An Earl, a Priest, and Martha Ray

0:00Dana Schwartz:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. The Summer Savings Event is here at Apple Vacations. It's the perfect time to bring everyone together for the getaway you've been dreaming about. Book between July 24th and August 27th and enjoy up to 55 % instant savings. From relaxing beach days to unforgettable moments with the people who matter most, your next vacation starts here. Travel through July 31st, 2027. Start your vacation today at AppleVacations.com or through your travel advisor. App vacations where your story starts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Menke.

0:41Dana Schwartz:Listener discretion advised.

0:48Dana Schwartz:The evening of April 7th, 1779 was playing out just like any other typical night in Covent Garden. The post-theater crowd was filled with London socialites, there to see and be seen and maybe take in a little entertainment along the way. There had been a benefit that evening at the Royal Opera House that included a performance of Love in a Village, a comic opera about mistaken identities and the follies of young love. A lovely woman in her mid-thirties was there, dressed in a fine silk gown and adorned with jewels. In the bustling crowd, the woman and her friend chatted with acquaintances while they searched for the woman's carriage to take them home.

1:39Dana Schwartz:Suddenly, an agitated young man appeared. He approached the woman, grabbing at her. Before anyone could understand what was happening, the young man raised a gun to the woman's head and delivered a fatal shot. He raised a second gun to his head and tried to take his own life, but the gun missed. A would-be murder-suicide turned into regular old murder. The man was a lovesick soldier-turned-priest. And what about the woman whose night at the theater had just taken a deadly turn? She was Martha Ray, a skilled performer in her own right, as well as a kept woman who had been through plenty of romantic drama of her own.

2:32Dana Schwartz:I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.

2:40Dana Schwartz:For Martha Ray, life began and ended in Covent Garden, the vibrant London neighborhood where art and commerce intersected, and where people from all classes rubbed elbows on a daily basis. In between her humble beginnings and her untimely end, Martha scaled the social ladder, gaining access to upper-class life and to creative outlets that would not normally have been available to the daughter of working-class parents. She was beloved and respected by the upper classes, if never quite accepted as one of their own. One admirer in particular found her to be, quote, a lady of elegant person, great sweetness of manners, and a remarkable judgment and execution in vocal and instrumental music.

3:36Dana Schwartz:That same admirer would be the one to later end her life, setting off a media frenzy that capitalized on the era's obsession with criminality and sentimentality in equal measure. Not much is known about Martha's young life. She was born around 1742, although some sources say it was as late as 1745. Her father made stays for corsets. Her mother was a servant in a noble household. Around the age of 14, Martha began to apprentice as a cloakmaker, setting her up for a working-class life in a respectable, if humble, profession that would have set her up well for a respectable marriage and decent life.

4:26Dana Schwartz:After all, she was smart, charming, and a gifted singer. No doubt one of her father's patrons would take her for a wife. But once a certain nobleman took notice of her, no one else stood a chance. John Montague was ten years old when he became the fourth Earl of Sandwich, inheriting the title, but little else, from his grandfather. He was worldly and well-educated, and he spun his title and background into a long, albeit rocky, career in political life. He was generally well-liked, with a taste for the finer things and a fondness for beautiful women. The time of his meeting Martha Ray is estimated at around 1760, when Martha would have been 18, and the Earl of Sandwich around 42.

5:25Dana Schwartz:For clarity's sake, let's call him Sandwich going forward, because how often do we get to do that? Sandwich was instantly taken with Martha, and with her father's blessing, he took the young woman as his mistress. By this point, Sandwich had been separated from his wife, Dorothy, for several years. Dorothy suffered from poor mental health and was later declared a word of the state in 1767. Was it possible her condition was exacerbated by watching her husband build a new life with a teenager? We'll never know, but I can't imagine it helped things. Noblemen taking young mistresses was far from a rare occurrence.

6:10Dana Schwartz:But the relationship between Sandwich and Martha Ray was notable for both its tenure and depth of quality. They had nine children together, five of whom survived to adulthood, and the two of them pretty much conducted themselves as husband and wife. Sandwich loved their children and cared for them as if they had been, quote, legitimately born. And in public, he treated Martha as his legal partner. He also made sure she received a full education, including musical training by top-tier instructors. Sandwich gave Martha her own residence in London, and she was also welcomed into Hinchingbrook House, the Sandwich family country estate, as its rightful mistress.

