The Bermondsey Horror. And I Have Things To Say.

Vol. 133: Go pound sand, 2024

Even Creeps Need A Break

Just letting you know that I’m taking a break from now until January 7^th. I’ll spend my time buying black clothes and researching murder cases, just as you’d expect. Also, gathering with the family for Christmas and our yearly watch of Rosemary’s Baby. Never stops being funny.

As a holiday gift to my readers, I’m making all my 2023 posts free! Yes, all the murder, the terrifying travels, the horror movies, recipes and book reviews! Just go back through my archives and spend the next few weeks catching up on 2023. Then get yourself a subscription to Autumn Lives Here so you stay at maximum creepiness throughout 2025.

Start with this one, which includes the true story of the Sawney Beane family. Cannibals for Christmas! https://jennifermorrow.substack.com/p/autumn-lives-here-1bb

Or the one with Shirley Jackson and the electric chair: https://jennifermorrow.substack.com/p/autumn-lives-here-5f5

How ‘bout deadly mushrooms and Boris Karloff? https://jennifermorrow.substack.com/p/autumn-lives-here-9a8

Just scroll to the bottom of the posts to find more. If it’s 2023 or 2022, it’s free to read.

I also want you to be the first to know that I’ve been working on a new, second Substack of book reviews. Called Delectable Books, these are fast reviews of everything aside from horror and true crime. Reviews of the books that didn’t make the bestsellers list, the quirky or forgotten books. And there will be snacks and other things representing the ‘delectable’ of the title. It will be 100% free, so breathe a sigh of relief and subscribe if you like it. I’m still deciding on a launch date.

Books and snacks. I don’t do leotards.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year. I hope you get exactly the right shade of hair dye in your stocking. Now, I selfishly wonder: where’s MY present?

My Best Horror Reads of 2024

I don’t toss out high marks willy-nilly. I’m an avid reader and it takes some effort to scare me. I would recommend these to anyone who enjoys a well-written fright because they’re the best books I read this year, though their year of publication varies.

1. Muckross Abbey and Other Stories by Sabina Murray. A collection of truly eerie short stories. Recommended.

2. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. The disturbing tale of a wealthy woman whose goal is to make herself incessantly unconscious through the use of just about any and all drugs available.

3. The Dinner by Herman Koch. Is it a horror story? You’ll think not until the purpose of the get-together is revealed.

4. A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers. Raise your hand, who bet that this list would include at least one book about cannibalism? But what a gorgeously written book it is!

5. The Troop by Nick Cutter. A boy scout troop on their yearly island excursion has to pull out all their survival skills when a virus hits. Does that sound fun? Well it’s terrifying.

6. The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson. This one straddles the mystery/horror line. A young Anglophile is invited to join in the quaint village Christmas of a university acquaintance, thereby breaking one of my cardinal rules: when someone is nice to you, always demand an explanation.

7. The Spite House by Johnny Compton. A secretive family is hired to live in a haunted house and gather irrefutable proof of the ghosts, and this house is chock full o’ them.

8. Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge. Every year, the town’s teenage male population is starved to increase their fervor in hunting down October Boy. The winner’s dreams come true. Maybe.

9. The Devil’s Rooming House by M. William Phelps. The best nonfiction/true crime I read this year, this case was the inspiration for Arsenic & Old Lace. You wouldn’t believe what this woman got away with.

Even in 2024 America, there is so much about Christmas that harkens back to the Victorian age. The trees, the candles, the decorated cookies and gilt. It’s beautiful.

And then my train of thought takes over: Victorian. Victorian England. Slums. Poverty. Murdermurdermurdermurdermurder!

Let’s revisit one of the most infamous crimes of the Victorian era. It’s known as-

The Bermondsey Horror!

Bermondsey lies in East London, south of the Thames. It’s a hip place to live now, but in Victorian days it was just an in-between spot. Across the river to the North, you had the Cockney slums of Whitechapel, to the East lie the docks, and to the West was Buckingham Palace. The only thing one could have against Bermondsey was that it wasn’t an affluent area, which is what Maria Manning had against it.

Born as Marie de Roux in 1821 in Lausanne, Switzerland, she emigrated to England while in her teens and changed her name to Maria. She took domestic work in the grand houses of wealthy Londoners, and eventually began working for Lady Blantyre at Stafford House. She was with Lady Blantyre in 1846 on a trip to France when she met the wealthy 50 year-old Joseph O’ Connor, an Irishman twice Maria’s age. He has been labeled as a tax collector and railway magnate, but he made his wealth as a loan shark who charged outlandish interest. Maria was considered a beauty, and he was desirable to her because of his wealth and status. They made a date to meet up once they were both back in London.

This began something of a ‘no strings attached’ relationship that worked well for O’Connor but not for Maria. She wanted the security of marriage to a wealthy man and he kept putting her off.

But O’Connor wasn’t Maria’s only boyfriend. She was overlapping her relationship with the Irishman with that of a local publican named Frederick Manning. He did everything he could to win her hand. Knowing that money was of utmost importance to Maria, he claimed that he would inherit wealth when his mother died, which turned out to be a lie. But Maria was fed up with O’Connor stringing her along, so she spitefully married Manning in May of 1847, a decision that worked out disastrously for her plan of entering English society. Not only did Frederick lose his pub soon after, it turned out that his previous job, as a security guard for the railroad, had ended in his dismissal for suspicion that he was a train robber. Maria was no longer working in a grand house and understood that she was the one who would have to provide for them. She became a dressmaker and seethed.

