November 5, 2024 • 23 mins
When Catherine Flannagan and her younger sister Margaret moved to Liverpool from Ireland in the late 1800s, they were among the tens of thousands of poverty-stricken Irish laborers and their families who left Ireland during the potato famine to find work in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. To make their money, Catherine and Margaret established and ran a boarding house. In short time, the house was filled to capacity with lodgers. But there was one problem: guests were dying in suspiciously similar circumstances.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
When Catherine Flanagan and her younger sister Margaret known to
friends as Caddie and Maggie, moved to Liverpool from Ireland
in the late eighteen hundreds, they were among the tens
of thousands of poverty stricken Irish laborers and their families
who left Ireland during the Potato Famine to find work
in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. To make their money,
(00:32):
Catherine and Margaret established and ran a boarding house. In
eighteen eighty they were living in a small terraced home
also known as a back to back house, at five
Scurving Street. Catherine was proprietress of the premises and Margaret
was charlady and in case you're not familiar with that term,
it's someone who cleans. In short time, the house was
(00:54):
filled the capacity with borders, but there was one problem.
Guests were in suspiciously similar circumstances. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm
Maria Tremarky.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And I'm Holly Frye. The first lodger to move in
at five Scurving Street was Catherine's twenty two year old son,
John Flanagan. Catherine was a widow and John and Margaret
were her only close family. Next there was lodger Thomas Higgins,
a hob carrier. That's another job title that might not
be familiar, so it's a person who brings supplies and
(01:30):
materials to workers on construction sites. Thomas also had a
six year old daughter named Mary, and then Caddie and
Maggie rented to Patrick Jennings, a dock laborer, with his
fourteen year old daughter, Margaret.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Catherine and Margaret's boarding house was situated in the squalid
living quarters of the city. Poor residents of Liverpool lived
in the city's slum districts in the eighteen eighties and
conditions were abysmal. The word slum actually first entered English
vocabulary in the nineteenth century, an idiom for this very
(02:05):
type of district densely populated urban environments. These poverty stricken
neighborhoods were characterized by squalor disease, and poor sanitation and
waste management. Whole families, sometimes large families, often lived in
a single small room. Typically there was just one toilet
(02:26):
to serve the whole street, sometimes the whole block and
the only available water for your daily needs came from
a solitary fountain that supplied the entire neighborhood. So, as
you might imagine, this was an environment where disease spread
fast and sudden deaths were common.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Despite the extreme poverty in these neighborhoods, the popularity of
burial societies was growing among people who lived there because
they offered people the dignity of a funeral, of course,
that is, if they could afford the weekly premiums for insurance,
and a lot of people scrambled to do so. Funerals
(03:04):
were very important occasions on which people spared no expense
if they had the means. A burial society, sometimes also
known as a friendly society, was basically kind of a
life insurance group that worked like this. Each member paid
dues to one society, and then those dues were paid
out upon death to help bury you and other members
(03:27):
of that society. This insurance was intended to be enough
to pay for funeral services only.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Though their establishment was fully rented, Catherine and Margaret still
had concerns about their financial situation, so they came up
with a plan a murderous and prosperous scheme to make
money exploiting the burial societies in the Liverpool area. They
would ensure their borders through several societies through a cheap
(03:56):
funeral when one died, and then walk away with a
tidy little sun leftover for themselves. But then here's the
critical piece. The sisters never intended on waiting for their
lodgers to die of natural causes.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So first thing, they took out insurance coverage on a
border and then they sped up their insurance payout by
taking matters into their own hands. Why wait for years
or decades for a person you've insured to die when
you could help them along with poison, specifically our old
friend arsenic. Symptoms of arsenic poisoning include, but are not
(04:34):
limited to, very prominent gastro intestinal signs including vomiting off
and bloody, along with severe watery diarrhea also off and bloody.
If you're poisoned slowly over a period of time rather
than in one big hit, the toxicity can also cause
skin lesions, seizures, coma, and it can damage your heart
(04:57):
as well as your liver and kidneys. It can kill
a person rapidly. If that's the type of murder you're
looking for, or it can be prolonged and agonizing. Disease
and death, as we talked about just a little while ago,
were common in these neighborhoods, and no one, the sisters figured,
would suspect a thing.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Just before Christmas of eighteen eighty, Catherine's son John died
after a sudden illness. His unexpected death set off no alarms.
Catherine had been telling neighbors for some time that he
was in poor health, although there was no evidence that
he was actually ill at all. Other than Catherine's word.
People didn't seem surprised when it came to pass, and
(05:40):
as the sisters had hoped, no one in the neighborhood
thought much of it. In what some referred to as
the Sister's murder for money dress rehearsal, Catherine, after her
son's death, claimed a total of approximately seventy pounds in
insurance money from a number of burial societies, allegedly to
pay for his funeral. Today, that amount would be between
(06:02):
ten thousand to fifteen thousand pounds. The funeral he was
given cost the barest of bare minimum, and Catherine pocketed
the rest.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
About two years later, in October of eighteen eighty two,
Margaret married lodger Thomas Higgins. A month after their marriage,
tragedy struck when Margaret's young stepdaughter, Mary Higgins died after
a sudden illness, an illness with symptoms remarkably similar to
those John Flanagan had before his death. Mary's new stepmother
(06:36):
claimed twenty two pounds in insurance moneys from multiple burial societies.
That adds up to roughly thirty three hundred pounds today.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
In January of eighteen eighty three, tragedy struck again when
Margaret Jennings died. She was you'll recall the teenage daughter
of border Patrick Jennings. Catherine, who had insured her, was
quick to throw a funeral of little value and kept
the rest of the insurance payout for herself. Patrick, who
(07:06):
was one of the original borders of the flant against
sister's house, fades away in this story after his daughter's death,
but note he is the only one to escape the
boarding house alive.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
We're going to take a break here for a word
from our sponsors, and when we're back we'll talk about
the next murder in the building and how it sparked
an investigation into the sisters.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Welcome back to Criminalia. This is the time in the
story where Thomas Higgins dies and his death takes down
the sister's money making scheme.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
We talked earlier about how death was a pretty common
occurrence in the neighborhood, and though it was sad, it
wasn't shocking when it happened. But these multiple deaths in
such quick succession had the neighbors suspicious. These were deaths
of people who had seemed perfectly healthy, and all of
(08:12):
them had lived at the same boarding house. The sisters
were already both considered to be a kind of dubious character,
so as new rumors about them started to spread, Catherine
and Margaret decided it was time to move. They relocated
first to Latimer Street, but for reasons unknown, they moved again.
(08:33):
In September of eighteen eighty three. They finally settled into
a new boarding house at twenty seven Ascott Street. Their
borders moved with them. It was in this house on
Ascot Street where Thomas Higgins, age forty five, fell ill
with severe symptoms similar to those that John and Mary
(08:54):
and Margaret Jennings had.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The doctor who sought to Thomas diagnosed him with dysentery,
explained it was likely from his drinking too much cheap whiskey.
Thomas died just two days after his stomach pains began quickly.
Like the other three deaths in the boarding house. Dysentery
caused by contaminated water was a common infection in poverty
(09:17):
stricken neighborhoods, and though it can be fatal, the infection
often clears up even without treatment in about a week
or two. The same doctor who had attended Thomas signed
the death certificate and noted his death was due to dysentery.
Margaret Higgins may have been a grieving widow, but she
was now also one hundred pounds richer. The insurance payout
(09:40):
on Thomas came from multiple burial societies. That hundred pounds
would roughly be fifteen thousand pounds today, and that's a
windfall for the sisters.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Because their scheme involved poison and murder, they've been referred
to as the Borgia Sisters of the Slums, and in
more modern times as the Black Widows of Liverpool. So
as a reminder, black widows are women who kill for
money and who often, but not always, target their lovers
or husbands. But however you want to nickname them, Catherine
(10:14):
and Margaret's crimes were horrific and despicable, and they were
carried out with pure greed.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Thomas had been in fine health. Unfortunately for him, though
quote his life expectancy had decreased in direct proportion to
the amount by which his life insurance had increased. Isn't
that the truth? But there was something Catherine and Margaret
did not know about Thomas's death. Thomas had mentioned to
his brother another person in the story named Patrick, that
(10:43):
an insurance agent had come around the house with a
doctor to examine him, but he was drunk when they
paid their visit, and he sent them away. Their visit
may have seemed out of the blue or maybe even
bothersome to Thomas, but it was his sister in law
who had been behind it. Had tried to insure Thomas
for as much as fifty pounds roughly equivalent to seven thousand,
(11:05):
six hundred pounds today, and while dotting their eyes and
crossing their tees that particular burial society had arranged a
doctor's exam before insuring him.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
After his brother's death, and after learning that others in
the boarding house had died a similar death. Patrick Higgins
decided to dig around a little and he made the
rounds of the local insurance companies. When he found that
five policies had been taken out on Thomas's life, he
grew suspicious. He also visited with the doctor who confirmed
(11:39):
his brother's death, and then he took his suspicions to
the police, and this was the beginning of the end
of Catherine and Margaret's arsenic for insurance money scam.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
On the day that Thomas was supposed to be buried,
a coroner's officer and two doctors pulled up to twenty
seven Ascot Street in a hearse. A coroner's officer received
reports of deaths in the community, from hospitals to home
deaths and everything in between. Letting themselves in, they found
several women standing around Thomas's coffin in the middle of
(12:12):
the room, but they weren't grieving. They were having a party.
