Killer Forensics - bad science sends a young cook to the scaffold

Eliza’s dumplings (3.00pm in St George the Martyr Church) is a semi-dramatized presentation of Eliza Fenning’s terrible story. But what are the lessons? What went wrong in 1815? What did society eventually learn about investigating systematically and trying suspects fairly? What would be different today, if a local cook was accused of poisoning people? Eliza’s story has been told and retold many times. In 1867 Charles Dickens wrote in his weekly journal about ‘the danger of condemning to death on circumstantial evidence alone'. To examine the lessons in the case, Sandra Hempel, a former Times journalist, will highlight the impact her case had on crime scene investigation today (4.15pm in St George the Martyr Church). Sandra Hempel is author of the Victorian true-crime mystery, “The Inheritor’s Powder”, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week which looked at how arsenic became the murder weapon of choice in the 19th century and how a flawed investigation sent the young Eliza Fenning to the scaffold.

Childcare available for parents listening to the talk.