Thou Savage Woman

‘A fascinating read. Adams navigates the evidence with the calm clarity of a detective and an eye for titillating detail… This is popular history at its best, where the past is brought vividly, albeit gruesomely, to life, and we come a step closer to making sense of that most elusive of things: the strange contours of our ancestors’ minds’

Spectator

‘Riveting.. Blessin Adams’s boisterous account of female killers in ‘early modern Britain’ (roughly the era of Shakespeare) is replete with stabbings, bashing and thumping… Men could get away with things – even murder! – as ‘male violence was considered to be normal and, in certain circumstances, even honourable’. Women weren’t allowed to say boo to a goose. Which is why their crimes, once discovered, were ‘more outrageous, frightening and disturbing’

Daily Mail

‘Fascinating… As Adams explores in clear-eyed, often vivid prose, the cases of these women accused of murder – from servants to witches to wealthy wives – were used as titillating warnings to women and men about the importance of maintaining social order…riveting’

Daily Telegraph

Blessin Adams traded police work investigating today’s crime in the Norfolk Constabulary for academia, tracing the lives and deaths of people in early modern England. Blessin received her doctorate following research in early modern English law and literature at the University of East Anglia. As a fan of true crime she is fascinated by historical stories of murder and justice. She lives in Norfolk with her husband and two dogs, and is a beekeeper in her spare time.