0:00

This is the BBC. This

0:03

podcast is supported by advertising

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outside the UK.

0:11

The 29th of July 1981, Prince

0:13

Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer.

0:16

An eight-year-old boy watches the fairy

0:18

tale unfold. An hour later, he's

0:21

missing.

0:21

Then, one day in 2020, a

0:24

BBC reporter gets a call from

0:26

a mysterious source. Vishal,

0:29

the extraordinary true story of a boy

0:31

who went missing while the world looked the other

0:33

way.

0:34

All lives are not treated the same. Listen

0:37

to Vishal.

0:46

Welcome to Lady Killers with me, Lucy

0:49

Worsley, where true crime meets

0:51

history with a twist from BBC

0:53

Radio 4. This

1:01

time on Lady Killers, we look at women's

1:03

rights over their own bodies. We'll

1:06

dig a little deeper into the parallels between

1:08

19th century women and us today. There'll

1:11

be frustrated sexual desire, legal

1:14

prejudice, illegal abortion and slavery.

1:17

Christiana

1:19

Edmonds, a lady

1:21

obsessed, a stalker. The

1:24

poison that she put into chocolate

1:26

creams had deadly results. Margaret

1:36

Garner, an enslaved woman

1:38

who murdered one of her own children.

1:41

She wanted to free her daughter from

1:43

a life of servitude. Elizabeth Taylor, a

1:45

practical midwife who provided

1:47

women with illegal abortions, sometimes

1:49

with tragic crimes. consequences.

2:01

On arrival of Mrs. Taylor's I was shown

2:03

into a bedroom where she performed the operation.

2:05

And Mary McKinnon, a landlady

2:08

and likely bottle keeper, she

2:10

said that she was innocent but she was

2:13

hanged on the testimony

2:14

of a group of drunken men. I did

2:16

not have a knife in my hand at any time.

2:18

I do not know

2:21

who gave Mr. Howard the wound but it was not from

2:23

me. I'm joined by a

2:25

crack team of female detectives to take

2:27

a look, a feminist look actually,

2:30

at the wilds and unthinkable crimes

2:33

committed by murderers in Britain,

2:35

North America and Australia. We

2:37

hear their words, their voices

2:39

and we ask what

2:42

drove these ordinary women

2:44

to do these extraordinary things?

2:47

What do these lady

2:48

killers tell us about the world

2:50

they lived in, about women's lives

2:52

in the past and what might they

2:55

tell us about women's lives today?

3:00

I'm joined by Ayesha Hazarika,

3:03

broadcaster, political commentator and feminist.

3:06

Welcome Ayesha. Thank you so

3:08

much it's such a joy to be here. Ah

3:10

well you're very very welcome. Can you

3:13

tell us Ayesha a bit about

3:15

the work that you do? So I

3:17

worked in politics for a long

3:19

time and I was an advisor on women's

3:22

issues. I worked for the great feminist

3:25

politician Harriet Harmon and one of

3:27

the big pieces of legislation we got

3:29

in the statute book was the 2010

3:31

Equality Act. What was that like?

3:34

Tell us about it. It was a fascinating

3:36

process but it was really really hard

3:39

work because it feels like whenever

3:41

you are questing for more women's rights

3:44

particularly in legislation there is always

3:46

pushback and actually we got as much pushback

3:49

from men on the left as we did from

3:51

people on the right of politics

3:53

as well. You know we had arguments

3:55

for example about positive action saying this

3:58

will be the end of any senior

4:00

white man ever been able to get a job ever

4:03

again, for example. We put into

4:05

the legislation more transparency

4:08

on the gender pay gap and people were absolutely

4:10

up in arms saying, this is going to bring the

4:12

foundations of capitalism down. We

4:14

mustn't let women start having these conversations.

4:17

It's going to lead to no good. One

4:19

of the things that I feel is so interesting, particularly

4:21

looking at all the cases that we're about

4:23

to talk to, is that

4:25

it's so hard to make progress

4:28

on women's rights. So hard.

