Last year I wrote an article for Jane Austen’s Regency World about lonely hearts adverts in the Georgian period. They ranged from the wealthy old men openly searching for a nubile young wife, to the blunt “WANTED: A husband”, and the cheeky young rake describing himself as “a tolerably handsome young Fellow, of great Parts.”
The most disturbing tale, however, is that of Suffolk man William Corder. Having murdered his lover Maria Marten, he promptly whisked himself off to London and reputedly advertised for a wife in the Sunday Times. Less than two months after first reading his advert, the “respectably-connected” (but undeniably unfortunate) Mary Moore unwittingly attached herself to a serial liar and “tiger-hearted assassin” in matrimony.
At his trial in 1828, Corder’s futile attempt at defending himself for what became known as the “Red Barn Murder” began thus:
It has been well observed that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Never was this assertion better exemplified than in this hapless instance.
The “tremulous address” he delivered offered a somewhat fantastic account of the death of his former lover in her hometown of Polstead, Suffolk. His claims that she had shot herself in the eye (the stab wound and strangulation marks around her neck he did not attempt to explain), proved to be of no avail. A verdict of “all guilty” was returned. William was hanged on the 11th August at Bury St Edmund’s, and the mob that gathered to view the spectacle was estimated to be “upwards of 7000 persons.”
William and Maria had engaged in a long courtship, about which they had been very open with their families and neighbours, and which resulted in the birth of an illegitimate son around March 1827. A frequent caller to the Marten household, Corder fully acknowledged his parental duties and the two remained intimate, but the child – Maria’s second – lived less than two weeks. After the burial, William affrighted his young sweetheart with the possibility that the local authorities might prosecute her for her bastard children. He convinced her to flee to that renowned city of romance, Ipswich, where they might finally be united in matrimony. They arranged to meet at a local barn and set out together. Following an argument, which Corder later declared was about the burial of their son, Maria was shot, stabbed and concealed beneath the floorboards of the barn. After a rather unwise decision to indulge in a little light chit-chat and borrow a spade from a local woman, he continued on his travels. For weeks, Corder regularly wrote to the Martens with pithy excuses for Maria’s silence.
As months passed, her family’s anxieties rose. The eventual discovery of the body in April 1828 seems no less mysterious; according to popular accounts Maria’s step-mother was plagued with recurring dreams about her being buried in the ‘Red Barn.’ She urged her husband to investigate, and he was subjected to the horrific experience of finding his own daughter’s body crumpled beneath the wooden boards.
This broadside, published in the week after William’s execution, took advantage of the huge public excitement around the affair. It gives an account of the manner of his death and other “interesting particulars” including a letter to his new wife and the confession he finally made on the preceding night (how much was fabricated by the writer is unclear, but this confession printed here was included in most accounts of the trial). The “Likeness of William Corder” depicts a shifty and evil-looking mustachioed character, frowning upon his accusers.
This slightly later “Portrait of the Criminal” goes further, giving Corder a shave but adding a pair of shadowy spectacles and large black cloak which must have left its audience in no doubt as to his wicked intentions. If he genuinely walked around town looking quite so evil it’s a wonder he wasn’t apprehended immediately, or indeed that Mr. Marten the mole-catcher let the fellow near his daughter at all.
While prints such as this were clearly cashing in on the criminal trial of the moment, other much more macabre souvenirs were reportedly being eagerly sought by the public. I leave you with the rather grim account given in The Newgate Calendar:
After the execution a spirited bidding took place for the rope which was used by the hangman; and as much as a guinea an inch was obtained for it. Large sums were offered for the pistols and dagger which were used in the murder, but they became the property of the sheriff of the county, who very properly refused to put them up to public competition. A piece of the skin of the wretched malefactor, which had been tanned, was exhibited for a long time afterwards at the shop of a leather-seller in Oxford St.