Seeing the men inside her house. Catherine, reportedly wearing a
quote shabby black dress to this wake, cried out in surprise,
and then she took off through the back entrance of
the house. She wasn't found for several days. The coroner's
officer wasn't there to give chase, though he was there
(12:34):
to give notice to Margaret that her husband's funeral would
not go ahead as originally planned because a post mortem
would be performed on the body.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
The result of the post mortem and a subsequent search
of twenty seven Ascot Street found traces of arsenic everywhere
in Thomas's body and even in Margaret's pair cased pocket watch,
as a style of pocket watch with an outer case
that closes. A bottle containing an unknown white powder was
(13:03):
also found in the house. Margaret was arrested. Release said
that Margaret going downtown.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Catherine on the run moved from one boarding house to
another while she was hiding from authorities. She had heard
that the results of that post mortem had proved Thomas
Higgins had not died from dysentery, he had died from
arsenic poisoning. She'd also heard that Margaret had been arrested
about a week after she'd fled her house. She was
(13:32):
finally discovered and arrested after a boarding house proprietor alerted
the police to a tenant who was behaving suspiciously. Both
sisters were charged with the murder of Thomas Higgins.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
We're going to take a break for a word from
our sponsors. It'll be all about Catherine and Margaret's trial
when we return.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk a little bit about
the murder weapon arsenic, and also how Catherine tried to
testify as a witness against her sister in an attempt
for leniency.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
There were, of course, other people other than Thomas who
had died in Catherine and Margaret's boarding house whose deaths
had not been investigated. After the results of Thomas's postmortem,
the bodies of John Flanagan, Margaret Jennings, and Mary Higgins
were each exhumed for examination. Fatal doses of arsenic were
(14:38):
found in each body.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Arsenic, and if you're a longtime listener, you know this
has been a character in our episodes for quite a
long time now. Is a colorless and tasteless poison and
was pretty easy to get your hands on. In the
eighteen eighties, stores in Victorian England sold everything from tea
and biscuits to arsenic based rat killing products. It was
(15:02):
in wallpaper pigment. Some people nibbled on wafers laced with
arsenic to give themselves a fashionable translucent complexion. The sisters
had used a pretty simple method of creating their murder weapon.
They soaked arsenic laced fly paper in water. The poison
would leach out into the water, and then the arsenic
(15:22):
laced water was used to poison the foods and drinks
of their victims.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
On October sixteenth, eighteen eighty three, the sisters were charged
with the murder of Thomas Higgins. Their trial opened at
Saint George's Hall on February fourteenth, eighteen eighty four. While
Margaret didn't have much to say during the trial, Catherine
sure did. She claimed the murders of Thomas Higgins, John Flanagan,
(15:47):
Margaret Jennings, and Mary Higgins were not the only ones
the sisters had committed. We're not sure exactly how this
was her defense, but it was. She also alleged she
wasn't the only one run such a scheme and knew
of other people who had murdered for insurance money. Hoping
that she might get leniency from the judge, she named
(16:09):
names of other poisoners and claimed that three agents of
the insuring burial fund societies and one other accomplice were
all in on it. The alleged conspirators included Margaret Evans
and Bridget Begley, both poisoners, Margaret Potter, Bridget Stanton and
a Missus Fallon each agents for burial societies, and Catherine
(16:32):
Ryan named as an accomplice. None of those people were
prosecuted at the time. The police and the Solicitor for
the City of Liverpool, upon a cursory look into it,
agreed that in their opinions, the information that Catherine supplied
was likely true. There were more victims, but the only
(16:52):
evidence against the possible perpetrators came from a woman who
was trying to escape a death sentence, and they just
didn't think that was good enough evidence. William Marx, prosecutor
for the City of Liverpool, agreed and he wrote to
the Director of Public Prosecutions stating that and were paraphrasing
him for length. These other victims were probably poisoned, but
(17:16):
without evidence it would be difficult to prove anyone other
than Margaret Higgins and Catherine Flanagan were responsible for the deaths.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
While the prosecution tried to paint Catherine as the brains
behind the entire scheme, Catherine, in another attempt to save
herself from the gallows, offered to turn Queen's evidence and
testify that Margaret was responsible for the deaths. Her offer
was rejected by the court. On February sixteenth, the jury
reached guilty verdicts on both women in less than an hour.
(17:49):
When the sisters were both sentenced to death by hanging,
Catherine remained unmoved, Margaret collapsed. Though they were also accused
of three other murders Catherine's son, in addition to their
borders Margaret and Mary, the court did not proceed with
those cases the women were already sentenced to death. The
sisters were locked up in Kirkdale Prison awaiting their execution.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
At the time of their executions, Catherine was fifty five,
Margaret aged forty one. Both women wore long dresses to
the gallows. Catherine was in black and Margaret in a
dark brown dress. On March third, eighteen eighty four, during
an early morning snowstorm, the sisters were given assistance up
(18:33):
the twenty or so steps of the scaffold at the
execution shed, where they were then hooded, noosed, and then
dropped to their deaths by executioner Bartholomew Binns and his
assistant Samuel Heath. There were no last words. The final
moment for the Sisters was greeted by a large crowd
that had gathered outside the prison to see the black
(18:56):
flag unfurl in the snowfall, indicating that the execus Cutian
was over it, or rather dark tail.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
It is it is?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Would you like to make it a double? Yes?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
I would.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
This is one of those weird things that probably only
would jump out to me, come along for the ride.
The phrase that I fixated on, and I don't know why,
was shabby black dress, and my brain was like, you know,
a shabby black is a great name for a drink.
So that's what we're calling this one. And just before
(19:31):
anybody gets scared, it's not solid black because this will
get into a little bit of like textile nerdery. Come
with me. When black fades, one of the colors that
starts to emerge usually is like a purply tone or
a burgundy tone. And so I wanted to do a
very dark, reddish, purply black drink. And I also wanted
(19:56):
it to be delicious. So hopefully this worked into shaking tin.
You are going to put an ounce of lemon juice,
an ounce of blueberry liqueur. If you can't find blueberry
liqueur where you are, you can sub in another rich berry.
You could use a raspberry here, or you can't even
(20:16):
do a strawberry if you want, but blueberry is the
winner on this one. You can find it, go for it.
And then two ounces of a black spiced rum you
want a very very dark black spiced rum ideally, and
then three ounces of pomegranate juice and just give that
a shake with ice and strain it over fresh ice
because you have quite a bit of lemon juice in there.
(20:38):
This one stays very tart to my palette, and pomegranate
juice has a tartness anyway, so it's not a super
sweet drink, even though it does have a substantial amount
of juice. So this one just becomes like kind of
a there's a fruit note, but that citrus zing in
it keeps it very bright on the pallet. It's a
really yummy one, even though it looks quite dark. It's
(21:00):
one of those things where your eye and palette coordination
gets a little weird because because of its dark flavor,
it's like your brain thinks it's gonna taste more fruity
or heavier, but the lemon really brings it up and
makes it not that way. The mocktail version of this
is quite fun because you're gonna keep your half ounce
of lemon, your three ounces of pomegranate juice, but you're
(21:23):
gonna brew a cup of tea with two tea bags.
You're gonna do one black tea bag of your choosing
and then one blueberry tea bag. Blueberry tea super easy
to find. My supermarket has that. I check several others
in my area. The big brands make blueberry tea, and
you're gonna just brew that as you would. You're gonna
season it a little bit once you take the tea
bags out with allspice to give it that like kind
(21:45):
of deeper flavor with a little bit of a nutty note,
and you're gonna use two and a half ounces of
that once it's cooled, and then a half ounce of
simple syrup. So again for the mocktail, it's an ounce
of lemon juice, three ounces pomegranate juice, two and a
half ounces of the tea that you've made, and a
half ounce of simple syrup and just same thing. Shake
that up, pour it over ice that's a very yummy
(22:07):
mocktail for me. That's when I'm going to be drinking
a lot of as like my beverage when I'm working,
because it's just really tasty and also good for you.
All of the you know, pomegranate and blueberries full of antioxidants.
They will keep you away from needing your payout from
the Friendly Society. None of this has any you know,
(22:31):
fly paper or other insect stuff in it. It's all yummy,
delicious ingredients.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
So there's no special powder.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
No special powder at all. So that's what we're calling
the Shabby Black. I hope if you make it that
you love it. I really quite liked it. We will
be right back here next time around with another story
and some more drinks. Can't wait to see you then.