4:31

Every stage in history, any advancement

4:33

is contested and yet it's

4:36

so easy for the clock to go back. And

4:40

here to assess any progress we may have made or

4:42

not since the 19th century is our

4:44

own in-house historian at Lady

4:46

Killer's, Professor Rosalind Crone

4:49

from the Open University.

4:50

Hello, Lucy. Hello, Ayesha. Hello,

4:52

Rawls. Now,

4:56

we have selected the cases

4:58

we're here to discuss for the windows

5:00

that they open into women's lives

5:03

in the 19th century. And

5:05

what's particularly interesting to me about the four

5:07

we're looking at today is that they've all got

5:09

something to say about women's rights over

5:12

their own bodies, especially

5:14

their reproductive rights. Elizabeth

5:17

Taylor ran her business because

5:19

women couldn't access safe legal

5:22

abortions. Margaret Garner

5:25

chose to kill her own daughter rather than expose

5:27

her to the sexual abuse that she'd suffered herself.

5:30

Mary McKinnon was hanged for, or

5:32

so it seems to us, standing up for her fellow

5:35

sex workers. And people thought

5:37

that it was Poisoner Christiana Edmunds'

5:40

frustrated sexual passions

5:43

which led to her undoubted crimes.

5:45

She did actually poison people.

5:47

Now, Rawls, there's been progress

5:49

towards respecting women's rights over

5:51

their bodies, I hope. I'm

5:54

thinking access to contraception and safe

5:56

abortion since the 19th century. But

5:58

what was the situation?

5:59

for our forebears in

6:02

this Victorian period? Well, the reproductive

6:04

function of women's bodies, the

6:06

incubator, if you like, the deliverer of babies,

6:09

this has meant that the female body has been

6:11

a site of contention and

6:13

debate throughout history. And at times

6:15

it's been subjected to very strict controls,

6:18

including in the 19th century. The

6:20

19th century was a time when new understandings

6:23

or ideas about anatomy had

6:25

come to maturity. For example,

6:28

that women's bodies, their sexual organs,

6:30

meant that they were fundamentally different from

6:32

men and also predetermined

6:35

their social role as mothers. At the same

6:37

time, so much emphasis was placed

6:39

on the family. This was where children

6:42

were raised, where morals and

6:44

values were taught, and so substantial

6:46

effort was then put into controlling

6:49

women's bodies.

6:50

So there was the attempt to

6:52

shame women who had sexual intercourse

6:54

outside of marriage, to force

6:56

women into marriage through economic

6:59

or financial inequalities,

7:01

including legislation that dealt very harshly

7:03

with illegitimate children.

7:05

In marriage, in England or Wales at

7:07

least, for much of the century, not only

7:10

did women have to give their husbands their

7:12

property, but also their bodies.

7:14

There was no rape in marriage.

7:16

We know that many women had good

7:19

sexual relationships with their husbands

7:21

and partners. It wasn't

7:23

a case that sex was just a thing that

7:25

was done to them. The old idea of lie back

7:27

and think of England, they were active

7:29

participants. Are you saying that Victorian women

7:32

sometimes had fun in bed? Of course they did,

7:34

Lucy. You'd have thought it. That's not our popular

7:36

image of the Victorian age at all. I like it. You're

7:38

painting a mixed picture of life for Victorian

7:40

women, but the law, to my mind,

7:43

was pretty much not on their side.

7:45

When you were doing your work, I issue

7:46

on the Equality Act in 2010. What

7:49

remains of this attitude that men are

7:51

on top legally? So many things.

7:54

The default position is always, how is

7:56

this going to affect men?

7:59

think the thing that's so shocking for me is

8:02

when I look back on recent changes in

8:04

the law, Rose just mentioned about

8:06

rape within marriage,

8:08

the UK only changed

8:10

the law on that relatively recently.

8:13

It was not illegal for, or

8:16

it was not a criminal act for a man to rape

8:18

his wife until very, very recently.

