True Crime Stories from the Victorian Era
Sometimes truth is stranger (and more gruesome) than fiction. These books explore some sensational, as well as lesser-known, murders from the Victorian era. They profile the killers and suspects, delve into the lives of the victims and showcase the police and investigators who worked to solve the crimes well before the era of modern forensics.
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
The real lives of Jack the Ripper's five victims. Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Jane—five women whose lives have been overshadowed for over a century by the sensationalism of the Ripper legend. Rubonhold's wonderfully researched book brings them to life and dismantles many of the myths about these infamous crimes.
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
The intriguing story of one of England's first detectives, Scotland Yard detective-inspector Jonathan Jack Whicher, and Constance Kent, a teenage girl accused of murdering her half- brother.
Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, A Quest for Justice, and the World’s Most Famous Detective Writer by Margalit Fox
Arthur Conan Doyle uses the methods of Sherlock Holmes to find the true murderer of Marion Gilchrist, an 83-year-old Glasgow resident, and free the unjustly accused man imprisoned for the crime. (The incident takes place in the Edwardian era and not Victorian times, but Sherlock Holmes is the quintessential Victorian creation, so let's not quibble!)
Did She Kill Him?: A Torrid True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and Murder in Victorian England by Kate Colquhoun
The "Maybrick Mystery"—did young Southern belle Florence Maybrick poison her much older husband, Liverpool merchant James Maybrick? This sensational murder in respectable Victorian society, and the matter of Florence's guilt or innocence, kept newspaper readers on the edge of their seats. Historian Coquhoun unfolds this tale and leaves us guessing to the very end.
Murder by the Book: The Crime that Shocked Dickens’s London by Claire Harman
May 1840: The murder of Lord William Russell had the whole city of London talking. The clue to the grisly murder lay in any unlikely source: his valet's reading material. At the time, the novel form was on the rise as new printing methods made books cheaper, and true crime was very popular. The popular tale of Jack Sheppard by William Harrison Ainsworth was cited by the murderer in his defense.
Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder: The Unsolved Murder that Shocked Victorian England by Paul Thomas Murphy
Walking his London beat one April day in 1871, a police constable discovered the grievously injured Jane Maria Clouson, a sixteen-year-old servant. She died five days later, never awakening from her coma. This meticulously researched book tells the story of the Scotland Yard police detectives, the British legal system that sought to convict her master's son accused of her murder, and the early days of forensics. While the murder remained unsolved for years, the evidence remained, and the author provides a definitive answer to the murderer's identity.
The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders
This book explores the obsession with murder and crime in nineteenth century Britain, from detective fiction and broadsides, to the development of England's new police force. Flanders retells the stories of famous murders such as Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, as well as crimes less well known to the modern reader.
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