Within lie twelve vintage tales of true crime by master essayist William Roughead. Henry James himself once urged Roughead: “Keep on with them all please, and continue to beckon me along the gallery that I can’t tread alone and where, by your leave, I link my arm fraternally in yours: the gallery of sinister perspective just stretches in this manner straight away.”Here you will find such Roughead classics as My First Murder: Featuring Jessie King, the crime that fortuitously set Mr...

Murder Most Criminous: The Cases of William Roughead, Father of Modern True Crime LiteratureJim Stovall, Ed Caudill, William RougheadWilliam Roughead is among the founders and one of the great popularizers of the "true crime" genre as it blossomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By those truly familiar with the genre, he is well-known as the father of modern true-crime writing.Roughead called himself a "historian of homic...

"Mary Blandy (1720 – April 6, 1752) was a female murderer in 18th century England. In 1751, she poisoned her father, Francis Blandy, with arsenic. She claimed that she thought the arsenic was a love potion that would make her father approve of her relationship with William Henry Cranstoun, an army officer and son of a Scottish nobleman."--WikipediaThis edition features• illustrations• a linked Table of ContentsCONTENTSIntroductionTable of Dates

A detailed account of the sensational murder trial that shocked Victorian Scotland and ended in Glasgow's last public hanging.In July of 1865, Dr. Edward William Pritchard was put on trial for the murder of his wife and mother-in-law. He slowly poisoned his wife, Mary Jane, while pretending to treat her for a mysterious illness. When her mother came to help care for her, Pritchard poisoned her, as well. He then falsified both women's death certificates.Over...

Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography of Britain’s greatest novelist by bestselling author Claire Tomalin, author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and Jane Austen: A Life‘Powerful and remarkable. It is a celebration of a great genius. No question: you put Tomalin’s book down knowing that you have met a living author’ Miriam Margolyes, The Times‘By far the most humane and imaginatively sympathetic accou...

A unique anthology for crime aficionados – seven of the world’s most notorious genuine murder mysteries retold by the most accomplished classic crime writers of their generation.A manipulative murderer who stalked the streets of Paris; a young wife who poisoned her eccentric husband; a bank cashier’s mysterious suicide; a brutal double murder in New Zealand… Seven of the world’s greatest crime writers turn their hand to some of the world’s most spine-tingling mysteries – all of the...

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 ...

A true crime account of a murdered teen in Victorian-era England, the Scotland Yard sergeant sent to investigate, and the gripping events that followed.Before Road there was Frome . . . before Whicher there was Smith . . . before the heartless slaughter of four-year-old Saville Kent, there was the brutal rape and murder of fourteen-year-old Sarah Watts.Taking place nine years earlier than the Road Hill case, made famous by the bestselling book The Suspici...

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...

In the summer of 1889, young Southern belle Florence Maybrick stood trial for the alleged arsenic poisoning of her much older husband, Liverpool cotton merchant James Maybrick.'The Maybrick Mystery' had all the makings of a sensation: a pretty, flirtatious young girl; resentful, gossiping servants; rumours of gambling and debt; and torrid mutual infidelity. The case cracked the varnish of Victorian respectability, shocking and exciting the public in equal measure as they clambered ...

Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most notorious murders in Lancashire's history. The cases covered here record the county's most fascinating but least known crimes, as well as famous murders that gripped not just Lancashire but the whole nation. From Liverpool's Florence Maybrick (was she really guilty of poisoning her hypochondriac husband with arsenic and was he indeed Jack the Ripper?) to late Victorian Bury's disturbing 'Body i...

Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most notorious murders in Norfolk's history. The cases covered here record the county's most fascinating but least known crimes as well as famous murders that gripped not just Norfolk but the whole nation. From the Burnham Poisoners of 1835 to the Yarmouth Beach Murders, from the Costessey Horror to the 'last judicial beheading in England', this is a collection of the county's most dramatic and inte...