Episode 001: Jane Griffin: The Mistress Who Turned a Knife on Her Maid

Jane Griffin is a woman of sharp wit, good reputation and a violent temper she cannot govern. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells it, she keeps a busy inn in Smithfield with her husband, drawing customers with her charm and driving them away with her rages; a figure who belongs as much to the annals of true crime as to any cautionary sermon.

She is well-bred, well-spoken and genuinely kind when calm; yet anger moves through her like weather, sudden and ungovernable. The domestic world she has built is real and prosperous, but it sits on a fault line that runs straight through her own character.

In the close quarters of a Georgian inn, temper and proximity are a volatile combination, and the question is never whether a spark will fall but when.

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.

Malice prepense: This is the old legal term for premeditated ill intent; deliberate, thought-out malice as opposed to a spur-of-the-moment act. In court it carried enormous weight: proving malice prepense could mean the difference between a lesser charge and a capital conviction. Today we would say 'premeditated' or 'aforethought,' but the older phrase has a colder ring to it, as if the law itself is whispering that it already knows what you were thinking.

Stays: Not pauses or delays; in this context, stays are the rigid, boned corset worn tight around a woman's torso. They were everyday armour in Georgian England, laced and stiffened to shape the body. When the text notes that the maid's stays happened to be 'unluckily open,' it means the one piece of clothing that might have stopped a blade was unfastened at exactly the wrong moment.

Ordinary of Newgate: The Ordinary was the prison chaplain assigned to Newgate, London's most notorious gaol. His duties went far beyond spiritual comfort: he attended the condemned in their final days, recorded their confessions, and often published pamphlets about their lives and crimes for a hungry public. The Ordinary was part priest, part journalist, and part spectacle-maker.

High words: Today we might say a 'heated argument' or 'shouting match.' In eighteenth century usage, 'high words' meant angry, raised voices exchanged between people in a dispute. It sounds almost polite now, but at the time it signalled a confrontation that had moved past reason.

Taxed her with: Nothing to do with money. To 'tax' someone in this period meant to accuse them, to lay blame at their feet. It carried a bluntness that the word 'accused' sometimes softens; to tax someone was to challenge them directly and expect an answer.

Aspersed: To asperse someone was to spread false or damaging stories about them; to smear their name. We still have the noun 'aspersion' in phrases like 'casting aspersions,' but the verb itself has all but vanished. Jane Griffin uses the word to describe those who slandered her during her imprisonment, adding cruelty to an already crushing situation.

Temporal concerns: This does not mean time. 'Temporal' here means worldly, earthly; the practical matters of money, property and livelihood as opposed to the spiritual welfare of the soul. When Jane begs her husband to attend to his temporal concerns, she is telling him to keep the business alive and the family fed after she is gone.

About This Series

Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse.

The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud.

True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight.

The voice you hear is David Dark; crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David’s own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David’s real voice in human-generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.

Transcript

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Dark Stories presents the lives of the most remarkable criminals who have been condemned and executed for murder, highway robbery, housebreaking, street mugging, forgery, or other offences. Collected from original papers and authentic memoirs and published in 1735, edited by Arthur L. Haywood. Jane Griffin, the mistress who turned a knife on her maid. Passion, when it once gains an ascendant over our minds, is often more fatal to us than the most deliberate course of vice could be. On every little start it throws us from the paths of reason, and hurries us in one moment into acts more wicked and more dangerous than we could at any other time suffer to enter our imagination. As anger is justly said to be a short madness, so while the frenzy is upon us, blood is shed as easily as water, and the mind is so filled with fury that there is no room left for compassion. There cannot be a stronger proof of what I have been observing than in the unhappy end of the poor woman who is the subject of this chapter. Jane Griffin was the daughter of honest and substantial parents, who educated her with very great tenderness and care, particularly with respect to religion, in which she was well and rationally instructed. As she grew up her person grew agreeable, and she had a lively wit and a very tolerable share of understanding. She lived with a very good reputation, and to general satisfaction in several places, till she married Mr Griffin, who kept the three pigeons in Smithfield. She behaved herself so well and was so obliging in her house that she drew to it a very great trade in which she managed so as to leave everyone well satisfied. Yet she allowed her temper to fly out into sudden gusts of passion, and that folly alone sullied her character to those who were witnesses of it, and at last caused a shameful end to an honest and industrious life. One Elizabeth Osburn coming to live with her as a servant, she proved of a disposition as Mrs. Griffin could by no means agree with. They were continually differing and having high words in which, as is usual on such occasions, Mrs. Griffin made use of wild expressions, which though she might mean nothing by them when she spoke them, yet proved of the utmost ill consequence after the fatal accident of the maid's death. For being then given in evidence they were esteemed proofs of malice propens, which ought to be a warning to all hasty people to endeavour at some restraint upon their tongues when in fits of anger, since we are not only sure of answering hereafter for every idle word we speak, but even here they may, as in this case, become fatal in the last degree. It was said at the time those things were transacted, that jealousy was in some degree the source of their debates, but of that I can affirm nothing. It no way appeared as to the accident which immediately drew on her death, and which happened after this manner. One evening, having cut some cold fowl for the children's supper, it happened, the key of the cellar was missing on a sudden, and on Mrs. Griffin's first speaking of it, they began to look for it, but it not being found Mrs. Griffin went into the room where the maid was, and using some very harsh expression, taxed her with having seen it or laid it out of the way. Instead of excusing herself modestly, the maid flew out also into ill language at her mistress, and in the midst of the fray, the knife with which she had been cutting, lying unluckily by her, she snatched it up, and stuck it into the maid's bosom. Her stays happening to be unluckily open, it entered so deep as to give her a mortal wound. After she had struck her, Mrs. Griffin went upstairs, not imagining that she had killed her, but the alarm was soon raised on her falling down, and Mrs. Griffin was carried before a magistrate and committed to Newgate. When she was first confined she seemed hopeful of getting off at her trial, yet though she did not make any confession, she was very sorrowful and concerned. As her trial drew nearer, her apprehensions grew stronger, till notwithstanding all she could urge in her defence, the jury found her guilty, and sentence was pronounced as the law directs. Hitherto she had hopes of life, and though she did not totally relinquish them even upon her conviction, yet she prepared with all due care for her departure. She sent for the minister of her own parish, who attended her with great charity, and she seemed exceedingly penitent and heartily sorry for her crime, praying with great favour and emotion. And as the struggling of an afflicted heart seeks every means to vent its sorrow, in order to gain ease or at least an alleviation of pain, so this unhappy woman, to soothe the gloomy sorrows that oppressed her, used to sit down on the dirty floor, saying it was fit. She should humble herself in dust and ashes, and professing that if she had an hundred hearts she would freely yield them all to bleed, so they might blot out the stain of her offence. By such expression did she testify those inward sufferings which far exceed the punishment human laws inflict even on the greatest crimes. When the death warrant came down, and she utterly despaired of life, her sorrow and contrition became greater than before, and here the use and comfort of religion manifestly appeared. For had not her faith in Christ moderated her afflictions, perhaps grief might have forestalled the executioner, but she still comforted herself with thinking on a future state, and what in so short an interval she must do to deserve an happy immortality. The time of her death drawing very near, she desired a last interview with her husband and daughter, which was accompanied with so much tenderness that nobody could have beheld it without the greatest emotion. She exhorted her husband with great earnestness to the practice of a regular and Christian life, begged him to take due care of his temporal concerns, and not omit anything necessary in the education of the unhappy child she left behind her. When he had promised a due regard should be had, to all her requests she seemed more composed and better satisfied than she had been. Continuing her discourse, she reminded him of what occurred to her with regard to his affairs, adding that it was the last advice she should give, and begging therefore it might be remembered. She finished what she had to say with the most fervent prayers and wishes for his prosperity. Turning next to her daughter and pouring over her a flood of tears, she said My dearest child, let the afflictions of thy mother be a warning and an example unto thee, and since I am denied life to educate and bring thee up, let this dreadful monument of my death suffice to warn you against yielding in any degree to your passion, or suffering a vehemence of temper to transport you so far even as indecent words, which bring on a custom of flying out in a rage on trivial occasions till they fatally terminate in such acts of wrath and cruelty as that for which I die. Let your heart then be set to obey your maker, and yield a ready submission to all his laws. Learn that charity, love and meekness which our blessed religion teaches, and let your mother's unhappy death excite you to a sober and godly life. The hopes of thus are all I have to comfort me in this miserable state, this deplorable condition to which my own rash folly has reduced me. The sorrow expressed both by her husband and by her child was very great and lively, and scarce inferior to her own, but the ministers who attended her fearing their lamentations might make too strong an impression on her spirits, they took their last farewell, leaving her to take care of her more important concern, the eternal welfare of her soul. Some malicious people spread stories of this unfortunate woman, as if she had been privy to the murder of one Mr Hansen, who was killed in the Farthing Pie House Fields. She declared her innocence in the most solemn manner, averred she had never lived near the place, nor had heard so much as the common reports as to that gentleman's death. When the fatal day came on which she was to die, Mrs. Griffin endeavoured, as far as she was able, to compose herself easily to submit to what was not now to be avoided. She had all along manifested a true sense of religion, knowing that nothing could support her under the calamities she went through but the hopes of earthly sufferings atoning for her faults, and becoming thereby a means of eternal salvation. Yet though these thoughts reconciled this ignominious death to her reason, her apprehensions were, notwithstanding, strong and terrible when it came so near. At the place of execution she was in terrible agonies, conjuring the minister who attended her and the ordinary of Newgate, to tell her whither there was any hopes of her salvation, which she repeated with great earnestness, and seeming to part with them reluctantly. The ordinary entreated her to submit cheerfully to this her last stage of sorrow, and in certain assurance of meeting again in a better state. She left behind her this declaration I declare then, with respect to the deed for which I die, that I did it without any malice or anger aforethought, for the unlucky instrument of my passion lying at hand, when first words arose on the loss of the key, I snatched it up suddenly, and executed that rash act which hath brought her and me to death without thinking. I trust, however, that my most sincere and hearty repentance of this bloody act of cruelty, the sufferings which I have endured since, the ignominious death I am now to die, and above all the merits of my Saviour, who shed his blood for me on the cross, will atone for this my deep and heavy offence, and procure for me eternal rest. But as I am sensible that there is no just hope of forgiveness from the almighty, without a perfect forgiveness of those who have any way injured us, so I do freely, and from the bottom of my soul, forgive all who have ever done me any wrong, and particularly those who, since my sorrowful imprisonment, have cruelly aspersed me, earnestly entreating all who in my lifetime I may have offended, that they would also, in pity to my deplorable state, remit those offences to me with a like freedom. And now as the law hath adjudged, and I freely offer my body to suffer for what I have committed, I hope nobody will be so unjust and so uncharitable as to reflect on those I leave behind me on my account, and for this I most humbly make my last dying request, as also that ye would pray for my departed soul. She died with all exterior marks of true penitence, being about forty years of age, the twenty ninth of January, seventeen twenty.