Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalium. We're exploring the
Speaker 1: intersection of history and true crime. I'm Holly Frye and
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Tremarky. In this season we have been talking
Speaker 1: about lady poisoners and we still are and in today's episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to look at the life of a young
Speaker 1: woman named Sarah Chesham. You may also sometimes hear that
Speaker 1: pronounced this cheeshelm. And she went on trial more than
Speaker 1: once after continued accusations that she didn't just use arsenic
Speaker 1: to poison the rats in her house. Sir Sarah, who
Speaker 1: was born Sarah Parker, was nineteen and pregnant with her
Speaker 1: first child when she married Richard Chesham, a twenty one
Speaker 1: year old farmer, in summer of eighteen twenty eight. They
Speaker 1: named their firstborn daughter, Harriet. In the next ten years,
Speaker 1: they went on to have five more children, who were
Speaker 1: all boys. Philip was born in eighteen thirty, John in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty two, Joseph in eighteen thirty four, James in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty seven, and finally George in eighteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: They lived in Clavering, a small rural village in northwest Essex,
Speaker 1: and we mean very small. In eighteen forty one there
Speaker 1: were barely more than a thousand people living in the
Speaker 1: village and most of the population was under the age
Speaker 1: of twenty. Sarah and Richard eked out really a meager living.
Speaker 1: Sarah and possibly Richard as well, was illiterate. There was
Speaker 1: little food and little work, and most people farmed just
Speaker 1: to get by right, and not even always on their
Speaker 1: own farms. Sometimes they would work for farmers, they were
Speaker 1: that poor. In January of eighteen forty five, two of
Speaker 1: their boys, Joseph, who at that time would have been
Speaker 1: about ten and James, who was probably about eight, both
Speaker 1: came down with severe stomach pains and vomiting, and they
Speaker 1: were seen by their local doctor. Yet they still both
Speaker 1: passed way. Both, it was believed, had died of cholera.
Speaker 1: They were buried together in the same coffin most stories report,
Speaker 1: and they were buried in their local churchyard. This is,
Speaker 1: of course incredibly tragic, but it was also not really
Speaker 1: out of character with the times. Cholera was a very
Speaker 1: common bacterial disease at this point in England's history, and
Speaker 1: it was easily spread through contaminated water. In general, this
Speaker 1: was a time when people were unaware of the ways
Speaker 1: in which diseases spread. Medicine was not really very sophisticated yet,
Speaker 1: and because of poor sanitation and poor diet nutrition, as
Speaker 1: well as dangerous working conditions, the overall British population at
Speaker 1: this time was actually pretty unhealthy. Life expected see was
Speaker 1: pretty low, and the fact that Sarah and her husband
Speaker 1: both lived into their forties is kind of remarkable. And
Speaker 1: if you were a baby at this time, thanks are
Speaker 1: pretty grim for you too. As many as three out
Speaker 1: of twenty babies didn't live beyond their first birthday, so
Speaker 1: the death of the two boys was considered a family tragedy,
Speaker 1: and there was no suspicion at the time against Sarah
Speaker 1: or her husband, at least not by the authorities. The
Speaker 1: small town gossip mill was beginning to run though. The
Speaker 1: trouble all started during the summer of eighteen forty six,
Speaker 1: about a year after the boys died, when another young
Speaker 1: woman in town her name was Lydia Taylor, who may
Speaker 1: or may not have been the ex girlfriend of Sarah's husband,
Speaker 1: Richard Bean, accusing Sarah of poisoning her infant son. That baby,
Speaker 1: named Solomon Taylor, was healthy when he was born, but
Speaker 1: his good health began to deteriorate rapidly in late June
Speaker 1: that year. His mother reported Sarah had visited Lydia and
Speaker 1: her son three times, and Lydia was certain that her
Speaker 1: son's death was linked to the gifts of rice pudding
Speaker 1: and apple turnovers that Sarah had brought along. Lydia reportedly
Speaker 1: also told authorities she was certain she saw a white,
Speaker 1: slimy substance on her son's lips before he became ill.
Speaker 1: Sarah she could continued, insisted that that was just sugar
Speaker 1: from the desserts, but because Solomon died shortly after eating
Speaker 1: Sarah's food, Lydia suspected her of murder. Okay, two questions.
Speaker 1: Should have baby be those sakes right for one year? Right,
Speaker 1: like your digestive system is still forming, But absolutely have
Speaker 1: a spoonful of rice pudding. I guess that's that's the
Speaker 1: more likely of the two to be digestible. It's not
Speaker 1: a high place to judge what she fed her son
Speaker 1: right less than a year old, that's really young to
Speaker 1: be eaten those any kind of rich dessert just it
Speaker 1: just seems weird to me. Again, I'm not a parent,
Speaker 1: So any parent that has fed your child these things,
Speaker 1: please don't think I'm judging you. My understanding is just
Speaker 1: that babies should not be eating food that rich. But
Speaker 1: this whole accusation kicked off a series of events, none
Speaker 1: of which were good for Sarah. In August of that year,
Speaker 1: based on Lydia's story as evidence, Sarah was investigated by
Speaker 1: local authorities who decided that there was enough in Lydia's
Speaker 1: report to move forward. So because of the of Sarah's
Speaker 1: guilt around town, it was at this time too, that
Speaker 1: the magistrate requested the bodies of her two sons be exhumed.
Speaker 1: The remains were examined by local authorities and a local
Speaker 1: doctor who sent the stomach contents of each child to
Speaker 1: London for analysis. So while we're pondering that, it makes
Speaker 1: me want to take a little bit of a break,
Speaker 1: and when we return, we're going to talk about how
Speaker 1: Sarah went on trial for the deaths of three boys.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's get back into how Sarah's
Speaker 1: did trial for the poisonings of three children, two of
Speaker 1: her own, the infant Solomon Taylor's body was tested for arsenic,
Speaker 1: but none was found. The bodies of Sarah's own children,
Speaker 1: Joseph and James, were also tested and the outcome I
Speaker 1: mean those tests was not so good. Expert and forensic
Speaker 1: scientists doctor Alfred Swain Taylor, no relation to Lydia and
Speaker 1: Solomon Taylor told the court that he had found sufficient
Speaker 1: arsenic in both James and Joseph's stomachs to have proved fatal.
Speaker 1: So Alfred Swain Taylor's work in this case is actually
Speaker 1: a really big deal because he himself was a big
Speaker 1: deal during this time in England, specifically for his work
Speaker 1: in the very early days of toxicology. So toxicologists are
Speaker 1: experts on poison and poisoning and they come up a lot,
Speaker 1: as you can tell in our episodes. So Taylor had
Speaker 1: become the go to expert witness for coroners in this country.
Speaker 1: He appeared at trials and in newspaper articles so often
Speaker 1: that he became a minor celebrity himself. Charles Dickens and
Speaker 1: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle both used him for inspiration in
Speaker 1: their writing, and today he's considered the father of British
Speaker 1: forensic medicine and doctor Taylor testified that he had found
Speaker 1: yellow arsenic in the boy's stuffe which apparently meant he
Speaker 1: explained that they had ingested white arsenic while they were
Speaker 1: still alive. The sulfur released by the body, he said,
Speaker 1: was what turned it yellow. So Taylor may have been
Speaker 1: good at his job time, but this is not exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of testing you would get from a modern
Speaker 1: day toxicologist. There's a little bit of guesswork involved, right.
Speaker 1: I'm still sure that it must have been pretty amazing
Speaker 1: if you were in the courtroom and you had your witness,
Speaker 1: you know, pulling out all of this scientific fact about arsenic.
Speaker 1: Maybe there was no reason to think he was wrong.
Speaker 1: So based on his evidence, it was decided then that
Speaker 1: Sarah should be arrested and put on trial. Actually, let's
Speaker 1: talk about those trials for just a minute, because Sarah
Speaker 1: was put on trial three times and something like two
Speaker 1: days or a day and a half. It was really compressed,
Speaker 1: but there were three trials, one each for each victim.
Speaker 1: While the evidence seemed clear to the court that her
Speaker 1: two sons died of arsenic poisoning, there was no way
Speaker 1: to prove how the boys had ingested the arsenic to
Speaker 1: begin with. The jury deliberated quickly in both cases, and
Speaker 1: Sarah was acquitted of the charges that she poisoned her son.
