When most people think of atrocious murders in the Victorian period, they typically think of Jack the Ripper and his famous killing spree across Whitechapel. Less known is a particularly gruesome affair known as “The Bermondsey Horror”. The story centres around Marie Manning and her husband Frederick murdering an acquaintance for money and hiding him under the floorboards. The discovery of the murder, subsequent manhunt, and ultimate execution of the pair made headlines in Victorian Britain and led to immortalisation in literature. As we delve deep, you’ll discover the details that shocked the conscience society.

Born Marie de Roux in Lausanne, Switzerland, Marie emigrated from there to England in her twenties and entered domestic service, first as a maid to Lady Pal in Devon and then to Lady Blantyre in London’s West End. It wasn’t long after this that she met and married Federick Manning, beginning a relationship that would culminate in murder and their deaths. At the time, Frederick was a railroad worker and later a publican, but as Marie would discover during their marriage, Frederick was also terrible with money and quite an alcoholic. Marie had also made friends with a man named Patrick O’Connor, a gauger at the docks who also dabbled in money lending, a side job that made him quite a lot of money that he invested in railway shares and made even more money. It’s also said that he began to spend a lot of time at Marie’s home in Bermondsey, regardless of whether Frederick was there or away.

O’Connor probably had no clue what he was in for when Marie invited him to her and Frederick’s home one last time for dinner on August 9, 1849. After Patrick had been missing for a week, his friends became greatly concerned and hired two constables, Burton and Barnes, to make inquiries. The pair of coppers eventually made their way to the Mannings’ home at 3 Minerva Place to find it stripped of practically everything and neither Marie nor Frederick insight. When one of the constables noticed some freshly damp mortar around one of the flagstones, he became suspicious. Digging it up, they found part of Marie’s bloodstained dress, a layer of lime, and what remained of Patrick O’Connor who had been badly decomposed by the lime and was only identified by his prominent chin and false teeth.

In the meantime, Marie had visited O’Connor’s lodgings and stolen most of his money and railway shares. She and Frederick split up, with her heading to Scotland and he to Jersey. Once discovered, it didn’t take long for authorities to track the husband-and-wife killers down and bring them to justice. Certainly, if there was any love remaining in their marriage, it was promptly exterminated when Frederick’s attorney painted Marie as the mastermind, and she promptly put the blame on her husband. Regardless of who ultimately planned the dastardly deed, both were found guilty and sentenced to hang. Upon hearing the verdict, Marie is said to have become violent, throwing a handful of rue herb (used to ward off prisoner pestilence) at the attorneys and shouting how shameful a place England was.

Of course, this is not where the story ends as their hanging was witnessed by none other than famous author Charles Dickens. He wrote about the event with a particular disgust for the “wickedness” it brought out in the crowd who exhibited “every variety of offensive and foul behaviour.” He would go on to base the character of Mademoiselle Hortense in Bleak House on Marie. She and Frederick also got a reference in Wilkie Collins’s 1860 novel The Woman in White, which takes place a year after the murders. And while today the murder has faded from prominence, it still lives on in these tales and the canons of true crime and mysteries.