Blanche Bastable

The Daughter Who Shot Her Mother

By: Alana Sanchez

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In a quiet Dorset village, the unthinkable shattered the fragile order of family life.

Blanche Bastable was a farmer’s daughter from rural Victorian England, a young woman whose mind appeared to be slipping beyond the understanding of those around her. What began as private distress within the home would end in one of the most shocking forms of domestic violence imaginable: a daughter turning a gun on her own mother.

But this is more than the story of a crime.

It is the story of a household under strain, of a mother at the centre of family life, of a daughter unravelling in a world that had little mercy for troubled women, and of the cold institutional fate that awaited those judged both dangerous and mad. From the quiet fields of Dorset to the shadowed confines of Broadmoor, Blanche Bastable: The Daughter Who Shot Her Mother traces a haunting case of matricide, mental collapse, and Victorian society’s uneasy treatment of women who could not be contained.