Erdington

But this is episode 176.

They had a ballroom and it is the story of Mary Ashford and Barbara Forrest from Erdington, England.

Super interesting.

Definitely give it a listen.

I actually signed up for their subscription to read these stories, but they were my main source and they killed it.

All right.

On Monday, May 26th, 1817, in Erdington, which is a small suburb of Birmingham, England, a 20-year-old by the name of Mary Ashford was getting ready to go to work.

On her way to work, she stopped by her friend's house, Hannah Cox, to drop off clothes for that night.

Morning, Matt.

It's Wayne from Erdington in Birmingham.

If the rest of the British Isles wanna go their own way, let them go their own way.

Let them all have a referendum.

[laughs] Okay, with Maria Lena Skillings.

Echoes of Erdington is the feature screenplay.

Uh, sh- it is from the Horror Festival.

Great screenplay.

Like, where did the, where did the story come for you?

So essentially, um, I had a roommate who was very obsessed with true crime, and, um, she told me about a story about two identical murders that had happened 157 years apart.

So then I started doing some digging online, and in Erdington, England, um, there was a young woman who was murdered in the 1800s, um, by a man named Abraham Thornton.

Um, but there wasn't enough evidence to convict him.

Don't put your eggs in the basket.

This is Erdington.

It feels, you know, after the excitement, this feels old-fashioned and mundane, doesn't it? We had the youth come in.

smashed the thing apart.

We lived in East London for 16 years.

and we packed up our home and we grieved and left the church that we were able to revitalize in 2010 that we planted and then we've now moved to Birmingham we are in Erdington there's a story to tell there's more to come on that but I get to minister now in Birmingham and as part of relocating we moved into a house and um The house we moved into doesn't quite have the room we needed.

My wife Becky, she needed an office.

I needed an office, needed a place to record podcasts and all the video stuff that I might do.

Again, another one that came down with my grandfather from up in the northeast to make a life here.

They lived over in Erdington.

The beauty was they lived about a five minute walk from my other grandparents.

So we could always pop round and go and see them.

He says, he said, I'm a big photographer for Lord Leonard Hardy.

He used to be one of the, we went to his house in Erdington, right? I tell you, he had the whole house.

You enter, statues of Laurel and Hardy, right? And walked in there.

It's amazing, you know, who you meet there.

Even members of The Proof to discuss the upcoming release of this Ali G movie.

Now, as somebody who was in year seven, year eight, when the explosion of Ali G was around and someone who went to school in Erdington, Birmingham, I'm qualified to speak on the impact it had at the time.

Now, at the time, Ali G, the character was used as a tool to bully black youth.

Now, I don't know how it went in all black schools or majority black schools.

Sir Josiah Mason.

One sunny morning in June, I went out five miles from the great manufacturing city of Birmingham, England, to the pretty town called Erdington to see the Mason Orphanage.

I found an immense brick structure with high Gothic towers in the midst of 13 acres of velvety lawn.

Over the portals of the building were the words, Do Deeds of Love.

Surely truth is stranger than fiction.

To what honor and renown had come the humble peddler.

On the following twenty-fifth of June, Sir Josiah Mason was born to his grave in the Erdington Mausoleum.

Three hundred and fifty orphan children followed his coffin, which was carried by eight servants, all working men, as he had requested.