Speaker 1: Despite the findings of the court, locals still believed that
Speaker 1: Sarah did in fact poison her sons, and that she
Speaker 1: did so to collect life insurance money. In nineteenth century England,
Speaker 1: there were such things as burial clubs, which were societies
Speaker 1: that had sprung up to help poor, working class families
Speaker 1: give their deceased family members a proper funeral. So these
Speaker 1: clubs worked like this. You paid into an association and
Speaker 1: your weekly payments would be used to cover the funeral
Speaker 1: expenses of your deceased loved ones when the time came.
Speaker 1: Parents were known to cover sick children under several plans
Speaker 1: if they could afford it, so that they would get
Speaker 1: a good payout. So then there was the third trial.
Speaker 1: This one was for the poisoning of Solomon Taylor, and
Speaker 1: if you remember, there was no train of arsenic found
Speaker 1: in Solomon's body, so the prosecution withdrew that case too,
Speaker 1: and Sarah was cleared of these charges as well. And
Speaker 1: then for a few years things seemed to go pretty quietly.
Speaker 1: But when Richard passed away, at the age of forty
Speaker 1: three after a long illness, the rumor mill sprung right
Speaker 1: back into action. Having been previously accused of poisoning Lydia
Speaker 1: Taylor's baby as well as her own two sons, the
Speaker 1: villagers were convinced, like with all caps, convinced even years later,
Speaker 1: and after Sarah had been found legally innocent, that the
Speaker 1: forty one year old farmer's wife had to be responsible
Speaker 1: for her husband's death. So Richard had suffered from chronic
Speaker 1: lung disease, which you know was probably tuberculosis, but because
Speaker 1: he complained of stomach pain and vomiting before his death,
Speaker 1: and because Sarah was his wife, authorities ordered an autopsy,
Speaker 1: and that autopsy did indeed reveal that he had tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: which may or may not have been hastened by arsenic
Speaker 1: poisoning because there was a scant amount of arsenic in
Speaker 1: his stomach. And so Sarah was arrested again. And although
Speaker 1: she had been cleared on all of those previous charges,
Speaker 1: the acquittals from her first three trials were not well
Speaker 1: received in the local community, sort of as we've been saying,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen fifty she was brought back into court
Speaker 1: and technically this was now her fourth four trials. So
Speaker 1: during this fourth trial it was reported that Sarah cared
Speaker 1: for Richard during his illness. That is not that unusual
Speaker 1: at all. She was his wife, okay, and she fed
Speaker 1: him milk that was thickened with rice, and apparently had
Speaker 1: a strict rule that no one else was to bring
Speaker 1: him food as in her previous trials. They brought doctor
Speaker 1: Taylor back in to analyze the evidence here as well,
Speaker 1: and he confirmed that there was a trace amount of
Speaker 1: arsenic in Richard's body. Where he found a huge amount
Speaker 1: of arsenic was actually in the bag of rice that
Speaker 1: was retrieved from the Chresham and tested as evidence. So arsenic,
Speaker 1: just in case you didn't know, is a naturally occurring
Speaker 1: thing in rice. Right, you know, rinse your rice. It's
Speaker 1: not supposed to be huge amounts of arsenic in your rice,
Speaker 1: but it does naturally occur. So, right, we don't know
Speaker 1: if that huge amount is like if it is a
Speaker 1: thirty pound bag of rice, and you go, I found
Speaker 1: X amount of arsenic, but no one's gonna eat the
Speaker 1: thirty pounds of rice at a time, so it would
Speaker 1: not be a fatal amount, or is it a cup.
Speaker 1: You know, right, Huge is a very variable word at
Speaker 1: this point. We don't know if they're saying huge in
Speaker 1: relation to the whole volume or just a huge as
Speaker 1: if I say I've driven twenty thousand miles, you go, wow,
Speaker 1: that's amazing, and I go, well over ten years, like
Speaker 1: it's yeah, yeah, yeah it is. It is interesting that
Speaker 1: no one in the court, or at least it's not recorded,
Speaker 1: actually ever asked the question how much should be in
Speaker 1: rice and how much was in rice? So it's cited
Speaker 1: interestingly that Taylor noted in his report that there wasn't
Speaker 1: enough arsenic found in Richard's body to warrant a murder charge.
Speaker 1: He just sort of noted that the arsenical rice existed.
Speaker 1: And despite these things, the chrial just kept moving forward.
