Victorian True Crime

What if everything you admired about the Victorians—was built on denial? Beneath the lace gloves and gaslight of 19th-century England lay a darker world—one of public executions and private abuses, imperial brutality and official denial, moral posturing and systemic hypocrisy. The Dark Side of the Victorian Era pulls back the velvet curtain to reveal the crimes, cover-ups, and contradictions that polite society worked hard to ignore. From child migrants sent overseas under the banner of Christian charity to the macabre spectacles of execution day, from Parliament’s strategic silences ...

Murder in the 19th century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama - even into puppet shows and performing-dog acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other - the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P. D. James and Patricia Cornwell.

In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

BRITISH LEGAL HISTORY - The Fielding Brothers & Bow Street Runners - the early days and beginnings of policing in England with the infamous Fielding Brothers, the early Bow Street Runners, Robert Peel, Jerome Caminada, and other brutal crime fighters, covering highway robberies, gruesome murders, street crime and a host of dangerous attacks on society. A fascinating slice of legal history and nostalgia, featuring Victorian & Edwardian Manchester crime.

The brutal murder of septuagenarian John Templeman shocks the little cottage community of Pocock's Fields. Rumours of illicit affairs, army desertion and violent confrontations spread as the community waits to see who will be sent to trial. An extraordinary power struggle develops between the Coroner, leading the Inquest, and the Police Magistrate, leading the Inquiry. As the case reaches a crisis point, just how far will the authorities be willing to go to bring the perpetrator to justice?

Step back into the gaslit alleys of Victorian London, where a shadow known only as Jack the Ripper unleashed a reign of terror that haunts us to this day. In the autumn of 1888, the impoverished district of Whitechapel became the hunting ground for a phantom. A series of brutal, ritualistic murders of destitute women exposed the dark underbelly of the world's wealthiest empire and launched one of the most intense and frustrating manhunts in history. The killer was never caught, leaving behind a terrifying legend and a perfect, unsolved mystery. This meticulously researched book cuts through...

A new compilation of Bram Stoker’s cult vampire novels for the 100th anniversary of his death. This delightful new compilation of Bram Stoker's cult classics will be sure to satisfy any lover of vampire fiction, from Dracula to Twilight. All three novels were published after Dracula debuted in 1897. They flirt with vampirism, horror, and human folly in the best Gothic tradition - all attempts to duplicate Stoker's only success.

In 1880s Britain, the chemist’s shop stood at the centre of a quiet revolution. Behind its polished counter were the substances that eased pain, soothed nerves, and saved lives — and the same substances that could quietly kill. As pharmacy professionalised and poison laws tightened, Victorian society struggled to balance access with safety, privacy with accountability, and relief with risk. The Victorian Chemist explores the uneasy coexistence of medicine and poison in an age of rapid chemical progress. Through regulation, scandal, courtroom testimony, and everyday trade, this book ...

The shocking murders carried out by an unknown serial killer in London's East End during the autumn of 1888, haunted the public imagination at the time and have continued to exert a baleful influence ever since. But what was it like to live through those terrifying weeks? This audiobook looks at the crimes of Jack the Ripper through the eyes of Londoners, including the rumors that swept through the capital city, the alarms, the riots, the persecutions, the suspicions, and the sheer naked terror of the awful autumn when a killer stalked the streets.

Peel back the headlines and enter the heart of Australia’s most chilling dinner-table crime—unravel the Erin Patterson mushroom murders in gripping detail, even if you think you know the whole story. What really happened behind closed doors in Leongatha, Australia? Which clues did the world’s eyes—and police—miss? How did tragedy at a Saturday family lunch spiral into an international obsession and a landmark legal battle? Fatal Invitation is your definitive, fact-driven guide through the tangled web of betrayal, forensic intrigue, and courtroom drama that shook a nation—and the...

She offered youth for a price, and discretion as part of the deal. In the fashionable heart of Victorian London, Madame Rachel built a beauty empire on fear: fear of ageing, fear of judgement, fear of being replaced. This historical true crime account follows the clients who came to her, the methods that held them, and the trial that exposed what polite society preferred to keep hidden.

THE LEGEND REEXAMINED – THE CRIME THAT SHOCKED A NATION RETURNS TO THE STAND On the sweltering morning of August 4, 1892, a scream shattered the stillness of Fall River, Massachusetts. Within minutes, a quiet home on Second Street became the most infamous address in America. Inside lay Andrew and Abby Borden—bludgeoned, brutalized, and left to bleed on the polished floors of their own home. Standing in the doorway was their daughter, Lizzie Borden—calm, pale, and soon to be accused of the most sensational crime of the nineteenth century. Axed: The Untold Shocking True Story of Lizzie ...

Fall River, Massachusetts, August 1892. A city sweltering under a suffocating heatwave holds its breath, waiting for something to break. Inside the Borden home on Second Street, the air is thick with more than just heat. It’s a place of oppressive silence, resentful family dynamics, and secrets locked away like the house’s many doors. When Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, are discovered brutally murdered with a hatchet, the tight-knit community is shattered. Suspicion falls on the unlikeliest of suspects: Andrew’s younger daughter, Lizzie. A quiet, church-going spinster of thirty-two...

On Halloween night, 1828, in the West Port district of Edinburgh, Scotland, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare would be accused of killing 16 people over the course of 12 months in order to sell the corpses as "subjects" for dissection.

London, 1886. A husband dies in a rented room in Pimlico. Chloroform is found in his stomach. Adelaide Bartlett was accused of murdering her husband, Thomas Edwin Bartlett, in one of the most perplexing poison cases of the Victorian era. The medical evidence revealed a lethal quantity of chloroform — yet no clear explanation of how it had been administered. At the Old Bailey, expert witnesses clashed. The marriage was dissected. A minister’s involvement deepened suspicion. But suspicion is not proof. Acquitted in April 1886, Adelaide Bartlett walked free. The question of how chloroform ...

In August 1892, two people were brutally murdered inside a locked house in Fall River, Massachusetts. The case that followed would become one of the most enduring mysteries in American history. Lizzie Borden: A True-Crime Historical Account returns to the original record to examine what is known—and what remains uncertain—about the deaths of Andrew and Abby Borden. Drawing exclusively from police reports, inquest testimony, trial transcripts, and contemporary accounts, this book traces the lives, routines, and tensions within the Borden household, the events of 4 August 1892, and the ...

“A tour de force of storytelling.” —Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Chief Inspector Gamache series “Jobb’s excellent storytelling makes the book a pleasure to read.” —The New York Times Book Review ”When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of...

Lights! Camera! Action! The latest book in the Big Book Series takes us behind the curtain to uncover the stories that became some of the greatest films of the silver screen. Among these are Robert Louis Stevenson's horrifying tale that was later turned into the iconic movie The Body Snatcher, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; and "Cyclists' Raid", the short story that formed the basis for the legendary Brando film The Wild One.

Breathless and painstakingly researched, this is a stunning debut mystery in which Sherlock Holmes unmasks Jack the Ripper. Lyndsay Faye perfectly captures all the color and syntax of Conan Doyle’s distinctive nineteenth-century London.

The 'H' is Silent. The Horror Isn't. The archives run deeper than anyone imagined. Welcome to Volume Six of the series that's redefining British true crime. This isn't just another collection; it's the beginning of a new era. Longer stories, deeper research, and the raw, unfiltered truth behind Britain's most chilling, and odd, crimes From the gaslit alleys of Victorian England to the stark, modern landscapes of unsolved cold cases, this is a proper smorgasbord of British villainy. Author Ben Oakley digs deeper than ever before, weaving together facts and forgotten details into narratives ...