A Very British Murder BBC 4 9pm ‘A Taste of Blood’.

When I can’t really settle, read or write, I turn my brain off and watch TV. There’s not much difference between my recumbent brain and my active brain, but a good way of telling the difference, without fancy machinery, is for the latter, to check whether  my eyes are open. I initially thought A Very British Murder was something to do with George Orwell’s short article of the same name. It might well be there are another four episodes. In this one Lucy Worsley did a bit of singing, dancing, and acting in the melodrama of,  Maria Martin, the woman murdered in the red barn. She already had an illegitimate child to the rotter,  William Calder, that wouldn’t marry her. Later, her mother in law had a dream that she wasn’t on holiday, begging for bread along the way or had made off with some other swindler, but had in fact been shot and buried in the red barn. Such dreams come rarely, but when they do come a big X marks the spot. Lo and behold her body was found and the charlatan hit about a bit and his not guilty plea laughed out of court. He pled guilty before he was hanged, claiming he’d accidently shot his beau, which let’s face it happens all the time. There was time for another case in which a man and wife killed the man who was her putative lover and bury his body underneath the flagstone – add liberal splashing of quick lime if you’re thinking of doing this at home. This gave Lucy Worsley a chance to dress up in crinoline and stand in the dock with only her face showing. The burqa and hijab are not as we believe products of Islamic believe, but in fact creations of Charles Dickens. Here the Lady Macbeth character castigates British society for their unfairness in finding her guilty, but she was a foreigner and stiff upper lip was for men. She blamed her husband. Her husband blamed himself too. They were reunited on the gallows. Fifty-thousand turned up to see them make the plunge. Oh, the good old days. The last case was perhaps the most interesting. It involved two families including woman and children killed and even their apprentices and servants murdered most dastardely too. The police weren’t as professional as they are now. The murderer had left the murder weapon, a type of pick,  commonly used by seaman of that time with his name, email address and the lodging house he was staying in on it. A woman came forward to say that such and such a seaman did possess such a tool. The police pounced. Unfortunately, that said seaman was at sea at the time of one of the killings. Another seaman who stayed in the same lodging house wasn’t at sea, which is the equivalent of an admission of guilt. He was arrested and hanged himself when awaiting trial. Another admission of guilt. His body was dragged through the streets on a cart and his body buried in a shallow grave and stake driven through his heart. Somehow his head found its way into the hands of the local boozer. There was little point in leaving a perfectly good head lying about doing nothing. Without telly, they were a rum lot for those kinds of attractions in those days.