Episode 22: Dark Angel in the House: Adelaide Bartlett

Victorian women were expected to be wives and mothers—not killers. Enter Adelaide Bartlett. In her middle-class Victorian world of green wallpaper, taxidermy, and submissive wifehood, the beautiful Adelaide was an enigma. Was she telling the truth about her husband’s weirdness? Was she really as good as she seemed? And most importantly: did she do it?

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The Trial of Adelaide Bartlett for Murder, Held at the Central Criminal Court from Monday, April 12, to Saturday, April 17, 1886

 “Adelaide Bartlett and the Pimlico mystery,” by M. Farrell, BMJ, Dec 24, 1994

“Science and Masculinity: The 1886 Pimlico Mystery Revisited,” by Holly Reynolds, University of Colorado

Murder Files from Scotland Yard and the Black Museum, by R. Michael Gordon

The A-Z of Victorian Crime, by Neil R. A. Bell, Trevor Bond, Kate Clarke, M.W. Oldridge

 “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on its Origins,” by John Frith, Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health, Vol 20 No 4

“George Dyson Alias John Bernard Walker,” by John A. Vickers, Methodist History, 41:1 (October 2002)

Hitchcock on Hitchcock, Volume 2: Selected Writings and Interviews

“The Heroine of the Hour,” The Pall Mall Budget: Being a Weekly Collection of Articles Printed in the Pall Mall Gazette from Day to Day, with a Summary of News, Volume 34, 1886

Music:

“Guilty” by Richard A. Whiting, Harry Akst, and Gus Kahn, sung by Anna Telfer.

“Silver Threads Among the Gold,” sung by John McCormack.