Mums Mysteries & Murder · Marti & Cheryl

The Life & Almost Death of Maggie Dickson

·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

Maggie Dickson says the baby was stillborn and she left him by the River Tweed after panicking.

The episode opens with Marty and Effie catching up in person and joking about how odd it feels to be recording off Zoom. They talk about cameras, filming, and how easy it is to get distracted by a screen instead of looking at each other. The tone stays loose from the start, with side comments and domestic tangents before the case properly takes over. An ad read sits at the top of the episode, but the conversation soon returns to the hosts' familiar back-and-forth. Then the show shifts into Maggie's life. Maggie is described as poor and already under pressure. She has two young children and works as a fish hawker, so the wages are not much. The hosts pause on how difficult that must have been in the 1720s, especially for a woman on her own who would have been heavily dependent on her husband. Her husband leaves, either to join the Royal Navy or simply to find work elsewhere, and the result is the same: Maggie is left behind in a very difficult position. The hosts linger on the hardship and even joke about the smell of fish and the unpleasantness of poor pre-modern hygiene, which adds some comic relief without softening the bleakness of the situation. Maggie is still young, only in her early twenties. With little money and two children to support, she decides to move to a small town called Kelso in the Borders. There she gets work as a domestic servant in an inn, which the hosts treat as a practical step up because it gives her food and somewhere to stay. The children are with her, so the move also feels more manageable. The story then begins to circle around the inn and the circumstances that follow, while keeping the focus on Maggie as a real woman trying to get by rather than just a historical curiosity. The conversation stays informal, with corrections, jokes, and small surprises, and that looseness remains part of the show's texture throughout.

As heard by us

A relaxed, human retelling that keeps Maggie's hardship in clear focus.

The episode keeps Maggie at the center as a woman carrying plain, difficult burdens: a husband gone, little money, two young children, and work as a fish hawker in the 1720s, when being alone left a woman heavily reliant on marriage.

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Why you'd press play

A historical murder story told with warmth, banter, and plenty of asides.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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