Episodes

  • Episode 007: Matthew Clark: The Cowardly Footpad Who Turned Killer

    Episode 007: Matthew Clark: The Cowardly Footpad Who Turned Killer
    Jun 29 2026
    Send us your FeedbackMatthew Clark is the kind of figure who makes true crime so unsettling: not a mastermind, not a hardened villain, but a lazy, cowardly young man whose small vices compound into something monstrous. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals introduces him as a creature formed entirely from the worst impulses of low life; idle, drunk, driven by lust, and too timid to commit even the crimes he plans. Born in St. Albans to parents of modest means, Clark squanders every opportunity placed before him. Dismissed from a gentleman's household for sheer incorrigibility, he drifts into roadside robbery on the heaths outside London; not from ambition, but because honest labour feels harder than the risk of the noose. The Georgian world Clark inhabits is one where cowardice and desperation make a volatile combination, and the roads between country and city are lined with gallows that watch every traveller pass. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Footpad: a robber who works on foot, as opposed to a highwayman who attacks from horseback. The footpad was considered the lowest and most contemptible breed of thief; lacking even the theatrical swagger of the mounted robber, he was simply a desperate figure lurking in hedgerows and waiting for someone weaker to come along. Meaner sort: nothing to do with cruelty here. In eighteenth century usage, 'mean' referred to lowly social standing or humble circumstances. The 'meaner sort' were the poor and labouring classes; the ones Georgian writers worried most about when it came to moral corruption. Passengers: today we think of someone sitting in a vehicle, but in this era a passenger was simply anyone passing along a road on foot, horseback, or in a coach. Every passenger on a lonely heath was a potential victim; every stretch of road between towns was a hunting ground. Junketting: feasting, merrymaking, carousing. The word 'junket' still survives in modern English, usually meaning a lavish trip at someone else's expense, but in Clark's day it was rawer and more physical: drinking bouts, dancing, and the reckless spending of stolen money on fleeting pleasures. The matrimonial maggot bit his brain: a wonderfully vivid eighteenth century expression. A 'maggot' in this context was a whim or a sudden foolish fancy; the image is of a parasitic idea burrowing into a person's thoughts and driving them to irrational action. When the matrimonial maggot bit Clark, it meant the notion of marriage seized hold of him like a fever. Timorous: fearful, easily frightened. Still in use today but far less common, it perfectly captures Clark's defining trait: a man who plans violence but whose own cowardice keeps undoing him, at least until desperation finally overwhelms his fear. Jocose: playful, humorous, given to joking. The word carries a warmth and ease that makes its use in this story deeply chilling; Clark sits laughing and flirting with a woman he is already planning to kill. Made a shift: managed with difficulty, barely succeeded. In this account, the phrase describes a dying woman's final desperate effort; she 'made a shift to mutter his name,' meaning she barely managed to speak it through a wound that should have silenced her entirely. About This Series Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse. The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud. True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight. The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
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    7 mins
  • Episode 006: Walter Kennedy: The Aspiring Pirate of Wapping