(23:14):
Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
When Catherine Flanagan and her younger sister Margaret known to
friends as Caddie and Maggie, moved to Liverpool from Ireland
in the late eighteen hundreds, they were among the tens
of thousands of poverty stricken Irish laborers and their families
who left Ireland during the Potato Famine to find work
in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. To make their money,
(00:32):
Catherine and Margaret established and ran a boarding house. In
eighteen eighty they were living in a small terraced home
also known as a back to back house, at five
Scurving Street. Catherine was proprietress of the premises and Margaret
was charlady and in case you're not familiar with that term,
it's someone who cleans. In short time, the house was
(00:54):
filled the capacity with borders, but there was one problem.
Guests were in suspiciously similar circumstances. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm
Maria Tremarky.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And I'm Holly Frye. The first lodger to move in
at five Scurving Street was Catherine's twenty two year old son,
John Flanagan. Catherine was a widow and John and Margaret
were her only close family. Next there was lodger Thomas Higgins,
a hob carrier. That's another job title that might not
be familiar, so it's a person who brings supplies and
(01:30):
materials to workers on construction sites. Thomas also had a
six year old daughter named Mary, and then Caddie and
Maggie rented to Patrick Jennings, a dock laborer, with his
fourteen year old daughter, Margaret.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Catherine and Margaret's boarding house was situated in the squalid
living quarters of the city. Poor residents of Liverpool lived
in the city's slum districts in the eighteen eighties and
conditions were abysmal. The word slum actually first entered English
vocabulary in the nineteenth century, an idiom for this very
(02:05):
type of district densely populated urban environments. These poverty stricken
neighborhoods were characterized by squalor disease, and poor sanitation and
waste management. Whole families, sometimes large families, often lived in
a single small room. Typically there was just one toilet
(02:26):
to serve the whole street, sometimes the whole block and
the only available water for your daily needs came from
a solitary fountain that supplied the entire neighborhood. So, as
you might imagine, this was an environment where disease spread
fast and sudden deaths were common.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Despite the extreme poverty in these neighborhoods, the popularity of
burial societies was growing among people who lived there because
they offered people the dignity of a funeral, of course,
that is, if they could afford the weekly premiums for insurance,
and a lot of people scrambled to do so. Funerals
(03:04):
were very important occasions on which people spared no expense
if they had the means. A burial society, sometimes also
known as a friendly society, was basically kind of a
life insurance group that worked like this. Each member paid
dues to one society, and then those dues were paid
out upon death to help bury you and other members
(03:27):
of that society. This insurance was intended to be enough
to pay for funeral services only.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Though their establishment was fully rented, Catherine and Margaret still
had concerns about their financial situation, so they came up
with a plan a murderous and prosperous scheme to make
money exploiting the burial societies in the Liverpool area. They
would ensure their borders through several societies through a cheap
(03:56):
funeral when one died, and then walk away with a
tidy little sun leftover for themselves. But then here's the
critical piece. The sisters never intended on waiting for their
lodgers to die of natural causes.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So first thing, they took out insurance coverage on a
border and then they sped up their insurance payout by
taking matters into their own hands. Why wait for years
or decades for a person you've insured to die when
you could help them along with poison, specifically our old
friend arsenic. Symptoms of arsenic poisoning include, but are not
(04:34):
limited to, very prominent gastro intestinal signs including vomiting off
and bloody, along with severe watery diarrhea also off and bloody.
If you're poisoned slowly over a period of time rather
than in one big hit, the toxicity can also cause
skin lesions, seizures, coma, and it can damage your heart
(04:57):
as well as your liver and kidneys. It can kill
a person rapidly. If that's the type of murder you're
looking for, or it can be prolonged and agonizing. Disease
and death, as we talked about just a little while ago,
were common in these neighborhoods, and no one, the sisters figured,
would suspect a thing.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Just before Christmas of eighteen eighty, Catherine's son John died
after a sudden illness. His unexpected death set off no alarms.
Catherine had been telling neighbors for some time that he
was in poor health, although there was no evidence that
he was actually ill at all. Other than Catherine's word.
