Episode 2 - Grace Marks

10/06/22 • 17 min

In late July 1843, the colony of Upper Canada was stunned with the news of a bloody double-murder. Thomas Kinnear had been shot and Nancy Montgomery – his housekeeper and pregnant mistress – had been strangled and dismembered. The two people accused of the murders were Kinnear’s Irish servants: James McDermott and the teenager, Grace Marks. Grace’s story has since become one of the most famous fictionalised episodes from nineteenth century Canada, but what was the real Grace like?

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Episode 1 - Introductions

Jane offers a brief overview of who we are, what we hope to achieve with this podcast, and a few of her inspirations for the first season of the show.

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Episode 3 - The 1832 Cholera Epidemic

Epidemic, pandemic, quarantine – these are words we’re very used to now, in a way that we arguably haven’t been in nearly 200 years. In 1832, Irish immigrants flooded into the Canadas, fleeing for their lives as cholera, a highly contagious and deadly disease, ravaged Europe, Britain, and Ireland. They didn’t receive the warmest of welcomes.