News of the Times - Unlocking the vaults of historical crime

Step back into Victorian Wales, where quiet lanes and morning mist concealed one of the era’s most disturbing disappearances. In 1874, Susan Gibbs — a hardworking Cardiff housekeeper — travelled to St Mellons to meet her young husband, James, a butler with ambition and secrets to protect. Three weeks later, her body was discovered beneath a tangle of briars, so hidden and decomposed that even the cause of death was uncertain.
What followed was a landmark investigation built not on forensics, but on behaviour: unanswered letters, midnight movements, missing belongings, and a chain of lies that revealed far more than any single piece of evidence.
Tonight we explore the life Susan hoped for, the double life James was living, and the extraordinary inquiry that led to one of Wales’s most chilling convictions. And in our Further Particulars, we lighten the gaslamps for a brief detour into Victorian chaos—this time involving a hotel, a missing parrot, and entirely too much commotion in Bath.
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In the winter of 1879, the quiet Somerset parish of Knowle St Giles was shaken by a death that seemed, at first glance, to be nothing more than a tragic household accident. Eighty-three-year-old Samuel Churchill was found burned beside his hearth, his wife insisting he had fallen into the fire during a fit.
But the scene told a different story.
There was blood on the walls.
Defensive wounds on Samuel’s hand.
A bill-hook hidden beneath a chair.
And the very morning he died, Samuel had dressed in his best clothes to change his will.
In this episode, we trace the investigation from the first suspicious observations to the Taunton trial that followed. Using contemporary newspaper accounts and inquest testimony, we explore the forensic limitations of the 1870s, the conflicting statements that defined the case, and the chilling question at the heart of it all:
Was this truly an accident—or a murder carefully staged by fire?
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In 1927 County Durham, a miner calmly declared that his wife had taken her own life.
But from the moment police stepped inside the cramped kitchen of 2 Lumsden Buildings, nothing about his story made sense.
A rope that didn’t fit.
A noose too small to pass over the victim’s head.
A bed he claimed to have slept in—yet had never been touched.
And the quiet, devastating testimony of a child who heard far more than any child ever should.
This episode unravels the forensic evidence, contradictions, and courtroom drama that ultimately exposed the truth behind Ada Dunn’s death. Drawing entirely from period newspaper coverage, we reconstruct how investigators dismantled Thomas Dunn’s account piece by piece—culminating in one of the era’s most striking murder trials.
In Further Particulars, we travel far from County Durham to 1959 Papua New Guinea, where a remarkably sensible priest documented one of the most politely perplexing UFO encounters ever recorded.
If you enjoy historically grounded true crime with strong investigative detail, this is an especially gripping case.
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The Meader Case (1922) is one of those rare British true-crime stories where everything feels uncertain: a troubled marriage, a blind ex-soldier, a fatal struggle behind a closed door — and a courtroom battle led by the legendary Sir Edward Marshall Hall.
Was Mabel Meader the victim of murder?A tragic accident?
Or did early 20th-century medical science misunderstand a death that hinged on a single, extraordinary detail?
In this episode, we explore:• The Meaders’ strained post-war marriage• Alfred Meader’s blindness, trauma, and desperate decisions• A dramatic suicide attempt that exposed a far deeper tragedy
• The inquest that shocked the public• Medical testimony that changed the course of the trial• And the Old Bailey verdict that continues to raise questions today
This is a story of post-WWI Britain: shifting gender roles, silent trauma, legal assumptions, and a nation still learning how to understand domestic tragedies.
✨ Further ParticularsStay with us to the end for two wonderfully eccentric pieces of British legislative history — including why Parliament once became preoccupied with girls' hairstyles, and how London nearly went to war with its own pigs. Truly.
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true crime 1922, British true crime, Edwardian crime, Marshall Hall, Old Bailey trials, historical crime podcast, post-war Britain, vintage crime stories, strangulation cases, London history

In 1829, English law allowed for a remarkable—and troubling—possibility: a person could be condemned for murder even when the victim survived.
This week we explore the case later known as The One-Penny Wife, a story in which domestic hardship, early forensic science, and a deeply unusual legal statute entwined to produce one of the strangest verdicts of the late Georgian era.

Mary Jardine lived on a starvation allowance of a single penny a day. When she collapsed after drinking her morning tea, her symptoms were unmistakable. Proving arsenic poisoning, however, was far from straightforward. Investigators had only the earliest forms of the stomach pump, inconsistent chemical tests, and a medical profession still decades away from reliable toxicology.

The result is a case that sits at the uneasy intersection of intent, law, survival, and the limits of early forensic practice—a case in which the courts treated an attempted poisoning as if it were wilful murder.

In Further Particulars, we leave the dangers of arsenic behind for a very different peril of Victorian life: a breach-of-promise scandal that shows how even a broken engagement could spiral into a courtroom drama.

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