We kick off Season Nine of the podcast by meeting a woman who could be called the godmother of true crime.
Producer/host Susan Stone tells the story of F. Tennyson Jesse, an English journalist, criminologist, and writer. The daughter of a vicar who dragged the family around the British empire, she trained as a painter before moving to London in 1911. Journalism beckoned, but she was not put off by losing the use of her right hand in a plane accident, learning to type left-handed. Known as Fryn to her friends, she reported from the ground during World War I and published fiction, before moving into criminology and true crime writing. Her 1924 book Murder and its Motives set out six basic motivations for killing, a very influential theory, and she wrote about several of the most notorious crimes in the first half of the 20th century. Fryn also had a rather dramatic private life thanks to her doctor-turned-playwright husband Tottie, who kept their marriage secret for several years.
DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins Susan to introduce our new season.
Show notes:
A Pin to See the Peepshow would be her most popular book (and a favorite of Dorothy L. Sayers!); it was based on the Thompson–Bywaters murder case.
If you want to know more about Fryn, check out her secretary’s Joanna Colenbrander’s meandering A Portrait of Fryn and Kate Summerscale’s The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place.
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