Content Warning: This text features discussions of ableism, religious intolerance and bigotry, sexual assault, enslavement, sexism, suicide, and emotional abuse.

Mary and Barnaby Rudge Jr. have lived alone (with Barnaby’s raven, Grip) since the disappearance and supposed death of Barnaby Rudge Sr. 22 years before the beginning of the novel. Barnaby Rudge Sr. was the steward to the late Rueben Haredale, but he murdered his employer and faked his death to avoid detection. He told his wife, Mary, about the murders but she, then pregnant with Barnaby Jr., shunned him and he has wandered throughout England in the 22 years since.

Mary is kind, pious, and highly devoted to Barnaby Jr., whom she supports with the annuity settled on her family by Geoffrey Haredale after her husband’s “death.” She is from Chigwell and was once courted by Gabriel Varden and is good friends with him, Haredale, and Haredale’s niece, Emma, who all look after her before she moves out of London. Though she despises her husband for his actions, she promises him she will love him again if he repents, which he does not.

Barnaby Rudge Jr., the titular character of the novel, was born with a red birthmark on his wrist that looks like blood and an unspecified intellectual disability, which are both attributed to the crimes of his namesake.