People didn't seem surprised when it came to pass, and
(05:40):
as the sisters had hoped, no one in the neighborhood
thought much of it. In what some referred to as
the Sister's murder for money dress rehearsal, Catherine, after her
son's death, claimed a total of approximately seventy pounds in
insurance money from a number of burial societies, allegedly to
pay for his funeral. Today, that amount would be between
(06:02):
ten thousand to fifteen thousand pounds. The funeral he was
given cost the barest of bare minimum, and Catherine pocketed
the rest.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
About two years later, in October of eighteen eighty two,
Margaret married lodger Thomas Higgins. A month after their marriage,
tragedy struck when Margaret's young stepdaughter, Mary Higgins died after
a sudden illness, an illness with symptoms remarkably similar to
those John Flanagan had before his death. Mary's new stepmother
(06:36):
claimed twenty two pounds in insurance moneys from multiple burial societies.
That adds up to roughly thirty three hundred pounds today.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
In January of eighteen eighty three, tragedy struck again when
Margaret Jennings died. She was you'll recall the teenage daughter
of border Patrick Jennings. Catherine, who had insured her, was
quick to throw a funeral of little value and kept
the rest of the insurance payout for herself. Patrick, who
(07:06):
was one of the original borders of the flant against
sister's house, fades away in this story after his daughter's death,
but note he is the only one to escape the
boarding house alive.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
We're going to take a break here for a word
from our sponsors, and when we're back we'll talk about
the next murder in the building and how it sparked
an investigation into the sisters.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Welcome back to Criminalia. This is the time in the
story where Thomas Higgins dies and his death takes down
the sister's money making scheme.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
We talked earlier about how death was a pretty common
occurrence in the neighborhood, and though it was sad, it
wasn't shocking when it happened. But these multiple deaths in
such quick succession had the neighbors suspicious. These were deaths
of people who had seemed perfectly healthy, and all of
(08:12):
them had lived at the same boarding house. The sisters
were already both considered to be a kind of dubious character,
so as new rumors about them started to spread, Catherine
and Margaret decided it was time to move. They relocated
first to Latimer Street, but for reasons unknown, they moved again.
(08:33):
In September of eighteen eighty three. They finally settled into
a new boarding house at twenty seven Ascott Street. Their
borders moved with them. It was in this house on
Ascot Street where Thomas Higgins, age forty five, fell ill
with severe symptoms similar to those that John and Mary
(08:54):
and Margaret Jennings had.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The doctor who sought to Thomas diagnosed him with dysentery,
explained it was likely from his drinking too much cheap whiskey.
Thomas died just two days after his stomach pains began quickly.
Like the other three deaths in the boarding house. Dysentery
caused by contaminated water was a common infection in poverty
(09:17):
stricken neighborhoods, and though it can be fatal, the infection
often clears up even without treatment in about a week
or two. The same doctor who had attended Thomas signed
the death certificate and noted his death was due to dysentery.
Margaret Higgins may have been a grieving widow, but she
was now also one hundred pounds richer. The insurance payout
(09:40):
on Thomas came from multiple burial societies. That hundred pounds
would roughly be fifteen thousand pounds today, and that's a
windfall for the sisters.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Because their scheme involved poison and murder, they've been referred
to as the Borgia Sisters of the Slums, and in
more modern times as the Black Widows of Liverpool. So
as a reminder, black widows are women who kill for
money and who often, but not always, target their lovers
or husbands. But however you want to nickname them, Catherine
(10:14):
and Margaret's crimes were horrific and despicable, and they were
carried out with pure greed.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Thomas had been in fine health. Unfortunately for him, though
quote his life expectancy had decreased in direct proportion to
the amount by which his life insurance had increased. Isn't
that the truth? But there was something Catherine and Margaret
did not know about Thomas's death. Thomas had mentioned to
his brother another person in the story named Patrick, that
(10:43):
an insurance agent had come around the house with a
doctor to examine him, but he was drunk when they
paid their visit, and he sent them away. Their visit
may have seemed out of the blue or maybe even
bothersome to Thomas, but it was his sister in law
who had been behind it. Had tried to insure Thomas
for as much as fifty pounds roughly equivalent to seven thousand,
(11:05):
six hundred pounds today, and while dotting their eyes and
crossing their tees that particular burial society had arranged a
doctor's exam before insuring him.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
After his brother's death, and after learning that others in
the boarding house had died a similar death. Patrick Higgins
decided to dig around a little and he made the
rounds of the local insurance companies. When he found that
five policies had been taken out on Thomas's life, he
grew suspicious. He also visited with the doctor who confirmed
(11:39):
his brother's death, and then he took his suspicions to
the police, and this was the beginning of the end
of Catherine and Margaret's arsenic for insurance money scam.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
On the day that Thomas was supposed to be buried,
a coroner's officer and two doctors pulled up to twenty
seven Ascot Street in a hearse. A coroner's officer received
reports of deaths in the community, from hospitals to home
deaths and everything in between. Letting themselves in, they found
several women standing around Thomas's coffin in the middle of
(12:12):
the room, but they weren't grieving. They were having a party.
Seeing the men inside her house. Catherine, reportedly wearing a
quote shabby black dress to this wake, cried out in surprise,
and then she took off through the back entrance of
the house. She wasn't found for several days. The coroner's
officer wasn't there to give chase, though he was there
(12:34):
to give notice to Margaret that her husband's funeral would
not go ahead as originally planned because a post mortem
would be performed on the body.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
The result of the post mortem and a subsequent search
of twenty seven Ascot Street found traces of arsenic everywhere
in Thomas's body and even in Margaret's pair cased pocket watch,
as a style of pocket watch with an outer case
that closes. A bottle containing an unknown white powder was
(13:03):
also found in the house. Margaret was arrested. Release said
that Margaret going downtown.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Catherine on the run moved from one boarding house to
another while she was hiding from authorities. She had heard
that the results of that post mortem had proved Thomas
Higgins had not died from dysentery, he had died from
arsenic poisoning. She'd also heard that Margaret had been arrested
about a week after she'd fled her house. She was
(13:32):
finally discovered and arrested after a boarding house proprietor alerted
the police to a tenant who was behaving suspiciously. Both
sisters were charged with the murder of Thomas Higgins.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
We're going to take a break for a word from
our sponsors. It'll be all about Catherine and Margaret's trial
when we return.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk a little bit about
the murder weapon arsenic, and also how Catherine tried to
testify as a witness against her sister in an attempt
for leniency.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
There were, of course, other people other than Thomas who
had died in Catherine and Margaret's boarding house whose deaths
had not been investigated. After the results of Thomas's postmortem,
the bodies of John Flanagan, Margaret Jennings, and Mary Higgins
were each exhumed for examination. Fatal doses of arsenic were
(14:38):
found in each body.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Arsenic, and if you're a longtime listener, you know this
has been a character in our episodes for quite a
long time now. Is a colorless and tasteless poison and
was pretty easy to get your hands on. In the
eighteen eighties, stores in Victorian England sold everything from tea
and biscuits to arsenic based rat killing products. It was
(15:02):
in wallpaper pigment. Some people nibbled on wafers laced with
arsenic to give themselves a fashionable translucent complexion. The sisters
had used a pretty simple method of creating their murder weapon.
They soaked arsenic laced fly paper in water. The poison
would leach out into the water, and then the arsenic
(15:22):
laced water was used to poison the foods and drinks
of their victims.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
On October sixteenth, eighteen eighty three, the sisters were charged
with the murder of Thomas Higgins. Their trial opened at
Saint George's Hall on February fourteenth, eighteen eighty four. While
Margaret didn't have much to say during the trial, Catherine
sure did. She claimed the murders of Thomas Higgins, John Flanagan,
(15:47):
Margaret Jennings, and Mary Higgins were not the only ones
the sisters had committed. We're not sure exactly how this
was her defense, but it was. She also alleged she
wasn't the only one run such a scheme and knew
of other people who had murdered for insurance money. Hoping
that she might get leniency from the judge, she named
(16:09):
names of other poisoners and claimed that three agents of
the insuring burial fund societies and one other accomplice were
all in on it. The alleged conspirators included Margaret Evans
and Bridget Begley, both poisoners, Margaret Potter, Bridget Stanton and
a Missus Fallon each agents for burial societies, and Catherine
(16:32):
Ryan named as an accomplice. None of those people were
prosecuted at the time. The police and the Solicitor for
the City of Liverpool, upon a cursory look into it,
agreed that in their opinions, the information that Catherine supplied
was likely true. There were more victims, but the only
(16:52):
evidence against the possible perpetrators came from a woman who
was trying to escape a death sentence, and they just
didn't think that was good enough evidence. William Marx, prosecutor
for the City of Liverpool, agreed and he wrote to
the Director of Public Prosecutions stating that and were paraphrasing
him for length. These other victims were probably poisoned, but
(17:16):
without evidence it would be difficult to prove anyone other
than Margaret Higgins and Catherine Flanagan were responsible for the deaths.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
While the prosecution tried to paint Catherine as the brains
behind the entire scheme, Catherine, in another attempt to save
herself from the gallows, offered to turn Queen's evidence and
testify that Margaret was responsible for the deaths. Her offer
was rejected by the court. On February sixteenth, the jury
reached guilty verdicts on both women in less than an hour.
