Description

Grimly fascinating engrossing Daily Mail

NINE HISTORIC CRIMES ONE FAMILIAR OBSESSION

In early modern England murder truly was most foul Trials were gossipy events packed to the rafters with noisome spectators Executions were public proceedings which promised not only gore but desperate confessions and the grandest most righteous human drama Bookshops saw grisly stories of crime and death sell like hot cakes
This history unfolds the true stories of murder criminal investigation early forensic techniques high court trials and so much more
In thrilling narrative we follow a fugitive killer through the streets of London citizen detectives clamouring to help officials close the net We untangle the mystery of a suspected staged suicide through the newly emerging science of forensic pathology We see a mother trying to clear her dead daughters name while other women faced the accusations sometimes true and sometimes not of murdering their own children
These stories are pieced together from original research using coroners inquests court records parish archives letters diaries and the cheap street pamphlets that proliferated to satisfy a voracious public
These intensely personal stories portray the lives of real people as they confronted the extraordinary crises of murder infanticide miscarriage and suicide Many historical laws and attitudes concerning death and murder may strike us as exceptionally cruel and yet many still remind us that some things never change we are still fascinated by narratives of murder and true crime murder trials today continue to be grand public spectacles female killers are frequently cast as aberrant objects of public hatred and sexual desire and suicide remains a sin within many religious organisations and was a crime in England until the 1960s
Great and Horrible News explores the strange history of death and murder in early modern England yet the stories within may appear shockingly familiar