Belle and Mary The No2 Dalton Square Murders

Belle and Mary: No 2 Dalton Square Murders is currently on exhibition at Lancaster City Museum

Transcript

00:00Belle and Mary is a petite exhibition and we focus on Buck Ruxton's two victims, Isabella

00:12and Mary. It's 90 years since they were murdered. We felt it was just quite fitting following their

00:20recent burials. We chose not to focus on Buck Ruxton because things like this, it's always

00:27about the murderer rather than victims and particularly Mary, Mary Ann Rogerson who was a

00:33local girl from Morecambe and who was their nursemaid. She was just shy of her 20th birthday.

00:43Unfortunately she witnessed Ruxton strangling his wife Bella and as a witness Ruxton killed her too.

00:57The charges were dropped against Buck Ruxton for her murder because it was thought by the Crown

01:04that pursuing the charge of murdering Isabella would have more traction. So the family never really

01:13got justice for the murder of Mary. For us, 90 years on we felt it was really important that we

01:22showed these two women as individuals so we wanted to get objects out from the museum collection

01:30that show who these ladies were. One of which is a beautiful letter written from Mary to one of her

01:38friends while she was on holiday but looking after the Ruxton's three children and she's having an

01:46incredible time. She has a new bathing suit and she's making herself a red dress. She doesn't know how

01:52she's going to go back to work after having such a wonderful summer. You really get a sense of who

01:59who Mary was. We have a lovely postcard photograph of Mary standing on some steps in her housemaid's

02:08uniform looking really happy. She was five foot one and a little bit and she had these incredibly striking

02:16blue eyes. A really engaging smile. Just a young woman completely in the prime of her life and really

02:27looking forward to her future. It's some of these really personal objects that we have in our collection

02:35that speak louder than any sort of story can really. Isabella Ruxton was not actually married to

02:43Buck Ruxton. They were in a common law relationship which is quite unusual for the time. She was 34 when

02:52she was killed so she was still a young lady and mother of three children. She met Buck in her mid-20s

02:59up in Edinburgh. She was a gregarious, fun-loving woman who loved life. She loved people. She loved dancing.

03:09She was a very striking young woman who unfortunately married someone who became quite obsessive.

03:19And we actually had some relatives of Mary's in the museum last week looking at the exhibition

03:28and I learned so much more from talking to them as well about how the family

03:35dealt with this horrific situation and the loss of Mary. For them to be able to come and see things

03:44that relate to their family and to be able to share with us these personal stories is very much important

03:51because it keeps that person's story alive. It keeps us talking about them and they'll never be forgotten.

03:59It's really important that museums are recognised for the work that they do in keeping local history

04:08there for people there for people to research, to learn from, to share, to discuss, to debate even.

04:16This little exhibition, it's not sensationalising a story, it's talking about two ordinary women

04:23who were thrust into a completely extraordinary circumstance.