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Austen Chat: Episode 35

May 7, 2026

Jane Austen & Crime: A Visit with Susannah Fullerton

"Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation & vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted."
—Jane Austen, 1796, letter to Cassandra on arriving in London

Susannah Fullerton

Jane Austen was very aware of life’s darker side, and beneath the genteel polish and decorum of her novels lurks a world of adultery, theft, seduction, dueling, poaching, smuggling, and more. In this episode, guest Susannah Fullerton, president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, guides us through the sordid underbelly of Georgian and Regency society and explores how Austen uses various crimes and wrongdoing to advance her plots, shape her characters, and add color to her narrative landscapes.

Susannah Fullerton, a literary historian and author, has been president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia (JASA) since 1996. She has lectured extensively on Jane Austen’s life and novels, and her books include Jane Austen and Crime, A Dance with Jane Austen, Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Jane & I: A Tale of Austen Addiction, and Great Writers and the Cats Who Owned Them, among others. Fullerton holds the Order of Australia Medal and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales. She is also Patron of the Kipling Society of Australia, a founding member of the NSW Dickens Society and of the Australian Brontë Association, and a Lady Patroness of the International Heyer Society.

Show Notes and Links

Many thanks to Susannah for joining us on Austen Chat!

Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

[Theme music]

Breckyn Wood: Hello, Janeites, and welcome to Austen Chat, a podcast brought to you by the Jane Austen Society of North America. I'm your host, Breckyn Wood, from the Georgia Region of JASNA. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 24% of top-ranked podcasts are about true crime, and 34% of American listeners tune in regularly to true crime podcasts. For those of you who fall into that last category, today is your lucky day because it's time for an Austen Chat true crime crossover.

Between Austen's novels and her real life, there's murder, dueling, adultery, theft, gambling, and more. Here to discuss with me the sordid underbelly of Regency life is Susannah Fullerton. Susannah is the president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia and has been for over 30 years. She has lectured extensively on Jane Austen in Australia and overseas and has published many articles about Austen's work. Her books include A Dance with Jane Austen, Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Jane and I: A Tale of Austen Addiction, and Great Writers & the Cats Who Owned Them. Of most interest to us today is her book Jane Austen & Crime, in which she examines Austen's fascination with illegality and its brutal consequences. Welcome to the show, Susannah.

Susannah Fullerton: Hi, Breckyn.

Breckyn: So, to start, can you tell us a bit about your Austen origin story? When did you first encounter her work?

Susannah: Well, my mother loved Jane Austen and so did my grandmother. So I always associated the idea of Jane Austen with pleasure, because, if ever my mom was waiting for me or, you know, had a bit of time to fill in, she would pick up an Austen novel, and there'd always be a smile on her face. One day we were having a holiday in New Zealand—I actually grew up in New Zealand, not in Australia—the weather was a bit miserable, and my mother said, "I think you might be ready for Pride and Prejudice." So, she sat on her bed and I lay along the end of the bed, and she began to read, "It is a truth universally acknowledged," etc., etc. She kept stopping to laugh as she read the book, and that made me a little bit frustrated because I think I was only 11 or 12, so still too young to really appreciate Jane Austen's irony. But I loved the story. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. And I'd say, "Mum, stop, stop laughing, you know, keep, keep reading." And she'd say, "But it's just so funny." And now, of course, I know exactly where she laughed and why she laughed.

And she then let me get on with reading the other Austen novels on my own, but we would discuss them together. We'd use her characters as a sort of shorthand with each other. You know, she'd say, "Oh, that woman's a real Miss Bates." You don't need to say anymore. You know exactly what the story is.

I think, you know, we shared a tremendous love of Jane Austen's novels. And I was just so fortunate that she read me Pride and Prejudice, because she was able to explain anything that I didn't quite understand. And it was a shared pleasure, and I was just very lucky indeed.

