On 23rd March 1851, James Cage took his last breath, poisoned to death by his wife, Mary. The Press were quick to report on the murder and before long produced damning reports of Mary and her ‘depraved’ character, as evidenced in the extract from the 9 August 1851 Norfolk Chronicle, below:
“It will be remembered that just before the last Assizes, Mary Emily Cage, at Stonham, was examined on a charge of murdering her husband, by poisoning him. The case was remanded until the Summer Assize, and at half-past eight o’clock on Saturday last, the wretched woman was placed at the bar to take her trial for the offence. She exhibited little alteration in her appearance. It is not our intention to lift the veil from the domestic history of this woman, any further than the trial itself removed it, for unfortunately there is not a feature in it that is not degrading to our common humanity. – Messrs. Power and Mills prosecuted; Mr. W. Cooper defended.
The case presented features of great depravity. The deceased was an agricultural labourer, and with his wife, the prisoner, lived at Stonham Aspal. They had a family of seventeen children, but one of them, now a lad of twenty years of age, was not the result of wedlock. The deceased was imprisoned twelve months, and during his incarceration she cohabited with another man, and the result was the birth of the boy. During the last eighteen months, she left her husband not less than three times, and exposed her daughter, sixteen years of age, to be debauched. In other respects she led a very dissolute and depraved life…”
“Vote for Murder” is a murder mystery based on Mary’s life . It takes a more sympathetic view of her behaviour than the Victorian press, taking into account the abject poverty in which she found herself. The murder of James Cage contrasts with the second (fictional) murder set in a comfortable, middle-class household close to Christchurch Park in Ipswich. Both lead female characters are headstrong; Mary determined to behave as she sees fit despite the social conventions of the time and Louisa, a suffragist campaigning for the right of women to vote.
Vote for Murder is a work of ‘faction’, where historical fact meets fiction. From the first moment I read the Mary Cage story many years ago, the circumstances of the crime did not ‘feel’ as black & white as the press implied. Vote For Murder is my fictional interpretation of Mary’s life and times.
Vote for Murder is now available through the Amazon Kindle Store http://tinyurl.com/pbpzehr
Jacqueline Beard Writer 
I have just discovered Mary Emily Cage was my great, great, great grandmother on my mothers side, this will be an interesting read
They are a very interesting family. I hope you enjoy the book 🙂