From dark crimes of passion to shocking tales of grave robbing, gruesome murders, dens of iniquity, Victorian séances, and haunted houses—not far beneath London’s everyday bustle and glitter there has long been a fascinatingly rich underworld of criminality, superstition, scandal, and macabre debauchery.In Dark London, social historian Dr Drew Gray, a specialist in the history of crime and punishment, delves into the city’...

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...

"The Executioner's Bible" tells the story of these working-class men who carried out this gruesome profession until its abolition in the late 1960's. Despite often being unassuming and quiet professionals, men like Albert Pierrepoint, William Billington and many other Chief and Assistant executioners made a name for themselves in a world hungry for salacious and gruesome news. Read about the bungling hangmen sacked for incompetence; drunken executioners dismissed for brawling; one hangman ...

"A fascinating insight into the country's most famous asylum for criminals" which reveals Victorian England's care and management of the mentally ill (Your Family Tree).On 27 May 1863, three coaches pulled up at the gates of a new asylum, built amongst the tall, dense pines of Windsor Forest. Broadmoor's first patients had arrived.In Broadmoor Revealed, Mark Stevens writes about what life was like for the criminally insane, over one hundred years ago...

A brilliant true crime account of the assassinations that altered the course of Irish history from the "compulsively readable" writer ( The Guardian).One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles...

The grim history of England's bodysnatching trade: "Lennox's thorough exploration is riveting" (Naomi Clifford, author of The Disappearance of Maria Glenn).From the string of murders committed by Burke and Hare, a pair of ghouls who are still the stuff of pop culture legend, to the lesser-known but equally gruesome grave-robbing exploits of Henry Gillies, William Patrick, and Joseph Grainger, here is the fascinating true chronicle of England's "Resurrectio...

The author of Jack the Ripper: Quest for a Killer examines a different series of grisly unsolved murders in Victorian-era London.Dismembered corpses are discovered scattered along the banks of the river Thames, a calculating clinical multiple murderer is on the loose, and the London police have no inkling of the killer's identity – and, more than a century later, they still don't. In this, M.J. Trow's latest reinvestigation of a bizarre and brutal serial ki...

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...

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...

Historical accounts of Englishwomen who have killed, their varying motives, and their final fates.Yorkshire history has its share of nasty and brutal murders, and the majority of these killers have been men. Statistics show that most homicides are men. But the records over the centuries have tales of murderous women too. Stephen Wade has investigated records across England to find stories of women from the mid-eighteenth century to mid-twentieth century who have ta...

'The clearest, most accurate, and most up-to-date account of the Ripper murders, by one of Britain's greatest and most respected experts on the "autumn of terror" in Victorian London.'William D. Rubenstein, Professor of Modern History, University of Wales, AberystwythEngland in the 1880s was a society in transition, shedding the skin of Victorianism and moving towards a more modern age. Promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police ineffic...

Once renowned as a place to dump criminals, and with a past steeped in smuggling, the Isle of Wight provides copious tales of corruption, violence and delinquency. From the customs officer who had both his hands severed by smugglers, to Bembridge witch Molly Downer who embarrassed the vicar by making him her heir, this book contains a vast array of misdeeds and miscreants. Featuring criminals such as Michael Morey, who butchered his grandson, and thirteen-year-old John Lei...