# The Red Barn Murder **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 17, 2017, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724 "2017-12-17T18:34:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SeniorCitizen007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@SeniorCitizen007](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeniorCitizen007)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/1 "2017-12-17T18:34:52Z")
In 1827, in Polstead, Suffolk, Maria Marten was murdered by her lover William Corder. > **[Red Barn Murder](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barn_Murder)** > > The Red Barn Murder was a 1827 killing in Polstead, Suffolk, England. A young woman, Maria Marten, was shot dead by her lover, William Corder at the Red Barn, a local landmark. The two had arranged to meet before eloping to Ipswich. Corder sent letters to Marten's family claiming that she was well, but after her stepmother spoke of having dreamed that Maria had been murdered, her body was next year discovered in the barn. > Corder was tracked down in London, where he had married. He was returned... Until the 1970s I had no knowledge of my family’s connection to this event. Prior to discovering that my direct line female ancestry leads back to Polstead … Maria Marten was my G G G Grandmother’s cousin, I had from childhood experienced on several occasions a very scary and startling waking dream. I’d close my eyes and immediately see a decomposing head … that seemed to be “alive”. The Wiki article doesn’t mention it but during the trial the pathologist caused a sensation (so The Times reported) by producing Maria Marten’s head from a bag, in open court,. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/2 "2017-12-17T18:44:25Z")
Interesting coincidence. But doesn’t everybody see decomposing heads when they close their eyes? ---
**Author:** ![SeniorCitizen007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@SeniorCitizen007](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeniorCitizen007)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/3 "2017-12-17T18:56:35Z")
Recently there has been speculation that events experienced by long dead ancestors can be epigenetically transmitted to the consciousness … my experiences always happened when I was very tired. R D Laing (a psychiatrist who attracted world-wide attention in the 60s and 70) speculated that mental illness may have something to do with the experiences of ancestors. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/4 "2017-12-17T19:49:08Z")
> [@SeniorCitizen007](#): > > Recently there has been speculation that events experienced by long dead ancestors can be epigenetically transmitted to the consciousness … Recently? Like, after 1973? ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/5 "2017-12-17T22:53:18Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Interesting coincidence. But doesn’t everybody see decomposing heads when they close their eyes? …and open. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/6 "2017-12-17T23:04:33Z")
So, if someone hears about or sees their cousin’s decapitated head, the memory can be genetically passed on for five generations? I’m not seeing the benefit or the mechanism. Much more likely that you heard a story about the head when very young, with the fearful image sticking in memory, but not the memory of hearing the story/stories. Fear memory is much stronger than episodic memory. Still, it’s an interesting bit of family history. * * * Just a quick check on R.D. shows his ideas “ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day”, and that day was before genetic screening and brain scans. His big theory was that mental illness was the result of a battle between your true self and the expected self that your family and society had constructed. So, no genetic component to mental illness. It’s your family’s fault or the world’s fault. I can’t find anything about him hypothesizing inherited memories. He seemed to have been against heredity and pro personal influence, in general. Although there were comments that he got odd after being withdrawn from the medical register in 1987 due to alcoholism, so he could have said something about inherited memories then. Personally, the views of anyone described as A Sixties Celebrity Guru should be taken with a grain of salt. A movie of his life, [with David Tennant playing him](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-38816660), will be released in the US February 2018. ---
**Author:** ![SeniorCitizen007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@SeniorCitizen007](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeniorCitizen007)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/7 "2017-12-17T23:30:27Z")
Laing’s analyst, Dr David Cooper, was eventually sectioned … after he began clamiing that other psychiatrists were putting evil spirits into patients they sent to him. Laing, in his later life, had a habit of fleeing the room when disturbed patients started acting up. Both Cooper and Laing became alcoholics … after experimenting with a wide range of psychedic drugs. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/8 "2017-12-17T23:42:14Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/9 "2017-12-18T05:41:08Z")
> [@SeniorCitizen007](#): > > Recently there has been speculation that events experienced by long dead ancestors can be epigenetically transmitted to the consciousness … Not by anyone with even a passing working understanding of what epigenetics is. What a load of nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Niply\_Elder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@The\_Niply\_Elder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Niply_Elder)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/10 "2017-12-18T08:12:17Z")
Yes but assassins creed is a really dope video game. Sci-fi tho of course. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/11 "2017-12-18T11:43:14Z")
Hardy Boys, Book Number 28. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/12 "2017-12-18T12:51:30Z")
> [@SeniorCitizen007](#): > > I’d close my eyes and immediately see a decomposing head … that seemed to be “alive”. The Wiki article doesn’t mention it but during the trial the pathologist caused a sensation (so The Times reported) by producing Maria Marten’s head from a bag, in open court,. But Marten’s head wasn’t ‘decomposing’ when the surgeon, John Lawton, produced it at the trial - it was just the skull. Indeed, according to the author of [the published account of the trial](https://archive.org/stream/b20443237#page/174/mode/2up), ‘it did not exhibit a very ghastly appearance’ (p. 174 footnote). ---
**Author:** ![SeniorCitizen007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@SeniorCitizen007](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeniorCitizen007)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/13 "2017-12-18T16:22:59Z")
My G G G Grandmother, Sarah Bedford, Maria’s cousin, was 15 at the time of the trial. In 1833 she became pregnant out of wedlock. She baptised her child as Emmaretta Bedford … then got a bastardy order against a man she claimed was the father. He, faced with having to support the child, which would mean he could not support a wife as well, reluctantly married her. … but never acknowledged Emmaretta as his daughter. There was no other child in the locality with the name Emmaretta. Corder was at risk of having to support Maria’s child if she got herself pregnant by another man and claimed the child was his. ---
**Author:** ![sweet\_chemist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@sweet\_chemist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweet_chemist)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/14 "2017-12-18T17:56:33Z")
Very interesting **SeniorCitizen007** , was it also a style of the time to tie an onion to your belt? ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/15 "2017-12-18T19:01:49Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Hardy Boys, Book Number 28. [Murder In The Red Barn is also a terrific Tom Waits song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcvQsetOV4g): > [@](#): > > Now a lady can’t do nothin’ > Without folks’ tongues waggin’ > Is this blood on the tree > Or is it autumn’s red blaze? > When the ground’s soft for diggin’ > And the rain will bring all this gloom > There’s nothing wrong with a lady > Drinking alone in her room ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/16 "2017-12-18T19:11:59Z")
Old Tom sure can create a scene/mood. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/17 "2017-12-18T19:42:12Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Old Tom sure can create a scene/mood. He’s a goddamn lyrical genius: > [@](#): > > Road kill has its seasons > Just like anything > It’s possums in the autumn > And it’s farm cats in the spring ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-red-barn-murder/804724/18 "2017-12-18T19:51:53Z")
Case in point, and carrying on the barn theme, [Don’t Go Into That Barn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRSBmalHDV0): They found the falling down timbers Of a spooky old barn Out there like a slave ship Upside down Wrecked beneath the waves of grain When the river is low They find old bones and When they plow they always Dig up chains