Chapter 26

Death by Sex 1594

Across the centuries there have been many ways in which desperate husbands have murdered their wives. Few, however, have meticulously planned to carry out the fatal act during sexual intercourse. This was the method chosen by Thomas Robinson, a Tudor sailor and fisherman who lived in the ancient port of Rye in Sussex. A truly callous killer, he chose to subject his wife, Bridget, to a diabolical death as she, unwittingly, was comforting him with her warm embraces.

Robinson had apparently been a well-respected member of society until he got into debt due to his lavish spending. According to a version of the case told in a pamphlet of 1598, (in which his name is given as Henry Robson) the financially embarrassed fisherman was duly thrown into debtors’ prison, ‘where he long time remained languishing in woe’. The dutiful Bridget, however, did everything she could to help, aiming to earn enough to free her husband. Yet he saw only one way to escape from behind bars – selling all the couple’s possessions and starting a new life. These items did not amount to very much: two beds; a cupboard; a table with bench and stools; three chests; a couple of spinning wheels and some lumber. They might, however, raise enough to pay off his debts. For some reason, Robinson saw Bridget as an impediment to achieving this goal. Perhaps she didn’t wish to see their marital home dismantled. As time passed, Robinson became determined to make the task more straightforward by killing her. But just how was it to be done, so that no-one would suspect him?

Alongside him in prison was a man whose name was given in contemporary coroner’s records as Humphrey. In the later pamphlet he is referred to as Glasier. In this account the fellow inmate sympathised with the fisherman telling him he was sorry to see such a beloved member of the local community locked up. The heartless lag merely replied, ‘tis too late now to be sorie, when there is no remedie, for so long as my wife liveth, it is impossible that ever I should come out.’ This led Glasier to reply, ‘Faith then sure, if my wife’s death could procure me libertie I would never be in bondage, or imprisoned.’ Glasier, himself soon to be released from incarceration, then began to plot with Robinson how they would cunningly do away with Bridget. Together they would then quietly leave England for the Low Countries. The scheme they devised was both inventive and monstrous. When Glasier left jail he immediately went to a mercer in the town called Fisher and spent a penny on ratsbane (arsenic) often left out to kill rats. He went back to visit Robinson at the prison and gave him the package, telling his coconspirator to mix it with some ground glass. Robinson did as directed and waited until one of his next meals, saving the skin from some shoulder of mutton and wrapping his deadly concoction – no bigger than the size of a hazelnut – inside.

Visitors were sometimes allowed into debtors’ prisons and the next time that Bridget came to see her husband they had sex. Court records give the date as 26 May, 1594. In the pamphlet account, Robinson persuaded his wife to stay until morning by promising her ‘the dearest night’s pleasure that ever a woman had.’ Evidently, in the dank darkness of his cell Robinson managed to secretly convey the package unseen and unfelt into her ‘privie parts’ while they were engaged in loving caresses. The inquest recorded that Robinson, ‘did conveye into the boddy at her secret partes certeyen broken glasse and poison.’

From the pamphlet we learn that Bridget’s body was soon swelling as the poison, ‘began to runne and eate into her veins.’ The pain was so great that she was confined to bed where she languished for five days. Nothing her neighbours, or several physicians who visited, could do helped her condition and the suspicion arose that her symptoms smacked of poison.

By 12 June Bridget had died, but the misgivings of those who tended her led to permission being sought for her body to be ‘ripped’. At this post mortem the physicians apparently ‘found in everie vaine both glasse and ratsbane and could not devise how or by what means it had come thither.’ They did not think, however that she had been poisoned through her food or drink. A Tudor style murder inquiry was launched and inquiries were made around the town to discover who had recently bought ratsbane. Glasier’s purchase at Fisher’s quickly came to light and he was known to have been in prison with Robinson. Now suspicion fell upon Bridget’s husband, especially since it also came to the authorities’ attention that he had slept with Bridget in the jail.

The pamphlet goes on to tell us that a Master Boulton examined Robinson and pretended that Glasier had spilled the beans on how he had planned to do away with his wife. But Robinson denied knowing anything about how she had died. Boulton told him, ‘Nay if you be so obstinate, we will bring Glasier forth, who to your shame shall testifie it.’ This was a ruse, as Glasier had already disappeared from the town without trace.

Under pressure Robinson at last admitted having had the ratsbane. At first he said he had wanted it to kill rats in the jailhouse, but eventually told Boulton, ‘I have often heard that poison will breake open any iron lock, and therefore I bought it thinking thereby to get my libertie.’

Boulton replied, ‘No thou hast not told the truth; for with it and glasse mingled together thou didst pyson thy wife; and therefore as thou lookest for any favour at our hands, confesse how and in what manner thou didst it and who was the counsellor of it.’

Robinson replied, ‘Well then I perceive you glut after my blood and if it will pleasure you shall have it.’

The official inquest into Bridget’s death was held the day after her death, 13 June, in front of Robert Bett, town mayor as well as coroner. The evidence here differs slightly from the pamphlet. One of the witnesses called was a man called Prescott who said he had seen Richard Sadler, the husband of Robinson’s sister Jane, visiting the suspect at the prison in the days running up to Bridget’s death. Brought before the jury, Sadler told how he had indeed bought a pennyworth of ratsbane from the ‘Goodwyfe Fisher’ but had given it to his wife to put down for rats. He had only been at the jail to take the prisoner some ‘hose’. Re-examined after his wife gave evidence, Sadler admitted that his brother-in-law had actually asked him to buy the ratsbane for him when he had visited him in jail, giving him money to do so. Sadler said that Robinson had told him that he would use it to try and open the prison locks.

Then Robinson gave evidence stating that it was, in fact, Sadler who told him the ratsbane could open locks and that was why he gave Sadler 4d for the poison on 7 June. However, pushed by the court, Robinson appears to have come close to a confession. He admitted having had sexual intercourse with Bridget on 26 May and that Humphrey, (possibly Humphrey Glasier), who was imprisoned with him ‘told him to poison his wife and made the glass and poison which killed her’. Evidently there was a second lot of ratsbane, from Sadler, which was never used. Robinson was perhaps concerned that the first dose had not worked, aiming to have a second attempt at murder when Bridget came to lay with him again. In fact, unknown to Robinson, the first lethal mixture was already taking its effect.

Robinson appeared in court at Rye on 17 June, where he pleaded not guilty to murder but was found to be responsible for Bridget’s horrible end and sentenced to be hanged. He went to the scaffold on 19 June and was buried ‘under the gallows’.

Although Rye is today a small, quaint tourist town, it was a busy place in Tudor times, important as one of the historic Cinque Ports and as a point for transporting troops to France. It had played a vital role during the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and would have been a melting pot of tradesmen and seafarers. Nevertheless such a heinous crime as Robinson’s would have shocked the local inhabitants and the country as a whole, news of it evidently having spread far and wide.

Indeed the crime was so shocking in its savagery, even in its day, that the author of the The Examination, Confession and Condemnation of Henry Robson says that the like has not been known ‘since Cain murthered the righteous Abel.’ And while the author, known simply as L.B., may have embellished the case for literary purposes the existence of the original court records, bears out much of its detail.