7:00Dana Schwartz:There, they threw epic concerts every Christmas, drawing on their shared obsession with music. Thanks to Sandwich's expert tutelage, Martha developed into an outstanding singer and entertained the elite guests that flocked each year to Sandwich's estate with her soaring soprano solos, often with her lover playing drums off to the side. But even though the pair was well-matched emotionally, Martha's humble roots and lack of security began to place a strain on the relationship. Sandwich was still married, and Martha had no legal ties to his title or money. Such a precarious setup was bound to fall apart eventually.

7:49Dana Schwartz:Fall apart it did, but probably not in the way either of them would have expected. For nearly 18 years, Martha Ray and the Earl of Sandwich lived an unconventional version of common law domesticity. She hosted grand parties at his country estate, accompanied him to London social events, and traveled with him to naval ceremonies that Sandwich had to attend thanks to his tenure as the head of the Admiralty, the government department in charge of the British Royal Navy. To the untrained eye, they behaved like any other aristocratic couple. But beneath the surface, cracks were beginning to show. Martha's position as Sandwich's long-term mistress put her in a kind of social limbo.

8:44Dana Schwartz:She could play hostess at Hinchingbrook House, but it was never truly her home. She could perform at private concerts and local churches, but the grand stages of London's opera houses remained out of her reach. At the end of the day, she could act as Sandwich's wife in every way that mattered, but with his wife still alive and banished to a mental hospital, Martha could never actually become Sandwich's wife. Inevitably, as she grew older, the situation began to take its toll. Martha was trapped between two worlds, too elevated for her working-class origins, but never fully accepted by the aristocracy.

9:32Dana Schwartz:She had given Sandwich the best years of her life and five children, yet she had no legal claim to his fortune nor any protections for her future. For his part, the Earl had a long habit of living beyond his means, racking up debts while refusing to give up his lavish lifestyle. Despite his clear affection for Martha, he consistently rejected her pleas for financial security, unwilling to tie up his assets in any formal settlement. Tensions between Martha and Sandwich continued to rise. They argued constantly about money, hashing out each other's spending habits. From household expenses to luxury goods to beer, anything could become a new source of friction.

10:24Dana Schwartz:Martha claimed that Sandwich did not give her a big enough housekeeping allowance, which forced her to dip into her own personal funds. At one point, Sandwich discovered that Martha had made an attempt to secure some public singing engagements. He was furious and felt betrayed by her deception. Martha fired back in a letter, asking the Earl how exactly she was supposed to secure her future. She had been told repeatedly that she had the talent for a career on the stage. Was she supposed to stay trapped in domestic limbo forever? As she wrote to him, I am not a slave, nor will I suffer myself to be treated as such, though of late not much better.

11:10Dana Schwartz:In her letters to Sandwich, Martha alternated between declarations of love and outright resentment. But she never forgot that he held the ultimate position of power in the relationship. Their pattern of explosive fighting, followed by reconciliation, continued for years. They were the 18th century version of that couple in the friend group you wish would just go ahead and break up already. After a few years of this back and forth, this toxic relationship got just the thing to liven things up. A hot new bombshell in the form of a young officer named James Hackman. Sandwich, who enjoyed entertaining military men at Hitchingbrook, invited Hackman as part of a recruiting party sometime around 1775.

12:05Dana Schwartz:The twenty-something lieutenant was everything Sandwich was not. Young, passionate, and singularly focused on Martha. There was an immediate attraction between Martha and Hackman, and before long they found themselves in the throes of an affair. He was smitten by her beauty and musical talent, while she no doubt enjoyed his intense devotion. For the young soldier, it wasn't just a casual romance. It was an all-consuming obsession. He proposed marriage many times, and each time Martha turned him down. It's unclear whether Martha was ever genuinely in love with Hackman, or she was simply enjoying the all-consuming attention of a younger man.

12:56Dana Schwartz:The only thing we can say with certainty is that Martha found herself in an impossible situation. As volatile as things were with Sandwich, he was the most stable presence in Martha's life. Leaving Sandwich would mean not just abandoning what financial security she had, but it might also threaten her relationship with their children. The affair with Hackman was, at best, a fun ego boost, and at worst, an ill-fated love connection. But either way, there simply wasn't a scenario where Martha could leave sandwich. Feelings aside, Hackman had neither the wealth nor the social standing to support Martha in the manner to which she had become accustomed.

