LAWYER REVISITS MURDER Was killer who inspired Tess of the D’Urbervilles innocent?
THE murderess whose hanging inspired the literary masterpiece Tess of the D’Urbervilles may not have been guilty of the crime that sent her to the gallows.
Housewife Martha Brown was sentenced to death for killing her abusive husband with a hatchet.
Author Thomas Hardy was among the 4,000strong crowd who watched her die in August 1856.
Just 16 at the time, he was so affected by the dreadful spectacle that he later wrote his classic tragedy about milkmaid Tess, who hangs for killing the man who raped her.
Now, 160 years after Martha’s execution, defence lawyer Jeremy Dean QC believes the housewife was the victim of domestic violence – and a terrible miscarriage of justice.
He has identified a number of factors that could have saved Martha from hanging and claims she fell foul of Victorian Britain’s misogynistic court system.
Jeremy said: “In her case – and several others we’ve looked at – it became crystal clear that abused women, vulnerable women, women who were victims of domestic violence, their stories weren’t taken seriously.
“They were regarded as low-lifes... judges and lawyers were misogynistic. Juries were all men.”
Jeremy has more than 30 years of legal experience. He represented N-Dubz singer Tulisa Contostavlos in her 2014 drugs case which was thrown out of court. And he reinvestigates historical cases with prosecution lawyer Sasha Wass on BBC2 series, Murder, Mystery and My Family.
They looked into Martha’s case after two of her descendants, sisters Frances Williams and Irene Craig, approached the show. Their third great uncle, John Record, married Martha’s sister, Anne.
Frances said: “We started doing our family tree about 20 years ago and learned about Martha. I do think she didn’t have a very fair trial. It would be great if she was wrongfully convicted.”
Widowed Martha married second husband John Brown in 1852. But in the early hours of July 6, 1856, she ran to a neighbour’s house saying her husband had been gravely wounded by his horse.
Just 13 days later, Martha found herself in court on trial for his murder and the 44-year-old was executed on August 9.
But that was way too hasty for Jeremy. He said: “We felt the investigation was very quick. Pathological evidence wasn’t very good. In historical cases, there’s always a question mark about the quality of the system at the time.
“There’s always a real risk there was a miscarriage of justice.”
Witness statements at the time said John had returned home after “drinking a lot of ale”. Martha claimed she found him in a bloodied mess on the doorstep after he was kicked by his horse.
Victims of domestic violence were not taken seriously JERMY DEAN QC DEFENCE LAWYER
OUTRAGEOUS
But pathologist Peter Vanezez, who also looked at the case for the show, believed John’s injuries could not have been inflicted by a horse shoe.
“Impossible,” he said. “Because there are six separate injuries on the skull, they could not have been done by a horse and they were not described as curved.”
He believes John’s horrific wounds were likely to have been inflicted by a hatchet, backing up Martha’s conviction.