8:22

We still have not decriminalised

8:24

abortion in this country. You can

8:26

get legal access to an abortion, but

8:29

with conditions. Yes,

8:32

we learnt that when we were learning about the case

8:34

of Elizabeth Taylor and we

8:36

learnt about some of the problems of backstreet

8:38

abortions, which that case exposed.

8:41

That was in Melbourne, Australia. But

8:43

this has once again become a heated topic of debate,

8:45

hasn't it, with the overturn of

8:47

Roe versus Wade in the

8:50

United States. Let me quickly recap

8:52

what that is. This is the ruling

8:55

that made abortion legal in the States

8:57

in 1973, but its overturn means that

8:59

individual States can now ban the procedure,

9:02

making abortion illegal for millions

9:05

in the US. It's a fiery debate

9:07

this is, with some people claiming the

9:09

rights of the unborn child should take

9:11

priority over those of the

9:14

woman. But Ayesha, how do you respond

9:16

to this overturn? It's so horrifying

9:19

to think that these really important

9:21

rights that we all sort of took for granted,

9:23

and I think this is the big

9:25

thing that has sent a shock through women

9:28

and of course men across the world, is that

9:31

you think these rights are established

9:33

and then they can be overturned. And

9:36

what I was really struck by, particularly

9:39

listening to the story about

9:42

Elizabeth Taylor, essentially,

9:45

you hear these stories from history about

9:47

the absolute dire streets

9:49

that women found themselves in. And

9:52

yet these are the stories that are

9:54

still happening today and will be happening

9:57

in States across America, where it's not

9:59

just about the world.

9:59

it will be illegal to administer

10:02

an abortion or help a woman

10:05

get an abortion. It really is an

10:07

absolutely horrendous situation.

10:09

I mean, these stories about women

10:11

having no agency over their bodies,

10:14

you think this is something from times

10:16

gone by and yet it is not. I

10:18

think it's really tempting to think, isn't it, that we've

10:20

moved on since the 19th century.

10:23

Everything has got better for women, but this is a reminder

10:25

that

10:26

history doesn't work like that. Some things

10:28

get better, some things get worse.

10:35

Now,

10:36

Rod, looking at the 19th century, we know,

10:38

don't we, that banning abortion doesn't make it go

10:40

away. What was the situation? The criminalisation

10:43

of abortion in the 19th century

10:45

didn't make it go away. It just made it riskier

10:48

and more dangerous for women's health

10:50

because it limited the options for getting

10:52

help when things went wrong. Banning

10:54

abortion without giving any thought

10:57

to the consequences of unwanted

10:59

pregnancies. So, for example, what support

11:02

mechanisms are in place for single mothers

11:04

and also large families? Is the state

11:07

willing to provide financial support, for

11:09

example, childcare? How do

11:11

we sustain a larger population

11:14

and bigger families? The thought process never

11:16

is there. That lack of state support

11:20

helps to sustain then an illegal

11:22

abortion industry. The industry basically

11:24

becomes this open secret.

11:27

And those working within the industry

11:29

illegally, they come to the

11:31

notice of the law, they are prosecuted

11:33

when things go terribly

11:35

wrong.