Breckyn: That's so beautiful. I love that. Can I say?—I am the mother to four young children, and one of my greatest pleasures of motherhood is introducing books that I love to my children. And I can imagine how your mother's heart was just swelling when she took her 12-year-old daughter and was like, "It's time, Susannah. It's time." That's so exciting.

Susannah: It is wonderful to share those books that you love so much with the next generation and hope that they love them. I've now got granddaughters—still a bit young for Jane Austen but they play with the Jane Austen bath duck when they come to stay. The indoctrination has already started. [laughing]

Breckyn: That's wonderful. And something they have now, that they didn't have when I was a child, is there's Jane Austen board books.

Susannah: I know.

Breckyn: I have some lovely picture books that are kind of just little biographies of Jane Austen, so there are more options for starting younger.

Susannah: They can do Jane Austen counting books and things like that when they're very young, so—and another one that they love is the sort of equivalent of "Where's Wally?" but it's called "Where's Jane?" And my little granddaughters are adept at finding Jane Austen on the page of all the characters, so they love that one.

Breckyn: I'm gonna have to look that up. My kids love search-and-find books. Okay, Susannah, let's pivot to crime—to the blood and guts and the nitty-gritty. On the surface, Austen and crime don't seem to go together. People don't always associate her quiet, bucolic Regency novels with anything criminal. So why Austen and Crime? Why did you pick the topic for your book?

Susannah: Well, I've always been interested in crime, and I love reading crime fiction. But yes, like most people, I thought, "Well, there's no crime in Jane Austen." But I live in Sydney in Australia, and one day I was sitting on a bus, which went past quite an historic jail near my place. It's now a technical college, not a jail, but it was quite a famous jail. And I thought to myself, "There's a tiny Jane Austen connection with that jail." Because Jane Austen's niece Fanny married a man called Edward Knatchbull, and Edward Knatchbull had a half-brother, called John Knatchbull, who committed forgery in England, and he was sent out as a prisoner to Australia. He went from bad to worse. He ended up murdering an elderly woman with an ax.

Breckyn: Oh, my gosh!

Susannah: So, he was a pretty nasty piece of work. As a result of that murder, it was decided he needed to be hanged, and he was hanged outside the jail that's just along the road from my place. It was after Jane Austen's time, of course; it was in the 1840s. A lovely sunny day in February, which, of course, is our summer, and a crowd of thousands and thousands of people turned up to watch the hanging. You know, hanging was good entertainment in those days.

Breckyn: Oh, sure.

Susannah: So, I began to think as I sat there on the bus, which was held up at lights for rather a long time, "Well, Jane Austen has this little tiny connection with Australia, you know, her niece's husband's half-brother." It's getting fairly tenuous. And I thought, "Well, interestingly, the only other connection she's got with Australia is the story of her aunt, Mrs. Leigh Perrot, who was accused of shoplifting from a shop in Bath." And had she been found guilty, Mrs. Leigh Perrot was very aware that she would be likely sent to Australia.

Breckyn: Whoo!

Susannah: Her husband actually made plans that he would go with her if that happened. So, in the end, of course, she was acquitted of the crime. She was not sent to Australia. But those are the two minute connections that Jane Austen has with this part of the world. So, as my bus trip continued, I thought, "Well, maybe I could write a talk about crime for the Jane Austen Society of Australia." And then I began to ponder, "What is a crime in her day? What counted as a crime?" So, you know, Wickham and Lydia elope and plan to go to Gretna Green, although they don't actually get to Scotland. Was that considered a crime when you were eloping with an underage girl? Mr. Rushworth mentions poachers in Mansfield Park. Well, if you poached game from a gentleman's estate, were you sent to Australia? Were you put into prison? Were you hanged? What were the punishments? Suicide, which happens in Jane Austen's juvenilia, was, interestingly—and we would not say that today—regarded as a crime, because your life belonged to God, and your life also belonged to His Majesty the King. So, if you took your own life, you were depriving His Majesty of one of his subjects, and you were basically taking his property. So, suicide was regarded as a crime in Jane Austen's day.

