Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Murder is an abhorrence to nature, and yet there are circumstances in which the taking of a life can be seen as a mercy, that it can be driven by political fears, and that of desperation when viewed through the lens of self-defence.
Even in age where there appears to be a glut, an overwhelming dedicated number of column inches in newspapers and social media driven commentary to any number of murders that take place in Britain, and around the world, it still comes as a shock to the senses that someone would willingly take another life, and even more astonishing when the murderer is revealed as a woman.
The act of murder is to be seen as by degree, and as eminent historian Lucy Worsley, and her team of her investigators, show over the course of the ten episodes of the second series of Lady Killers, murder is not always what it seems, and only a small percentage can be said to have been committed by a truly evil soul.
What Ms. Worsley, her panel of different guests, and the investigation team are at pains to deliver, and rightly so, that for a woman to take a life is normally born out of circumstance, or distress, of saving their own life in the face of a force greater than theirs. In the case of Margaret Garner, a woman who was a slave during one of the darkest and unforgiveable periods in the fledgling United States Of America, that of sheer rage and love, hatred and fear of being taking back to Kentucky and having her children forced into a life she had endured, and the love of those in her care, is it any wonder when confronted by a crowd and the man who claimed ownership over her, decided to cut the throat of her child, rather than ever see her live a life of slavery.
If love is a powerful motivator in the question of murder, then the series balances the question with serious debate and structure, allowing the modern feminist observance to give a degree of explanation in some cases, and in others, such as the crimes committed by Liverpool sisters Catherine Flanagan and Margaret Higgins, who ran a life insurance scheme and then as well as fraudulently taking money from the company, killed relatives and friends in cold blood in order to collect the money.
Love, money, and in the distressing and unbelievable case of Jane Toppen, sheer evil.
The cases bought to the attention of the listener are in many ways sympathetic to the plight of the ones who have murdered another human being, but when it comes to women such as Jane Toppen, there is nothing but revulsion to be found.
This is a woman who openly admitted to taking a strange sexual thrill in her position as a nurse and able to kill those “who got in her way”, only being sorry that she was caught when she took the lives of four family members over the course of a few weeks.
Lady Killers, an inversion of what may be decreed as the natural order, a fierce breakdown of the belief that women are by nature a more caring, empathetic gender, and whilst individuals such as Jane Toppen are an anomaly in history’s dark pages, they do exist, they are a revulsion to be feared and studied.
Whether out of love, greed, sheer abandonment of empathy and humanity, or one carried out in the service of offering abortions to 19th century women in Australia, as is the sensitive case of Elizabeth Taylor, the degrees of murder showcased in the second series of Lady Killers is a dramatic and fiercely insightful one to make the listener aware of. Keenly debated, researched with an unquenchable ferocity to make sure that the women’s stories are told with accuracy and honesty; beware that in which the Liverpool band Space urged to wary, that the female of the species, is often more deadly than the male.
Ian D. Hall