11:39

Now, our next lady killer, Christiana

11:42

Edmonds, was a woman who on the face

11:44

of it seems unlikely to have dealt with

11:46

an unwanted pregnancy. We're

11:48

talking here about a genteel spinster living

11:51

in Brighton who gets a huge crush

11:53

on a doctor, a married man, who

11:55

wants nothing to do with her. But

11:58

Christiana becomes fixated. becoming

12:00

what we would today call a stalker,

12:03

and a very dangerous one too, poisoning

12:05

people in pursuit of

12:07

the object of her desire. Now,

12:11

stalking may sound like a very modern phenomenon,

12:13

but no, this particular type of it, erotomania

12:17

was very real indeed in the

12:19

19th century, but female stalkers

12:22

are pretty rare. What do you

12:24

make of this whole phenomenon of stalking,

12:26

Ayesha? I hope you haven't had personal experience

12:28

of it, but I guess as a woman in the public

12:29

eye, you may well have done. Yeah,

12:32

I mean, I definitely had some quite

12:34

uncomfortable encounters with, again,

12:37

mainly men who have, you

12:39

know, constantly bombarded me with

12:41

messages. And when I was doing a stand-up tour, one

12:44

year there was a man who threatened to sort of turn

12:47

up at one of my gigs, and it was, you know, it was

12:49

really kind of quite frightening. But

12:51

what's so interesting about this story is that

12:53

it's about female stalking. Now, the

12:55

comedian kind of goes, haven't

12:58

we all been there, ladies,

12:59

after a couple of glasses of wine late

13:02

at night? Oh, before, before, in my case. Just let's

13:04

check up on what the ex is doing on Facebook

13:07

or Instagram, and then you have that horrible moment that you

13:09

might accidentally like, you know,

13:11

I sort of post. So I think there's definitely

13:13

something in the psyche, and

13:15

there's probably something in the female psyches, I

13:18

probably think everybody does it, that probably

13:20

is guilty of a bit of light

13:22

stalking, particularly in this age

13:25

of social media. So there's a kind

13:27

of funny side of this, because we all do

13:29

it. But of course, there is a very, very dark

13:32

side, and the Christiana story

13:35

goes there. But we also see it so

13:37

much in modern life because of

13:39

the phenomenon of social media.

13:43

And I think what that has done for

13:45

people is, you know, you might have had

13:48

a huge crush on a celebrity,

13:51

but they were very remote from you. But now,

13:53

with social media, you feel that you have

13:56

an accessibility to

13:57

them. You feel you can communicate with them.

13:59

them directly and that often happens.

14:02

I had a very good colleague

14:05

who he is a man. I mean he

14:08

has had a female stalker which went from oh

14:10

you know aren't you lucky you know to actually

14:13

very very very frightening

14:15

in terms of this sort of presence in

14:18

his life. So I think that sometimes

14:20

the idea of the female stalker

14:22

there can be a very ha ha old

14:25

fashioned slightly sexist trope you the

14:27

crazy stalking lady but

14:29

actually

14:29

it can get very dark as we

14:32

saw from this case.

14:36

So continuing our theme

14:38

of women's bodies and who gets to control

14:40

them let's move on to another

14:43

tragic encounter with the law experienced

14:46

by Mary McKinnon whose property in

14:48

Edinburgh was used as a drinking

14:50

den and also likely a bottle and

14:53

despite protesting her innocence when

14:55

one of her clients died in a fight Mary

14:58

was hanged. Now Roz

15:02

our

15:03

guest detective for this case Anastasia

15:06

Ryan when we talked about this challenged

15:08

the notion that sex workers have always been

15:10

victims. How much power

15:13

do you think that a 19th century sex worker

15:15

might or might not have had? So broadly

15:18

speaking in the 19th century there were two dominant

15:20

narratives about prostitution.

15:22

On the one hand prostitutes represented

15:25

a dangerous site of female sexuality.

15:28

This was sex outside of marriage this was

15:30

transactional sex. Some women they

15:33

believed went into

15:33

the trade because they had an insatiable

15:35

appetite for sex a licentious nature

15:38

they were fun loving and immoral and

15:40

this represented a kind of potential

15:43

danger of women being in control

15:45

of their bodies.

15:47

On the other hand prostitutes were viewed as

15:49

victims fallen women who

15:51

had been seduced trapped in the trade

15:54

and so not in control of their bodies.

