Murder Mystery at the Auction House

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In 1827 Maria Marten planned to elope to Ipswich with her lover William Corder. They arranged to meet at the Red Barn in Polstead and for some months afterwards Maria’s family received word from Corder that she was well. Several months after the elopement, Maria’s step-mother had a premonition in a dream that Maria had been murdered in the Red Barn and buried under the dirt floor. A Constable was duly summoned and her body discovered. 

William Corder, had resettled in London in the intervening months, and married, after advertising for a wife in the Sunday Times and receiving around 100 applications!

Corder was duly arrested and jailed in Bury St Edmund’s pending trial. In August 1828 the trial played out to tremendous media and public attention. 

The artefact, lot 999 in our April Fine Art auction, is a scrapbook of materials relating to the trial and includes various related engravings and snippets from the trial and letters sent to William Corder whilst he was incarcerated from his mother, his sister and his wife, and from William Corder to his wife. Most remarkable amongst the papers is the original lengthy defence speech written in his own hand from the confines of prison and delivered in court by William Corder. Ultimately his pleas didn’t persuade the jury, he was found guilty and hanged. 

The Red Barn Murder had all the traits of intrigue, sex and gothic horror which made it the biggest murder story of the era. Ballads and plays were written on the theme, Staffordshire pottery models of the barn were created and the tiny Suffolk village of Polstead became a macabre tourist destination, with an estimated 200,000 visitors in 1828 alone, much of the Red Barn and Maria Marten's tomb stone was eradicated entirely by trophy hunters. Yet there has been much doubt cast on William Corder’s conviction and barely a decade has passed since the infamous trial when a new book or reading of the proceedings hasn’t proffered a new opinion, this significant lot of first hand evidence is sure to get the armchair detectives interested when it comes to auction on the 9th of April, the estimate is £4000-6000. 

East Anglian, Antiques & Fine Art

Wednesday 8th & Thursday 9th April | 10am

auctions@reemandansie.com | 01206 754754

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