Episode 13: The Manchester Cab Mystery

On the evening of 26 February 1889, a respectable Manchester businessman climbed into a hansom cab with a young stranger. By the time the cab reached the infirmary, he was dead. No marks of violence. No obvious crime scene. Just an empty pocket where a gold watch and a purse of sovereigns had been. This was the case that would test Detective Chief Inspector Jerome Caminada — Manchester's most celebrated detective — like no other. With the city's nerves still raw from the unsolved Whitechapel murders, the pressure to find answers was immense. What followed was a meticulous three-week investigation that would make British legal history: the first criminal prosecution ever attempted for chloral hydrate poisoning. We trace the route of the cab, the network of witnesses Caminada quietly assembled, and the reluctant bookkeeper whose testimony changed everything — all the way to a packed courtroom in Liverpool, a death sentence, and the question of whether justice and mercy can occupy the same verdict.