15:57

These two narratives are reflected in the approach

15:59

of the author. authorities, social reformers

16:02

who made great strides to control

16:05

and restrict prostitution from

16:07

the criminalization of activities that surrounded

16:09

prostitution to the contagious diseases

16:11

acts, where women were targeted

16:14

in order to treat venereal disease, often

16:16

against their will, to the establishment of refuges,

16:19

homes for prostitutes where they would recover

16:21

their morality, become good citizens and go

16:24

back out into the world and not do it again. So

16:26

whilst 19th century prostitutes were

16:28

either bad or victims

16:32

in a sort of strange binary

16:34

way and sometimes they couldn't be both

16:37

at once it seems. Yes, according

16:39

to contemporaries, now over the last 20

16:42

or 30 years historians have done a very good

16:44

job of breaking through these narratives

16:46

to try to get a better understanding, especially

16:49

of who undertook sex

16:51

work and why. Prostitution

16:54

for the most part it was a choice,

16:57

it was about earning money, supplementing

17:00

low wages, basically

17:02

they had a poor set of options, limited

17:04

choice of employment and this looked like

17:06

the one to go for.

17:07

Best of a bad lot. Best of a bad lot.

17:10

And within the profession, it's important to

17:12

say,

17:13

women had some input, they

17:16

were part of the shaping of it. Which

17:18

wasn't the case in many other kinds of work

17:21

I suppose. Ayesha, what's your take

17:23

on sex work today? What do you think about

17:25

this whole issue?

17:27

It's very kind of fashionable at the moment to

17:29

sort of say that sex work is just the

17:31

same as other work. I

17:33

mean, I do have a different

17:35

view on that. I've

17:38

spent a bit of time talking with

17:40

prostitute groups and what's really interesting

17:43

is that they're campaigning very, very,

17:45

very hard for more rights and

17:47

I completely understand and respect that.

17:49

But what is interesting is to me

17:51

and what they have said to me is so

17:54

much sex work right now

17:56

and certainly over the last sort of 10 years has been

17:58

driven by poverty.

17:59

driven by austerity, it's

18:02

been driven by the cost of living crisis

18:04

that we're seeing at the moment. I

18:06

had a discussion with a prostitute

18:08

recently who was saying that actually the cost

18:11

of living crisis means that lots of young mothers

18:13

are turning to

18:16

sex work. So I'd

18:18

like to be pragmatic and

18:21

compassionate towards sex workers.

18:24

There may be things that the law does have

18:26

to revisit in terms of women's safety

18:29

and things like that. But fundamentally,

18:31

for me, I hate the idea

18:34

of commodifying women's bodies.

18:38

So interesting.

18:39

I want to start arguing with you, but we need to move on. Now,

18:43

Mary McKinnon was, until

18:45

it all went wrong for her, a businesswoman.

18:47

She was in charge of her own life.

18:51

And another of our lady killers,

18:53

who assesses her options and

18:56

who also strives for a better life,

18:58

actually, is Margaret Garner. Margaret

19:01

Garner was born enslaved and, the

19:03

evidence suggests, was cruelly sexually

19:06

exploited, bearing children that we think

19:08

were fathered by the man who claimed to own her. She

19:10

wanted freedom and control over

19:13

her own and her children's bodies. And

19:15

in her case, the free state of Ohio

19:17

lay only a tantalizing 16 miles

19:21

away. The danger of her

19:24

escape, the risks that she ran

19:26

to find freedom. Ayesha,

19:30

do you see any parallels for this experience

19:32

in the world today? I

19:34

just think this story is so

19:36

harrowing. And of course, it's

19:39

been immortalized in the book Beloved by

19:41

Toni Morrison. And

19:43

I think the thing that really

19:46

struck me is when you hear stories like

19:48

this, they didn't happen thousands

19:50

and thousands of years ago. They're

19:53

relatively recent in

19:55

our history. And slavery

19:58

has such a long tale,

20:01

and we're still not, I think, fully

20:03

understanding or as a

20:05

world fully processing

20:10

the legacy of the transatlantic slave industry. And there's

20:12

two elements to that. There is the entrenched

20:15

structural inequality that we still

20:17

see today in society, the

20:19

racism we see, the institutional

20:22

inequality. But there's also, I

20:24

think, one thing we don't talk about enough, and

20:26

that's the inherited trauma

20:29

of these stories and the slave

20:31

trade. We have not even, I think, scratched

20:34

the surface of the deep

20:36

psychological wounds that I think

20:38

is still inflicted by slavery

20:40

generations down the

20:43

track. So for me, this

20:45

story, it's horrible.