Speaker 1: Why ask questions on top of this kind of dicey
Speaker 1: arsenic evidence. Another local woman named Hannah Phillips told the
Speaker 1: court about conversations she said that she had with Sarah
Speaker 1: regarding how to get rid of a husband if the
Speaker 1: need arises, and that those conversations had indicated that it
Speaker 1: was with arsenic. It was also whispered around the village
Speaker 1: that Sarah had a reputation for putting a special ingredient
Speaker 1: into the mincemeat pies that she gave as gifts, and
Speaker 1: that ingredient was not Brandy. The prosecution did their best
Speaker 1: to present her as a disagreeable, angry, and quarrelsome woman.
Speaker 1: They even had strangers take the stand against her and
Speaker 1: appearing as her own defense. Sarah addressed the jury herself,
Speaker 1: but her statement, which it's said was long and a
Speaker 1: bit rambling, did not win anyone over. And although she
Speaker 1: wasn't able to pull together a list of her own witnesses,
Speaker 1: which would have been in her legal right, she did
Speaker 1: speak about how the evidence against her was based only
Speaker 1: on and we quote her from her trial, spite and revenge.
Speaker 1: The court, like the town, believed that Sarah had murdered before,
Speaker 1: and also believed that unless she was executed, there would
Speaker 1: be and we again quote, no safety for mankind. The
Speaker 1: coroner too, couldn't see any other outcome than execution. No
Speaker 1: other outcome, nothing, just execution. What kind of court system
Speaker 1: is this? There was no court of appeal in England
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty one when Sarah was convicted, and she
Speaker 1: have had no means of challenging the outcome of her case.
Speaker 1: In any of these instances. So that's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a downer, and I want to take a break
Speaker 1: and walk away from it for a second and we return.
Speaker 1: We are going to talk about Sarah's execution and the
Speaker 1: possible problems with this whole case. Welcome back to Criminalia.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the poison panic that gripped England at
Speaker 1: the same time as Sarah's trial. Okay, let's take a
Speaker 1: minute and talk about what life was like in England
Speaker 1: at this time. So this was kind of the early
Speaker 1: end of the Victorian Age, and economic conditions in England
Speaker 1: were pretty dreadful. As we talked about earlier, a lot
Speaker 1: of people were living in really abject poverty. There was
Speaker 1: high unemployment in the eighteen forties, which led to an
Speaker 1: alarm public health crisis as the number of child and
Speaker 1: infant poisonings began to increase, both accidental poisonings and intentional ones. Still,
Speaker 1: most people, though, who died from arsenic poisoning did so
Speaker 1: because of accidents or mistakes, or long term exposure to
Speaker 1: the poison in everyday items such as cosmetics. It was
Speaker 1: a common ingredient, or often from contaminated groundwater, which still
Speaker 1: happens today. Most people who died from arsenic poison weren't murdered,
Speaker 1: but that didn't prevent growing social unease about arsenic In
Speaker 1: nineteenth century England, the country became gripped in in poison panic.
Speaker 1: Sarah was hardly alone as an accused. Between eighteen forty
Speaker 1: and eighteen fifty, as many as two hundred and forty
Speaker 1: individuals were charged with murder or attempted murder by poisoning
Speaker 1: right or wrong. National hysteria surrounding poisonings was growing, and
Speaker 1: Sarah's trials caught the public's interest. They just they got
Speaker 1: swept up in this. The Times newspaper commented that Sarah
Speaker 1: was quote an accepted and repeated murderess who walked abroad
Speaker 1: in the village, unchallenged and unaccused. We don't really need
Speaker 1: to say it, but this was a time when journalistic
Speaker 1: standards were a little different, very different, and if they
Speaker 1: had clickabait back then, these headlines would have been for that.
Speaker 1: We talk about that as a modern thing, but I
Speaker 1: really do feel like Victoria, the Victorian age news industry,
Speaker 1: was the origin point of clicking. Absolutely, it's just a
Speaker 1: little bit different form. So they also went on to
Speaker 1: say in these articles that Sarah just did not have
Speaker 1: the kind of disposition that a mother should have towards
Speaker 1: her child, and thus she was nicknamed Sally Arsenic. So
Speaker 1: during the years that Sarah was allegedly poisoning three children
Speaker 1: and a husband, the Times published one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: two articles about poisoning crimes in the UK, So that's
Speaker 1: just a couple of years and press it down. So
Speaker 1: around this time period as well, there were about five
Speaker 1: hundred to six hundred people who died from being poisoned
Speaker 1: each year in those years, So we don't really know
Speaker 1: what the breakdown was of how many of the poisoners
Speaker 1: were women and how many were men. But what we
Speaker 1: do know about this press was that they ran seventy
Speaker 1: three articles about women who were on trial for poisoning
Speaker 1: crimes and only covered fifty nine men who were accused
Speaker 1: of the very same crimes. What I uncovered when I
Speaker 1: was doing this research was there's not a lot of numbers.
