Living Museums is dedicated to history and heritage projects - created with and for young people
Mary Morgan and her world
In 1805, in the town of Presteigne, Mary Morgan was put on trial for the crime of infanticide. She was found guilty, and hanged. She was 17.
It was very unusual in those days for someone to be hanged for this crime.
There are two gravestones to Mary in the churchyard in Presteigne. One reads:
To the Memory of Mary Morgan, who young and beautiful, endowed with a good understanding and disposition, but unenlightened by the sacred truths of Christianity, became the victim of sin and shame and was condemned to an ignominious death on the 11th April 1805, for the Murder of her bastard Child.
The other reads:
In Memory of Mary Morgan who Suffered April 13th 1805
Aged 17 years.
He that is without sin among you
Let him first cast a stone at her
the 8th chapter of St. John, part of the second verse
The two gravestones suggest very different attitudes to Mary and her crime.
Presteigne
This map is from Presteigne Past and Present by W.H. Howse.
It shows the town in 1945 (the year the book was published).
The slide show features images of the town, mostly dating from the early 1900s.
↓ To Maesllwch Castle
We have modified the map from Howse's book, to feature only those things we know were there in 1805. Click on the tags, to hear descriptions of different buildings and locations, and more information about the trial.
KEY
1. Gallows Lane
2. The Warden
3. Radnorshire Arms
4. Town Cross
5. Grammar School
6. Rectory
7. Graveyard
8. Curfew Bell: St Andrew's Church
9. Workhouse
10. The Great Sessions
11. Shire Hall
12. Gaol
13. Lugg Bridge
14. Maesllwch Castle
The Trial
Click on the tag, to hear Judge Hardinge's verdict at the conclusion of the trial
The Mary Morgan Project
In 1992, Dorothy Heathcote led a project about Mary with a class of 8 year-old, in Cape Primary School, Birmingham. She observed: "And of course, the material sounds a bit horrendous. But in fact, the mystery was looked at through this: two gravestones, on one grave - one seeming to condemn her, and one seeming to forgive her. And we felt this was something the children could handle."
The class teacher was Bogusia Matusiak-Varley. At first, she was concerned about using this topic with 8-year-olds. She said: "I hadn't dealt with death before [in the classroom], and I most certainly hadn't dealt with murder. ... I was just absolutely horrified. I thought: what am I going to do? … What are the parents going to say? How are the children going to take it?"
After the project ended, however, she was convinced that it is only by breaking conventions "that you get the best work". Dorothy commented:
"I know everything will work. I know there is no material, based in human ideas and concerns, that will not work, because the teacher plans it carefully, and very tactfully."
As Dorothy observed, the teacher must come to their own decision about working with material like this:
"You come back to your own sense of what is right for a teacher to do. I can't advise you, and I certainly wouldn’t presume to advise you. I know that there will be no horror, when I deal with it... There will be the compassion to understand how it might have been for such a lady, under those circumstances. But you make your own choice. The problem is, that frequently, we choose the bland choice; and this makes an even larger separation in children's lives, from what they may see around them, or what they may see on the television - so school seems even more unreal, in the material we present them with. We protect children into experience [in drama]. We don't protect them out of it. We protect them into it. And therefore, we are the judge of what we are prepared to do. We are responsible for our choices. And of course, human affairs range from the most heroic, splendid acts, to the most sordid. And you draw your line where you will."
Quotes from: Making Drama Work: In the Classroom, Tape 1 (University of Newcastle, 1992). You can hear Dorothy talking about the project on the video, above.