13:46Dana Schwartz:When Hackman's regiment received orders to deploy to Ireland in early 1776, he made one final desperate marriage proposal. Martha's answer didn't change. Did his refusal to take no for an answer finally give Martha the ick? Was she trying to make a clean break to protect her own heart? Did she worry that Sandwich would catch them and kick her out? We'll never know why exactly, but whatever her reasons, Martha ended the affair and distanced herself from Hackman. The rejection sent Hackman into a spiral. Not content with a recent promotion to lieutenant, he opted instead for a total career change, leaving the military and entering the clergy.

14:39Dana Schwartz:By February of 1779, he had been ordained as a priest in the Church of England and had been given a parish in Norfolk. But rather than settle into life as a country priest and try to start a new chapter, Hackman returned to London with renewed determination to win Martha back. It's possible that Hackman thought that his new career had transformed him into a more suitable husband. Or it's possible he was just a deranged stalker, incapable of letting her go. Either way, Martha wanted nothing to do with him, and Hackman could not handle it. He grew paranoid and became convinced Martha had taken a new lover.

15:29Dana Schwartz:Martha had started rejecting his letters and sent him one of her own, asking him to end his mad pursuit. Soon after, Hackman did put an end to the affair, but certainly not in the way Martha had hoped. On the evening of April 7, 1779, Martha attended the theater with a woman named Katerina Ghali, a close friend and fellow singer. Earlier that evening, Hackman had approached Martha at her home. When she refused to tell him where she was going, he decided to follow her. At the theater, Hackman spotted Martha in conversation with Lord Coleraine, a wealthy Irish nobleman. Whether or not there was ever anything that ever happened between the two is unknown, but for Hackman, seeing the two of them together was all of the proof he needed.

16:24Dana Schwartz:He stormed out of the Covent Garden Theater, picked up two pistols, and made his way to a nearby coffeehouse. He sat there for hours, writing what he believed would be his final letter, a suicide note addressed to his brother-in-law, Frederick Booth. In the letter, he poured out his anguish. I have strove against it as long as possible, but it now overpowers me, My having, by some means or other, lost her affections has driven me to madness. As the performance ended, theatergoers congregated outside in the night air, Martha and Katerina among them. In that bustling post-theater scene, no one could have predicted the horror about to unfold.

17:13Dana Schwartz:Suddenly, Hackman emerged from the crowd. He grabbed Martha's cloak and spun her around to face him. Before anyone could react, he raised one of his pistols to her forehead and fired. Martha Ray collapsed, dead by her former lover's hand. The crowd erupted in chaos and screams, but Hackman wasn't finished. He raised his second pistol to his own head and pulled the trigger. But the shot went wide, only grazing his skull. Frantic and bleeding, Hackman began beating himself with both pistols until horrified bystanders managed to restrain him. Within minutes, both Martha's body and Hackman were carried to the nearby Shakespeare Tavern.

18:04Hackman asked to see Martha, apparently not realizing that she was dead.

18:11Dana Schwartz:When officers searched his pockets, they found two letters, the suicide note to Frederick Booth and a desperate final plea to Martha that she had rejected just days before. The letter to Martha revealed the depth of his delusion. He was convinced they had agreed to marry, that she was simply being stubborn, that he could win her back still if he could just make her understand his devotion. But it's a line from the letter to Frederick Booth that hints at the sinister events that were about to unfold. May heaven protect my beloved woman and forgive this act, which alone could relieve me from a world of misery I have long endured.

19:03Dana Schwartz:Hackman had come prepared not just to kill, but to die. This was meant to be the ultimate romantic gesture. If he couldn't have Martha in life, they would be united in death. But when his own suicide failed, his dreams of becoming Romeo and Juliet devolved into plain, old-fashioned, gruesome murder. And for that, he would have to answer to the hangman. Just nine days after murdering Martha Ray, James Hackman found himself standing trial. His initial plan was to plead guilty. After all, dozens of witnesses had seen him shoot Martha in the head outside Covent Garden Theater. But when the moment came, something made him change his mind.

19:55Dana Schwartz:Perhaps it was a final flicker of self-preservation, or maybe his legal counsel convinced him that he had nothing to lose. Whatever the reason, Hackman entered a plea of not guilty. His defense strategy was ambitious but desperate, an insanity plea. His lawyers argued that the killing was completely unpremeditated, the product of a mind unhinged by obsessive love. They pointed to the letters found on his person, filled with desperate declarations and threats of suicide. Surely this was the work of a madman, not a calculated killer. But Justice Blackstone, presiding over the trial, wasn't buying it.