Having an illegitimate child, as Harriet Smith is, of course, in Emma, was that a crime—to give birth to a bastard baby? I came up with so many questions in my mind, you know. What was a crime? How were these things regarded in Jane Austen's day? Dueling in Sense and Sensibility, you know—how was that regarded? One of her most upright characters, Colonel Brandon, fights a duel. But, you know, was that illegal? How would duelists have been punished? So, I thought, "Well, you know, if I'm going to give a talk on this subject, I think I've got to do quite a bit of research first." I went away, I began my research, I became fascinated, and I think, before too long had gone by, I'd decided there was a book in it rather than just a talk. And it took me a long time to write. I had young children at the time; it had lots of interruptions.

I loved writing it, and Claire Tomalin, the wonderful Jane Austen biographer, very kindly described the book as "essential reading for every Janeite." So that was a real thrill. It has a foreword to it by the crime writer Reginald Hill, who loved Jane Austen and actually wrote a crime novel that's sort of a modern version of her Sanditon. So, I think people who've read the book have said it's just taught them so much about Jane Austen's era that they didn't know. And I think what it does is to give modern readers a knowledge that all of her contemporaries would have had. You know, they'd have known the treatment for duelists or poachers or smugglers, or, you know, all the laws of the land at the time would have been familiar to them. But a couple of hundred years have gone by, and we've lost a lot of that knowledge. So, I think my book fills in some of that knowledge and lets modern readers know how characters would have regarded these crimes, or Jane Austen's contemporaries. I've tried to give background information to the many interesting crimes in her novels.

Breckyn: Well, that's great. I thought of a parallel where you're kind of describing what the stakes are for the crime. Like you said, Jane Austen's readers at the time, her contemporaries, would have understood but we may not now know. It's kind of the same with the social etiquette of the time. It's like calling someone by their Christian name—like when Willoughby calls her Marianne instead of Miss Dashwood. That's lost on a lot of modern readers, but to the contemporary readers, it's a collective gasp of, "Such intimacy!" And so, we often need those things explained to us because 200 years or more have gone by. And so, I love that you're explaining more of the social, political, governmental, legal stakes of a lot of the actions that happened. So, let's talk about those crimes in her novels. What are some of the major crimes that she writes about? Why do you think she included them? You mentioned duels. Let's talk about duels. Can you explain the legality? I mean, at one point—have they always been legal, or did they used to be legal and then they became illegal? What's the story there?

Susannah: Jane Austen has one duel in her novels—in Sense and Sensibility—and it can be passed over. It's mentioned in half a line.

Breckyn: Yeah.

Susannah: And many readers don't even know that it's there. Colonel Brandon talks about Mr. Willoughby. He says, "We met by appointment." Clearly, nobody was injured and the whole thing was hushed up, but it's really intriguing. You know, another sensation novelist of the era would have made a huge thing of the duel—you know, pistols at dawn, and, you know, the nerves, and writing a will beforehand, and all of that. But Jane Austen is so restrained, and I think she felt that duels were a rather ridiculous way of satisfying one's honor. What she's interested in is the verbal duels that take place in that novel between Eleanor and Lucy, Fanny Dashwood and the Dashwood girls, the women. She was really interested in the verbal duels, not the physical duels. But yes, dueling had originally not been illegal. Then it was stamped out, so before Jane Austen was born it did become illegal. It lasted for a very long time in the military, and, of course, Colonel Brandon is a military man. So it was seen as being the appropriate way to fix up a problem with honor or revenge or whatever it might be, especially within the military.

But, had one of the men been wounded in the duel, the other would almost certainly have had to flee the country, because there was a very big risk of being arrested, put into jail. There were even some cases where people were hanged, you know, as a result of fighting a duel and killing the other man. So, I've got a chapter in my book on dueling, and there's all sorts of intriguing stories. You know, one of the prime ministers of the era was involved in a duel. Lots of men were. And, of course, there were—they took place at dawn, so not too many people around as witnesses. A doctor would usually be taken along in case somebody was very badly injured, and then, of course, the men would very quickly get off the scene and disappear.