Speaker 1: There's numbers of deaths, but there's numbers of trials. But
Speaker 1: if you were a female and you were accused of
Speaker 1: a crime, you were immediately more interested. And while it
Speaker 1: might be an indication that women were more likely to
Speaker 1: poison in Victorian England. Their editorial calendar may also simply
Speaker 1: reflect that stories about female criminals, as Maria just suggested,
Speaker 1: were more sensational and would draw more readers than those
Speaker 1: of males. Like we said, kind of like clickbait, but
Speaker 1: nineteenth century style. Right, So let's get back to Sarah's trial.
Speaker 1: Sarah was convicted in her fourth trial a single count
Speaker 1: of administering poison with intent, and it's that statement rather
Speaker 1: than murder. Because doctor Taylor didn't find enough arsenic to
Speaker 1: prove fatal in Richard's body. She was sentenced to death
Speaker 1: by hanging. It's reported also that thousands of people came
Speaker 1: to watch her public execution, and possibly as many as
Speaker 1: ten thousand people in March of eighteen fifty one. I
Speaker 1: have to say that if that number is true, and wow,
Speaker 1: does it feel high, like, particularly considering how small their
Speaker 1: village was. There were a thousand people who lived there
Speaker 1: and most of them were under the age of twenty.
Speaker 1: Where do these ten thousand people came from? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's more people than can legally fit in the Miami
Speaker 1: Beach Convention Center, so I'm not sure if they were
Speaker 1: bussing them in you think, you think a little exaggerated.
Speaker 1: There was actually an illustrated verse recounting Sarah's final moments
Speaker 1: that was distributed among the spectators. One Stanza read like
Speaker 1: this wicked, base, deceitful wife, barbarous and cruel mother, doomed
Speaker 1: to die in the prime of life. Poor Sarah. She
Speaker 1: was the last woman to be executed for attempted murder
Speaker 1: in England. So, as we have just uncovered, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of gossip and only a little bit of
Speaker 1: evidence in each of Sarah's trials. So was she just
Speaker 1: hanged as a result of hearsay and rumor. Although she
Speaker 1: was convicted of a single count of attempted murder, the
Speaker 1: public believed that she was responsible for more than that,
Speaker 1: and maybe also for teaching other women how to kill
Speaker 1: with arsenic in a deadly poison ring in her small town.
Speaker 1: There was no proof of that, but that didn't really
Speaker 1: matter who there as trials sparked a moral panic about
Speaker 1: poison And this is kind of the interesting and important
Speaker 1: thing about her going on trial for four times. Up
Speaker 1: until eighteen fifty one, arsenic was really cheap and it
Speaker 1: was really easily available around England, you know, like a
Speaker 1: small town. You would have found it there too, And
Speaker 1: although its intended uses were for things like killing rodents
Speaker 1: and surprisingly treating acne, it quickly became known for its
Speaker 1: off label uses such as killing family members and it
Speaker 1: was often for inheritance. And again it was also a
Speaker 1: thing to be talked about because it's very sensational. Who
Speaker 1: doesn't love a little drama varying Victorian England was like
Speaker 1: the era of the drama lama. I think we all
Speaker 1: know and this whole set of trials fits right in yep.
Speaker 1: So the London Medical Gazette at the time reported that
Speaker 1: with just two pence you could buy enough arsenic to
Speaker 1: kill about one hundred people. Two pence is the equivalent
Speaker 1: of two and a half cents in today's dollars, so
Speaker 1: for you know, one hundred bucks, you could kill those
Speaker 1: ten thousand spectators a legend spectators. You could at least
Speaker 1: kill everybody in your town. So Sarah's trial was one
Speaker 1: of several actually at this time that caught the attention
Speaker 1: of both the media as well as Parliament, and in
Speaker 1: early eighteen fifty one, the Earl of Carlisle introduced the
Speaker 1: sale of Arsenic Regulation Bill, and this bill put a
Speaker 1: few rules into effect. There had been no poison rules before,
Speaker 1: and it broke down like this. So first, it required
Speaker 1: arsenic suppliers to keep a register of names of people
Speaker 1: who bought the poison, as well as the amount they
Speaker 1: purchased and their reason for buying it, and they had
Speaker 1: to provide a signature. Second, there were no restrictions on
Speaker 1: who could sell arsenic even under the bill, but now
Speaker 1: sellers were only legally allowed to sell it to people
Speaker 1: whom they already knew. And third, arsenic, which we have
Speaker 1: talked about before, in its natural state after it's been processed,
Speaker 1: is white and an offen resembled sugar, and so at
Speaker 1: this point it had to be dyed with indigo or
Speaker 1: soot before it could be sold in individual packets, no
Speaker 1: more mistaking it for a household sweetener. So this bill
Speaker 1: was intended to address the growing public concern over both
Speaker 1: accidental and deliberate arsenic poisonings, and it was actually in
Speaker 1: place until it was repealed replaced with the Pharmacy and
Speaker 1: Poisons Act of nineteen thirty three, so quite a long time.
Speaker 1: Because of the way investigations and trials are conducted today,
Speaker 1: it can sometimes seem easier for us to look back
Speaker 1: on the past and cry, you know, injustice, Sarah had
Speaker 1: four trials and they didn't know what they were doing,
Speaker 1: and we just cry everything was wrong. But there really
Speaker 1: does just seem to be evidence in Sarah's case that
Speaker 1: things could have been done better. There wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence against her, and her one sided trial surrounding
Speaker 1: the death of her husband found trace amounts of a
Speaker 1: poison that often doesn't have to do with being poisoned.
Speaker 1: Conviction based on hearsay from locals, including bogus and uninvestigated
Speaker 1: stories like the one that we found, which was Sarah
Speaker 1: kept a stash of arsenic in a tree stump outside
Speaker 1: her house, it's hard to see her execution as a
Speaker 1: fine practice of law. So that said, there is an
Speaker 1: interesting twist to Sarah's story that we actually did not
Speaker 1: know about when we originally chose her for this season.
Speaker 1: I love this Yes. Recently, Rosalind Powell, a descendant of Sarah,
Speaker 1: approached the producers of BBC one's show Murder, Mystery and
Speaker 1: My Family and asked for help in re examining the
Speaker 1: circumstances of Sarah's case. So it's been more than one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty years since her execution, and with new
Speaker 1: eyes on the evidence, investigators from that team found that
Speaker 1: the tests carried out at the time of Sarah's trial
Speaker 1: were actually pretty inconclusive, citing that today we now know
Speaker 1: that it's not unusual to find small traces of arsenic
Speaker 1: in a human body, like what was found in Richard's body,
Speaker 1: Sarah's alleged victim. The barristers and judge determined there are
Speaker 1: two barristers in a retired judge who who were the investigators,
Speaker 1: had likely died from natural causes like cholera and tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: like we expect it. Ultimately, Sarah's family did get an
Speaker 1: unsafe verdict, and that means the original guilty verdict should
Speaker 1: be overturned. And while this isn't a binding judgment, it
Speaker 1: has inspired her family to continue to pursue her case
Speaker 1: and get her name cleared permanently. It's really exciting, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is the guy, the retired judge and
Speaker 1: the two barristers, you know, the retired judge who came
Speaker 1: down with this. He was like, I realized that, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't just make a proclamation right now and say that,
Speaker 1: you know, let's overturn it. But I think everybody's hoping
Speaker 1: that the evidence and the sort of you know, off
Speaker 1: record trial will really help her family in this manner,
Speaker 1: I hope. So it's one of those ways. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I love about studying history is that
Speaker 1: we think of it as settled business that happened in
Speaker 1: the past. But history is alive and it's affecting people today,
Speaker 1: and it can still shift, and what we understand of
Speaker 1: the past can still change. So this is a prime
Speaker 1: example of that. Absolutely, you know, ultimately, with that in mind,
Speaker 1: and you look back at her story, you just wish
Speaker 1: she'd just moved to a different town, just moved to London,
Speaker 1: maybe the town next door. Like the people in this
Speaker 1: village are terrible, just try, try again, try again. So
Speaker 1: with that in mind, what did you come up for
Speaker 1: for our cocktail this week? Colleg So this What's Your Poison?