    Episode 006: Walter Kennedy: The Aspiring Pirate of Wapping
    Jun 23 2026
    Send us your FeedbackWalter Kennedy grows up at Pelican Stairs in Wapping, the son of an anchor-smith, a boy with every reason to follow his father into honest labour. But something restless burns in him; as Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells it, he possesses a 'too aspiring temper' that honest trades can never satisfy. Serving aboard a man-of-war during Queen Anne's wars against France, Kennedy absorbs every whispered tale of buccaneers and maritime desperadoes, and what begins as fascination hardens into ambition. His is a true crime story shaped not by sudden desperation but by slow, deliberate seduction; the sea offering its own dark curriculum. The silver oar of Admiralty justice waits somewhere ahead of him, gleaming on a courtroom table he cannot yet imagine. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Petty treason: not a lesser kind of treason in the way we might assume. In English common law, petty treason referred specifically to the killing of a superior by a subordinate: a wife killing a husband, a servant killing a master, or a clergyman killing a prelate. When piracy is described as petty treason at common law, it signals that pirates were seen not merely as thieves but as men who had betrayed the sovereign authority itself. Silver oar: a literal object, not a metaphor. The Court of Admiralty carried a silver oar into the courtroom as its emblem of jurisdiction over maritime offences. It lay on the table during trials and was carried in procession before the condemned on their way to execution. It was the last thing many pirates ever saw gleaming in the daylight. Upon the account: sailor's slang for turning pirate. To go 'upon the account' was to abandon lawful service and take up robbery at sea. The phrase carried a grim bookkeeping quality; as if plunder were simply another ledger to be managed. Ambuscade: the older form of the word ambush, borrowed from the French. It sounds grander, more deliberate; and in this episode it describes exactly that: a carefully laid trap with poisoned arrows and lethal patience. Dissembled: today we might say 'pretended' or 'concealed.' To dissemble is to hide one's true intentions behind a mask of courtesy. The Portuguese governor who discovers the pirates but invites them to an entertainment is dissembling; and the consequences are devastating. Tractable: meaning obedient, easily managed. We still use it occasionally, but in eighteenth century character sketches it appears often; a tractable child is one who gives no trouble. Kennedy is described as tractable in his youth, which makes his later transformation all the more striking. Buccaneers: not simply a romantic synonym for pirate. The buccaneers were a specific group of seventeenth century raiders, originally hunters on Hispaniola who smoked meat on wooden frames called 'boucans.' They evolved into seafaring raiders who operated under loose commissions and sometimes with the tacit approval of colonial governors. By Kennedy's time, their era was passing into legend; the kind of legend that infected young sailors with ambition. Man-of-war: a warship in the service of a national navy, armed and crewed for battle. It is not a pirate vessel; quite the opposite. That Kennedy learns his piracy while serving aboard one of the Crown's own fighting ships is one of the darker ironies of his story. About This Series Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse. The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud. True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight. The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
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    8 mins
  • Episode 005: Barbara Spencer: The Young Coiner of Cripplegate

    Episode 005: Barbara Spencer: The Young Coiner of Cripplegate
    Jun 15 2026
    Send us your FeedbackBarbara Spencer is barely out of childhood when the world begins to shape her into something dangerous. Raised without restraint in the cramped lanes of Cripplegate, she is the kind of figure that Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures with unflinching clarity: a young woman too proud for servitude, too restless to stay still, drawn by temperament toward the edges of lawful life. Her drift into counterfeiting feels almost inevitable; a single act of defiance carries her out of her mother's alehouse and into the company of coiners who see her recklessness as a useful tool. In the annals of true crime, few portraits are as vivid as this one: a girl barely twenty, pushing false money through London's streets with a freedom she mistakes for power. Georgian justice has a particular cruelty reserved for women convicted of this offence, and the machinery of that law is already turning. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Mean parents: today 'mean' usually suggests cruelty or stinginess, but in eighteenth century usage it simply meant humble or of low social standing. Barbara's parents were not wicked; they were poor and unremarkable, the kind of people the law barely noticed until their children crossed it. Mantua-maker: a dressmaker who specialised in the mantua, a loose flowing gown fashionable in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It was one of the few skilled trades open to women, and an apprenticeship to one could have set Barbara on a very different path. Utter: to utter false money had nothing to do with speaking. In legal language it meant to put counterfeit coins into circulation; to pass them off as genuine in a transaction. The crime of uttering was considered a form of petty treason against the Crown, because the monarch's image and authority were stamped upon every coin. Vend: to sell or distribute. Paired with 'utter' in the text, it underlines the commercial nature of the offence; coiners operated in networks, with some people manufacturing the forgeries and others, like Barbara, sent out into the streets to move them. Petty treason: a legal category that has no modern equivalent. It covered crimes that violated a bond of allegiance or obedience: a wife killing her husband, a servant killing a master, or a subject counterfeiting the king's coin. The penalties for petty treason were deliberately more severe than those for ordinary felonies, and for women the distinction carried a uniquely horrifying consequence. Faggots and brushes: bundles of sticks and dry kindling used to build the fire at an execution by burning. The word 'faggot' today carries entirely different connotations, but in this period it referred simply to a bound bundle of firewood; the mundane fuel of an extraordinary punishment. St. Giles's Pound: a public pound near the parish of St. Giles in the Fields, used for impounding stray livestock. The area around it was notorious for poverty, gin shops and criminal networks; it was exactly the kind of place where a young runaway could vanish into a new and dangerous life overnight. Discover: in this context, to discover someone meant to reveal or expose their identity to the authorities. Barbara refused to discover those who taught her to coin; she would not name them, even under the weight of her own conviction. About This Series Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse. The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud. True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight. The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
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    5 mins
  • Episode 004: Robert Perkins: The Disinherited Baker Turned Thief

