The talks is based on my published book, "One Morning in May."

The year is 1817 and a young country girl, Mary Ashford is looking forward to the annual Whitsun dance, which is held at a local Coaching Inn. She attends the dance with her friend, Hannah Cox. She meets a local farmer, Abraham Thornton. They dance the night away and leave at the stroke of midnight and begin their walk home on a fresh May night. Mary is never seen alive again.

She is found dead in a marl pit in the grounds of Pype Hayes Hall in north Birmingham. She had been violently attacked and flung in the pit to drown. Abraham Thornton is accused. The evidence it seems is overwhelming. He has Mary’s blood on his shirt, his footprint was found by the pit, he was the last person to be seen with Mary, and above all he admitted having sex with her after the dance.

In August of that year Thornton appeared at Warwick Assizes. It took the jury eight minutes to acquit him. However, such was the anger in the village of Erdington that a fund was set up for the family to reopen the case. Astute lawyers use the ancient law of DOUBLE JEOPARDY and Thornton is re-arrested on All Soul’s Eve and taken to the Old Bailey, in London.

As new evidence is gathered and rumours abound that the jury, “Were not all they were supposed to be,” raised Mary’s family’s hopes. What happens next? Was he found guilty? Was justice ever found?

Let's fast forward to 1974. Erdington is no longer a rural village but a thriving Birmingham suburb. A young woman called Barbara Forrest comes to Birmingham from Corby to start a new life as a Child Care Officer at the rambling Jacobean Hall, Pype Hayes Hall.

During the May Bank Holiday of that year Barbara went to a dance in Birmingham. She caught the Night Bus home but she never made it back to the Hall that night. The date was May 27th exactly 157 years to the day of Mary’s death.

The case of Mary and indeed Barbara has fascinated and indeed frustrated authors, sleuths, the police over the years and to this day there has never been an adequate explanation and one is left with an open verdict. What will you think?!