Murder or Accident? The Case of Rose Harsent

When a woman is found dead in a kitchen and partially burned, the community wonders if it's related to the salacious rumors that have been told about Rose Harsent.

Do you have any insights, or even a case you’d like to suggest?  Feel free to send it to me, you’ll find a comment form and case submission link at LordanArts.com.

Thank you strangeco.blogspot.com, grunge.com, eadt.co.uk, everything2.com, suffolkchurches.co.uk, biblegateway.com and Wikipedia for information contributing to today’s story.

This episode was written by Christy Arnhart, edited by John Lordan and is produced by LordanArts.

This is not intended to act as a means of proving or disproving anything related to the investigation or potential charges associated to the investigation.  It is a conversation about the current known facts and theories being discussed.  Please do not contact people you are suspicious of or attempt to harass, threaten or intimidate them in any way. Do not release information that can be used to do the same, or join in attacks being conducted by others.  Everyone directly or indirectly referred to is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
The Victorian Era was a very unique time in Britain's
history and ran from the birth of Queen Victoria on
June twentieth, eighteen thirty seven until her death on January
twenty second, nineteen oh one. During this time, science, literature,
and many other professions saw a lot of progress. Reform
was everywhere, but at the backbone of it all was morality.

(00:44):
Your name was everything, and it could be besmirched simply
by holding the wrong hand. While this helped some groups
grow and develop, it also severely restricted others. It was
very hard to be a woman during this time. Every
move you made was watched, as well as the clothing
you wore and how you conducted yourself in public. To

(01:05):
be a woman in this time, and some would argue
many others, meant that you were constantly being judged as
we see now. Back then, younger people also looked forward
to a future with less restrictions, while older generations fought
to keep the old beliefs and antiquated systems alive. Amidst
this backdrop, toward the end of this era was a

(01:28):
seriously mysterious murder, one that still has people baffled over
one hundred years later. I'm John Lorden and this is
a look at the historic case of Rose Harsent. Peasenhall
is a village and civil parish in the East Suffolk
District in the English County of Suffolk. To give you
some idea of the size, the population as of the

(01:49):
twenty twenty one census was only five hundred and twenty
five people. James Smythe invented an upgraded seed drill there,
a piece of farm machinery that so seeds for crops
by burying them in the soil at a specific depth
and in Rose, which helped him launch smythen Sons, and
eventually the Suffolk Seed Drill Company. Today, the company sits

(02:12):
against the north wall of Saint Michael's, a church built
in the fifteen hundreds. As you can tell, Peasenhall has
a deep history. For such a small rural area, this
beautiful village seems to sit untouched by time amidst a
green forested backdrop, and is also known for their pride
of peacocks that walk the village year round, along with chickens,

(02:33):
ducks and other little creatures. Many of the old residences
are still standing and inhabited today. Now imagine this quaint
little village back in nineteen oh one, everyone knew each
other and the best way to stay up to date
on local news was to listen to the gossip. Many
towns were held together and destroyed by this one impropriety alone.

(02:57):
This is where Rose Harsent lived at twenty two years old.
She was single and worked as a living servant at
Providence House for Deacon William Crisp, a church elder, and
his wife. That gossip network was in full swing, and
everyone in town knew a little too much about Rose
at a time when a person's morality should be at

(03:17):
its height. Rose was young and somewhat promiscuous. She was
also a person with multiple sides, known for her lovely
singing in the church choir, as well as the X
rated verses and limericks that she loved to collect. Rose's
choir leader was a man named William Gardner. Gardner was

(03:37):
middle aged with a long list of civic achievements and
duties in the village. He worked as a foreman at
smythen Sons for about four years, but his passion was
his faith and his love of God at church. He
was also trustee of the local Sunday School and Assistant
Society Stewart. He and his wife, Georgina Katie were paragons

(03:59):
of the community that were blessed with eight children, six
of which were alive in nineteen oh one. One evening
in May of that year, two men named George Wright
and Alfonso Skinner were walking about the village talking when
they came upon a small building known as the Doctor's Chapel.
This was the place where a deacon Crisp would usually

(04:19):
pray and study. To the men's surprise, they watched as
miss Rose entered the building. A few moments later, mister
Gardner walked up nonchalantly and quietly entered the chapel as well.
These two were not permitted in the same space together alone,
let alone at that location, so what exactly were they doing?

(04:41):
Neither men wanted to miss out on this bit of gossip.
As quietly as they could, the two snuck over to
the building and listened very carefully to see if they
could catch any of the couple's conversation. They soon heard
Rose laugh loudly. She was talking to Gardner about her
studies of the Bible, specifically Genesis thirty eight regarding Tamar

(05:02):
and Onan. In this passage, Judas's son Air was his
first born, but was wicked in the sight of the
Lord and was killed. Ayer's wife, Tamar, was given to
his brother Onan so that the two could provide errors
for both of their family lines. Onan was said to
spill his seed upon the ground when he had sex

(05:22):
with Tamar, which kept them childless. The Lord found this
wicked and killed Onan as well. While in today's standards
two adults discussing any aspect of the Bible might seem
innocent and even tame, for that time period it was
seen as much more. The two men could not believe
the salacious details that were being discussed and immediately spread

