Why the Edinburgh murder of a 'drunken wife' inspires book on other side of world

Edinburgh in the late 19th Century where petitions were circulated around the city to secure mercy for wife killer Edwin Salt. Edinburgh in the late 19th Century where petitions were circulated around the city to secure mercy for wife killer Edwin Salt.
Edinburgh in the late 19th Century where petitions were circulated around the city to secure mercy for wife killer Edwin Salt. | Getty Images (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Edwin Salt was a man who never made good his second chance.

In press reports of the day, Edwin Salt - who was convicted of the murder of his wife - was described simply as an “unhappy man” who had endured a miserable home life.

His wife Mary Ann, meanwhile, was decried as a wretched drunk and a poor mother who provoked her husband to kill her, even though she was passed out at the time he fatally attacked her with a poker at their home in Juniper Green in 1860.

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Salt, an exciseman who was also fond of the drink, was found guilty of murder by majority and faced death by hanging but the case quickly aroused such public sympathy for the man who endured great “melancholy” at home that petitions were laid out in the main streets of the capital in bid to save him.

Such was the power of the campaign, Salt’s sentence was commuted to a life of penal servitude in Australia just days before he was due at the gallows.

Within two years of arriving on a convict ship in Fremantle in 1862, he was able to go about his business, albeit under curfew, and was given a conditional pardon in 1872, making him a free man. Meanwhile, Mary Ann was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Colinton.

Now, the story of Edwin Salt and the fate of his wife has inspired a novel on the other side of the world - The Silence of Water - after author Sharron Booth made a chance discovery in prison records while researching a family history.

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Sharron Booth, author of The Silence of Water .Sharron Booth, author of The Silence of Water .
Sharron Booth, author of The Silence of Water . | contributed

After going down several “rabbit holes” of research, the many secrets that Salt carried with him to Australia, and their impact on those around him over several generations, started to emerge.

Ms Booth said: “Salt was a man who just had wreckage around him all his life from broken marriages, separation of family, violence and this ugly and difficult behaviour. He someohow managed for the rest of his life in Western Australia to cover this up. “That is not the kind of convict story we are used to hearing in Western Australia.

“We are used to convict stories about the men who made good - and Edwin Salt was not one of those.”

John Ross, the assistant chaplain at the Prison of Edinburgh, circulated a petition following Salt’s conviction and set out his case for mercy in a letter to The Scotsman on February 22, 1860.

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Ross wrote of the “great provocation” that Salt endured and the jury’s wish, despite the majority guilty verdict, that he be shown mercy.

Meanwhile, the public were unaware of the “melacholy history of this unhappy man’s miserable home” where he endured the “almost unparalleled drunkenness of the poor woman”.

When researching the book, Ms Booth found “stacks” of letters and petition papers in the National Archives at Kew in support of Salt.

Ms Booth said: “Meanwhile, so many column inches of the coverage were devoted to how much Mary Ann had had to drink. It was as if she was on trial for what happened.”

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Many of the details of the “brutal” autopsy were left out of the book, she added.

“I didn’t want to exploit her further. I felt she had been exploited enough. She never had an opportunity to speak for herself,” Ms Booth said.

“I felt like I had witnessed a crime and I feel like I had to do justice to the victims - and there were multiple.”

Edwin Salt died in Freemantle, Australia in 1910 aged approximately 85. Silence Over the Water is dedicated to Mary Ann.

Silence Over the Water is available now and published by Fremantle Press.

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