Accompanies series three of Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley
1 The mark of a murderer
Swiss maid Maria Manning was convicted for the killing of a former lover. But might she have been the victim of gender stereotyping?
It was a stain between two flagstones that gave the game away. On 17 August 1849, two policemen were conducting a search for a missing customs officer named Patrick O’Connor. For days they had been collecting information about O’Connor’s last known movements, and this had led them to a house in Bermondsey, London.
At first the officers found nothing. In fact, they were about to leave the house when Constable Barnes noticed the damp mark. The stain suggested that the flagstones in the kitchen had recently been re-laid, and so the policemen started digging. When they got 18 inches down, Barnes “discovered the loins of a man… it was lying on the belly, and the legs were brought back and tied up round the haunches with a strong cord… it was quite naked.”
Nowhere to be seen
Dental records confirmed the body was Patrick O’Connor. On 9 August, O’Connor had been invited to dine with the occupants of 3 Miniver Place: Frederick Manning and his Swiss wife, Maria. O’Connor had met Maria when she was a lady’s maid for the Duchess of Sutherland’s daughter. They began a relationship but, when he was slow to propose, Maria married Frederick, a guard on the Western Railway. Tough times had brought Maria and Frederick to London, and Maria had rekindled her affair with the welloff O’Connor. But on 17 August, Maria and Frederick Manning were nowhere to be seen.
