On the eighteenth of May 1827, a young woman named Maria Martin hurried from her cottage in the Suffolk village of Polstead, dressed in boy’s clothing. Her stepmother had urged her to disguise herself so she would not be recognized on the road. William Corder, the man who had promised to marry her, had warned that a warrant for her arrest was about to be signed, and she had to flee the village at once. She was to meet him at the Red Barn on Barnfield Hill, where he would have a dress for her to change into before they travelled on to Ipswich.
She was never seen alive again. Maria had been born in Polstead on the twenty-fourth of July 1801, the daughter of Thomas Martin, a mole catcher. England had no compulsory schooling at the time, but Maria was an intelligent girl and picked up reading and writing from the little teaching she received. Her mother died when Maria was nine, and the girl took on the care of her younger siblings until her father remarried.
As she grew older, she became known as an attractive and likable young woman, and despite her low social standing she drew the attention of local gentlemen. One of these was Thomas Corder, the son of a wealthy tenant farmer. He courted Maria secretly, unwilling to be seen with the daughter of the mole catcher. Maria was only seventeen and impressionable; when she found she was pregnant, Thomas’s visits grew less frequent, and after the child was born he stopped coming altogether.
He provided no support. In those years infant mortality was high, especially in rural areas, and Maria’s baby died within a few months. She then entered a relationship with a respectable gentleman named Peter Matthews, who was not from the village but had relatives there. Again she became pregnant, and again marriage was out of the question.
Matthews, however, agreed to provide financial assistance for his child. Thomas Corder’s youngest brother, William, had a poor reputation. Bright but sly, he had earned the nickname “Foxy” at boarding school. He had fraudulently sold his father’s pigs, passed a forged cheque for ninety-three pounds, and helped a man steal another pig from a neighbouring village.
His father, despairing of him, sent him to London in the hope that he would find work and reform. Instead, William gambled away everything he had been given. He was forced to return to Polstead when his father and brothers all died within eighteen months of one another. Thomas drowned trying to cross a frozen pond, while his father and the other brothers succumbed to tuberculosis.
William now had to run the farm with his mother. In March 1826, he began a relationship with Maria Martin. She was twenty-four by then, and neither of them seemed troubled that she had previously been involved with William’s deceased brother. Like Thomas before him, William made sure he was never seen out with Maria in public.
This became more difficult when she discovered she was pregnant. To avoid local gossip, the couple left the village for the nearby town of Sudbury, where they passed themselves off as husband and wife. When the baby was born in 1827, Maria insisted that William marry her. He agreed each time but always found an excuse to postpone the wedding.
Within a month of the birth, the baby died. William suggested they take the body back to Sudbury for burial, but on the ten-mile journey he stopped before reaching the town and buried the child in a field. With no living child to bind them, William had no reason to marry Maria. She was now a fallen woman in the eyes of the community, and a respectable marriage seemed unlikely.
Yet William continued to assure her and her stepmother, Anne, that he intended to keep his word. He was working on the farm but depended on his mother for a weekly wage, and she kept control of the money, much to his displeasure. Peter Matthews continued to send maintenance payments for the child he had fathered with Maria. In 1827, one such payment disappeared.
Knowing William’s history, Maria suspected he had stolen it. She was in a hopeless position: if she accused him and he was found guilty, he could be hanged for theft, and she herself could be prosecuted for having given birth to three illegitimate children. If he married her, the magistrate could no longer bring charges against her. William denied taking the money and kept saying the wedding would soon take place.
In May 1827, William arrived at the Martin cottage and told Maria and her stepmother that he had heard the local constable was seeking authority to prosecute Maria for bearing illegitimate children. She would have to leave the village. They planned to leave on a Wednesday evening, but the departure was delayed until Friday, the eighteenth of May, when William came in a hurry and said the warrant had been signed. Anne Martin feared her stepdaughter might be recognized if she left in daylight, so she suggested the disguise.
After instructing her to meet him at the Red Barn, William left. Maria gathered her things and went to the barn. In the weeks that followed, William continued to work on the farm, and there was no sign of Maria. When her father asked after her, William told him she was staying in Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast and was afraid to return because of the arrest warrant.
He said she had injured her hand but was otherwise well. He told others that the two of them would marry in September, but given his reputation, many did not believe him. Eventually William left Polstead and moved to London. He continued to write to Maria’s father and stepmother, telling them that he and Maria had married and were living happily on the Isle of Wight.
He asked that they burn his letters, claiming he feared Peter Matthews might discover their address. As months passed and 1828 arrived, the Martins grew increasingly concerned. They had heard nothing directly from their daughter since the day she left for the barn. William always said she was busy and that letters must have been lost in the post.