20:43Dana Schwartz:He pointed to Hackman's letter to his brother-in-law, Frederick Booth, written hours before the killing. The letter's tone, Blackstone observed, showed, quote, A coolness and deliberation which no ways accorded with the ideas of insanity. The jury agreed. After deliberating, they returned a verdict of guilty, and Hackman was sentenced to hang. On April 19, 1779, just 12 days after the incident, James Hackman was hanged for the murder of Martha Ray. Witnesses reported that Hackman faced his execution with remarkable fortitude, showing no signs of fear, completely resigned to his fate. But the real story of this case wasn't confined to the courtroom.

21:38Dana Schwartz:As historian John Brewer explores in his fascinating book, A Sentimental Murder, Love and Madness in the 18th Century, the murder ignited a media sensation that revealed as much about 18th century culture as it did about the crime itself. Despite pressing news about the failing war with American colonists and political battles at home, London newspapers devoted enormous amounts of space to the killing and its aftermath. Between the night of Martha's murder and Hackman's execution, daily coverage appeared in many newspapers, quickly escalating the situation into a cultural phenomenon that tapped into the era's obsession with sentiment and sensibility.

22:29Dana Schwartz:Sentimental literature was everywhere, filled with stories of virtue in distress, love-lorn youth, and tragic passion. As Brewer notes, it wasn't difficult to present the tragedy of Hackman and Ray as a sentimental story designed to provoke sympathy from readers. This cultural context helps explain why James Hackman attracted far more public sympathy than Martha Ray. He could easily be cast as a romantic hero destroyed by unrequited love. Martha was mostly cast in a sympathetic light, but she was often seen as the architect of her own downfall, a woman whose refusal to return Hackman's devotion had driven him to madness.

23:22Dana Schwartz:Behind the scenes, there was a deliberate effort to shape public opinion. Both Sandwich's allies and Hackman's supporters worked to present versions of events that cast their respective figures in the most favorable light. The Earl's Circle wanted to downplay the financial tensions and quarrels that had marked his relationship with Martha, while Hackman's defenders promoted the image of a gentle clergyman driven to temporary insanity by overwhelming passion. In death as in life, despite being at the center of this triad, Martha had the least agency of it all. The Earl of Sandwich was shattered by Martha's murder.

24:09Dana Schwartz:Though he continued in public life for a few more years, he was never the same. His political career, already marked by accusations of incompetence and corruption, fizzled out unceremoniously. Contemporaries often said of him, Seldom has any man held so many offices and accomplished so little. He lived until 1792, outlived by his erstwhile wife, Dorothy, who was still living as a ward of the state. Ironically, Sandwich's most enduring legacy has nothing to do with his naval administration, or political maneuvering, or even the scandalous murder of his longtime mistress. The modern sandwich, that humble workhorse of meals, bears his name.

25:01Dana Schwartz:A lasting legacy indeed, although it's unclear whether he invented it because he was too busy working or gambling to step away for a proper meal. Allegedly. Over the centuries, each generation has rewritten Martha's story to reflect their own values and anxieties. In 1780, just a year after the murder, a young writer named Herbert Croft rushed out an epistolary novel called Love and Madness, At first, claiming erroneously that it was based on actual letters between Martha and James Hackman, then later admitting he invented it whole cloth. The book was a sensation, proving that as a species we've always had a taste for some juicy true crime.

25:54Dana Schwartz:The Victorians turned Martha Ray into a cautionary tale about aristocratic decadence and the dangers of living outside conventional morality. By the 1920s, she had been reimagined as a chaste victim of male dominance and privilege. Modern historians like Brewer have tried to rescue Martha from these competing mythologies, recognizing her as a woman trapped by circumstances largely beyond her control, but still a human woman nonetheless, a full three-dimensional person. Martha Ray was buried in a vault beneath St. Nicholas Church in the village of Elstree. In 1824, during church renovations, her remains were moved to an unmarked grave in the churchyard.

26:48Dana Schwartz:It wasn't until 1920 that George Montague, the 9th Earl of Sandwich, had a proper tombstone erected over her grave. It was a final, belated gesture of respect for a woman who lived a life dictated by the men who surrounded her. sometimes for better, but in the end, for far worse.

27:15Dana Schwartz:That's the story of Martha Ray and her murder, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about her theatrical legacy.

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