A Very British Murder (37 page)

I’m grateful to the staff at Dove Cottage, The Wordsworth Trust, for access to their collections, and for a copy of Robert Woolf’s catalogue to
Thomas De Quincey
, an exhibition staged at Dove Cottage, Cumbria in 1985. Grevel Lindop’s
The Opium-Eater, A Life of Thomas De Quincey
(1981) provided extra detail.

As well as Judith Flanders’ and Rosalind Crone’s work on the rise of policing in London, P. D. James’s and T. A. Critchley’s
The Maul and the Pear Tree, The Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 1811
(1971) was essential for the details of the crime.

In addition to the sources for Chapter 2, Bob Jeffries, curator of the Thames Police Museum at Wapping, was a useful source of help, as was Simon Dell’s
The Victorian Policeman
(2004) and the Open University’s online resource called ‘History From Police Archives’.

I relied on Judith Flanders here, and the very full account provided by Albert Borowitz,
The Thurtell-Hunt Murder Case, Dark Mirror to Regency England
(1987), along with Angus Fraser, ‘John Thurtell’,
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2004).

As well as help given by Charlotte Burford, the present archivist at Madame Tussaud’s in London, two books were particularly useful:
Pauline Chapman,
Madame Tussaud in England, Career Woman Extraordinary
(1992) and, especially, Pamela Pilbeam,
Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxworks
(2003). On the earlier history of waxworks,
The Funeral Effigies of Westminster Abbey
, edited by Anthony Harvey and Richard Mortimer (1994), is essential.

In addition to the sources already quoted, especially Rosalind Crone’s
Violent Victorians
(2012), Richard Altick’s
The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900
(1957) and V. A. C. Gatrell’s
The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770–1868
(1994) were also useful. The Richard Altick quotation is from
Victorian Studies in Scarlet
(1972). See also Andrew Brown
, ‘
Lytton, Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer’,
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2004), and Neil R. Storey,
The Victorian Criminal
(2011), Robert Miles, ‘Ann Radcliffe’,
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2004), and the wonderful online resource at
english.cam.ac.uk/pop
‘Price One Penny, A Database of Cheap Literature, 1837– 1860’
, produced by Marie Léger-St-Jean. The interpretation of Sweeney Todd comes, via Crone, from Sally Powell’s article ‘Black markets and cadaverous pies: the corpse, urban trade and industrial consumption in the penny blood’, in A. Maunder and G. Moore (eds.),
Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation
(2004).

Simon Callow’s
Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World
(2012) was supplemented by his interview in person (which included
a sensational performance as Bill Sykes killing Nancy). Claire Tomalin’s
Charles Dickens, A Life
(2011), Philip Collins’s
Dickens and Crime
(1962, 1994) and Haia Shpayer-Makov’s
The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England
(2011) were also useful. Rebecca Gowers has researched the case of Eliza Grimwood for her novel,
The Twisted Heart
(2009).

Alex McWhirter, curator at Moyse’s Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds, was a terrific source of information on William Corder, as was Vic Gammon, now retired, but a guest member of staff at Newcastle University where he was director of the degree in folk music.

Rosalind Crone’s
Violent Victorians
(2012) was once again essential for this chapter, while the actor Michael Kirk gave me some practical coaching in the techniques of melodrama, onstage at the Old Vic. Kathy Haill, curator from the Victoria and Albert Museum, shared her knowledge of the collection’s puppets. The webpage
vam.ac.uk/page/p/puppets
has more on the Victoria and Albert Museum’s puppet collection, including the marionettes used to perform ‘Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn’.

In addition to all the general surveys of murder in the period, which uniformly mention the Mannings, Michael Alpert’s
London 1849, A Victorian Murder Story
(2004) was the most detailed account consulted.

The William Salt Library, Stafford, holds many contemporary records of the Palmer trial, and I was also able to examine the medicine chest said to belong to William Palmer, courtesy of Sarah Williams and the museum at Tamworth Castle. There is more information on it in Fiona Sheridan and Nick Thomas,
Dr William Palmer, Trial by Media
(catalogue of the exhibition at the Ancient High House, Rudgeley, run by Staffordshire Council, 2004).

Ian Burney of the University of Manchester, author of several books on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century crime, shared his research published in
Poison, Detection and the Victorian Imagination
(2006) and the article ‘Poison and the Victorian Imagination’,
History Today
(March, 2008), pp. 35–41. Other useful publications included Noel G. Coley, ‘Alfred Swaine Taylor, MD, FRS (1806–1880): Forensic Toxicologist’,
Medical History
, vol. 35 (1991), pp. 409–27, James C. Whorton,
The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned, at Home, Work and Play
(2011) and Clive Emsley, ‘Victorian Crime’, published in
History Today
(1998).

This is a richly researched and interesting area, where the key publications are: Mary S. Hartman,
Victorian Murderesses
(1977), Judith Knelman,
Twisting in the Wind
(1998), Virginia Morris,
Double Jeopardy: Women Who Kill in Victorian Fiction
(1990), Elaine Showalter,
A Literature of Their Own: British Novelists from Brontë to Lessing
(1977) and, for Florence Bravo,
I have relied heavily upon James Ruddick’s extremely enjoyable
Death at the Priory, Love, Sex and Murder in Victorian England
(2001).

