True Victorian

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 ...

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...

British true crime history told through railway murders, canal killings, river bodies and road crimes — from Victorian Britain to the modern commuter age. Bodies in Transit is a dark, documentary collection of fifteen true crime cases about the journeys that became crime scenes: sealed railway compartments, canal boats, left-luggage offices, bridges, tunnels, country lanes, burning cars and the dangerous last mile home. From the first railway murder of Thomas Briggs and the Brighton Line Murder to the Thames Torso Murders, the Green Bicycle case, the Blazing Car Murder, the A6 Murder and ...

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 ...

August 1893. A young heir lies dead on a Scottish Highland estate. A loaded shotgun. A trusted tutor. Life insurance policies worth twenty thousand pounds, signed mere days before the fatal shot. The local authorities call it a tragic accident. Sherlock Holmes takes the next train north. At Ardlamont Estate in Argyllshire, Holmes and Watson uncover a crime of breathtaking calculation — and beneath it, something far larger: a systematic industry of fraud reaching from the Highland glens into the drawing rooms of London's most powerful men. Alfred Monson is meticulous, well-connected, and ...

The year is 1888 and a brutal serial killer stalks the streets of London. For the first time, the press realise if it bleeds it leads... Using press reports from the time The Ripper Reports reveals the crimes of Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel Murders as events unfolded. If you already know the Ripper crimes, this book reveals the fallacies, misinformation and conspiracies initially reported as events unfolded and England’s first serial killer was revealed to the world. If you are new to Jack the Ripper you can experience the rollercoaster of news revelations as the horrified ...

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?

Victorian Poverty Was Not Chaos. It Was Arithmetic. Beyond the myths of Jack the Ripper and Charles Dickens lies the brutal, mechanical reality of the London Underworld. You’ve read the novels. You’ve walked the gaslit streets in your imagination. But what did survival actually cost in the East End? How much did you pay for eight hours of sleep on a stretched rope? How many calories sustained a workhouse inmate? What did it mean to raise a family inside a single, airless room in a rookery? The stories are familiar. The numbers are not. In The Victorian Rookery: The Economic Reality of ...

When Leana Farlow's sister vanishes after eloping with a Colorado rancher, Leana leaves her polished Kansas City life to follow the trail. Her only lead is Simeon, the jilted fiancé whose piercing gaze and steady resolve spark questions in her heart she's not ready to face. Simeon Morgan never wanted love—just a wife in order to secure his inheritance. Yet when Leana arrives searching for her sister, guilt drives him to help, and her vulnerability stirs something unexpected, making Simeon wonder if his heart is truly off-limits. As their search leads them through perilous terrain and ...

This story of the Elgin marbles re-creates in full detail "the greatest art theft in history." Almost 200 years after they were "purchased" from Greece, the finest and most famous marbles of antiquity still remain a burning issue. This compelling, controversial story of the Elgin marbles re-creates in full and colorful detail "the greatest art theft in history", a steamy tale of obsession, intrigue, adultery, and ruin.

The Whitechapel Murders Were Not a Mystery. They Were a Systemic Collapse. Forget the conspiracy theories and the legends of a criminal mastermind. Step into the brutal, mechanical reality of a police machine pushed beyond its operational limits. In 1888, London was the largest industrial city on Earth, yet it was policed by an infrastructure designed decades earlier for basic crowd control. When a calculated predator began operating in the East End, the Metropolitan Police did not simply fail to catch him—the entire investigative apparatus suffered a catastrophic system overload. In The ...

A Victorian Saga of Brotherhood, Loss, and the Sea In the shadow of the Barnstaple workhouse, two brothers are forced to grow up far too quickly. When Margaret Hale leaves Thomas and Samuel behind with nothing but a promise, the boys must navigate a world where survival comes before childhood. Inside the harsh system of the Victorian workhouse, they learn a brutal truth — that kindness is scarce, and hope must be protected at all costs. But through hunger, hardship, and separation, one thing never falters. Their bond. As the brothers fight to carve out a future beyond the workhouse walls,...

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...

The Victorian Mind Was Not a Soul. It Was Malfunctioning Machinery. Forget the ghost stories and the gaslit myths of haunted asylums. Step into the brutal, mechanical reality of 19th-century criminal lunacy. The industrial expansion of London produced cities dense enough to magnify every social instability. The courts could hang murderers, but execution was a terminal output, not a diagnostic tool. It did nothing to explain why certain individuals were immune to the deterrence of the gallows. In The Victorian Alienist: The Medical Reality of Criminal Insanity, Glenn S. Martinez reconstructs...

What kind of man walks out of a back yard at dawn with a uterus in his pocket, then sits down to read about himself in the morning paper? For over a hundred and thirty years, the world has been chasing the wrong man. The cape. The top hat. The royal physician with a black bag and a brougham. Every generation paints him a new costume. The truth has never worn one. Jack The Ripper, the Whitechapel killer was almost certainly a man you would have walked past on the way to the baker. Quiet. Polite. Forgettable. He paid his landlady on time. He nodded at the constable on the corner.

In the winter of 1848, a family moved into a farmhouse in rural New York and heard knocking in the walls. What happened next would change American religious history forever. The Rochester Rappers: A History of the Fox Sisters is the definitive narrative account of one of the strangest and most consequential stories in American cultural life — the birth of the Spiritualist movement and the three sisters at the center of it. Drawing on historical testimony, signed statements, newspaper accounts, and the remarkable documentary record left by forty years of investigation and controversy, this...

Lord Charles Danvers, still mourning his lost love Charlotte, hopes to escape from his ghosts at the gala coming-of-age celebrations for the son of his oldest friend. All is jubilation and proper respectability until the evening is shattered by a brutal murder. The police are quick to point to a quarrelsome farmer, but Danvers has his doubts. Is the real culprit much closer to home? And does Danvers owe the greater loyalty to an old friend or to the truth? Then, Danver is even more unsettled by the entrance of the alluring Lady Antonia Hoover. The first in the Lord Danvers Investigates ...

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 ...

An intrepid female reporter matches wits with a serious, sexy detective in an award-winning author's fun and flirty historical rom-com, perfect for readers of Evie Dunmore, Julia Quinn, and Tessa Dare!England, 1865: Newspaper columnist Lady Katherine Bascomb finds herself the subject of...

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 ...