(17:49):
When the sisters were both sentenced to death by hanging,
Catherine remained unmoved, Margaret collapsed. Though they were also accused
of three other murders Catherine's son, in addition to their
borders Margaret and Mary, the court did not proceed with
those cases the women were already sentenced to death. The
sisters were locked up in Kirkdale Prison awaiting their execution.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
At the time of their executions, Catherine was fifty five,
Margaret aged forty one. Both women wore long dresses to
the gallows. Catherine was in black and Margaret in a
dark brown dress. On March third, eighteen eighty four, during
an early morning snowstorm, the sisters were given assistance up
(18:33):
the twenty or so steps of the scaffold at the
execution shed, where they were then hooded, noosed, and then
dropped to their deaths by executioner Bartholomew Binns and his
assistant Samuel Heath. There were no last words. The final
moment for the Sisters was greeted by a large crowd
that had gathered outside the prison to see the black
(18:56):
flag unfurl in the snowfall, indicating that the execus Cutian
was over it, or rather dark tail.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
It is it is?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Would you like to make it a double? Yes?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
I would.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
This is one of those weird things that probably only
would jump out to me, come along for the ride.
The phrase that I fixated on, and I don't know why,
was shabby black dress, and my brain was like, you know,
a shabby black is a great name for a drink.
So that's what we're calling this one. And just before
(19:31):
anybody gets scared, it's not solid black because this will
get into a little bit of like textile nerdery. Come
with me. When black fades, one of the colors that
starts to emerge usually is like a purply tone or
a burgundy tone. And so I wanted to do a
very dark, reddish, purply black drink. And I also wanted
(19:56):
it to be delicious. So hopefully this worked into shaking tin.
You are going to put an ounce of lemon juice,
an ounce of blueberry liqueur. If you can't find blueberry
liqueur where you are, you can sub in another rich berry.
You could use a raspberry here, or you can't even
(20:16):
do a strawberry if you want, but blueberry is the
winner on this one. You can find it, go for it.
And then two ounces of a black spiced rum you
want a very very dark black spiced rum ideally, and
then three ounces of pomegranate juice and just give that
a shake with ice and strain it over fresh ice
because you have quite a bit of lemon juice in there.
(20:38):
This one stays very tart to my palette, and pomegranate
juice has a tartness anyway, so it's not a super
sweet drink, even though it does have a substantial amount
of juice. So this one just becomes like kind of
a there's a fruit note, but that citrus zing in
it keeps it very bright on the pallet. It's a
really yummy one, even though it looks quite dark. It's
(21:00):
one of those things where your eye and palette coordination
gets a little weird because because of its dark flavor,
it's like your brain thinks it's gonna taste more fruity
or heavier, but the lemon really brings it up and
makes it not that way. The mocktail version of this
is quite fun because you're gonna keep your half ounce
of lemon, your three ounces of pomegranate juice, but you're
(21:23):
gonna brew a cup of tea with two tea bags.
You're gonna do one black tea bag of your choosing
and then one blueberry tea bag. Blueberry tea super easy
to find. My supermarket has that. I check several others
in my area. The big brands make blueberry tea, and
you're gonna just brew that as you would. You're gonna
season it a little bit once you take the tea
bags out with allspice to give it that like kind
(21:45):
of deeper flavor with a little bit of a nutty note,
and you're gonna use two and a half ounces of
that once it's cooled, and then a half ounce of
simple syrup. So again for the mocktail, it's an ounce
of lemon juice, three ounces pomegranate juice, two and a
half ounces of the tea that you've made, and a
half ounce of simple syrup and just same thing. Shake
that up, pour it over ice that's a very yummy
(22:07):
mocktail for me. That's when I'm going to be drinking
a lot of as like my beverage when I'm working,
because it's just really tasty and also good for you.
All of the you know, pomegranate and blueberries full of antioxidants.
They will keep you away from needing your payout from
the Friendly Society. None of this has any you know,
(22:31):
fly paper or other insect stuff in it. It's all yummy,
delicious ingredients.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
So there's no special powder.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
No special powder at all. So that's what we're calling
the Shabby Black. I hope if you make it that
you love it. I really quite liked it. We will
be right back here next time around with another story
and some more drinks. Can't wait to see you then.
(23:14):
Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
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