There's a rather wonderful story of an enterprising tavern owner at the side of a heath, which was quite a popular place for duels because it was quite empty. He advertised as part of his services, "Pistols for two, champagne for one,” expecting one person at the end would have a nice champagne afterwards. He could provide the pistols if they were needed.

Breckyn: That's awesome! That is a capitalist right there. That is—what a businessman!

Susannah: Jane Austen's response to duels is really interesting, and, you know, she certainly knew of people fighting duels. Mrs. Bennet gets terribly worried in Pride and Prejudice that when Mr. Bennet finds Wickham, "He will fight a duel and he will be killed. And then what will become of us?" [sic] So, it's really interesting the way, you know, the idea of dueling just creeps into the novels. It's very much there and a fascinating part of the books.

Breckyn: I'm glad that you've enlightened that for us—that it was still more common in the military—because then that makes sense why Colonel Brandon, this otherwise fairly restrained, very responsible man—

Susannah: Very upright man

Breckyn: —yeah, is engaging in this kind of scandalous behavior. And so that's an example of—I was one of the readers who was completely unaware that there was a duel in Sense and Sensibility, and then I saw it in the movie version that Andrew Davies wrote, and I was, like, "Oh, well, he's kind of... " I thought he had added it into it to make it spicier and more interesting.

Susannah: No, it is there.

Breckyn: And then someone had to be like, "No, that really happens." And I was very surprised by that.

Susannah: And of course, movie directors love duels. The mist at dawn, and the excitement, and the taking certain paces, and turning, and firing. And I look at Jane Austen's parents' era—most duels would've been fought with a sword. But by the time we get to Jane Austen's time, most were fought with pistols, but she doesn't actually say what weapons are used in the duel. I mean, as I say, it's passed over in one line in the novels.

Breckyn: The thing about that duel is that it's so subtle that it's not really that important to advancing the plot. It's characterization and some interesting color. But maybe we can talk about some of the crimes in her novels that do advance the plot?

Susannah: Well, look, there are so many interesting crimes in her novels, and, of course, things like adultery, which we have in Mansfield Park—that advances the plot because—

Breckyn: It's a big one.

Susannah: —clearly, you see what Henry Crawford was all about with Maria, and that very definitely advances the plot.

Breckyn: It's a huge twist.

Susannah: Elopements to Gretna Green, which, you know, we get in both Mansfield Park and the elopement in Pride and Prejudice. Theft, you know, can advance plots, and particularly in the juvenilia. And we do get a wonderful range of crimes in Jane Austen's juvenilia.

Breckyn: Absolutely.

Susannah: And I really begin my book by looking at the most serious of all crimes, which is murder—you know, taking the life of another person. And I'd just like to share with you this really wonderful little bit from Jane Austen's juvenilia.

Breckyn: Please.

Susannah: So this comes—it's about a young lady called Anna Parker, and it comes from a little piece that she wrote called A Letter from a Young Lady, whose feelings being too Strong for her Judgement led her into the Commission of Errors which her Heart disapprove. And this is how the story begins: "I murdered my father at a very early period of my Life, I have since murdered my Mother, and I am now going to murder my Sister. I have changed my religion so often that at present I have not an idea of any left. I have been a perjured witness in every public tryal for these last twelve years; and I have forged my own Will. In short there is scarcely a crime that I have not committed. . . ."

Breckyn: Oh, my gosh.

