Lambeth Heritage Festival: The Murder of Mary Ashford

London audiences venturing across Waterloo Bridge in May 1818 to the brand new Royal Coburg Theatre (later the Old Vic) were thrilled by a melodrama based on a shocking murder prosecution that had recently failed in the Court of King’s Bench. Naomi Clifford, whose latest book is The Murder of Mary Ashford, talks about a case that gripped and appalled the country and led to a change in English murder law.