The Dumplings of Death

In March 1815, in London, Elizabeth Fenning served a plate of dumplings to the family that employed her as a cook. Almost all members of the household, including Eliza herself, became violently ill, apparently poisoned. Barely four months later Eliza was dead, hanged for attempted murder after a drumhead trial tainted with misogyny, class prejudice and official corruption. An angry newspaper reporter who witnessed her execution, William Hone, took up her cause and began to expose the web of lies that led to Eliza’s wrongful conviction—but Hone would soon find himself on trial for daring to speak truth to power. This was a major event in the birth of investigative journalism as we now know it, but it didn’t exist before the Second Decade. This is the story of the case that brought it into being.

In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger connects the disparate threads of the Eliza Fenning case and how it affected media and legal history. You’ll hear the likely real story of what happened in the troubled Turner household the day Eliza baked the dumplings, including her own words—ignored by legal authorities and historians alike—suggesting that the genesis of the whole thing was Eliza’s act of resistance against an attempted assault. You’ll meet a parade of corrupt officials and incompetent bureaucrats who tried to railroad her, from a feckless doctor who made a supposed murder weapon out of a sniff of garlic to the odious John Silvester, London’s chief criminal judge who demanded sexual favors in exchange for legal ones. And you’ll learn about the life of William Hone, briefly the most famous man in England, whose own trials in 1817 proved as much of a sensation as Elizabeth Fenning’s. There’s a lot more to this episode of Second Decade than the title suggests!

Content Warning: this episode contains a brief discussion of sexual assault.

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