Susannah: It's a wonderful little piece. You know, forging her own will is totally ridiculous. And in the juvenilia, we find people who murder, we find hangings quite frequently get mentioned, and there's a lot of theft taking place. But there are thefts in the novels, and I think Jane Austen handles theft very interestingly indeed. If you look at the opening of Sense and Sensibility, when John Dashwood has promised his dying father that he will look after the wife and sisters—half-sisters—and he and Fanny Dashwood managed to cut down that promised £1,000 each to a basket of fish and game "when they are in season." So that's an interesting little theft. They should be giving that money, and they are not doing so. Mrs. Norris has a petty theft in Mansfield Park.

Breckyn: Oh, gosh.

Susannah: The green baize that's being used for the curtains in the theatricals gets whipped home. Now, Sir Thomas has paid for that. Mrs. Norris just quietly purloins it and takes it home to her house. So, there are all sorts of interesting little thefts in the course of the novels. I look at how the Georgians had a real fixation with property. Property was all-important, so you could be sent out to Australia for stealing an ornamental bush from somebody's land. Poaching, of course, was regarded as a big crime against property. You were taking, you know, animals, pheasants, deer, whatever, from the property of a landowner. So, property was very, very highly regarded by the Georgians, and they had a huge number of laws connected with the theft of property, and very, very draconian punishments indeed.

Breckyn: Mm-hmm. We think of Mrs. Norris's thefts as petty and small but, correct me if I'm misremembering, but Jane Austen's aunt—it was like one shilling of ribbon or something that was very small that she was accused of stealing and could have been sent across the globe for that.

Susannah: Absolutely. That happened in 1799, and must have made the whole Austen family very aware of theft and the punishment of theft. Mrs. Leigh Perrot went into a shop in Bath, and she ordered some black lace. She wanted some to trim a cloak. She left the shop, and soon afterwards the shopkeeper came running up and said, "Excuse me, madam, but you've taken extra lace from our shop." And when the parcel was opened, it was found not only to have the black lace but to also have the white lace. Mrs. Leigh Perrot protested her innocence, and there does seem to be evidence that the shopkeeper did this every so often, and most customers accused of theft would very quickly just pay money in order for everything to be hushed up—

Breckyn: Like extortion.

Susannah: —because it was scandalous, of course. But Mrs. Leigh Perrot said, "No, I am innocent and I will defend my innocence." She had to go into the home of a jailer. She was kept in the jail for quite some months, and Jane's mother, Mrs. Austen, offered that her daughters could come and keep their aunt company in the jail.

Breckyn: I remember that, yeah.

Susannah: Fortunately, the aunt said, "No, no, this is not the place for two gently reared young ladies. They don't need to come." But the whole Austen family must have been so aware as the trial came up at the Assizes in Taunton that the aunt could well be sent to Australia. I mean, the amount of lace that she had taken did actually make it a hanging offense, according to the laws of the day. But she was, of course, a respectable lady. It would be very unlikely that she would be hanged. Much more likely was the fact that she would be sent out to Australia, which, of course, was a penal colony at the time.

As I mentioned, her husband James made plans that, if he needed to go too, everything would be ready; and then, fortunately, she was acquitted. There is some indication that she later was accused of stealing some plants from a shop. So, whether she did have kleptomaniac tendencies, I guess we'll never know, but it's interesting to think about. And we do know that Jane Austen was not at all fond of Aunt Leigh Perrot, so maybe she had good cause.

Breckyn: And maybe would not have wanted to go hang out with her in her jail cell, which is such a weird—I mean, the past is a foreign place, right? The past is a foreign country, and that is a foreign concept to us.

Susannah: And, interestingly, there is actually a novel called Jane Austen in Australia, which imagines that the Leigh Perrots do come out here, and sort of gives a whole story about what happens to them in the early days of Australia.

Breckyn: I would read that. Well, you mentioned that it was a hanging offense. That's a good transition to something I wanted to ask you, which is that, for modern listeners, how was Regency-era Britain's understanding of crime and punishment different from our modern systems? One thing that comes to mind is it seems like even the most minor infractions could earn you the gallows, which is pretty shocking to our modern sensibilities. What are some other things that are going on?

Susannah: Well, I think punishment was much more visible. It was felt to be important that people were seen to be punished. Now today, people are put away inside a prison and not really seen. And if there is an execution—and some countries, including some states in the USA, do have the death penalty—that is not conducted publicly in front of thousands of people, which it was in Georgian England. So, a criminal or somebody who'd been accused of a crime would be hanged in front of a whole lot of people. It was quite a festival day to go off and watch a hanging. Pickpockets were there in the crowd. You know, it was wonderful entertainment for the Georgians. So I think that is very, very different. Also, people were put into the pillory or the stocks—

Breckyn: I was going to ask about that.

Susannah: —for some minor problem. There was public whipping. When Mr. Price in Mansfield Park hears about Maria Bertram's adultery with Henry Crawford, he says, "Well, you know, I'd stand over her with the whip, give her a good whipping, for man and woman too." [sic] So that was another thing that was dying out by Jane Austen's time, but still public floggings were popular.

And then, of course, people were sent out to Australia. Around the various coastal towns of England there were prison ships called hulks. Jane Austen knew somebody who had to work on one of the prison hulks. They were old ships from the Navy that were no longer fit to go to sea but, because the jails were so full, they needed to put their prisoners somewhere. So they would be kept in terrible conditions on these ships. Charles Dickens uses the prison hulks wonderfully at the start of Great Expectations. But, you know, they're there in the background, and Jane Austen's naval brothers would have known all about them. She knew people, as I say, who were connected with them. Punishment was really, really visible.

Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey sort of imagines that on her journey to Bath that maybe highwaymen will ride up. Now, if a highwayman was caught, he was often hanged near the scene of his crime as, again, a way of reminding the populace that being a highwayman was not a good thing to do. And often the body was left in a sort of iron cage hanging from some gibbet or tree as it rotted away, and the crows would come and peck at it. It became a really gruesome sight, but it was a common sight around the roads of England—these bodies of highwaymen swinging in gibbets or iron cages. And again, it was to act as a deterrent. It was to tell people, "Don't become a highwayman." General Tilney, when he travels to Northanger Abbey, goes with a large number of outriders. Sir John Middleton in Sense and Sensibility talks of holding a ball when it's the new moon. That was very common. You would hold a party when there was very good moonlight so that your guests coming to it could travel more safely on the roads, and there was hopefully less risk of highwaymen. But it was a common thing in Georgian England, so writing about highwaymen was great fun.

Breckyn: Oh, I bet. That's again a good transition to my next question, because highwaymen were so romanticized in novels—sort of like pirates, right? About how it seems really romantic, and dashing, and daring but the realities were rotting corpses and gibbets. But the Gothic authors that Austen loved to read and later loved to satirize were particularly obsessed with crime and sordid behavior. So, how does Austen's treatment of crime and punishment compare to the other authors of her time period?

Susannah: Well, I have a chapter in my book on Gothic crime, and I look at, you know, the fascination of the day for forged wills and people locked away, which, of course, Catherine imagines with Mrs. Tilney in Northanger Abbey. Jane Austen realizes that those sorts of crimes are not the everyday crimes of Georgian England, and she satirizes them wonderfully. But she, I think, was fascinated by them, and she loved reading Gothic crime. I'm sure, were she alive today, she'd be reading some of the excellent crime novels that are around and enjoying them. And so, yes, she was really interested.

But some of the crimes—as you said, people like highwaymen had a romanticized image, and some of the crimes of her day did. Another one of those was smuggling. Jane Austen almost certainly drank smuggled tea in her lifetime. There was so much of it in England, and it was really quite almost acceptable to have dealings with your local smuggler. Parson Woodford, who was one of her contemporaries who wrote a wonderful diary—he talks about little arrangements late at night with his local smuggler to get his brandy from France, and his snuff, and other things. And that's a parson who's dealing with, you know, with the local smuggler.

So, many people regarded smugglers—and Jane Austen's brothers in the Navy were supposed to be catching smugglers—regarded smugglers as really not proper criminals. It was sort of a, more a social crime that didn't have nearly as much stigma attached to it. So, I look at—you know, dueling, I think, was the same. People, you know, often just turned a blind eye and thought, "Well, you know, that's the way it's always been, and it will continue." So, some crimes were not as heavily punished or as harshly regarded as others.

Breckyn: That's really fascinating about smuggling, because would there have been the threat of capital punishment with that as well? Was the risk that high?

Susannah: Yes, definitely. Yes, and soldiers who were armed who could well fire at smugglers on a beach as they were trying to bring their smuggled goods in. But it was absolutely rife, because England was at war with France, and so bringing stuff in legally meant, of course, tax had to be paid on it, if you could get it at all. Smugglers had a wonderful trade going backwards and forwards to France and bringing in lace, and perfumes, and brandy, and wine.

So, when Jane Austen talks in a letter of how she sits at her brother's home in Godmersham and she drinks French wine, one has to ask, you know, "Did he pay duty on that wine?" How much duty was paid on the tea that she was drinking as she traveled around and visited people? So many people—it's estimated that an enormous percentage of the tea that was drunk in England in her lifetime was smuggled. So, again, we don't sort of think about that. You know, there's all these mentions of tea but, you know, was it smuggled tea? Was duty paid on it? These questions have to be asked.

And in Persuasion, when Louisa has her fall on the Cobb, we hear of a fisherman sort of standing nearby with nothing to do. Well, again, you have to ask, you know, down there on the south coast, not too far from France, "Were half the fishermen of Lyme involved in the smuggling trade?" It was highly likely, and in the little streets and alleyways of Lyme Regis there'd be plenty of places to hide your contraband and, you know, get it away from the excise officers.

Breckyn: Oh yes, smugglers' coves. Again, that's something that it's just there on the surface in Persuasion, but if you dig a little deeper, like you have done in your research, there is so much more going on beneath the surface. And that's always true of Austen with the irony and with the social aspects, but it's really fun to talk to you about how it's true with the laws as well.

Susannah: She never wastes a word. If there's a reference to, you know, some little crime or a man of the law—I've got a chapter looking at the characters who are involved in the legal world. Mr. Darcy mentions that his grandfather is a judge or, rather, Miss Bingley mentions it for him. Mr. Musgrove, we hear, goes off to the Assizes. So, what did the Assizes mean? How long did a court trial go if somebody was accused of something? So, you know, what was some of the background that all of her contemporaries would've known? They'd know where the Assizes were held and how often, what was involved, which men went there. Jane Austen just mentions very briefly that Mr. Musgrove goes off to the Assizes, but I've tried to fill in some of that background.

Breckyn: Okay, well, that leads me to my next question, which is, did you uncover any interesting legal cases from Austen's time that you want to share, while researching your book? Were there any favorites that stuck out?

Susannah: Well, I love the whole learning process, but I think one of the things that really fascinated me was something called the crim. con. suit. Now, at the end of Mansfield Park, we hear that Mr. Rushworth manages to divorce Maria Bertram, his wife, because of her adultery. And of course, you know, her reputation is ruined forever. So, I looked into divorces, because it was not easy, not like today, to get a divorce. And the one way that men could divorce their wives and also make some money from it—and one has to wonder if this happened with Mr. Rushworth and Henry Crawford—was to hold what was called a criminal conversation suit. Now, in the Georgian era your wife was your property. You owned her. You owned her money, you owned her body, you could do what you liked with it. But if another man used her body, then he was taking what was your property as a gentleman and what were your rights over her body. So, basically, the adulterous affair between a man and a woman was called criminal conversation—it was a conversation between the two of them, and it was criminal because she was a married woman. So a man like Mr. Rushworth could take Henry Crawford to court in a criminal conversation suit—or crim. con., as they were always called in the popular language—and he could sue Henry Crawford for using his wife's body, having sex with her.

