Download or read book Crime and Criminals of Victorian England written by Adrian Gray and published by History Press (SC). This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crime & criminals of Victorian England
Download or read book Crime and Criminals of Victorian London written by Adrian Gray and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating exploration of the seedy underside of London life in the Victorian era, Adrian Gray provides a rich picture of the sheer variety of criminal activity in the city. While taking care to cover the familiar Dickensian themes of grisly murders and ragged street urchins, he also uses a range of dramatic but forgotten cases as evidence for patterns of crime, and to illustrate the causes and effects of changes in criminal law. Starting with murder and other violent crimes, he shows how pure greed and genuine mental illness were both responsible for unpleasant cases - such as the murder of an elderly aristocrat in his bed or the poisoning of a series of 'working girls'.
Download or read book Crime and Criminals of Victorian England written by Adrian Gray and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dark and foggy Victorian streets, the murderous madman, the arsenic-laced evening meal - we all think we know the realities of Victorian crime. Adrian Gray's thrilling book recounts the classic murders, by knife and poison, but it also covers much more, taking the reader into less familiar parts of Victorian life, uncovering the wicked, the vengeful, the foolish and the hopeless amongst the criminal world of the nineteenth century. Here you will encounter the women who sold their children, corrupt bankers, smugglers, highwaymen, the first terrorists, bloodthirsty mutineers and petty thieves; you will meet the 'mesmerists' who fooled a credulous public, and even the Salvation Army band that went to gaol. Gray journeys through the cities, villages, lanes, mills and sailing ships of the period, ranging from Carlisle to Cornwall, showing how our laws today have been shaped by what the Victorians considered acceptable - or made illegal.
Download or read book Crime and Punishment in Victorian London written by Ross Gilfillan and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-03-03 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the seamy history of nineteenth-century England that has inspired countless crime novels and films. Victorian London: All over the city, watches, purses, and handkerchiefs disappear from pockets; goods migrate from warehouses, off docks, and out of shop windows. Burglaries are rife, shoplifting is carried on in West End stores, and people fall victim to all kinds of ingenious swindles. Pornographers proliferate and an estimated eighty thousand prostitutes operate on the city’s streets. Even worse, the vulnerable are robbed in dark alleys or garroted, a new kind of mugging in which the victim is half-strangled from behind while being stripped of his possessions. This history takes you to nineteenth-century London’s grimy rookeries, home to thousands of the city’s poorest and most desperate residents. Explore the crime-ridden slums, flash houses, and gin palaces from a unique street-level view—and meet the people who inhabited them.
Download or read book The Thames Torso Murders of Victorian London written by R. Michael Gordon and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-10-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Thames Torso Murders have been overshadowed by Jack the Ripper and his crimes, but were just as brutal and gruesome. They began in 1887 in London's East End, just north of the Thames River in Rainham, England. The killer took one victim that year, another in 1888, and two more in 1889. He resumed his crimes in 1902, taking his last victim south of the Thames and leaving her body in a pile of dismembered parts as he had done with most of his other victims. This work delves deep into the case of the Thames Torso Murders. It begins with a look at London in the late 1800s, a time of great confusion and tremendous population increase, and the killer's path to London, which seems to include a murder in Paris in 1886. The book then examines in great detail each murder and the investigation that may have been hindered by the search for Jack the Ripper. It also raises the idea that Jack the Ripper and the Torso Murderer may have been the same man--Severin Klosowski, better known as George Chapman, the Borough Poisoner. It ends with an examination of Serial Killers; the Ripper, Torso, and Borough Poisoner murder cases; the search for clues to the serial killer responsible for the five Thames Torso murders; and Wolff Levisohn, a dark horse who seems to have known much about all three sets of murders, testified at Chapman's murder trial, and then faded away as Chapman was sent to the gallows.
Download or read book Capital Offenses written by Simon Joyce and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1900 crime appears as a distinctively modern problem, requiring large-scale solutions and government intervention in place of an older approach rooted in personal morality or philanthropic paternalism.".
Download or read book Unconscious Crime written by Joel Peter Eigen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sleepwalking, homicidal nursemaid; a "morally vacant" juvenile poisoner; a man driven to arson by a "lesion of the will"; an articulate and poised man on trial for assault who, while conducting his own defense, undergoes a profound personality change and becomes a wild and delusional "alter." These people are not characters from a mystery novelist's vivid imagination, but rather defendants who were tried at the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, in the mid-nineteenth century. In Unconscious Crime, Joel Peter Eigen explores these and other cases in which defendants did not conform to any of the Victorian legal system's existing definitions of insanity yet displayed convincing evidence of mental aberration. Instead, they were—or claimed to be—"missing," "absent," or "unconscious": lucid, though unaware of their actions. Based on extensive research in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers (verbatim courtroom narratives taken down in shorthand during the trial and sold on the street the following day), Eigen's book reveals a growing estrangement between law and medicine over the legal concept of the Person as a rational and purposeful actor with a clear understanding of consequences. The McNaughtan Rules of l843 had formalized the Victorian insanity plea, guiding the courts in cases of alleged delusion and derangement. But as Eigen makes clear in the cases he discovered, even though defense attorneys attempted to broaden the definition of insanity to include mental absence, the courts and physicians who testified as experts were wary of these novel challenges to the idea of human agency and responsibility. Combining the colorful intrigue of courtroom drama and the keen insights of social history, Unconscious Crime depicts Victorian England's legal and medical cultures confronting a new understanding of human behavior, and provocatively suggests these trials represent the earliest incarnation of double consciousness and multiple personality disorder.
Download or read book The Invention of Murder written by Judith Flanders and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review In this fascinating exploration of murder in nineteenth century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama-even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other-the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder-from the brutal to the pathetic-Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.
Download or read book The Good Old Days Poverty Crime and Terror in Victorian London written by Gilda O'Neill and published by . This book was released on 2016-12-21 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were things really better in the 'good old days'. The Victorian era is often thought of as an age of propriety, inventions and the British stiff upper lip. However, in a world of extremes between the rich and poor, for most people it was often hellish, violent and filled with death. In The Good Old Days she reveals exactly what it was like for those on the streets that history has forgotten. Meet: The madame whose mysterious East End chambers were visited nightly by the aristocracy. The psychic who 'solved' the Jack the Ripper murders. The conwoman, bigamist and murderer who left twenty-one bodies in her wake. The Lambeth Poisoner, sewer-hunters, oyster sellers and many other colourful characters. O'Neill leads us through fog-bound streets into rat-infested slums, boozers, penny gaffs and brothels to expose the teeming underbelly of London in the reign of Queen Victoria. Praise for The Good Old Days 'A world of hunger, squalor, disease and pain' - Daily Telegraph 'Terrific. A delightful foray through nineteenth century murder and mayhem' - Spectator 'Packed with shocking and tragic tales' - Big Issue Praise for Gilda O'Neill '[Gives a] voice to memories of a changing East End' - The Guardian 'A shocking book which, for once, should dispel the myth that life in the East End was one long knees-up' - Daily Express 'O'Neill chronicles the filth and poverty with leery aplomb, then sobers things up with sharp social commentary' - The Scotsman Gilda O'Neill (1951-2010) took three university degrees and was awarded an honorary doctorate for her work on the East End. In 1990 O'Neill began writing full-time. She published thirteen novels and six works of non-fiction, including East End Tales. She also broadcasted, gave talks and wrote articles about east London history. She tragically died in 2010 from a sudden illness.
Download or read book Murder by the Book written by Claire Harman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early on the morning of May 6, 1840, the elderly Lord William Russell was found in his London house with his throat so deeply cut that his head was nearly severed. The crime soon had everyone, including Queen Victoria, feverishly speculating about motives and methods. But when the prime suspect claimed to have been inspired by a sensational crime novel, it sent shock waves through literary London and drew both Dickens and Thackeray into the fray. Could a novel really lead someone to kill? In Murder by the Book, Claire Harman blends a riveting true-crime whodunit with a fascinating account of the rise of the popular novel and the early battle for its soul among the most famous writers of the day.
Download or read book Criminal Conversations written by Judith Rowbotham and published by Ohio State University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The essays in this book set out to explore the ways in which Victorians used newspapers to identify the causes of bad behavior and its impacts, and the ways in which they tried to "distance" criminals and those guilty of "bad" behavior from the ordinary members of society, including identification of them as different according to race of sexual orientation. It also explores how threats from within "normal" society were depicted and the panic that issues like "baby-farming" caused." "Victorian alarm was about crimes and bad behavior which they saw as new or unique to their period - but which were not new then and which, in slightly different dress, are still causing panic today. What is striking about the essays in this collection are the ways in which they echo contemporary concerns about crime and bad behavior, including panics about "new" types of crime. This has implications for modern understandings of how society needs to understand crime, demonstrating that while there are changes over time, there are also important continuities."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book A Visitor s Guide to Victorian England written by Michelle Higgs and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-02-12 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “utterly brilliant” and deeply researched guide to the sights, smells, endless wonders, and profound changes of nineteenth century British history (Books Monthly, UK). Step into the past and experience the world of Victorian England, from clothing to cuisine, toilet arrangements to transport—and everything in between. A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England is “a brilliant guided tour of Charles Dickens’s and other eminent Victorian Englishmen’s England, with insights into where and where not to go, what type of people you’re likely to meet, and what sights and sounds to watch out for . . . Utterly brilliant!” (Books Monthly, UK). Like going back in time, Higgs’s book shows armchair travelers how to find the best seat on an omnibus, fasten a corset, deal with unwanted insects and vermin, get in and out of a vehicle while wearing a crinoline, and avoid catching an infectious disease. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book blends accurate historical details with compelling stories to bring alive the fascinating details of Victorian daily life. It is a must-read for seasoned social history fans, costume drama lovers, history students, and anyone with an interest in the nineteenth century.
Download or read book Crime Control and Everyday Life in the Victorian City written by David Churchill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of modern crime control is usually presented as a narrative of how the state wrested control over the governance of crime from the civilian public. Most accounts trace the decline of a participatory, discretionary culture of crime control in the early modern era, and its replacement by a centralized, bureaucratic system of responding to offending. The formation of the 'new' professional police forces in the nineteenth century is central to this narrative: henceforth, it is claimed, the priorities of criminal justice were to be set by the state, as ordinary people lost what authority they had once exercised over dealing with offenders. This book challenges this established view, and presents a fundamental reinterpretation of changes to crime control in the age of the new police. It breaks new ground by providing a highly detailed, empirical analysis of everyday crime control in Victorian provincial cities - revealing the tremendous activity which ordinary people displayed in responding to crime - alongside a rich survey of police organization and policing in practice. With unique conceptual clarity, it seeks to reorient modern criminal justice history away from its established preoccupation with state systems of policing and punishment, and move towards a more nuanced analysis of the governance of crime. More widely, the book provides a unique and valuable vantage point from which to rethink the role of civil society and the state in modern governance, the nature of agency and authority in Victorian England, and the historical antecedents of pluralized modes of crime control which characterize contemporary society.
Download or read book Crime Criminals of Victorian Eng written by Adrian Gray and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dark and foggy Victorian streets, the murderous madman, the arsenic-laced evening meal - we all think we know the realities of Victorian crime. Adrian Gray's thrilling book recounts the classic murders, by knife and poison, but it also covers much more, taking the reader into less familiar parts of Victorian life, uncovering the wicked, the vengeful, the foolish and the hopeless amongst the criminal world of the nineteenth century. Here you will encounter the women who sold their children, corrupt bankers, smugglers, highwaymen, the first terrorists, bloodthirsty mutineers and petty thieves; you will meet the 'mesmerists' who fooled a credulous public, and even the Salvation Army band that went to gaol. Gray journeys through the cities, villages, lanes, mills and sailing ships of the period, ranging from Carlisle to Cornwall, showing how our laws today have been shaped by what the Victorians considered acceptable - or made illegal
Download or read book The Wicked Boy written by Kate Summerscale and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book! From the internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey. Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy. At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.
Download or read book London s Shadows written by Drew D. Gray and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1888 London was the capital of the most powerful empire the world had ever known, and the largest city in Europe. In the west a new city was growing, populated by the middle classes, the epitome of 'Victorian values'. Across the city the situation was very different. The East End of London had long been considered a nether world, a dark and dangerous region outside the symbolic 'walls' of the original City. Using the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper as a focal point, this book explores prostitution, poverty, revolutionary politics, immigration, the creation of a criminal underclass and the development of policing. It also considers how the sensationalist 'new journalism' took the news of the Ripper murders to all corners of the Empire and to the United States. This is an important book for those interested in the history of Victorian Britain.
Download or read book Women Crime and Custody in Victorian England written by Lucia Zedner and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