(05:45):
the tale all over town. Eventually, the gossip got back
to William Gardner and he was enraged. He denied the
whole tale and demanded that Wright and Skinner write him
an apology to set the matter straight. An investigation was
started by the church, and Gardner was hoping to see
the matter settled quickly. To everyone's surprise, Wright and Skinner

(06:06):
refused to write the apology letter and declared that everything
they said was the truth. The church elders held an
informal trial to try to get to the bottom of
the matter. Both Wright and Skinner testified as to the
truth of their sultry tale. Gardner testified again that nothing
of the sort ever happened. Oddly, Rose did not testify,

(06:28):
and she wasn't at the trial. In the end, no
fault of Gardner's could be found. All the elders had
was his word against the two other men. That's when
they decided to try to sweep the matter under the rug.
They declared that the charges were unproven and left it
at that. Sadly, gossip never really dies, and no one

(06:49):
forgot a word of what had been said. Weeks later,
another resident of the village, a Methodist preacher named Henry Rouse,
saw Gardner anne Rose walking alone down road at night.
Rouse felt that another trial and more rumors would only
hurt the church, so he took Gardner aside and gave
him a lecture on the impropriety of the situation. Gardner

(07:11):
quickly apologized and swore to never do anything like that again.
Not a month later, Raus again caught Gardner with Rose,
this time while he was preaching a sermon. He stated
that when he turned to look at the choir, there
sat Gardener with his feet in Rose's lap. Evidently, Rows
was the only one to see this, because when he

(07:31):
confronted Gardner, the man swore the incident had never happened,
and he denied everything. Things seemed to quiet down until
the morning of June first, nineteen oh two. Rose's father
traveled to Providence House to bring some laundry to her.
As he searched the house for his daughter, he walked
into the kitchen and into a terrifying sight. On the

(07:54):
floor at the foot of the stairs lay Rose. She
was wearing only her socks and night shirt. She was
lying in a pool of blood. Dead. It appeared that
she had stab wounds to her throat and chest, and
her body had been set on fire. Rose Harsent had

(08:22):
been stabbed and set ablaze. The kitchen now a crime scene.
The village constable Eli Nunn was brought to the scene
by neighbors and quickly took charge of the situation. As
soon as he walked into the room where Rose lay,
he could smell paraffin and surmise that it was used
to burn her body. A broken lamp lay by her side,

(08:42):
as well as an old broken medicine bottle. That also
smelled of paraffin. The label on it read for Missus
Gardner's children. A newspaper was also found half charred with
her body. It was the East Anglian Daily Times. Deacon
Crisp had no subscription to that publication, but William Gardner did.

(09:04):
There were no footprints in any of the blood that
could help identify the murderer, no signs of forced entry,
and nothing else was out of place. When Constable Nuns
searched Rose's room, he found her collection of bawdry verses,
as well as three notes, one of which had been
written the day before, and it read, I will try
to see you tonight at twelve o'clock at your place.

(09:26):
If you put a light in your window at ten
o'clock for about ten minutes, then you can take it
out again. Don't have a light in your room at twelve,
as I will come around the back. There was no signature,
but when samples of Gardner's handwriting were compared to the
writing on this letter, it appeared to be his. It
also didn't escape the Constable's eye that Gardner only lived

(09:48):
two hundred yards from Providence House. When other people in
the area were questioned, a neighbor recalled seeing a light
at the top of the house on the night of
the murder, and it was at ten p m. He
had also seen Gardener standing on his front porch. James Morris,
a local gamekeeper, found footprints the morning of the murder.

(10:09):
They were in the mud that led from Gardner's house
and went to Providence House. Although the footprints were never examined,
he drew a sketch of the prince and the soles
matched a pair of Gardener's shoes. When Rose's autopsy was performed,
a time of death was loosely established some time between
twelve thirty a m. To six thirty a m. The

(10:29):
Crisps had heard a scream and a thud during the night,
but they didn't investigate and they were unsure what time
that occurred. At the autopsy confirmed that Rose had a
stab wound to her chest and also bruising on her face.
She also had her throats slashed from a cut that
ran nearly from ear to ear. She sustained several defensive
wounds to her hands as she fought off her attacker,

(10:51):
and there was another very compelling detail found in this examination.
Rose was six months pregnant when her life was taken.
With this information, it was now believed that Gardner had
confronted Rose the night before about the pregnancy, and, seeing
no way to save his good name, killed her to
hide the affair. When Gardner's wife was questioned, she told

(11:14):
the constable that she heard all about the supposed affair,
and she didn't believe those rumors. Her husband had been
cleared by the church elders and that was all that
she needed. To no one's surprise, Gardner himself denied the
whole thing regardless. He was arrested on the charge of murder.
Gardner was held for trial over a six month period,

(11:36):
and in that time evidence seemed to continue to mount
against him. A pen knife that he owned was deemed
a possible murder weapon. When it was examined, the knife
was newly sharpened and cleaned, but it still had blood
on its hinge. No one could tell if it was
human or animal blood, but Gardner explained this all away
by saying that he had gutted a rabbit with it. Recently,

(12:00):
a neighbor named Herbert Stammers reported that Gardner had started
a bonfire near the wash house on his property about
an hour before Rose was found dead, could he have
been burning incriminating evidence there By the time his trial
arrived in November of nineteen oh two, Gardner's timeline the
night of the murder was much more fleshed out, so
to speak. Witnesses were able to show Gardner's movements for

(12:23):
most of the night. He was accounted for from ten
pm until about one point thirty the next morning. His wife, Georgina,
hadn't slept well after a thunderstorm that night. Neighbors verified
that she was up until about four am, then at
eight thirty am, Gardner rose for the day. This left
him with little to no time to commit the murder.