Anne Martin became more troubled than anyone else. She began dreaming about her stepdaughter and talking in her sleep, saying that Maria had been murdered and buried in the Red Barn. On the nineteenth of April 1828, her husband agreed to go and look. He did not expect to find anything, since many people had been in and out of the barn since Maria disappeared.
But when he began digging around the grain storage bins, he uncovered what appeared to be a badly decomposed body covered with a sack. The constable was contacted, and the remains were taken to the local inn for an inquest. Despite the condition of the body, Maria’s sister and stepmother identified her by her clothes, her hair colour, and a small gap in her teeth. A green handkerchief was found wrapped around her neck, and it was said to belong to William Corder.
A doctor concluded she had been shot and also bore stab wounds to the chest, though the exact cause of death could not be determined. Nine different possibilities were listed, including strangulation and being buried alive. The constable now had to find William Corder. Unknown to everyone in Polstead, he had married and, with his new wife, was running the Everly Grove boarding house for ladies in Brentford, a few miles west of London.
His wife, Mary Moore, had come into his life after he placed an advertisement in the lonely hearts pages of two newspapers. The advertisement had been convincing enough to draw more than one hundred replies. A constable from Polstead, assisted by a London officer named Lee, traced the suspect to the boarding house. Lee approached Corder on the pretext that he had a daughter who needed a place to stay.
Once the three men were alone, Lee told Corder he had the authority to arrest him and take him back to Suffolk to face a charge of murder. The trial was set for the town of Bury St Edmunds, but even before it began, the press and the public had already decided Corder was guilty. Puppet shows depicted him killing Maria in the Red Barn, and songs were written about the crime. The coverage was so intense that the trial had to be delayed.
The presiding judge, William Alexander, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, was displeased with the media attention, saying it was to the manifest detriment of the prisoner. Because the exact cause of death could not be established, Corder was indicted on nine charges, including one of forgery, to avoid the risk of a mistrial on the murder charge alone. The trial finally began on the seventh of August 1828 at Shire Hall in Bury St Edmunds. Hotels were full, and entrance to the court was by ticket only.
Large crowds gathered outside, and even court officials had to push their way through to get inside. Corder pleaded not guilty. Witnesses described the events of the eighteenth of May 1827. Anne Martin told the court how Corder had instructed Maria to dress as a boy and go to the Red Barn, warning that the constable was about to arrest her.
But when questioned, the constable said he had never considered obtaining a warrant against her. Maria’s brother George, who had been nine years old at the time, said he had seen Corder walking toward the barn carrying a pistol and a pickaxe. The prosecution argued that Corder had never intended to marry Maria and that tension had arisen between them after the theft of the money sent by Peter Matthews. Corder, taking the stand, told a different story.
He said Maria had been in possession of his pistols since their time in Sudbury and had taken them to be repaired. A gunsmith confirmed that the pistols had indeed been collected by both a young lady and a young gentleman, though other witnesses said they had seen them solely in Maria’s hands. Corder admitted he had been in the barn with Maria but claimed they had argued because she spoke to him unfavorably. He told her that if she treated him that way, he would not marry her.
He said he then left the barn, heard a shot as he walked away, rushed back, and found that she had killed herself. In a panic, he buried her body. He insisted he was innocent. The jury retired and returned after only thirty-five minutes with a verdict of guilty.
Corder was sentenced to death. Throughout the trial, his wife had remained calm and composed, and now, with a prison chaplain, she urged him to make peace with God. On the day of his execution, the eleventh of August 1828, William Corder wrote a full confession. He said he and Maria had argued and he had shot her, but he maintained it was an accident.
Shortly before noon, he mounted the scaffold before a large crowd gathered behind the prison. His final words were: “I am guilty. My sentence is just. I deserve my fate, and may God have mercy on my soul.
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His body was left hanging for an hour, then taken back to Shire Hall, where it was slit open and put on public display. The Norwich and Bury Post estimated that more than five thousand people lined up to view it. The case fascinated the entire country. Books and plays were written about it.
Pieces of the rope used to hang Corder were sold for a guinea each, and a lock of Maria’s hair went for two guineas. Polstead became a destination for souvenir hunters, and it was estimated that in the year of the trial more than two hundred thousand people visited the small village. The Red Barn was stripped for souvenirs, including toothpicks made from its wooden side planks. Visitors even chipped pieces off Maria Martin’s gravestone in the churchyard of St Mary’s, so much so that today only a sign on a shed marks her burial place.
William Corder’s skeleton was kept on display in a glass case in West Suffolk until 2004, when it was removed and cremated. The Red Barn burned down in 1842. The bodies of William Corder and Maria Martin’s baby, buried in a field on the way to Sudbury, have never been located.
Nearly two centuries later, the Red Barn murder case remains one of the most well-known in British criminal history, preserved in songs, plays, television shows, movies, and documentaries.
