The Wench is Dead
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Colin Dexter |
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| Cover artist | Matthew Cook |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Inspector Morse series, #8 |
| Genre | crime novel |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
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Publication date
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26 October 1989 (1st edition) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 200p. (hardcover edition) |
| ISBN | (hardcover edition) |
| OCLC | 21118477 |
| LC Class | PR6054.E96 W46 1989 |
| Preceded by | The Secret of Annexe 3 |
| Followed by | The Jewel That Was Ours |
The Wench Is Dead is a historical crime novel by Colin Dexter, the eighth novel in the Inspector Morse series. The novel received the Gold Dagger Award in 1989.
In 1859, the body of a young woman was found floating in the Oxford Canal; her death led to a sensational murder trial, and two men were eventually hanged for the murder.
In 1989, Inspector Morse is recovering from a bleeding ulcer in Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Morse is given a book by the wife of a recently deceased patient at the hospital. The little book called Murder on the Oxford Canal tells the story of the murder of Joanna Franks aboard the canal boat Barbara Bray. Morse is soon convinced that the two men hanged for the crime were innocent and sets out to prove it from the confines of his bed.
The title of the novel comes from Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta; the following quotation serves as the epigraph to the novel:
Colin Dexter based the novel on the 1839 murder of 37-year-old Christina Collins as she travelled the Trent and Mersey Canal at Rugeley, Staffordshire, on the Staffordshire Knot en route to London. Of the four crewmen, captain James Owen and boatman George Thomas were hanged for the murder by William Calcraft and assistant George Smith, while boatman William Ellis was transported for his involvement (following a last minute reprieve from his death sentence), and cabin boy William Muston was not charged. The evidence was largely circumstantial; the three accused were drunk at the time of the woman's death, numerous witnesses attested to Collins being distressed as the men used sexually explicit language towards her, and all four men (including the cabin boy) were seen to have lied in court in an attempt to pin the blame on each other and to escape punishment. The three accused stated that Collins jumped into the canal of her own accord and drowned, despite the fact that the water at the particular section of the canal was less than four foot in depth. Alan Hayhurst, author of 2008 book Staffordshire Murders states that "this author does not agree with Mr Dexter's conclusions!"
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