Download or read book The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones and Other Victorian Scandals written by Michelle Morgan and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Ghoulishly entertaining' Jacqueline Banerjee, Times Literary Supplement 'This is a great book for dipping into . . . the cases themselves are written engagingly and with appealing dramatisation of key events.' Kim Fleet, Crime Review A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes, but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians. These include the story of a teenage man who married an actress, only to be shipped off to Australia by his disgusted parents; and the Italian ice-cream man who only meant to buy his sweetheart a hat but ended up proposing marriage instead. When he broke it off, his fiancée's father sued him and the story was dubbed the 'Amusing Aberdeen Breach of Promise Case'. Also present is the gruesome story of the murder of Patrick O Connor who was shot in the head and buried under the kitchen flagstones by his lover Maria Manning and her husband, Frederick. The couple's subsequent trial caused a sensation and even author Charles Dickens attended the grisly public hanging. Drawing on a range of sources from university records and Old Bailey transcripts to national and regional newspaper archives, Michelle Morgan's research sheds new light on well-known stories as well as unearthing previously unknown incidents.

Download or read book Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones and Other written by Michelle Morgan and published by Charnwood. This book was released on 2019-02 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like their modern counterparts, Victorians knew how to love and hate in equal measure. The archives are brimming with stories of all kinds of atrocities, including husbands murdering their wives, suicidal lovers, and mistresses taking revenge on their love rivals. They range from the truly dreadful to the fairly ludicrous, but mostly they have one thing in common - bloodshed, and plenty of it. Dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England and the United States, this grisly book covers high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that nevertheless provoked scandal around the world.

Download or read book The Unfortunate Colonel Despard written by Mike Jay and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the true story of Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, the character in the fifth series of the BBC's popular television drama Poldark. Colonel Despard was the last person to be sentenced to hanging, drawing and quartering in Britain - for high treason, an alleged plot to kill the king. His execution on 21st February 1803 was witnessed by twenty thousand hushed onlookers. Their silence was ominous, for few believed he was guilty. His death would tear apart a Britain still reeling from the impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. But who was Edward Marcus Despard? Was he, as his comrade-in-arms on the Spanish Main Lord Nelson believed, an outstanding British army officer of unimpeachable honour, courage and patriotism? Or, as the white slave-owners of the Caribbean claimed, a traitor not only to his nation but to his race, who had married a local woman and championed the rights of freed slaves? And when Despard returned to London to answer these allegations, did he commit himself to the cause of political reform in Britain's best interest? Or did he join a shadowy international terrorist conspiracy dedicated to the murder of George III and the overthrow of the state? Despard's contested fate marked the sensational climax to a British revolution that never happened, but it also presaged the birth of modern democracy. 'Compelling, absorbing and wide-ranging . . . Jay weaves a complex variety of themes, many with overtly topical resonances, into Despard's journey from hero to traitor' Sunday Times

Download or read book Wildcat written by John Boessenecker and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A True West magazine Best Book of 2021, a nominee for the MPIBA Annual Reading the West Book Award, and a Top Pick in the Annual Southwest Books of the Year by Pima County Public Library “[A] true-life adventure saga about the female outlaw who robbed a stagecoach at gunpoint in Arizona in 1899.” –New York Times Book Review The little-known story of Pearl Hart, the most famous female bandit in the American West. On May 30, 1899, history was made when Pearl Hart, disguised as a man, held up a stagecoach in Arizona and robbed the passengers at gunpoint. A manhunt ensued as word of her heist spread, and Pearl Hart went on to become a media sensation and the most notorious female outlaw on the Western frontier. Her early life, family and fate after her later release from prison have long remained a mystery to scholars and historians—until now. Drawing on groundbreaking research into territorial records and genealogical data, ’s is the first book to uncover the enigma of Pearl Hart. Hailed by many as “The Bandit Queen,” her epic life of crime and legacy as a female trailblazer provide a crucial lens into the lives of the rare women who made their mark in the American West.

Download or read book Victorian Murders written by Jan Bondeson and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book features fifty-six Victorian murder cases from the files of the Illustrated Police News.

Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals written by Michelle Morgan and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murders, suicides, unexplained deaths, scandalous romances, illegitimate children, cover-ups, and more, from the 1920s to Hollywood's Golden Age in the 1960s and right up to the present day. It covers over 60 scandals including: The Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle Scandal; Clark Gable's Baby Scandals; The Rape of Patricia Douglas; The Life and Death of Jean Harlow; The Sudden Death of James Dean; Marilyn Monroe's Mysterious Death; John Belushi Dies at the Chateau Marmont; Madonna's Hollywood Stalker; Hugh Grant's Hollywood Scandal; Winona Ryder Is Arrested For Shoplifting; The Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie Love Triangle; The Tragic Life and Death of Anna Nicole Smith; The Life and Death of Michael Jackson; Arnold Schwarzenegger's Love Child; The Very Public Melt-Down of Charlie Sheen; The Rise and Fall of Whitney Houston; The Marriage of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and many, many more.

Download or read book When Marilyn Met the Queen written by Michelle Morgan and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2022-02-17 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'England? It seemed to be raining the whole time . . . Or maybe it was me' MARILYN MONROE In July 1956, Marilyn Monroe arrived in London, on honeymoon with her husband Arthur Miller, to make The Sleeping Prince (later released as The Prince and the Showgirl) with Laurence Olivier. When the couple arrived at London Airport, they were looking forward to a peaceful stay. Marilyn would work during the day at Pinewood Studios, while Arthur would write. Then, in the evening, the couple would be able to relax together in their private English country cottage. It didn't quite turn out that way. The 'cottage' was actually a mansion, which belonged to Lord Drogheda, the managing director of the Financial Times. Raised in tiny hotel rooms and apartments, Marilyn felt herself being watched. She was, by Lord Drogheda's servants, who were selling stories to the papers. When filming began, it was a disaster. Director Joshua Logan had written to Olivier, offering advice on how to handle Marilyn as an actress, but Olivier ignored him. Instead, he condescended to her in his introduction to the cast, pooh-poohed her views on acting, and dismissed her stage-fright as an inconvenience. Marilyn grew to hate Olivier with a passion; the feeling was mutual. Marilyn found herself torn between settling into married life, being a curiosity for the frequently hostile British press, and her work on The Prince and the Showgirl. She took solace in small acts of kindness from members of the public, and a new fascination with Queen Elizabeth. Marilyn made a point of adopting some of the Queen's favourite brands, buying gloves from Cornelia James, perfume from Floris, and switching from Chanel No. 5 to Yardley's Lavender. Marilyn made a point of asking the film's PR manager to add a royal meeting to her schedule, but each day Olivier would delete the request. Michelle Morgan describes Marilyn's trip to late-1950s' Britain in evocative detail, exploring the making of the film alongside the film star's troubled private life and her quest to meet the Queen.

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 Now it Can Be Told written by Philip Gibbs and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The New Machiavelli written by Herbert George Wells and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Accelerando written by Charles Stross and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-07-05 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day. Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber’s son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity. For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form...

Download or read book The Ripper of Waterloo Road written by Jan Bondeson and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2017-01-13 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jack the Ripper first prowled the streets of London, an evening newspaper commented that his crimes were as ghastly as those committed by Eliza Grimwood's murderer fifty years earlier. Hers is arguably the most infamous and brutal of all nineteenth-century London killings. Eliza was a high-class prostitute, and on 26 May 1838, following an evening at the theatre, she brought a 'client' back to her home in Waterloo Road. The morning after, she was found with her throat cut and her abdomen viciously 'ripped'. The client was nowhere to be seen. The ensuing murder investigation was convoluted, with suspects ranging from an alcoholic bricklayer to a royal duke. Londoners from all walks of life followed the story with a horror and fascination – among them Charles Dickens, who took inspiration from Eliza's death when he wrote the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist. Despite this feverish interest, the case was left unsolved, becoming the subject of 'penny dreadfuls' and urban legend. Unusually for a crime of this early period, the diary of the police officer leading the investigation has been preserved for posterity, and Jan Bondeson takes full advantage of this unique access to a Victorian murder inquiry. Skilfully dissecting what evidence remains, he links this murder with a series of other opportunist early Victorian slayings, and, in putting forward a credible new suspect, concludes that the Ripper of Waterloo Road was, in fact, a serial killer claiming as many as four victims.

Download or read book The Memoirs of Fran ois Ren written by François-René vicomte de Chateaubriand and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Complete Jack The Ripper written by Donald Rumbelow and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-02-18 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fully updated and revised, Donald Rumbelow’s classic work is the ultimate examination of the facts, theories, fictions and fascinations surrounding the greatest whodunit in history. The Complete Jack the Ripper lays out all the evidence in the most comprehensive summary ever written about the Ripper. Rumbelow, a former London Metropolitan policeman, and an authority on crime, has subjected every theory – including those that have emerged in recent years – to the same deep scrutiny. He also examines the mythology surrounding the case and provides some fascinating insights into the portrayal of the Ripper on stage and screen and on the printed page. More seriously, he also examines the horrifying parallel crimes of the Düsseldorf Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper in an attempt to throw further light on the atrocities of Victorian London.

Download or read book Rise Up Women written by Diane Atkinson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-08 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking the centenary of female suffrage, this definitive history charts women's fight for the vote through the lives of those who took part, in a timely celebration of an extraordinary struggle An Observer Pick of 2018 A Telegraph Book of 2018 A New Statesman Book of 2018 Between the death of Queen Victoria and the outbreak of the First World War, while the patriarchs of the Liberal and Tory parties vied for supremacy in parliament, the campaign for women's suffrage was fought with great flair and imagination in the public arena. Led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, the suffragettes and their actions would come to define protest movements for generations to come. From their marches on Parliament and 10 Downing Street, to the selling of their paper, Votes for Women, through to the more militant activities of the Women's Social and Political Union, whose slogan 'Deeds Not Words!' resided over bombed pillar-boxes, acts of arson and the slashing of great works of art, the women who participated in the movement endured police brutality, assault, imprisonment and force-feeding, all in the relentless pursuit of one goal: the right to vote. A hundred years on, Diane Atkinson celebrates the lives of the women who answered the call to 'Rise Up'; a richly diverse group that spanned the divides of class and country, women of all ages who were determined to fight for what had been so long denied. Actresses to mill-workers, teachers to doctors, seamstresses to scientists, clerks, boot-makers and sweated workers, Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English; a wealth of women's lives are brought together for the first time, in this meticulously researched, vividly rendered and truly defining biography of a movement.

Download or read book Pierrepoint written by Steve Fielding and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2008-07-07 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between them, the three men in the fearsome Pierrepoint dynasty executed over 800 people during a career spanning more than half a century. Henry, his brother Thomas, and his son Albert, dispatched some of the most infamous criminals of the 20th century, and in the process earned a public notoriety that followed them throughout their eventful lives.For years, the three men were faced with the task -- prestigious to some, horrific to many others -- of being the last point of contact for the guilty and condemned. The Pierrepoints executed criminals the nation over before travelling to many countries including Egypt and postwar Germany, where they hanged Nazi war criminals, and gained a reputation as the world's most deadly practitioners of the art of hanging."Pierrepoint: A Family of Executioners" recounts the intriguing stories of the three men and the effect that their macabre occupation had on their personal lives. This definitive guide is filled with shocking inside tales from the official records and diaries kept by the Pierrepoint family. With revealing insights into the intense rivalry between fellow executioners, new light is shed on the menacing world of years gone by.

Download or read book Mary Ann Cotton Dark Angel written by Martin Connolly and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true crime account of the life, trial, death, and aftermath of Britain’s first female serial killer. A female thief, with four husbands, a lover and, reportedly, over twelve children, is arrested and tried for the murder of her stepson in 1872, turning the small village of West Auckland in County Durham upside down. Other bodies are exhumed and when they are found to contain arsenic, she is suspected of their murder as well. The perpetrator, Mary Ann Cotton, was tried and found guilty and later hanged on 24 March 1873 in Durham Gaol. It is claimed she murdered over twenty people and was the first female serial killer in England. With location photographs and a blow-by-blow account of the trial, this book challenges the claim that Mary Ann Cotton was the “The West Auckland Borgia,” a title given to her at the time. It sets out her life, trial, death, and the aftermath and also questions the legal system used to convict her by looking at contemporary evidence from the time and offering another explanation for the deaths. The book also covers the lives of those left behind, including the daughter born to Mary Ann Cotton in Durham Gaol. Mary Ann Cotton’s crimes were the subject of the 2016 ITV drama, Dark Angel, starring Joanne Froggatt. Praise for Mary Ann Cotton, Dark Angel Recommended as one of the Evening Standard’s “Best biographies and memoirs to read in 2016” “For true crime historians, fans of intriguing crime tales, and those interested in how criminal justice operated in the Victorian era, this is a well-presented book on a complex case. Furthermore, it is a book which explores all the evidence available and questions whether or not the conviction and execution of Mary Ann Cotton in 1873 was the correct outcome.” —Crime Traveller