Matthew Clark is a young man from St. Albans who squanders every chance he is given: first a place in a gentleman's household, then honest farm work, before drifting into highway robbery to fund his taste for drink, dancing and women. In the desperate world of old England, he is a coward at heart, forever scheming but forever losing his nerve at the moment of action.
When the 'matrimonial maggot' bites his brain and he promises a young woman in London that he will return with fifteen pounds to buy a wedding ring, Clark sets out on a journey that will lead him to a lonely alehouse and a crime of sickening intimacy. What unfolds is one of the most chilling true crime episodes you will ever hear: tenderness turned to savagery in a single breath.
Listen now and follow Matthew Clark down the road he could not bring himself to walk past.
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FROM THE 1735 TEXT
He kissed her, designing at the same time to dispatch her; but his heart failed him the first time.
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 worked on foot rather than on horseback. In old England, footpads were considered the lowest rung of highway crime: too poor for a horse, too desperate to care.
Meaner sort: nothing to do with cruelty here. In old England this simply referred to people of low social standing or modest means: the common folk scraping by.
Skulk: to lurk or loiter with intent, hiding in hedgerows or along roadsides. Today we might say someone was 'casing' a place; in old England, a man who skulked about a heath was advertising his criminal purpose to anyone watching.
Junketting: feasting, carousing and making merry, often on someone else's money. Today a 'junket' usually means a freebie trip; back then it was a broader word for indulgent pleasure, and for Clark it was the engine that drove every robbery.
Matrimonial maggot: a wonderfully vivid phrase meaning a sudden whim or obsession with getting married. In old England, a 'maggot' in the brain was any irrational fancy that burrowed in and would not leave.
Made a shift: managed with difficulty, barely succeeded. When the dying maid 'made a shift to mutter his name,' it means she scraped together just enough life to speak his identity aloud: a small, devastating act of defiance.
Sessions at the Old Bailey: the periodic sittings of London's central criminal court. In old England, trials were heard in batches, so a prisoner might wait weeks in gaol before facing the bench.
Lay under condemnation: the grim interval between receiving a death sentence and being executed. Prisoners who 'lay under condemnation' existed in a legal purgatory: alive, but with a fixed date of death already set.
About This Series
Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals (1735) is one of the earliest works of true crime in the English language. Each week this podcast retells one of its stories for today's listener, keeping the old book's most striking lines.
