The Bermondsey Murder
The Bermondsey Murder

Author: Angela Buckley

Publisher: Pen and Sword True Crime

Published: 2024-09-30

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1399044249

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When Patrick O’Connor went missing in August 1849, his friends were suspicious. The London dock worker was last seen in the company of Swiss-born Maria Manning and her husband in Bermondsey. By the time police officers discovered his remains under the kitchen floor, the couple had fled. This shocking crime sparked a race against time to bring these cold-blooded killers to justice. After almost a decade of unsolved murders in the capital, could Scotland Yard detectives find the murderous pair and restore public confidence in their sleuthing skills? The search for the Mannings spread beyond England and was closely followed by the Victorian public, including prominent writers such as Charles Dickens who was haunted by the case and later immortalised some of the key characters in Bleak House, which was published just four years later. To this day, the Bermondsey Murder remains a legendary crime in the history of Scotland Yard and mid-nineteenth century London. Using primary source material, this book delves into the background of the Mannings, including Maria’s link with royalty and Frederick’s previous criminal activities. It also offers a full biography of the victim, Patrick O’Connor, and his shady past, as well as presenting the original court documents which shed further light on the case and the Mannings' relationship.

Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England
Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England

Author: Anna Kay

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-25

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1000933075

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Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England seeks to provide a comprehensive examination of the notorious Mannings' ‘Bermondsey murder’, and its wider implications in Victorian criminal narrative and popular culture. Exploring the ongoing textual afterlife of Maria Manning, including significant literary contributions by Charles Dickens through his characters Mademoiselle Hortense and Madame Defarge, this volume illuminates representations both echoed and challenged in mid-nineteenth-century conceptions of gender, sexuality, class, nationality, religion, and criminality. This volume also examines the five largely forgotten cases of female homicide from the same year and the imagined discourse perpetuated in fictional personifications. Utilising a wide breadth of literary and historical research, this volume provides readers with a thorough understanding of the various cultural implications of crime and gender in the Victorian period to be read, remembered, and reinterpreted today. Located simultaneously in the fields of feminist, historical, and literary criticism, this volume is invaluable to students of nineteenth-century literature and culture, and researchers with an interest in criminology and media culture.

Gender and the Representation of Evil
Gender and the Representation of Evil

Author: Lynne Fallwell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-07-28

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1315531569

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This edited collection examines gendered representations of "evil" in history, the arts, and literature. Scholars often explore the relationships between gender, sex, and violence through theories of inequality, violence against women, and female victimization, but what happens when women are the perpetrators of violent or harmful behavior? How do we define "evil"? What makes evil men seem different from evil women? When women commit acts of violence or harmful behavior, how are they represented differently from men? How do perceptions of class, race, and age influence these representations? How have these representations changed over time, and why? What purposes have gendered representations of evil served in culture and history? What is the relationship between gender, punishment of evil behavior, and equality?

The Invention of Murder
The Invention of Murder

Author: Judith Flanders

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2013-07-23

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 1250024889

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"Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review In this fascinating exploration of murder in nineteenth century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama-even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other-the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder-from the brutal to the pathetic-Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.

Domestic Murder in Nineteenth-Century England
Domestic Murder in Nineteenth-Century England

Author: Bridget Walsh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1317148444

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Why did certain domestic murders fire the Victorian imagination? In her analysis of literary and cultural representations of this phenomenon across genres, Bridget Walsh traces how the perception of the domestic murderer changed across the nineteenth century and suggests ways in which the public appetite for such crimes was representative of wider social concerns. She argues that the portrayal of domestic murder did not signal a consensus of opinion regarding the domestic space, but rather reflected significant discontent with the cultural and social codes of behaviour circulating in society, particularly around issues of gender and class. Examining novels, trial transcripts, medico-legal documents, broadsides, criminal and scientific writing, illustration and, notably, Victorian melodrama, Walsh focuses on the relationship between the domestic sphere, so central to Victorian values, and the desecration of that space by the act of murder. Her book encompasses the gendered representation of domestic murder for both men and women as it tackles crucial questions related to Victorian ideas of nationhood, national health, political and social inequality, newspaper coverage of murder, unstable and contested models of masculinity and the ambivalent portrayal of the female domestic murderer at the fin de siècle.

The Port of London Murders
The Port of London Murders

Author: Josephine Bell

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1464215413

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A suicide, a derelict barge, and floating pink chiffon nightdresses... When the San Angelo drifts into port in the Pool of London, telephones begin to ring across the capital and an intricate series of events is set in motion. Beset by dreadful storms in the Bay of Biscay, the ship, along with the "mixed cargo" it carries, is late. Unaware of the machinations of avaricious importers, wayward captains, and unscrupulous traders, docklands residents Harry Reed and June Harvey are thrust together by a riverside accident, before being swept into the current of a dark plot developing on the harborside. First published in 1938, this early novel from one of the great Golden Age mystery writers skillfully delivers a compelling tale of murder set against a gritty portrayal of life alongside the Thames. This edition also includes an Introduction by series editor CWA Diamond Dagger-Award winning author Martin Edwards.

Singing the News of Death
Singing the News of Death

Author: Una McIlvenna

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-07-05

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 0197551858

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Across Europe, from the dawn of print until the early twentieth century, the news of crime and criminals' public executions was printed in song form on cheap broadsides and pamphlets to be sold in streets and marketplaces by ballad-singers. Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900 looks at how and why song was employed across Europe for centuries as a vehicle for broadcasting news about crime and executions, exploring how this performative medium could frame and mediate the message of punishment and repentance. Examining ballads in English, French, Dutch, German, and Italian across four centuries, author Una McIlvenna offers the first multilingual and longue durée study of the complex and fascinating phenomenon of popular songs about brutal public death. Ballads were frequently written in the first-person voice, and often purported to be the last words, confession or 'dying speech' of the condemned criminal, yet were ironically on sale the day of the execution itself. Musical notation was generally not required as ballads were set to well-known tunes. Execution ballads were therefore a medium accessible to all, regardless of literacy, social class, age, gender or location. A genre that retained extraordinary continuities in form and content across time, space, and language, the execution ballad grew in popularity in the nineteenth century, and only began to fade as executions themselves were removed from the public eye. With an accompanying database of recordings, Singing the News of Death brings these centuries-old songs of death back to life.