20:47

And you think, my goodness, this has happened in the de

20:50

Mendis and Pass. It's not actually.

20:52

And I think we're still seeing the long tail of that

20:55

horrible

20:56

barbaric trade. The transatlantic

20:58

slave trade may have come to an end, but slavery

21:01

certainly hasn't in the

21:03

form of modern day slavery and

21:05

people trafficking. Ayesha,

21:08

can you tell us, have you had any involvement with the women

21:10

affected by this today? At one point,

21:13

we did a bit of a study in about 2007, 2008, looking

21:15

at your local newspaper where

21:21

you would see adverts for a skip perhaps

21:23

or a lost cat. And in the midst of

21:26

it were

21:26

basically adverts for

21:28

brothels, which had trafficked

21:31

women in them all across the

21:33

country. And actually, you know, we

21:35

have trafficking and slavery

21:38

going on. I think sometimes in our

21:40

own communities, we turn a blind eye

21:43

to it. People don't realise that sometimes

21:45

in suburbia, leafy suburbia, there

21:47

are brothels where it isn't a

21:50

choice for many of those women.

21:54

Now in all of the four cases we've

21:56

looked at, the women get bad press

21:58

in some cases.

21:59

deserved, we'd argue, other cases less

22:02

so. And Ayesha,

22:04

this world of the press is one that

22:06

you know well as a journalist.

22:09

How do you treat women

22:12

that you have to cover as a journalist who you disagree

22:14

with? What happens when your feminism and your

22:16

other views come into conflict with each other? Well,

22:20

I actually wrote a stand-up show about

22:22

this a couple of years ago called Girl on Girl, the

22:24

fight for feminism. And my

22:26

premise was that actually, just

22:29

because you're a feminist,

22:29

it does not need to

22:32

be the case that you agree with every other

22:34

woman. Of course we shouldn't. And

22:36

there are many women who I profoundly

22:39

disagree with, but I respect their

22:42

agency and they're allowed to have that view.

22:44

What I think is so interesting is that we never think

22:47

that men should think the same. In

22:49

fact, men are allowed to

22:52

disagree gloriously with

22:55

verve and enthusiasm and

22:57

vigour and virility. And then they're

22:59

allowed to go for a pint afterwards and then

23:01

slap each other on the back and actually continue

23:03

the old boys network. Interestingly, the old boys network

23:06

goes across the political divides

23:08

and where men have disagreements. We

23:10

should be able to say, look, we don't agree on these

23:13

five things, but actually there's probably

23:15

quite a lot of things we do agree

23:18

on in terms of poverty and violence

23:20

against women and all of these things.

23:24

I was looking

23:27

at the lives of the women we've

23:29

covered, these 19th

23:31

century women. Is there anything about

23:34

their world that we can be jealous

23:36

of

23:37

as women living in the 21st century? Is there anything

23:39

that they got right?

23:41

Yeah, what you're touching on there is historians

23:43

do not like to think of the past

23:45

as this kind of story of progress, right?

23:47

The assumption that we're better than our forebears isn't

23:50

good, but historians are equally

23:53

distrustful of nostalgia.

23:55

Now there are times in my life,

23:58

I suppose I've had a little bit of sympathy.

23:59

for the idea of separate spheres

24:02

that you divide up your world, you know, men occupy

24:04

this bit, women occupy this bit. And especially

24:06

within a marriage, it's quite a neat division of

24:08

roles, isn't it, where you take on different tasks. But

24:11

immediately when you start to scratch, you see how

24:13

terrible that idea actually is in

24:16

practice, especially when women are given

24:18

the home, which generally means they don't

24:20

have any kind of authority. You

24:22

lose that when you don't get to earn the money. When you think

24:25

of 19th century society as being stratified,

24:27

the answer to this might depend on where

24:29

you fit in into that social structure.