    Episode 004: Robert Perkins: The Disinherited Baker Turned Thief
    Jun 8 2026
    Send us your FeedbackRobert Perkins grows up in Hertfordshire as the son of a prosperous innkeeper, but prosperity does not protect him. After his mother dies and his father remarries, the boy is cast out of his own home; stripped of affection, stripped of inheritance, stripped of everything that might have held him steady. As recorded in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals, Perkins drifts into the kind of company that haunts the margins of Georgian England: drinkers, gamblers, idlers whose appetites outrun their means. His is the sort of true crime story that begins not with malice but with dispossession; a young man living as though he still possessed his father's fortune while owning almost nothing at all. What follows is a life pulled further and further from solid ground, carried across oceans and through the gears of a justice system that does not forget. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Mother-in-law: today this means your spouse's mother, but in the eighteenth century it was the standard term for a stepmother. When the text says Perkins's mother-in-law had him turned out of the house, it means his father's new wife; not some distant relative by marriage, but the very woman who replaced his mother under the same roof. Groat: a small silver coin worth fourpence. To say someone was 'never a groat the better' means they gained absolutely nothing; not even the most trivial sum. It was a common way of expressing total exclusion from any benefit or inheritance. Cast: in legal language of this period, to be 'cast' meant to be found guilty at trial. It sounds almost casual to modern ears, like being tossed aside; and in a sense it was exactly that, the court casting you out of ordinary life and into the hands of punishment. Upon the rake: to go 'upon the rake' meant to go out carousing; drinking, gambling, chasing trouble through the streets. A 'rake' was a dissolute young man, and the phrase captures the reckless energy of young men looking for anything but honest work. Shuffle-board: not quite the gentle cruise-ship game of today. In Georgian alehouses, shuffleboard was a tavern pastime played on long wooden tables, and it was closely associated with gambling, idleness, and the kind of company that led to worse things. Crown piece: a large silver coin worth five shillings. In this account, the alehouse owners had marked a crown with particular scratches or notches so it could be identified if stolen from the till; a trap that snapped shut on Perkins. Transportation: the sentence of being shipped to the colonies as forced labour. It sounds almost merciful compared to the gallows, but in practice it meant being sold to a planter and worked in conditions little different from enslavement; and returning without permission was a capital offence. Vulgar pleasures: today 'vulgar' suggests crude or obscene, but in this context it simply meant common or low; the cheap amusements of ordinary people. Drinking, gaming, skittle-playing: none of it was scandalous on its own, but together these pastimes marked a young man as someone drifting toward ruin. About This Series Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse. The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud. True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight. The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
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    6 mins
  • Episode 003: William Barton: The Highwayman Who Could Not Stay Still

