What is Murder, Mystery and My Family?
In the hit family history TV series Murder, Mystery and My Family, criminal barristers Sasha Wass and Jeremy Dein reinvestigate a murder case from British history. They interview the descendants of those involved and apply the more rigorous standards of modern-day criminal justice to ask: was the right person convicted?
When is Murder, Mystery and My Family on TV?
Series 5 of Murder, Mystery and My Family will start airing on BBC One on Monday 28 June 2021. All ten episodes will be broadcast over consecutive days at 11am each day. The episodes will also be available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
What is the new series about?
Series 5 of Murder, Mystery and My Family begins with the case of Henry Jacoby. On 13 March 1922, after an evening playing cards, a wealthy widow named Lady Alice White headed for bed at the Spencer Hotel in London’s Marylebone. The next morning a chambermaid found White covered in blood and close to death. She had suffered horrific injuries, including a fractured skull, and died a day later.
Despite there being little evidence, an 18-year-old pantry boy, Jacoby, was hanged for the crime on 7 June. Having previously confessed, Jacoby changed his story at trial but it was to no avail. The jury took just 43 minutes to find him guilty. Nearly a century later, Jacoby’s relative Peter, whose grandmother cared for Jacoby when he was young, thinks there are grounds to question the conviction. Was the confession forced? Did class prejudice influence the decision?
Other cases in the series include the brutal murder of a barge captain, an apparent case of matricide, and the 19th-century ambush of a police van carrying two political prisoners from the cause of Irish independence.
Rosemary Collins is the staff writer of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine
