Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley - 23. Jane and Ann Boyd - Secret Baby

23. Jane and Ann Boyd - Secret Baby

01/24/24 • 29 min

Lucy Worsley travels back in time to revisit the unthinkable crimes of 19th century murderesses from the UK, Australia and North America.

In this episode Lucy is joined by the Right Honourable Dame Siobhan Keegan, the Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, who was one of the first women High Court judges in Northern Ireland.

They explore the case of mother and daughter Jane and Ann Boyd, from a poor family living in Holywood near Belfast, whose lives are turned upside down when 19-year-old Ann is dismissed from her job as a domestic servant because she is pregnant and unmarried.

We worry a lot about lack of privacy today, about the invasiveness of social media, but Lucy discovers that in mid 19th century rural Ireland, in a very religious community, there was absolutely no privacy. The Boyd’s neighbours and extended family were in and out of each other’s houses all day, observing every detail of each other’s lives.

So when Ann goes into labour in the Boyd’s cottage, there is no way that Jane is going to be able to keep her daughter’s baby a secret.

Lucy is also joined by historian Rosalind Crone, Professor of History at the Open University. They travel to the Ulster Folk Museum near Holywood and discover the awful truth about how the shame of illegitimacy drove hundreds of Irish women every year to desperate measures to conceal their unwanted pregnancies.

Lucy wants to know what it was like trying to deal with an illegitimate pregnancy in a highly religious, judgemental society. How did the mid 19th century criminal justice system deal with women like Jane and Ann Boyd, and what might happen to women in a similar situation today?

Produced in partnership with the Open University

Producer: Jane Greenwood Readers: Grace, Catherine and Margaret Cunningham, Jonathan Keeble, Patrick Kelly-Bradley and William McBride Sound design: Chris Maclean Series Producer: Julia Hayball

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4

New episodes will be released on Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. But if you’re in the UK, listen to the latest full series of Lady Killers first on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds - Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley - Available Episodes: http://bbc.in/3M2pT0K

Lucy Worsley travels back in time to revisit the unthinkable crimes of 19th century murderesses from the UK, Australia and North America.

In this episode Lucy is joined by the Right Honourable Dame Siobhan Keegan, the Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, who was one of the first women High Court judges in Northern Ireland.

So when Ann goes into labour in the Boyd’s cottage, there is no way that Jane is going to be able to keep her daughter’s baby a secret.

Produced in partnership with the Open University

Producer: Jane Greenwood Readers: Grace, Catherine and Margaret Cunningham, Jonathan Keeble, Patrick Kelly-Bradley and William McBride Sound design: Chris Maclean Series Producer: Julia Hayball

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4

Previous Episode

22. Marie Christensen - Murderous Matron

It’s the 14th September 1896, just a short distance from Brisbane, on Australia’s east coast, and the sun is rising on Minjerribah Island, the ancestral land of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait ‘Quandamooka People’. It’s an area rich in Aboriginal culture. It’s also a colonised area, steeped in racism and division, and this is where the murder of six year old ‘Cassey’ takes place.

To investigate this tragic crime and its contemporary resonances, Lucy Worsley is joined by Guest Detective Vanessa Turnbull Roberts. Vanessa is a proud Bundjalung Widubul-Wiabul First Nations woman, a Law Graduate and recipient of the Australian Human Rights Medal for her work around the adoption laws and forcible removal of First Nations children.

Lucy hears that our case begins at ‘Myora Mission School’, an institution set up by white settlers who wish to establish a ‘reformatory’ for Aboriginal children. In reality, it’s part of a wider ‘management’ system aimed at controlling the First Nations population. The children are being trained in domestic duties to work as servants for white families. There’s also evidence that some of the children – including six-year-old Cassey - have been forcibly taken from their homes.

Whilst the children are under the supervision of their matron – a Danish settler called Marie Christensen – Cassey is killed. Marie’s cruel and fatal actions are witnessed by First Nations women Budlo Lefu, Topsy Mcleod and Polly Roberts who bravely speak out on Cassey’s behalf.

Professor Rosalind Crone from the Open University travels to Australia to visit the site of the Mission School and meet local tribal elders.

As the tragic murder unfolds, Vanessa explains that the subject which really underpins everything in this case, is Australia’s ‘Stolen Generations’, the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and communities. Although this began during the earliest days of white settlement, Vanessa – herself, a survivor of the ‘Family Policing System’ – reveals, it is not a thing of the past.

Produced in partnership with the Open University.

Producer: Nicola Humphries Readers: Paula Delany-Nazarski, Clare Corbett and Jonathan Keeble Sound Design: Chris Maclean Series Producer: Julia Hayball.

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4

With thanks to The Minjerribah Moorgumpin Elders-In-Council and North Stradbroke Island Museum on Minjerribah

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24. Frances Kidder - Wicked Stepmother

Lucy Worsley travels back in time to revisit the unthinkable crimes of 19th century murderesses from the UK, Australia and North America.

In this episode, Lucy is joined by Dr Gwen Adshead, for many years a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist at Broadmoor Hospital.

They investigate the case of Frances Kidder, a 25-year-old woman unhappily married to a much older man, who is accused of murdering her stepdaughter Louisa in Kent in 1867.

We all know the stories of Cinderella and Snow White – evil stepmothers badly treating their innocent stepdaughters. So when, one evening in August 1867, Louisa Kidder fails to return from a walk with her stepmother Frances across the lonely wetlands of Romney Marsh, Frances has some explaining to do.

Lucy is also joined by historian Rosalind Crone, Professor of History at the Open University. She has uncovered numerous reports from local magistrates’ courts which reveal the violence and discord of the Kidder household. Lucy and Rosalind travel to Hythe in Kent where Frances married her violent husband, to Romney Marsh where Louisa disappeared, and to Maidstone Gaol where Frances awaited trial.

Lucy wants to know what actually happened to Louisa on that August evening. Is Frances a wicked stepmother or herself the victim of a troubled and violent home? What does her case tell us about family breakdown in the 19th century, and how much has changed today?

Produced in partnership with the Open University

Producer: Jane Greenwood Readers: Clare Corbett, Jonathan Keeble and Ruth Sillers Sound design: Chris Maclean Series Producer: Julia Hayball

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4