London Crimes

This book surveys the lives and experiences of hundreds of thousands of eighteenth-century non-elite Londoners in the evolution of the modern world.

With its fascinating mix of people - rich and poor, British and foreign, worthy and suspicious - London is a city where anything can happen. The possibilities for criminals and for the crime writer are endless. London has been home to many of fiction's finest detectives, and the setting for mystery novels and short stories of the highest quality. 'Capital Crimes' is an eclectic collection of London-based crime stories, blending the familiar with the unexpected in a way that reflects the personality of the city.

Dig deep into the unsolved murder of Jackie English and join the hunt for a serial killer Fifty years ago, a serial killer prowled the quiet city of London, Ontario, marking it as his hunting grounds. As young women and boys were abducted, raped, and murdered, residents of the area held their loved ones closer and closer, terrified of the monster — or monsters — stalking the streets. Homicide detective Dennis Alsop began hunting the killer in the 1960s, and he didn’t stop searching until his death 40 years later. For decades, detectives, actual and armchair, and the victims’ families and friends continued to ask questions: Who was the Forest City Killer? Was there more than one person, or did a depraved individual commit all of these crimes on his own? Combing through the files Detective Alsop left behind, researcher Vanessa Brown reopens the cases, revealing previously unpublished witness statements, details of evidence, and astonishing revelations. And through her investigation, Vanessa posits the unthinkable: is it possible that the Forest City Killer is still alive and, like the notorious Golden State Killer, a simple DNA test could bring him to justice?

Like the mythic cities of Gotham or Gomorrah, London, Ontario was for many years an unrivalled breeding ground of depravity and villainy, the difference being that its monsters were all too real. In its coming to inherit the unwanted distinction of being the serial killer capital of not just Canada—but apparently also the world during this dark age in the city’s sordid history— the crimes seen in London over this quarter-century period remain unparalleled and for the most part unsolved. From the earliest documented case of homicidal copycatting in Canada, to the fact that at any given time up to six serial killers were operating at once in the deceivingly serene “Forest City,” London was once a place that on the surface presented a veneer of normality when beneath that surface dark things would whisper and stir. Through it all, a lone detective would go on to spend the rest of his life fighting against impossible odds to protect the city against a tidal wave of violence that few ever saw coming, and which to this day even fewer choose to remember. With his death in 2011, he took these demons to his grave with him but with a twist—a time capsule hidden in his basement, and which he intended to one day be opened. Contained inside: a secret cache of his diaries, reports, photographs, and hunches that might allow a new generation of sleuths to pick up where he left off, carry on his fight, and ultimately bring the killers to justice—killers that in many cases are still out there. Murder City is an explosive book over fifty years in the making, and is the history of London, Ontario as never told before. Stranger than fiction, tragic, ironic, horrifying, yet also inspiring, this is the true story of one city under siege, and a book that marks a game changer for the true crime genre.

Over seven centuries London has changed dramatically - from walled medieval settlement to bustling modern metropolis. But throughout its history there has been one inescapable constant: murder. It winds through the heart of the capital as surely as the River Thames. Capital Crimes tells the story of crime and punishment in the city, from the killing of infamous 'questmonger' Roger Legett during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 through to the hanging of Styllou Christofi in 1954. Along the way we encounter such shocking characters as railway murderer Franz Muller, the ‘baby farmers’ of Finchley and the notorious political assassin John Bellingham. Some are well known, some obscure; the lives and fates of all, however, have much to tell us, providing a glimpse into the workings of London’s mysterious underworld and reminding us that dark deeds are not so far removed from everyday life as we would perhaps like to believe.

This edited volume provides a contemporary overview of major issues and control strategies associated with fraud and financial crime, including prevention, public ethics, compliance mechanisms, and law enforcement in England and Wales. The UK – and in particular, England & Wales - has had a number of public strategies and plans to address fraud and financial crime, beginning (in this edited volume) with the 2008 National Fraud Strategy and now including, most recently, the 2020 Local Government Fraud and Corruption strategy, the 2019 Economic Crime Plan and National Fraud Policing Strategy, the 2018 Serious and Organised Crime Strategy, and the 2017 Anti-Corruption Plan. All, together with a number of past, existing, reconfigured and new institutions and procedures, reflect a continuing collective response to emerging issues and themes in fraud and financial crime. Frauds and Financial Crimes: Trends, Strategic Responses and Implementation Issues in England and Wales contributes insights about the continuing interplay of strategic responses, priorities and implementation in an era of budget reductions, competing local and national agendas and a continuing absence of joined-up oversight and ownership. Drawing on both academic and practitioner experts, the book seeks to explore a range of important themes, including: the gaps between strategic intentions and practice on the ground; different approaches to the same issue; labelling of crimes as ‘organised’ and/or ‘economic’; collaborative public-private and inter-agency approaches and problem ownership; the role of prevention; and the translation of experience upwards and policy downwards in development and implementation. In doing so, it seeks to inform more effective strategic responses to fraud and financial crime. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Public Money and Management.

Invisible Crimes is an edited volume containing a collection of articles from a distinguished panel of academics. The book explores many features of 'invisible' crimes and in doing so provides numerous examples of hidden crimes and victimisations. The book will be invaluable to students of criminology at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. It will also inspire academics from a range of disciplines to update, rewrite and offer new courses on neglected crimes and victimisations.

In 1883 newspaper editor G.W. Foote stood trial three times for blasphemy. Here Joss Marsh reconstructs the forgotten cases of more than 200 working-class "blasphemers" in Victorian England, whose stubborn refusal to silence their "hooligan" voices, along with Foote, helped secure our rights to speak and write freely today. 22 photos.