Victorian Murders

This book features fifty-six Victorian murder cases from the files of the Illustrated Police News.

The Thames Torso Murders have been overshadowed by Jack the Ripper and his crimes, but were just as brutal and gruesome. They began in 1887 in London’s East End, just north of the Thames River in Rainham, England. The killer took one victim that year, another in 1888, and two more in 1889. He resumed his crimes in 1902, taking his last victim south of the Thames and leaving her body in a pile of dismembered parts as he had done with most of his other victims. This work delves deep into the case of the Thames Torso Murders. It begins with a look at London in the late 1800s, a time of great confusion and tremendous population increase, and the killer’s path to London, which seems to include a murder in Paris in 1886. The book then examines in great detail each murder and the investigation that may have been hindered by the search for Jack the Ripper. It also raises the idea that Jack the Ripper and the Torso Murderer may have been the same man—Severin Klosowski, better known as George Chapman, the Borough Poisoner. It ends with an examination of Serial Killers; the Ripper, Torso, and Borough Poisoner murder cases; the search for clues to the serial killer responsible for the five Thames Torso murders; and Wolff Levisohn, a dark horse who seems to have known much about all three sets of murders, testified at Chapman’s murder trial, and then faded away as Chapman was sent to the gallows.

Victorian Murders contains all the most shocking cases of murder from Victorian true-crime classic Mysteries of Police & Crime. The author, Major Arthur Griffiths (1838–1908), was Inspector of Her Majesty’s Prisons and deputy governor of Millbank and Wormwood Scrubs, and was most famous for his association with the Whitechapel case. He knew many of the greatest detectives of the day, and, as a result, was the first to describe in print the three men – Kosminski, Ostrog and Druitt – that the police suspected of being ‘Jack the Ripper’. This fascinating volume also includes every other case of note in the annals of Victorian crime. From Elizabeth Brownrigg, who whipped her domestic into an early grave, to the horrific tale of Henry Wainwright, who attempted to transport the dismembered body of his lover across London, it is not for the faint of heart. Richly illustrated, including early sketches by Arthur Rackham, and filled with countless tales of poisoners, sadists, serial killers and cases that have never been solved, this is a book that no true-crime fan should be without.

ÊIt may be said that society itself creates the crimes that most beset it. If the good things of life were more evenly distributed, if everyone had his rights, if there were no injustice, no oppression, there would be no attempts to readjust an unequal balance by violent or flagitious means. There is some force in this, but it is very far from covering the whole ground, and it cannot excuse many forms of crime. Crime, indeed, is the birthmark of humanity, a fatal inheritance known to the theologians as original sin. Crime, then, must be constantly present in the community, and every son of Adam may, under certain conditions, be drawn into it. To paraphrase a great saying, some achieve crime, some have it thrust upon them; but most of us (we may make the statement without subscribing to all the doctrines of the criminal anthropologists) are born to crime. The assertion is as old as the hills; it was echoed in the fervent cry of pious John Bradford when he pointed to the man led out to execution, ÒThere goes John Bradford but for the grace of God!Ó Criminals are manufactured both by social cross-purposes and by the domestic neglect which fosters the first fatal predisposition. ÒAssuredly external factors and circumstances count for much in the causation of crime,Ó says Maudsley. The preventive agencies are all the more necessary where heredity emphasises the universal natural tendency. The taint of crime is all the more potent in those whose parentage is evil. The germ is far more likely to flourish into baleful vitality if planted by congenital depravity. This is constantly seen with the offspring of criminals. But it is equally certain that the poison may be eradicated, the evil stamped out, if better influences supervene betimes. Even the most ardent supporters of the theory of the Òborn criminalÓ admit that this, as some think, imaginary monster, although possessing all the fatal characteristics, does not necessarily commit crime. The bias may be checked; it may lie latent through life unless called into activity by certain unexpected conditions of time and chance. An ingenious refinement of the old adage, ÒOpportunity makes the thief,Ó has been invented by an Italian scientist, Baron Garofalo, who declares that Òopportunity only reveals the thiefÓ; it does not create the predisposition, the latent thievish spirit.

“We are a trading community, a commercial people. Murder is doubtless a very shocking offence, nevertheless as what is done is not to be undone, let us make our money out of it.” Punch.

Riveting combination of true crime and social history examines a dozen famous cases, offering illuminating details of the accused women's backgrounds, deeds, and trials. "Vividly written, meticulously researched." — Choice.

This book features fifty-six Victorian murder cases from the files of the Illustrated Police News.

Provides a collection of comic strip versions of murders in Great Britain during the Victorian era.