Karen Farrington - Murder, Mystery and My Family: A True-Crime Casebook from the Hit BBC Series

Karen Farrington is an author, ghost-writer, editor and researcher for a range of leading UK publishers. She has written more than 40 books, including the Springwatch Almanac, The Ambridge Chronicles, and Great Lives, as well as for national magazines and newspapers.

I was called to the Bar in 1982. My dream was to defend in the criminal courts, to become a jury advocate, to be a voice for those ill-equipped to speak for themselves. With support from many others, my ambition was realised. Thirty-seven years later, I have lived and breathed the criminal justice process daily. I have experienced the highs and lows, not just for myself, but, much more importantly, for those thrown into the system nationwide. I have witnessed emotions of all types, at all levels, in every shape and size. Horror, devastation, anger, sympathy, remorse, regret: the full range. But nothing could have prepared me for Murder, Mystery and My Family, and the cruelty of the death penalty.

Glad though I am to have gained profound insight into this concept, its effects will remain with me forever. Miscarriage of justice is bad enough, but when the story ends with questionable, even wrongful, state killing, there is no going back. At least, not in any meaningful way. That, above anything, is the all-embracing mischief behind the death penalty. But there are plenty more, as I believe our programme starkly reveals.

Guilty or not, in the cases Sasha and I reviewed, the defendant was generally hanged, then buried within the precincts of prison grounds. True, the individual concerned had been found guilty of murder. But the routine way in which the punishment was handed down, then swiftly administered, was astonishing. Sarah Chesham, Emily Swann, Charlotte Bryant and Louis Calvert and other women like them were executed following trial by 12 landowning, upper-class males. Those hanged fast tracked, largely after rushed appeals could not be brought back. Justice was final; worse still, so was injustice.

On a more positive theme, throughout my involvement in Murder, Mystery and My Family, I was overwhelmed by the quantity, and quality, of research done by the Chalkboard TV production team. The footprints of criminal justice are never an easy thing to retrace but, in preparation for filming, no stone was left unturned to investigate the truth behind these womens journeys to the gallows. Sasha and I owe a massive debt of gratitude to the Chalkboard squad, whose tireless endeavours enabled us to analyse each case fully informed and confident of our ground. Thanks to everyone concerned, and I mean everyone.

In the process of reviewing these cases from the perspective of defence counsel, however, I encountered many truly disturbing features of historic criminal justice. There is scope to highlight a mere handful here. A prime example: how the justice process, indeed society, historically viewed women. Derogatory attitudes that were adopted towards females emerged starkly, and the unfair prejudice they faced when striving to secure just verdicts cried out.

As far back as 1839 the year of the earliest case we reviewed and for a long time thereafter, there was an all-embracing perception that just being charged with a crime meant a woman was untrustworthy, discreditable, simply a low-life. Though it was not this debasing of women alone that caused me discomfort as the reality of our historic criminal justice system dawned.

Another notable concern that consistently stood out amidst the piles of papers and quagmire of information confronting us was naked judicial effort to promote the integrity and credibility of police officers, sometimes to the point of no return. Glowing judicial references for the investigating police, even in trials where the defendant hotly disputed the confessional testimony, were undoubtedly a recipe for injustice. While the accused was frequently referred to as The Man or The Woman, the judge would commonly commend to the jury the police officers years of experience and seek to emphasise their professional reputation. Once, in an attempt to persuade the jury to believe police evidence, the trial judge compared lies on oath to conspiracy to murder. Astounding. It inevitably follows that all of this was infinitely damaging to a defendant, rendering a fair trial nigh on impossible. No doubt class, gender and narrow-mindedness, rather than malice, were the primary cause. This was, of course, no consolation to the soon-to-be-executed accused.

As our programme unfolded, a further troubling area related to the field of expert evidence came to light. The prosecutions favouritism towards select experts was perhaps unsurprising, but the way in which these witnesses were sometimes made to seem infallible before the jury left a dreadful taste. From a defence perspective, this inevitably created overwhelming difficulties. Particular prosecution experts were viewed as untouchable, which meant an intimidating atmosphere crept into the trial. So powerful were the reputations of certain prosecution experts for example, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the pathologist who gave evidence in Edith Thompsons case that on occasions the defence would not dare to be seen to challenge their testimony. This approach was flawed, indeed dangerous, as it meant that often the defendant was deprived of a fair trial, the very cornerstone of our criminal justice system today. A truly worrying state of affairs.

The spotlight shone on the criminal justice process by Murder, Mystery and My Family raised many other historical questions. Crucially, how could a defendant have been deprived of entitlement to give evidence for so long? It is now impossible to believe that the accused was effectively gagged until the year 1898. And what, overall, was the true quality of defence indeed how many hanged defendants were poorly, even terribly, represented?

In the midst of all this, and much more, the families involved in the various series cases showed huge dignity and patience throughout. The pitfalls in the process that shone through as the root cause of prospective injustice were treated with respect and understanding testament to the families, if fortunate from the point of view of the system itself.

Overall, I feel immensely privileged to have imported my years of defending to this unique project. I was reminded throughout of the paramount importance of fair trial, and the indispensability of strong and fearless defence of the accused. Gladly, the death penalty is now a distant memory in the United Kingdom but criminal justice is not. The many condemned who feature in the programme Murder, Mystery and My Family vehemently protested their innocence. The vast majority, including the five women in this book, were executed. Innocent or guilty, there is a single lesson to be learnt from this unique programme never again.

When I was invited to participate in a series looking at historic capital cases, that is to say those resulting in the death penalty, I had little idea how challenging the project would be. The researchers working for Chalkboard TV not only found cases where there were justifiable reasons for concern, they also unearthed a surprising amount of contemporaneous material. This included trial transcripts and judges notes. These legal documents revealed expert analysis by pathologists, toxicologists and ballistic experts. There were also trial exhibits that had been retained, which had been put before the jury, such as photographs of the key participants in the various cases and crime scene drawings. This wealth of material not only revealed a fully rounded picture of each case but also painted the social and historic environment in which these trials took place.