It didn’t take long before she and O’Connor were back in communication. The affair picked up just where it had left off, only this time, O’Connor must have breathed a sigh of relief that Maria couldn’t expect him to marry her. It’s believed that Frederick knew of the affair and was humiliated by it, yet O’Connor was surely helping them out financially so Frederick kept his mouth shut.

The Mannings moved to No. 3 Miniver Place in Bermondsey and O’Connor became a frequent dinner guest, sometimes of the couple, and sometimes alone with Maria. It wasn’t out of the ordinary when he was invited for dinner on the night of August 8th. What he didn’t know was that Maria and Frederick had finally had a talk about their marriage and agreed that they were bound together. There was no room in the relationship for O’Connor. His money, yes, but not him.

O’Connor inadvertently saved his own life on August 8^th by arriving for dinner with an uninvited friend named Pierce Walsh. They dined, as the night drew to a close, Maria invited O’Connor for dinner the next night, telling him to come alone with the insinuation that she wanted him to herself.

He arrived for dinner on the 9^th and walked into a kitchen that had been prepared for him. A few flagstones had been pulled up and a man-sized grave dug into the earth. A bag of quicklime stood at the ready. This was the last thing O’Connor saw before Maria shot him in the back of the head. He dropped to the floor, severely wounded but alive. This was unexpected. Frederick came from his hiding place and grabbed an iron rod, likely something from the kitchen hearth, and beat O’Connor to death. The body was shoved into the ready hole, covered with quicklime, and the flagstone set back into place. And now, Maria set about the second part of their plan, which was to make themselves rich off the murder.

Maria was a regular guest at O’Connor’s rooms, so she had no problem getting into the boarding house where he stayed. She helped herself to his valuables and a stack of stock certificates.

Three days later, she answered her front door and found a group of O’Connor’s coworkers and friends asking about the last time she had seen him. They were on her doorstep because he had told friends that he would be dining at Maria’s house the night of the 9^th. Thinking quickly, Maria told them that O’Connor had never appeared for their date and his friends went away.

The Mannings knew they couldn’t stay in Bermondsey, and at this point, their partnership effectively dissolved. Maria made a mad dash for Scotland, taking almost everything of value with her. When Frederick realized he’d been left behind, he sold off the furniture and was able to make it all the way to The Channel Islands off the English coast.

Meanwhile, O’Connor’s friends had gone to the police. They gave the information about him being expected for dinner at the Manning’s home, so two constables went to Miniver Place to begin their investigation. They found the house unoccupied and empty, but the disturbed stones in the kitchen couldn’t have been more obvious. The flagstones were lifted and the body found.

The Mannings are often called inept, but they were also incredibly unlucky. If they’d committed this murder even a year before, they might have disappeared, but the telegraph had recently been invented. The London police tracked Maria’s flight through transportation employees and they were able to wire their counterparts in Edinburgh, where Maria had taken a room while she attempted to sell O’Connor’s stock certificates. Edinburgh police arrested her.

Frederick was roused out of bed in Jersey by the police. He had a hangover, but that didn’t stop him from blaming his wife, telling the police, “She is the guilty party. I am as innocent as a lamb.” But then he also admitted to taking part in the murder.

They were put on trial together, though it was clear that they hated each other now. It was noted that Maria refused to look at her husband.

Of note was the beautiful black satin gown Maria wore to the trial. Upon her arrest, the police were surprised by the expensive and extensive wardrobe Maria possessed. After several years of being gifted the cast-offs of the wealthy women she attended to, Maria had acquired a trousseau that included 19 pairs of gloves, nine gowns, and the black satin gown. It was a rarity for a middle-class woman to own such things and the black gown became something of a trademark for Maria.

The coroner was able to count the impressions left in the victim’s head. Joseph O’Connor had been killed by 17 blows to the head from the iron bar. Another witness was O’Connor’s stockbroker, who definitively identified the stocks Maria had attempted to sell as being O’Connor’s. He pointed out that his own initials were on them.

When the Mannings were declared guilty and sentenced to death, Maria went into a profanity-laced rant about the English and was quickly removed from court. The couple were reunited on the scaffold on November 13^th. Thirty thousand spectators arrived to watch the public hangings, and among them were Herman Melville and Charles Dickens.

Frederick was so overcome with terror that he had to be pulled along to the platform, but Maria was only helped up the stairs in what may have been a gentlemanly deed by the attending law enforcement. She stood still on the scaffolding while the nooses were placed around their necks, then suddenly turned to Frederick and gave him a little kiss, which brought an uproar of taunts from the crowd. The trap doors dropped and Frederick died almost instantly, but Maria kicked and took some time to die.

It was this sight, of Maria struggling on the end of a rope, that horrified Dickens and caused him to campaign against public executions, but not because of the horror of death. He was more upset about the behavior of the spectators who treated the event as if it were entertainment.

Maria Manning became the basis for Dickens’ Bleak House character of the murdering French maid Mademoiselle Hortense.

A death mask of Maria Manning was made and has been displayed in Scottish and English museums.

That’s the last post of the year. In the bag you go, 2024! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year! See you all back here on January 7^th!