(12:45):
When Georgina was asked about the prescription bottle, she stated
that the broken bottle had come from her, but not
to burn Rose. Weeks earlier, Rose had come down with
a cold, and Georgina had filled the empty bottle with
camphorated oil to help with that illness. Georgina said that
Rose must have filled the bottle with paraffin after she
finished using the medicine. Also, the supposed great bonfire that

(13:09):
Gardner used to destroy evidence was nothing more than a
fire he built to boil water for a kettle. The
defense also brought forward a possible culprit, a young neighbor
named Frederick James Davis. He had been the one to
provide Rose with what was called her pornography, collection of
limericks and such. To everyone's shock, he also provided her

(13:31):
with a book on abortion. In a fit of confession,
he also admitted to writing her graphic letters while he
lusted for her. He was lectured by the judge on
what he called Davis's abominable conduct before he cleared the
young man as a possible suspect. Although titillating, his admissions
didn't seem to lend any credence to the argument that

(13:52):
he could be the culprit. At this time, no single
witness could be found who had seen someone come in
or go out of Providence House than night of the murder.
When Gardner took the stand, he doubled down again and
claimed that he had nothing to do with Rose or
her murder. Only one letter from her room had matched
his handwriting. The others were seemingly from different men. Could

(14:13):
one of them have been her murderer? After deliberations, a
jury of twelve came back deadlocked. Eleven had voted for conviction.
While one member stated, I have heard nothing to convince
me that he's guilty. No one was ready to let
the case go with a deadlock, so the judge ordered
another trial. The second trial went over most of the

(14:34):
same arguments and evidence. Rose's younger brother, Harry Harsent, changed
his testimony from the first trial. He had been asked
if he ever delivered letters from Rose to Gardner and
back again, he testified that no, he hadn't. This time
he said that actually he had. He said that he
must have just forgotten that. During the first trial, the

(14:56):
defense called for jurors to have sympathy for the Gardner
family and what they had endured. The prosecution pointed out
that every piece of evidence pointed to Gardner. When the
jury deliberated for the second time again, they came back
deadlocked and again eleven to convict and one for acquittal.
Nobody wanted a third trial that was likely to have

(15:17):
the same outcome, so the Attorney General issued a writ
of noli pross, which means that they were unwilling to
pursue the charge. Effectively, it freed Gardner, even if it
didn't actually clear him of the affair and murder. He
and His family immediately left town and moved to London,
where Gardner lived a normal life until his death in

(15:38):
nineteen forty one. No one was ever convicted for the
murder of Rose Harsent and her unborn child, and to
this day, and for well over one hundred years now,
her murder remains officially unsolved. Today, Rose's death remains an
enduring mystery for the people of Great Britain. Crime historians
and amateurs alike still puzzle over the case, looking to

(16:00):
find justice for Rose. Several years ago, Downton Abbey actor
Julian Fellows took up the case on a television program
in what was called a recreation or dramatization of the crime.
Viewers followed, along with Julian Fellow's investigates, a most mysterious murder.
So who actually killed Rose Harson? Was it Gardner? Could

(16:24):
it have been his wife, who apparently knew the rumors
of what was going on, or was it simply another lover?
We aren't even sure if Gardner was the actual father
of Rose's child. One crime historian even postulated that Rose
may have killed herself accidentally. It claimed that as she
went downstairs, she tripped and fell with the bottle of

(16:45):
paraffin in her hand, the broken glass from the bottle
cutting her throat and chest. She dropped her lamp, which
caught her on fire. In truth, we may never know,
but people will keep talking about the mystery of who
killed Rose Harson. Do you have any insights or even
a case you'd like to suggest, Feel free to send

(17:06):
it to me. You'll find a comment form and case
submission link at Lordenarts dot com. Thank you, Strangeco dot
blogspot dot com, Grunge dot com, EA, d T dot
co dot uk, Everything to dot com, Suffolk Churches dot
co dot uk, Biblegateway dot com, and Wikipedia for information
contributing to today's story. This episode was written by Christy Arnhardt,

(17:29):
edited by John Lorden, and produced by Lordenarts. A big
thank you to our audience here for the live recording
session hosted on the YouTube channel lord and Arts Studio two.
Special thanks to Seriously Mysterious financial supporters Candybishop, Mike w
and Amber Rust. I'm John Lorden. Please join us again
next week for another case. I know you'll find seriously

(17:51):
mysterious