There are many interesting cases, and Jane Austen writes in her letters of, "You know, I had a good eye at an adulteress. I spotted the adulteress at the ball." [sic] She knew people who were involved in these criminal conversation suits, and they filled the scandal papers of the day. And there are some wonderful stories. There was a colonel, Colonel Sykes, who had an affair with a woman called Mrs. Parslow, and he commented afterwards that he really had a right to call her "Dear Mrs. Parslow" because he'd had to pay £10,000 to her husband in a criminal conversation suit. And the damages were often enormous. And then, of course, once you've proved that your wife was having adultery, it was very easy to divorce her.

But women didn't have the same rights. If their husbands were having affairs with other women, they could not take the husband to court. There could be no crim. cons. for women. It was only for, you know, men whose wives had been used by another man. So, I was really fascinated by the crim. cons, and although Jane Austen doesn't tell us at the end of Mansfield Park how Mr. Rushworth gets his divorce, I like to imagine that there was a crim. con. suit, and maybe Henry Crawford had to pay £10,000 for his fling with Maria Rushworth. So, all sorts of interesting little stories that I think fill out the background to the novels and are really fascinating to think about.

Breckyn: Yeah, I will say, one of the early episodes of this podcast [Episode 5] is about Jane Austen and divorce. We had a lawyer [Jim Nagle] come on, and he talked all about this process and how difficult it was, and if you were a commoner or if you were a lord of the realm, and things like that. So if people are interested in that topic, they can go back and listen to that episode. I think Jim briefly touched on crim. cons., but I'm glad that you have told us more about it. It is another thing that's changed so much from Jane Austen's time to our time. And actually, the "published in the newspaper"—maybe that is still common, you know, in celebrity rags and things like that, but it's definitely a really important aspect of the plot, and the end of the book, and a big twist in the end of the novel.

Well, this has been such an interesting conversation, Susannah. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. Where can listeners go to find out more about you and your work and your most recent book?

Susannah: Well, I've got a website so they just need to Google my name and the website will come up. Many listeners might enjoy receiving my monthly newsletter which comes out for free on the first day of every month. It's called Notes from a Book Addict. I give good reading suggestions. I celebrate fabulous literary anniversaries, like the big Jane Austen anniversary of last year. I include a lovely poem every month, often with links to good readings of it on YouTube, and I just discuss all sorts of aspects of being a book addict. As I say, it's totally free. People can unsubscribe at any time if they find it's not for them, but I'd love to have more American readers of Notes from a Book Addict, so I do hope that people sign up for that.

Also on my website, it is possible to order my books, although, sadly, postage is very expensive from Australia at the moment. But Jane Austen and Crime is available as an ebook. My new book, Great Writers and the Cats Who Owned Them, sadly doesn't include a chapter on Jane Austen because she didn't write enough about cats.

Breckyn: I know, Jane, why didn't you have a cat?

Susannah: I know, but it's been selling really well. It was published by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which was a real thrill. A couple of my other books are now sadly out of print. Happily Ever After, which was written to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, is also available as an ebook. But there's lots of—some of my talks are available through my website, so you can get illustrated talks. Some of them are free, some of them there's a small charge. I just adore being a book addict and, of course, Jane Austen is my favorite writer of all time. So, I'm always thrilled to discuss Jane Austen and to meet fellow Janeites from all over the world. It's very exciting.

Breckyn: Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you so much, Susannah.

Susannah: Thank you, Breckyn. It's been fabulous chatting with you.

Breckyn: Dearest listeners, I am pleased to announce that Austen Chat now has over 200 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for your support. If you haven't yet given us a rating, please consider leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so more Janeites can find us and join our Austen-loving community. Again, thank you. I remain yours respectfully, Breckyn Wood.

[Theme music]

Austen Chat: Episode 35

May 7, 2026

Jane Austen & Crime: A Visit with Susannah Fullerton

Show Notes and Links

Transcript

Austen Chat Podcast

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