Heirs & Grievances: the Georgian daughter who poisoned her father for love

An etching of Mary Blandy, made before her execution in 1752

In the sixth and final instalment of the series, James Thellusson tells the story of Mary Blandy, hanged in 1752 for poisoning her father with arsenic to please the lover he refused to accept

Guest blog by James Thellusson

Parents have threatened to cut children from their wills as a means of controlling their behaviour and affections. To escape the clutches of their domineering parents, many young lovers have eloped. Others have murdered their domineering parents. Mary Blandy is one such case. She was a Georgian daughter who poisoned her father with arsenic so she could marry her Scottish lover. The result made her one of the most loathed and pitied female murderers of the Georgian era.

Francis Blandy was a ‘tuft hunter’, a Georgian word for a snob or social climber. He was a successful lawyer in the Thames-side village of Henley-on-Thames and had great dreams to raise his family’s status even further before he died. To do this, he needed to find his daughter, Mary Blandy, a husband who could boost the family out of the bourgeoisie into the upper classes, a man with a title.

Such social jumps were not unheard of. Many aristocratic families found themselves struggling for money at various moments and would consider a marriage match which brought them income. But did Francis have enough? He must have been unsure, because he went around the social circuit of Henley (where he was also town clerk) boasting that Mary would bring a dowry worth £10,000 (north of £2m now) when he was actually only worth £4,000. Whatever her real value as a wife would be, what is interesting is that Francis was shamelessly touting his daughter for marriage. He may as well have put an advert outside his house saying: ‘Eligible Daughter. Large Dowry available’. Unfortunately for him, his snobbery would be his death warrant.

Mary Blandy was ‘virtuously brought up, distinguished for her good behaviour and prudent conduct in life.’ By her mid-twenties, she was still single. Some say she was scarred by smallpox and this deterred suitors. Others say her father was too picky, turning down three suitors, including an army officer whom Mary genuinely appeared to love.

In the summer of 1746, aged 26, Mary was introduced by her uncle to William Henry Cranstoun, the younger son of Lord Cranstoun, a Scottish baron. An army officer who had served against the Jacobites in the rebellion of 1745, he was an ‘undersized spindle shanks built after Beau Didapper pattern’. (Beau Didapper is a dwarfish, aristocratic sex pest in Henry Fielding’s novel, The Adventures of Joseph Andrews.)

Henry Fielding, the novelist and magistrate, who wrote that Mary Blandy’s infatuation had overcome her otherwise high intelligence and goodness

As the youngest son of an aristocratic family, he was probably not as rich as Francis hoped. Male primogeniture concentrated wealth with the eldest male, and younger sons of aristocrats often had to make their fortunes from war or working in the church. But, rich or not, Cranstoun bowled over Mary and her ‘vain parents, in their delight at the honour and glory of an alliance with a family of title’.

In the autumn of 1747, his courtship looked destined for success as he was invited to live in the family home, presumably as a precursor to marriage. Then disaster struck. Lord Kerr, the man who had introduced him to the Blandy family, told Francis that William Cranstoun was already married. The love of Mary’s life was a bigamist.

Francis was appalled, but Mary’s faith in her lover was unshaken. Her mother, who had lent Cranstoun money, also seems to have believed in this ostensibly deceitful man. But when Mrs Blandy died in 1749, Francis banned Cranstoun from the house. Mary lobbied her father relentlessly to forgive Cranstoun and, in the summer of 1750, Francis allowed him back into the family home. Nevertheless, his trust in Cranstoun was shattered, leaving Mary and William living ‘in dread lest she should be disinherited’.

Exiled to his family in Scotland, Cranstoun sent Mary gifts, including ‘Scotch pebbles’, a valuable cryptocrystalline quartz, wrapped in packets of white arsenic. He suggested she disguise the poisonous powder in her father’s food. The plan might have worked, except the Blandy servants would often eat the ‘slops’ left over by Francis and Mary after their meals. Two of them fell ill over the summer of 1751 with gastric pains and began to wonder why.

On 5 August, they found a letter from Cranstoun containing a white substance and the mysterious phrase ‘powder to clean the pebbles.’ The servants called the Blandy family doctor, Mr Addington, who after seeing Francis accused Mary of poisoning her father. It was too late to save Francis, who died on 14 August, forgiving Mary for her murder.

On 3 March 1752, Mary was tried at the Divinity School at Oxford.

The Divinity School at Oxford, under whose vaulted Gothic ceiling Mary Blandy was tried in 1752

Under the school’s vaulted Gothic ceiling, the solicitor general chastised her for killing her father ‘by whose care and tenderness she was protected in her helpless infancy’, and claimed her motive was ‘to be her own mistress’ (a profoundly disruptive idea to the male Georgian mind).

Mary confessed to administering a powder provided by Cranstoun, but she claimed she thought it was a love philtre, designed to soften her father’s hard heart towards the man she loved. It was not a convincing defence. It took the jury just five minutes to find her guilty of murder, and the trial lasted less than a single day. Days later, Mary was hanged at Oxford Castle, aged 33. William Cranstoun, like a coward, fled to France.

Did Mary Blandy kill because of a ‘morbid longing for her dower’, or was she a naïve and desperate girl who was bullied by her father and manipulated by her bigamist lover?

Oxford castle

Henry Fielding, the novelist and judge, thought Mary’s infatuation overcame ‘her otherwise high intelligence and goodness.’ Her case embraced class, sex and murder, and fascinated the public at the time. It shocked a patriarchal culture, which was appalled that she had chosen her affection for her lover over duty to her father. Unable to believe her crime was born of affection, most saw avarice as her murderous motive: ‘Her father’s wealth and that alone / It was, that turn’d her heart to stone’, ran one popular verse on her trial.

Without the murder, Mary Blandy’s love affair might have been a Jane Austen novel; instead, it has become a historic case in gender studies and an example of how parental oppression can backfire disastrously.

James Thellusson is a writer living in Chiswick. He is the author of ‘School’s Out: Truants, Troublemakers and Teachers’ Pets’, and has written for The Oldie, The Idler and Management Today. He won the Sandstone Press Prize for Short Fiction. He is writing ‘Heirs & Grievances’, a history of famous feuds and inheritance disputes, from which this series is drawn. His agent is Andrew Lownie. James previously wrote ‘Man in the Middle’ for the Calendar and is published in the recent anthology of cricket poems ‘Catching the Light’.