    Episode 003: William Barton: The Highwayman Who Could Not Stay Still
    Jun 1 2026
    Send us your FeedbackWilliam Barton is born with restlessness in his blood. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells it, his father abandons him as a child, fleeing to Jamaica with a concubine and a hold full of goods; the boy grows up in his grandfather's eating-house, surrounded by comfort he cannot bring himself to accept. This is true crime at its most unsettled: a young man who cannot sit still, who trades a safe apprenticeship for the open sea and trades the sea for soldiering and trades soldiering for the road. Every turn of fortune that might have saved him only sharpens his appetite for the next dangerous thing. Somewhere on the highways of early Georgian England, the machinery of justice waits for a man who keeps running toward it. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Convened with: today 'convene' means to gather for a meeting; in early eighteenth century usage it could mean to cohabit or consort with someone, often with a hint of scandal. When the text says Barton's father 'had long convened with' his concubine, it means they had been living together as lovers, not that they held committee meetings. Temporal laws: these are the laws of the earthly state, as opposed to divine or ecclesiastical law. When the source says Barton's father was 'addicted to every species of wickedness, except such as are punished by temporal laws,' it suggests the man was a sinner but not quite a criminal; wicked enough for God's judgment, but careful enough to dodge the hangman's. Bound him to himself: not a reference to ropes or chains. To 'bind' a young person in this period means to apprentice them; the grandfather formally took Will on as his apprentice, training him in the eating-house trade. It was both a legal contract and a family rescue. Rubbed on: to rub on means to get by, to muddle through with difficulty. It carries a sense of grinding friction; life is not smooth, you are scraping along it. The phrase is all but extinct today. Reconnoitre: borrowed from the French, this military term means to survey or scout out an enemy position. Barton, the old soldier, sends his companion ahead to assess the strength of a stagecoach the way an officer would assess a fortification. It tells you everything about how he thinks: robbery is just war continued by other means. Blunderbusses: a blunderbuss is a short, wide-muzzled firearm designed to spray shot at close range. The name likely comes from the Dutch 'donderbus,' meaning thunder gun. Coaches carried them as defensive weapons; their spread of shot made accurate aim unnecessary, which was the point. Uxorious: excessively devoted to one's wife. It sounds like a compliment, but in this context it is almost a diagnosis. Barton's devotion to his wife is presented as the very engine that drives him onto the road; he robs because he cannot bear to see her want. The word carries a faint note of contempt, as if love itself is a weakness when it leads a man to the gallows. Quoth: simply 'said.' Already old-fashioned by 1735, it survived mainly in literary and legal writing. When 'quoth Will' appears, the narrator is giving Barton's words a slightly theatrical air, as if recounting a scene from a stage play rather than a crime report. About This Series Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse. The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud. True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight. The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
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    9 mins
  • Episode 002: John Trippuck: The Golden Tinman's Highway Robberies

    Episode 002: John Trippuck: The Golden Tinman's Highway Robberies
    May 25 2026
    Send us your FeedbackThey call him the Golden Tinman; a man who robs alone and in company, whose scarred body carries the evidence of musket balls extracted from his flesh, and whose notoriety across the roads of early Georgian England is already the stuff of grim legend. In the pages of Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals, John Trippuck stands as one of four men whose intertwined stories form a single devastating chapter of true crime from 1720: a highwayman, a footpad, a thief, and a housebreaker, each pulled toward ruin by separate hungers.Trippuck is a man who has already bought his way out of justice once, a seasoned offender who believes that money and connections can always purchase one more reprieve. Alongside him are Richard Cane, barely twenty-two and desperate enough to rob a drunk stranger for the price of a marriage licence; Richard Shepherd, a ruined Oxford apprentice drawn into housebreaking by bad company; and Thomas Charnock, a well-educated young man who plunders his own master's counting-house in pursuit of appearances.Four lives, four roads to the same destination; the weight of Georgian justice gathers around each of them with quiet, inescapable patience. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. The Golden Tinman: a nickname modelled on the earlier 'Golden Farmer,' another notorious highwayman. In this era, such colourful aliases clung to criminals the way tabloid headlines cling to them today; they made a man famous and marked him for capture in the same breath. The Ordinary: not an adjective here but a title. The Ordinary of Newgate was the prison chaplain, tasked with coaxing condemned prisoners toward repentance and extracting confessions before they swung. He published those confessions for profit; part priest, part journalist, part grief counsellor. Footpad: a robber who works on foot rather than on horseback. Where a highwayman has a certain dark glamour, galloping in on a mount, the footpad lurks in alleys and side streets; he is the mugging to the highwayman's armed holdup. Cast: to be 'cast' in a court of law means to be found guilty. Today we cast votes, cast fishing lines, cast actors; in the eighteenth century, a jury could cast a man straight to the gallows with a single word. Fuddled: drunk. A wonderfully soft word for a state that left its victim vulnerable to robbery in the dark streets of Georgian London. To be fuddled was to be confused with drink; a fuddled man on a dark lane was easy prey. Prithee: a contraction of 'I pray thee,' meaning 'please' or 'I beg you.' Trippuck uses it with the prison chaplain; even a condemned highwayman remembers his manners when he wants a favour. Impeaching: today impeachment is a political process, but in the criminal underworld of the 1700s, to impeach meant to inform on your accomplices in exchange for your own freedom. Richard Shepherd uses it as a survival tool; betrayal dressed up as cooperation with the law. Facts: in eighteenth century legal language, a 'fact' is a criminal act or deed. When the text says Shepherd 'committed several facts,' it does not mean he stated truths; it means he committed several crimes. The word sounds innocent today, which makes its old meaning land with a quiet shock. Turned off: the moment when the cart or platform beneath a condemned prisoner is pulled away, leaving them hanging. A chillingly casual phrase for a final, irreversible act. About This Series Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse. The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud. True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight. The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
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    9 mins
  • Episode 000: Introduction to The Lives Of the Most Remarkable Criminals

