Second Decade

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