Speaker 1: Is brought to you by my desire to sweeten Sarah's story.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, So I started to look at I wanted
Speaker 1: to come up with a cocktail that was sort of
Speaker 1: pretty and lovely, and I searched around on the internet
Speaker 1: for some ideas, and the cocktail that kept coming up
Speaker 1: that I thought was most interesting to me was the
Speaker 1: Arsenic and Old Lace, which is an existing cocktail that
Speaker 1: a lot of people make. You'll find different variations on
Speaker 1: the recipe. Obviously, that play that it is named after
Speaker 1: is a twentieth century play and does not apply to
Speaker 1: the Victorian era, but the arsnickness of it, and there's
Speaker 1: it's got a very sweet list of ingredients, not literal
Speaker 1: sweet taste, but just it's a beautiful assortment. So it
Speaker 1: starts with two ounces of gin, one ounce of driver mooth,
Speaker 1: one ounce of violet liqueur. Some people will do creme
Speaker 1: de violette. Sometimes you can just get a regular violet liqueur.
Speaker 1: You can actually make your own violet liqueur not that hard,
Speaker 1: and then varying degrees depending on the recipe. All of
Speaker 1: these amounts shift from recipe to recipe for this cocktail
Speaker 1: under different different bartenders versions a little anywhere from a
Speaker 1: splash of absinthe to one and a half ounces. One
Speaker 1: and a half seems very heavy to me and is
Speaker 1: an outlier, but most of them are like an eighth
Speaker 1: of an ounce, a tenth of an ounce, half a spoon,
Speaker 1: a splash, and so normally to make a narsenic and
Speaker 1: old lace, you would stir all these ingredients with ice
Speaker 1: and then strain them into a chilled glass, normally like
Speaker 1: a coop glass. But I wanted to make it a
Speaker 1: little bit sweeter and softer. And this is also inspired
Speaker 1: by the fact that gin is not my natural choice
Speaker 1: in spirits. It's a little bity for me. It's not
Speaker 1: mine either, so I'm curious about where you had it.
Speaker 1: I added a spoonful of simple syrup and it just
Speaker 1: softens up the edges of the gin a little bit
Speaker 1: and makes it a little more palatable. Now I will
Speaker 1: say my husband said it tasted like children's robotessin But again,
Speaker 1: keep in mind I always have to caveat that he
Speaker 1: is not a drinker and doesn't really like the taste
Speaker 1: of any alcohol. So you know, he's definitely one of
Speaker 1: those people that I would say eighty percent of drinks
Speaker 1: he goes taste like medicine. Keep that in mind, noted,
Speaker 1: but it is it was a really it's a nice
Speaker 1: the I'm always a fan of any floral liqueur. I
Speaker 1: just love them. I like to use them in everything.
Speaker 1: I love to make a rose liqueur and just keep
Speaker 1: it on hand. It occurred to me as well, if you,
Speaker 1: like me, are not a gin person, this same recipe
Speaker 1: would be beautiful with vodka. That's good to know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my thing I always want. I'm not a bartender.
Speaker 1: I just I enjoy cocktails and I like learning about them.
Speaker 1: So the one thing I always encourage people is like,
Speaker 1: there aren't really like rules. You know, don't don't be
Speaker 1: foolish and drink too much and please drink responsibly, but
Speaker 1: like you can make substitutions and try different stuff. You're
Speaker 1: not going to go to cocktail jail. Like, fine, this
Speaker 1: isn't Victorian English. People are gonna come watch you die.
Speaker 1: It's not Victorian England. You're not gonna go to cocktail jail.
Speaker 1: So yeah, give it a whirl. Any or any variation
Speaker 1: on it that sounds delightful. I had. I had one
Speaker 1: with lunch so I could test it before we recorded.
Speaker 1: It's delightful you would like to make this. We highly
Speaker 1: encourage it, but also we wanted to thank you once
Speaker 1: again for spending time with us today and hearing about
Speaker 1: Sarah's story, which to me has like one of the
Speaker 1: best de newmal of any of the stories we've talked
Speaker 1: about so far and maybe in the future too. Like
Speaker 1: she just her end was a pretty good one. It's
Speaker 1: really pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good. If you would
Speaker 1: like to subscribe to the podcast, you could do so.
Speaker 1: We would love for that to happen. So you can
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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Criminalia is a production
Speaker 1: of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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