    Episode 000: Introduction to The Lives Of the Most Remarkable Criminals
    May 19 2026

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    This is not a podcast about true crime. It is true crime — written in 1735 and read aloud for the first time in nearly three centuries.

    Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals was first published in 1735, covering murderers, highwaymen, housebreakers, coiners, pirates and worse — each one profiled in vivid, unsparing detail. It is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, and it has been waiting nearly three centuries to be heard aloud.

    The crimes are real. The world they reveal — brutal, strange and surprisingly familiar — is closer to our own than most of us would care to admit.

    True crime fascination did not begin with podcasts. It began here, by the burning light of a candle.

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    2 mins
  • Episode 001: Jane Griffin: The Mistress Who Turned a Knife on Her Maid

    Episode 001: Jane Griffin: The Mistress Who Turned a Knife on Her Maid
    May 19 2026
    Send us your FeedbackJane Griffin is a woman of sharp wit, good reputation and a violent temper she cannot govern. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells it, she keeps a busy inn in Smithfield with her husband, drawing customers with her charm and driving them away with her rages; a figure who belongs as much to the annals of true crime as to any cautionary sermon.She is well-bred, well-spoken and genuinely kind when calm; yet anger moves through her like weather, sudden and ungovernable. The domestic world she has built is real and prosperous, but it sits on a fault line that runs straight through her own character.In the close quarters of a Georgian inn, temper and proximity are a volatile combination, and the question is never whether a spark will fall but when.Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.Malice prepense: This is the old legal term for premeditated ill intent; deliberate, thought-out malice as opposed to a spur-of-the-moment act. In court it carried enormous weight: proving malice prepense could mean the difference between a lesser charge and a capital conviction. Today we would say 'premeditated' or 'aforethought,' but the older phrase has a colder ring to it, as if the law itself is whispering that it already knows what you were thinking.Stays: Not pauses or delays; in this context, stays are the rigid, boned corset worn tight around a woman's torso. They were everyday armour in Georgian England, laced and stiffened to shape the body. When the text notes that the maid's stays happened to be 'unluckily open,' it means the one piece of clothing that might have stopped a blade was unfastened at exactly the wrong moment.Ordinary of Newgate: The Ordinary was the prison chaplain assigned to Newgate, London's most notorious gaol. His duties went far beyond spiritual comfort: he attended the condemned in their final days, recorded their confessions, and often published pamphlets about their lives and crimes for a hungry public. The Ordinary was part priest, part journalist, and part spectacle-maker.High words: Today we might say a 'heated argument' or 'shouting match.' In eighteenth century usage, 'high words' meant angry, raised voices exchanged between people in a dispute. It sounds almost polite now, but at the time it signalled a confrontation that had moved past reason.Taxed her with: Nothing to do with money. To 'tax' someone in this period meant to accuse them, to lay blame at their feet. It carried a bluntness that the word 'accused' sometimes softens; to tax someone was to challenge them directly and expect an answer.Aspersed: To asperse someone was to spread false or damaging stories about them; to smear their name. We still have the noun 'aspersion' in phrases like 'casting aspersions,' but the verb itself has all but vanished. Jane Griffin uses the word to describe those who slandered her during her imprisonment, adding cruelty to an already crushing situation.Temporal concerns: This does not mean time. 'Temporal' here means worldly, earthly; the practical matters of money, property and livelihood as opposed to the spiritual welfare of the soul. When Jane begs her husband to attend to his temporal concerns, she is telling him to keep the business alive and the family fed after she is gone.About This SeriesLives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse.The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud.True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight.The voice you hear is David Dark; crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David’s own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David’s real voice in human-generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
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    11 mins