John Lee is the most infamous Victorian criminal after Jack the Ripper. Found guilty of the murder of his employer, he was sent for execution but three times the trap failed to open. Released from gaol after 23 years, he married, then abandoned his family and disappeared. This text pieces together his story, reviewing and presenting new evidence.

We believe that this book will have an extended lifespan, not on your bookshelf but in your workbag. It is an extremely useful tool, which can support social interventions, as well as school and community projects. We have used language that everyone should understand with the hope that the book will be useful to community activists with strong interest in using the empowerment and behaviour change strategies of Edutainment Therapy to explore various cultural approaches - theatre, music, d...

“We are a trading community, a commercial people. Murder is doubtless a very shocking offence, nevertheless as what is done is not to be undone, let us make our money out of it.” Punch.Murder in nineteenth-century Britain was ubiquitous – not necessarily in quantity but in quality. This was the era of penny-bloods, early crime fiction and melodramas for the masses. This was a time when murder and entertainment were firmly entwined.In this meticulously researched and compell...

In 1888 Jack the Ripper made the headlines with a series of horrific murders that remain unsolved to this day. But most killers are not shadowy figures stalking the streets with a lust for blood. Many are ordinary citizens driven to the ultimate crime by circumstance, a fit of anger or a desire for revenge. Their crimes, overshadowed by the few, sensational cases, are ignored, forgotten or written off. This book examines all the known murders in London in 1888 to build a p...

Prisons and Prisoners In Victorian Britain provides an illustrated insight into the Victorian prison system and the experiences of those within it - on both sides of the bars. Featuring stories of crime and misdeeds, this fascinating book includes chapters on a typical day inside a Victorian prison - food, divine service, exercise and medical provision; the punishments inflicted on convicts - such as hard labour, flogging, the treadwheel and shot drill; and an ove...

In 1811 John Williams was buried with a stake in his heart. Was he the notorious East End killer or his eighth victim in the bizarre and shocking Ratcliffe Highway Murders? In this vivid and gripping reconstruction P. D. James and police historian T. A. Critchley draw on forensics, public records, newspaper clippings and hitherto unpublished sources, expertly sifting the evidence to shed new light on this infamous Wapping mystery.This true crime novel begins amid the horror of a da...

Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most notorious murders in Kent's history. Linda Stratmann re-examines some of the historic crimes that shocked not only the county but Britain as a whole. Among the gruesome cases featured here are the doctor who was poisoned with morphine in Faversham; the couple who were brutally battered to death in their beds in Chislehurst; and, the strange death of a young German man whose body was discovered ...

For two centuries, the shadow of the workhouse hung over Britain. The recourse of only the most desperate, dark and terrible tales of malnutrition, misery, mistreatment and murder ran like wildfire through the poorer classes, who lived in terror of being forced inside the institution's towering walls. This book contains 365 incredible tales of fires, drownings, explosions and disasters, infamous scandals such as the Andover affair – where inmates were forced to eat the bon...

Gaslight tales of rooftop escapes, men and women snatched in broad daylight, patients shut in coffins, a fanatical cult known as the Abode of Love.The nineteenth century saw repeated panics about sane individuals being locked away in lunatic asylums. With the rise of the 'mad-doctor' profession, English liberty seemed to be threatened by a new generation of medical men willing to incarcerate difficult family members in return for the high fees paid by an unscrupulo...

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 sol...

By dusty decree, the county judges sent em down . . . and the city sheriffs strung em up.From Norman times to the late 19th century, Cheshire had its own unique way of disposing of the criminals condemned at its assizes. For more than 500 years the countys rulers simply handed the miscreants over to the Chester city fathers who, due to an obscure medieval tradition, were duty bound to execute them.Ever since the Emperor Vespasians Second Legion encamped beside the River Dee, Chester h...

A breathtaking history of Britain's executioners—from the seventeenth court of King Charles II to the UK's last official hangman of the twentieth century.In 1663, Jack Ketch delighted in his profession and gained notoriety not only because of those he executed—dukes and lords—but for how often he botched the job. Centuries later, in 1965, after nearly six hundred trips to the gallows, Albert Pierrepoint retired as Britain's longest-running executioner. Between them...