I’d (really) like to know the origin of the phrase “all she wrote”. “Murder She Wrote”, the title of the television series, seems to be a variation of the phrase. Bruce Springsteen uses it in The River: “then I got Mary pregnant and man, that was all she wrote”. The expression is used on the Straight Dope now and again but I’m unaware of my question having been asked before.
Thank you very much.
IIRC, the phrase was also in the music to “Deep Throat”, Linda Lovelace’s cinematic classic.
“Deep throat
That’s all she wrote…”
(Ex-boyfriend used to sing this all the time.)
Earliest use of the phrase of which I’m aware is by Hank Williams in the song “Dear John” (circa 1949).
The song is (obviously) about a “Dear John” letter. The singer’s wife takes all his money out of the bank, writes him a note and takes off.
And that’s all she wrote:
“Dear John,
I sent your saddle home.”
The phrase “that’s all she wrote” gets repeated throughout the lyrics.
I don’t know whether Hank Williams was incorporating a phrase that was already in popular use, or whether people picked up the phrase from the song. Anyone?
The TV show Murder She Wrote and the phrase “That’s all she wrote” are unrelated. The TV show title was a slight variation on the title of the 1961 movie Murder She Said, which was based on an Agatha Christie novel called 4:50 from Paddington. I have a vague memory about the title of the movie being based on the fact that Miss Marple at one point in the film says, “Murder most foul,” quoting Shakespeare.
I know that it basically means “Everything After That Is History” or “No Need To Say Any More”
As far as the origin, I cannot find it - But i found a site where you can look up the origins of many other phrases as such.
From The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Revised and Expanded Edition by Robert Hendrickson:
It’s not the most authoritative source I’ve ever cited, but it is the one that had this phrase in it. 
A little further research reveals that the Hank Williams song “Dear John” (a top ten hit) came out in 1951. Lyrics here.
KneadToKnow’s post sounds like the most likely explanation. Sounds like the phrase started as a bit of World War II slang, referring to “Dear John” letters received by G.I.s. The Hank Williams song may have further popularized an already-existing usage.
That’s really comprehensive. Thank you. I have a memory of discussing the phrase with another interested person such a long time ago but failing to discover the origin then. It was some time in the ZX81 epoch. What about that? Did anyone else have one of those?
>>It was some time in the ZX81 epoch. What about that? Did anyone else have one of those?
Aye, that was a real computer! Now the kids these days, they complain about memory… we had one K of memory and we liked it! Assembly? Our computers came as a pile of resistors and chips and a circuit board and we soldered it ourselves! And we were grateful for the chance!
Not like the kids today, I’ll tell you…
I wish you could have taught my brother all that. He is much younger than me and it was him I bought a ZX81 for. At that time I was busy working in job in which I was not required to use a computer. I just left him to play with it and he only ever used it for games. The games were announced by a loud booming voice though which you could hear all over the house and which I can never forget. Over and over it would boom “You are now playing rings of Saturn Rings of Saturn”. Do you remember that? He still has the computer and the manual but not the games thank God. I’m still driving a car that was made in the year before that computer was. It still goes perfectly. Amazing.