24:32

That's exactly right. We could say that

24:34

19th century ideas around

24:37

sexual differentiation, femininity

24:39

and masculinity, there was some

24:42

certainty here. And that meant

24:44

that I think it was kind of easier at times

24:46

to identify the inequalities

24:49

in society, and then to work to

24:51

address them. You kind of knew where you had

24:53

to target things like the vote,

24:56

things like addressing abortion law,

24:58

education, work, marriage, political

25:00

rights, and women made good progress in these

25:02

things over the 19th century and into the 20th.

25:05

I think for better or worse, we

25:08

no longer have that certainty.

25:10

Legally speaking,

25:12

it feels like we've achieved most

25:15

if not all of the big battles for women's

25:17

rights, but equality for women still

25:20

feels, to me at least, very

25:22

elusive,

25:23

or that it hasn't somehow met

25:26

our expectations. More

25:28

women work alongside child

25:30

rearing, more men are kind of

25:32

involved in domestic life, but

25:35

gender stereotypes and expectations

25:37

continue to shape our lives in important

25:40

and profound ways.

25:47

Ayesha,

25:47

what would you like our listeners to

25:50

take away from the four stories

25:52

of these women that we've been looking at? I think

25:54

it would be to learn

25:56

the lessons of history and

25:59

time.

25:59

And these

26:02

four cases at their

26:05

core have actually got issues

26:07

that we are still battling for

26:10

today in terms of gender inequality.

26:13

Extreme poverty, lack

26:15

of agency, lack of opportunity,

26:18

women's health and reproductive

26:21

rights and violence against

26:24

women. And

26:26

it's just a reminder that

26:28

these things are never set in

26:31

stone and that the clock can go back.

26:33

The story's not over, is it? History

26:35

isn't over yet. No,

26:37

it's very much still in progress.

26:41

Now, it's comforting to think

26:44

that mainly as time goes by, things

26:46

get better for women. And broadly, I think

26:48

in terms of reproductive safety

26:51

and rights for women, that is probably true.

26:54

But I don't want to assume

26:56

that everything for Victorian women was dreadful.

26:59

We need a nuanced view of their lives. And that's

27:01

why we try on lady killers to examine

27:04

the sources, try to find out what the

27:06

sources biases might be and

27:08

to do our level best to listen

27:11

to those really elusive voices of women

27:13

from the past whose stories haven't traditionally

27:16

been told. And you know what? I

27:18

think that these skills of analysis

27:21

and judgment and questioning the evidence, they

27:23

aren't just skills for the historian

27:25

or for the journalist like you, Aisha, they're

27:27

skills for the citizen, they're skills for any

27:29

member of the human race. But

27:32

what I think mainly are lady killers of show

27:34

names is a world

27:36

in the 19th century for women in

27:38

terms of reproduction that was a bit dark and

27:40

dangerous, even if the courage shown

27:43

by Margaret Garner or even by Elizabeth Taylor

27:46

is humbling and inspiring. Sitting

27:48

here in my own body

27:50

in the year 2023, I'm

27:53

very glad that in terms of reproductive

27:56

rights, things have come on a

27:58

bit since the story we've told in this series.

27:59

series began 200 years

28:02

ago. Well, thank you for joining me, Roz,

28:04

and of course you too, Ayesha. Thank you so

28:07

much. Oh, it's been a pleasure.

28:15

Lady Killers is presented by me, Lucy

28:17

Worsley, and produced by Emily Hughes. Our

28:20

resident historian is Rosalind Crone, and our special

28:22

guest was Ayesha Hazarika. The

28:24

series producer is Julia Haebel. It's

28:27

a story hunter production for BBC Radio 4.

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