The Murder of George Little & The Broadstone Mystery

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2022

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Broadstone station in Dublin, Ireland creaked, clanked and clattered with the din of everyday rail traffic. In 19th Century Ireland, it was one of the grandest buildings in the country's capital, and every day hundreds of people worked to ensure that its trains, serving over 500 miles of track from one coast of Ireland to the other, were running as efficiently as they could. It was an imposing machine that stood on the hillside of the city, pulsing away, day after day. In 1856, however, it became famous for more than just its trains and vast profits, when the cashier was found dead, locked in an office full of money. The investigation that followed struggled to solve the mystery for a full year, with a conclusion that pretty much no one who had followed the case, which was more or less the whole of Dublin, would find satisfactory. SOURCES Dublin Evening Post (1856) Shocking Occurence - Supposed Suicide. Dublin Evening Post, 15 Nov, 1856, p2. Dublin, Ireland. London Evening Standard (1856) Murder Of The Cahsier Of The Great Midwestern Railway Company. London Evening Standard, p4. London, UK. Dublin Evening Mail (1856) Terrible Tragedy At The Midland Railway. Dublin Evening Post, 17 Nov, 1856, p3. Dublin, Ireland. Dublin Evening Post (1856) This Day. Dublin Evening Post, 20 Nov, 1856, p3. Dublin, Ireland. London Evening Standard (1856) The Broadstone Tragedy. London Evening Standard, 12 Dec, 1856. p3. London, UK. Leeds Mercury (1857) The Broadstone Tragedy. Leeds Mercury, 1 Jan, 1857. p4. Leeds, UK. Saunders’s News Letter (1857) Murder Of The Late Mr Little. Saunders’s News Letter, 24 June, 1857. p1. London, UK. Manchester Times (1857) The Arrest Of The Suspected Murderer Of Mr Little. Manchester Times, 27 Jun, 1857. p7. Manchester, UK. Freeman’s Journal (1857) The Murder Of Mr Little. Freeman’s Journal, 29 Jun, 1857. p3. Dublin, Ireland. Freeman’s Journal (1857) Trial Of Spollen For The Murder Of Mr Little. Freeman’s Journal, 10 Aug, 1857. p4. Dublin, Ireland. Freeman’s Journal (1857) Trial Of Spollen For The Murder Of Mr Little. Freeman’s Journal, 12 Aug, 1857. p4. Dublin, Ireland. Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette (1857) Re-Arrest Of Spollen. Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette, 26 Aug, 1857. p4. Scotland. Premium.weatherweb.net (2022) Weather in History 1850 to 1899 AD. [online] Available at: KBC, S. (2022) Virtual Reality Tour: Explore this grand former railway station in Dublin... with its own murder mystery. [online] TheJournal.ie. Available at: ---------- For almost anything, head over to the podcasts hub at darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9 Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/ Or you can contact us directly via email at [email protected] or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072 or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Broadstone station in Dublin, Ireland creaked, clanked and clattered with the din of everyday
0:07.5	rail traffic. In 19th century Ireland, it was one of the grandest buildings in the country's
0:13.1	capital. And every day hundreds of people worked to ensure that it's trains, serving
0:17.9	over 500 miles of track from one coast of Ireland to the other, were running as efficiently
0:22.8	as they could. It was an imposing machine stood on the hillside of the sea, pulsing
0:28.2	away day after day. In 1856, however, it became famous for more than just its trains
0:34.7	and vast profits when the cashier was found dead, locked in an office full of money. The
0:40.8	investigation that followed struggled to solve the mystery for a full year, with the conclusion
0:45.8	that pretty much no one who had followed the case, which was more or less the whole
0:50.1	of Dublin, would find satisfactory. This is dark histories, where the facts are worse
0:56.1	than fiction. Hello and welcome to Dark History, Season 6, Episode 11. I'm Ben and I hope
1:07.5	this episode finds you very well. There's not much to talk about this week, just I'm
1:12.0	going to give you a little quick heads up there, coming up in the next week or two, on
1:17.0	the 17th is Dark History's fifth anniversary. I've been doing this for five whole years,
1:23.0	which feels like madness. And finally, the Episode 5 book will be going on sale to celebrate
1:29.1	the fifth year. So Episode 5 book will be on sale from the 17th, so that's pretty cool.
1:35.8	But yeah, aside from that, I think that's about all the news for this week, so let's just
1:40.7	crack straight into it, let's get going. This is the murder of George Little and the Broadstone
1:46.0	Mystery. The 18th and 19th centuries were a tumultuous period in Ireland, with over
1:58.8	a hundred years of extreme contrasts as great change accelerated through the wealthier
2:03.3	cities whilst intense poverty festered in rural hamlets. The capital city of Dublin, situated
2:09.9	on the east coast of Ireland, had been completely overhauled throughout the 18th century. An economic
	...

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