The mystery of the sapphic suicides: Two women found dead and erotic letters written in code. Now an expert has finally unravelled the truth behind case that gripped Edwardian Britain

  • Augusta McGowan, 24, was found dead in rural Essex home in September 1905
  • The clues to Augusta's demise lay in two letters that were found next to her body
  • Another young woman, Theodora Uniacke, was found dead just five miles away 
Entering the sitting room at the rectory of the small parish of Nevendon, in rural Essex, the maidservant saw her mistress, Augusta McGowan, the young wife of the rector, lying prone on a chaise.
She was dead — with the two bottles marked 'poison' lying nearby suggesting suicide. The high-spirited Augusta, 24, was apparently happy and well-liked in the parish. So why would she have killed herself?
That was the question suddenly on the lips of every newspaper reader in Edwardian Britain, as reports of the incident in September 1905 took the country by storm. Indeed, what followed was a sensational maelstrom that incorporated a lesbian affair, erotic poetry, poison, suicide, coded telegrams and a paedophile parish priest.
The clues to Augusta's demise lay in two letters found next to her body, one written by her to her mother, another to her blind husband, the Reverend Willie McGowan, written in Braille.
And so the inquest into her death was adjourned until it could be translated and an autopsy performed.
The deaths of two young women within two days, five miles apart, presented a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes. For Theodora and Augusta were, it emerged, more than just good friends (file image)
The deaths of two young women within two days, five miles apart, presented a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes. For Theodora and Augusta were, it emerged, more than just good friends (file image) 
But then, two days after Augusta's death, the mystery deepened when another young woman, Theodora Uniacke, was found dead just five miles away.
There was nothing suspicious about Theodora's death as she had been seriously ill with pulmonary tuberculosis for over a year.
But a policeman happened to know that she and Augusta McGowan were friends. Furthermore, alongside the two letters found with Augusta's body there had been a telegram that said, 'Theodora is asleep,' from one F. Uniacke — Frances Uniacke, mother of Theodora.
The deaths of two young women within two days, five miles apart, presented a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
For Theodora and Augusta were, it emerged, more than just good friends. Indeed, a story of a highly intimate relationship unfurled, gripping the nation and dominating newspaper headlines.
But, as so often with scandals, it burned brightly then died away and has long since been forgotten.
Until now, thanks to the detective work of Ellen Crowell, professor of English and an expert on Oscar Wilde at St Louis University, Missouri, whose enthralling account of the mystery has just featured in The Times Literary Supplement.
Professor Crowell first encountered the story in the diary of the artist Charles Ricketts, a contemporary of Wilde's, who wrote that he was 'aghast' at a newspaper report he had read.
Intrigued, Professor Crowell began digging, using contemporary newspaper reports to piece together this fascinating tale of doomed, illicit love.
'The accounts of the inquests,' she says, 'made it very clear that it was a passionate and — in 1905 —inappropriate friendship.'
The friendship began after Augusta, aged only 18, married the blind rector, 22 years her senior, and came to live at Nevendon.
Until now, thanks to the detective work of Ellen Crowell, professor of English and an expert on Oscar Wilde at St Louis University, Missouri, whose enthralling account of the mystery has just featured in The Times Literary Supplement (file image)
Until now, thanks to the detective work of Ellen Crowell, professor of English and an expert on Oscar Wilde at St Louis University, Missouri, whose enthralling account of the mystery has just featured in The Times Literary Supplement (file image) 
Through him she met Theodora, and at some point their friendship evolved into something more.
At the inquest into Theodora's death, the coroner asked her mother why she had sent that 'peculiar' telegram stating, 'Theodora is asleep'? Mrs Uniacke explained that it was in response to a telegram from Augusta that 'was rather difficult to answer'.
When pressed to produce this 'difficult' telegram, she resisted, saying: 'I am exceedingly anxious not to be mixed up in any way with the affairs of the McGowan family.'
But the coroner insisted that she produce the telegram when Augusta's inquest resumed.
When it did, the doctor who had carried out the autopsy reported that Augusta had taken 'more than a fatal dose' of morphine.
Then came the telegram that Mrs Uniacke had tried to withhold. It read: 'THEODORA. 2 GROVE-ROAD. 1.3 31. DOWSON STELLA MARIS ARTHUR DORIAN JUST CONVEY TO APHRODITE ONE THING IF POSSIBLE.'
Augusta's father, Mr Woolard, explained to the coroner that his daughter was 'in the habit of sending code or cipher telegrams'.
The two women had been fans of 'Decadent poetry', or 'erotic verse' that they used in their code. This then-indecipherable code has now been cracked by Professor Crowell. As she explains, the numbers referred to pages in a book of poetry by Ernest Dowson, poems about separation and devotion. Stella Maris was the title of a poem about forbidden love:
'That joy, not shame, is ours to share,
'Joy that we had the frank delight,
'To choose the chances of one night…'
Meanwhile, the names Aphrodite and Dorian stood for Augusta and Theodora. And given the telegram's emphasis on only 'one thing', Professor Cowell believes Augusta simply wanted to know that Theodora was still alive. So when Theodora's mother, oblivious to the message's meaning, telegrammed back abruptly that Theodora was 'sleeping,' Augusta made a similar mistake to Shakespeare's Juliet, assuming that her beloved was not 'sleeping' but dead.
Unable to bear life without Theodora, Augusta took a huge dose of morphine that she had been prescribed for a bad throat. And then, two days later, possibly further weakened by a broken heart, her desperately ill lover also passed away.
The Braille letter to Augusta's husband, by now translated, seemed to confirm grief as the reason for her suicide. 'I've cared for only one man — you. Others I've loathed and shrunk from. [But] I've given myself wholly now to my white Dorian [Theodora]. The hopelessness of her illness is killing me.'
Augusta, although affectionate towards her husband, felt that he had not reciprocated her previous devotion to him.
The reason for this? His interests clearly lay elsewhere, with young boys. For in a bizarre twist during the inquest, Aug-usta's widower, Reverend Willie McGowan, was arrested on charges of 'gross indecency.'
Three underage boys who had worked at the rectory accused him of sexual impropriety. They had been employed to guide the blind rector around and read to him. But, as they testified, he had molested them 'two or three times a week'.
Indeed, Augusta's father told the inquest that, he knew she had stopped sharing a bedroom with her husband after learning of his predilection for boys.
Her worried parents tried to persuade her to leave her husband and return to the family home but she would not part from the dying Theodora. 'She lived to make Miss Uniacke happy,' he said.
The jury clearly sympathised with Augusta, concluding that 'Mrs. McGowan committed suicide while in a state of melancholia, brought on by the neglect of the husband and the distress of Miss Uniacke's illness. The jury severely censured Mr McGowan for his conduct.'
Two weeks later the rector was sentenced to six months' hard labour for 'gross indecency'.
But the judge saved his harshest words for the rector's dead wife.
'It may be that had your wife been more attentive to you instead of so attentive to her female friend, she might have saved you,' he speculated. 'When a wife has an extreme affection for another female it is often at the expense of the husband.'
He even tried to shift responsibility onto the three boys.
'One cannot help thinking that had they been boys of a proper disposition this might have been nipped in the bud,' he fulminated.
There is no record of what happened to the rector after he served his sentence.
Indeed, all we are left with is the tragic tale of his wife and her doomed affair, one that remains as poignant today as it did over a century ago.

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