Kate Summerscale’s brilliant
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
(2008) was supplemented by the interview she gave me for the programme. Haia Shpayer-Makov’s
The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England
(2011) stood out among the relevant books on the subject. Matthew Sweet also added to his published writings with an interview on Wilkie Collins, while Noeline Lyons’
A Greater Guilt: Constance Emilie Kent and the Road Murder
(2009) gives an alternative interpretation, and transcribes many useful documents, relating to the murder of Savile Kent. Michael Diamond’s
Victorian Sensation
(2003) was also very useful. Stephanie Lyons and family welcomed us at Langham House, the modern name for Road Hill House, while James Dukes showed us Savil Kent’s grave at St Thomas’s Church, Coulston.

Here, Andrew Gasson’s
Wilkie Collins, An Illustrated Guide
(1998) was very useful, as was Helen Rappaport’s
Beautiful for Ever, Madame Rachel of Bond Street, Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer
(2010). As well as Wilkie Collins’ own works, John Sutherland’s introduction to the Penguin edition of
Armadale
(1995) is particularly recommended.

Lord Petre, the current inhabitant of Ingatestone Hall, showed us round the real-life ‘Audley Court’. Katherine Mullin, ‘Mary Elizabeth Braddon’,
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2004), provides an introduction to a life explored more fully in Robert Lee Wolff,
Sensational Victorian: Life and Fiction of Mary Elizabeth Braddon
(1979) and Jennifer Carnell,
The Literary Lives of Mary Elizabeth Braddon
(Sensation Press, 2000). Jennifer also gave an interview in person.

Judith Flanders’
The Invention of Murder
(2010) has an especially good chapter on ‘Jack the Ripper’ and Mr Hyde, also vital was Martin A. Danahay and Alexander Chisholm,
Jekyll and Hyde dramatized: the 1887 Richard Mansfield Script and the Evolution of the story on Stage
(2005). In addition, Michael Kirk, actor, showed me how Richard Mansfield did the transformation scene at the Lyceum Theatre. Alan Sharp’s ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Saucy Jacky’ was published in
The Ripperologist
, no. 55 (September, 2004), and online at
casebook.org
,
a site produced by Stephen P. Ryder and Johnno.

E. J. Wagner’s
The Science of Sherlock Holmes
(2006) gives an overview of the relationship between Holmes and forensic science, which is built upon by James O’Brien,
The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics
(2013). Ken Butler, former Met fingerprint officer, explained the history of his
profession in an interview, while Jonathan Evans, archivist of The London Medical College, now part of Queen Mary, University of London, elucidated early pathology for me in person. You can hear a recording of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle explaining how he came up with the character of Sherlock Holmes on the BBC website, in the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Great Lives’ series 30, part 5, and Gordon Honeycombe is the author of
Murders of the Black Museum, 1875–1975
(2009).

Kathryn Johnson, the curator at the British Library responsible for the exhibition ‘Death in the Library’ (2013), gave me an interview that was essential for this chapter. Alexander McCall Smith’s quotations are taken from his article ‘Why do we enjoy reading about female detectives?’ published in
The Independent
(7 November 2012). Additionally, Haia Shpayer-Makov’s
The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England
(2011) was useful, as was Michael Sims, (ed.),
The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime
(2011). Lucy Sussex, ‘The Detective Maidservant’, in Brenda Ayres (ed.),
Silent Voices: Forgotten Novels by Victorian Women Writers
(2003), puts the case for the forgotten Susan Hopley. The identity of Andrew Forrester as the pseudonym of James Redding Ware first appeared in Judith Flanders’
The Invention of Murder
.

Here P. D. James’s
Talking About Detective Fiction
(2010) was supplemented by her interview. The biographies of the ‘Queens of Crime’ include Joanne Drayton’s
Ngaio Marsh, Her Life In Crime
(2008), Julia Jones’s
The Adventures of Margery Allingham
(1991, 2009),
James Brabazon’s
Dorothy L. Sayers, A Biography
(1988) and Laura Thompson’s
Agatha Christie, An English Mystery
(2007). I also used Clive Emsley’s
Crime and Society in Twentieth Century Britain
(2011).

Agatha Christie,
Agatha Christie, An Autobiography
(1977) reads well in conjunction with the analysis provided in Laura Thompson,
Agatha Christie, An English Mystery
(2007).

Mike Ripley’s article ‘Dorothy L. Sayers as crime critic, 1933–35’ was published in
Crime Time Magazine
, and James Brabazon,
Dorothy L. Sayers, A Biography
(1988) provided the biographical details.

Julian Symons’
Bloody Murder
(1972) was vital here, especially for details of the Club’s writers. Simon Brett, today’s Club President, gave me an informative and funny interview, while John Gannon, author of
The Killing of Julia Wallace
(2012), also contributed his expertise in person in an interview on William Herbert Wallace.

Colin Watson,
Snobbery with Violence
(1971), Julian Symons,
Bloody Murder
(1972) and T. J. Binyon’s
Murder Will Out, The Detective in Fiction
(1989) will all get you reading detective stories with new eyes. Edmund Wilson’s essay ‘Why Do People Read Detective
Stories?’ was published in
The New Yorker
(14 October 1944) and ‘Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?’ in the same magazine on 20 January 1945.

Graham Greene,
Brighton Rock
, Vintage Classics edition introduced by J. M. Coetzee (2004)

Page numbers in
italics
refers to an illustration

The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

Adams, Fanny 75

Allingham, Margery 229, 232–3, 240, 271

Altick, Richard

Victorian Studies in Scarlet
75–6, 77

analytical chemists 134

Anatomy Act (1832) 198

anthropometric measurement 206

antimony 148, 149

arsenic 128–9, 142

Marsh Test for 134

Auden, W.H. 272