yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
I'm close you Bye.

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Episode 111 - Littlehampton lible

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 111 - Littlehampton lible