In 1849, a woman called Ellen Langley died in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. She was the wife of a prosperous local doctor. So why was she buried in a pauper's coffin? Why had she been confined to the grim attic of the house she shared with her husband, and then exiled to a rented dwelling-room in an impoverished part of the famine-ravaged town? And why was her husband charged with murder? Following every twist and turn of the inquest into Ellen Langley's death and the trial of her husband, The Doctor's Wife is Dead tells the story of an unhappy marriage, of a man's confidence that he could get away with abusing his wife, and of the brave efforts of a number of ordinary citizens to hold him to account. Andrew Tierney has produced a tour de force of narrative nonfiction that illuminates the weave of money, sex, ambition and respectability that defined the possibilities and limits of married life. It is a gripping portrait of a society and a shocking legal drama.

Author Biography

Andrew Tierney, a native of Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, is a distant descendant of Ellen Langley. Trained as an archaeologist, he is working on the inaugural Pevsner Architectural Guide to the Irish midlands. The Doctor's Wife is Deadis his first book.