Infamous Victorians

'Even the lives of scoundrels play some part in portraying an age...' Our interest in all things Victorian - in the seamy side of the era especially - is ageless and undimmed. Giles St. Aubyn's Infamous Victorians, first published in 1971, stands as a brilliant illumination of two dark stories of the time, replete with sinister elements of iniquity and hypocrisy. In the first fifty years of Victoria's reign two doctors were hanged after being found guilty of murder at the Central Criminal Court. Both men were 32 years old, both poisoners, both murdered for money. Dr William Palmer was a notorious figure, tried for a single murder though he almost certainly killed others. Dr George Lamson was a morphia addict convicted of killing his crippled young brother-in-law at Blenheim House school. Giles St. Aubyn restores them to life on the page, examines their careers and assesses their guilt.

In Victorian London, filth was everywhere: horse traffic filled the streets with dung, household rubbish went uncollected, cesspools brimmed with "night soil," graveyards teemed with rotting corpses, the air itself was choked with smoke. In this intimately visceral book, Lee Jackson guides us through the underbelly of the Victorian metropolis, introducing us to the men and women who struggled to stem a rising tide of pollution and dirt, and the forces that opposed them. Through thematic chapters, Jackson describes how Victorian reformers met with both triumph and disaster. Full of individual stories and overlooked details--from the dustmen who grew rich from recycling, to the peculiar history of the public toilet--this riveting book gives us a fresh insight into the minutiae of daily life and the wider challenges posed by the unprecedented growth of the Victorian capital.

"The essays in this book set out to explore the ways in which Victorians used newspapers to identify the causes of bad behavior and its impacts, and the ways in which they tried to "distance" criminals and those guilty of "bad" behavior from the ordinary members of society, including identification of them as different according to race of sexual orientation. It also explores how threats from within "normal" society were depicted and the panic that issues like "baby-farming" caused." "Victorian alarm was about crimes and bad behavior which they saw as new or unique to their period - but which were not new then and which, in slightly different dress, are still causing panic today. What is striking about the essays in this collection are the ways in which they echo contemporary concerns about crime and bad behavior, including panics about "new" types of crime. This has implications for modern understandings of how society needs to understand crime, demonstrating that while there are changes over time, there are also important continuities."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Here is a valuable, and fascinating, piece of social history. Watson sheds new light on a macabre yet frequently misunderstood subject.

In this revised and expanded edition, leading forensic scientist John Trestrail offers a pioneering survey of all that is known about the use of poison as a weapon in murder. Topics range from the use of poisons in history and literature to convicting the poisoner in court, and include a review of the different types of poisons, techniques for crime scene investigation, and the critical essentials of the forensic autopsy. The author updates what is currently known about poisoners in general and their victims. The Appendix has been updated to include the more commonly used poisons, as well as the use of antifreeze as a poison.

One of the most notorious Victorian murders was committed by Dr George Henry Lamson, who stood trial in 1882 for poisoning his crippled brother-in-law Percy Malcolm John; he was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed.