Much like Victorian daily life, murder wasn’t pretty.
Is it ever? Murder, I mean. Or, one can easily imagine . . .
It surprises me that author Alex Grecian gets a lot of flack (at least as far as a few reviews go) for being too horrific or graphic in his books about Scotland Yard’s “Murder Squad.”
Granted, I’ve only read the first two books in the series: The Yard, and The Black Country. As it stands, there are five books in the series. And it is said that the author gets progressively darker with each book.
The first book in the series is The Yard, of course, and it is one of my favorite books of Victorian crime fiction. I read this book when it was first published and thoroughly enjoyed it. I just recently finished listening to the Audible version of the book. Not only was it fun revisiting The Yard, but I highly recommend listening to the Audible version, because the narrator is fantastic.
Is the story dark? Yes. Gritty? Absolutely! I wouldn’t have it any other way. This darkness, to my mind at least, lends the story a sense of gritty reality.
I thoroughly enjoyed the graphic detail provided when Dr. Kingsley is examining each of the bodies of the victims. Kingsley is a man of science, very logical and meticulous. His daughter, with her sketch pad, calmly sketching the corpses, was a nice touch, also, and her presence softens the edges of the gritty scene. She brings a sort of light to the darkness. Fiona is depicted as somewhat shy and seems to have been sheltered from everyday life by her father; and yet, in the confines of their home she is presented with death on an almost daily basis. Fiona is used to death, as was the whole of society during the time period. Sickness and early death were prevalent; often due to disease brought on by the wretched living conditions of most of London society at the time.
One could perhaps argue that within this book the manner of the murders, or the setup and posing of the bodies (if one could call it that—I would tell you about it but that would spoil things) might be a little over the top. But is it?
The setting is just during or after the Jack the Ripper murders. Sensationalism ruled the day as far as the newspapers went, the papers vying with one another to embellish and amplify all of the gory details of the Ripper killings. And the citizenry of the time revelled in the sensationalism, devouring with relish every little morsal of gore. The newspapers were filled with horrific depictions. And the newspapers weren’t the only things. There were broadsides (similar to fliers), plays, poems and songs . . . The fascination with the killings and the global interest is why we have so many facts of the Ripper case accessible today. Jack the Ripper became world famous, but what about the victims?
And so, this leads me to the “canonical five,” as the five women killed by the Ripper are known, and on to a book of nonfiction. Though there is some disagreement and speculation that perhaps there were more women murdered by the Whitechapel killer, these five victims are not in dispute:
Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly
Though there is a huge amount of material regarding the Ripper murders, many theories as to who he was, etc., and a great deal of facts regarding the deaths of these five women, there is one book that tries to provide clues to these women’s lives. Unfortunately, the women are often all lumped together, and classified as, or assumed to be prostitutes.
In her book, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold tries to dispel this general assumption. She digs up all of the facts about each of these women and then takes things even further by using plausible speculation to fill in where the facts fail. Her attempts seem reasonable enough, coloring in what each of these women might have seen and experienced in their short and hardscrabble lives. I believe she succeeds as well as anyone could in presenting her case that these women were in fact simply individuals who were down on their luck and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A different decision here or there, a step in one direction or another, and each one might have lived to read about other women in the papers who had been so brutally murdered. But one could say that about life in general, of course. We all lead lives of chance, in a sense.
In any case, I enjoyed listening to the narrator of this book on Audible as well. There are a few dry spots, and I did nod off a time or two, but perhaps I was listening to larger chunks at a time than I should have. I simply backed the chapter up to the spot where I thought I had drifted off and started again.
And there are other books on Victorian life that shed light on the everyday world at the time. One cannot fail to mention the author Judith Flanders, and her excellent books (two of them anyway):
Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England, and The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime.
And there were other sensational crimes leading to other nonfiction books:
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, by Kate Summerscale
And, also by Kate Summerscale, and on my “to read,” list is The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London.
And I’ll just mention one more book, though there are so many more out there that I am undoubtedly unaware of:
Death at the Priory: Love, Sex and Murder in Victorian England, by James Ruddick.
So Yes, Victorian Murder was Gritty and Brutal, as was the life.
Don’t just take my word for it, read the books. Just don’t expect them to be Cozy Mysteries. Though I believe Mr. Whicher did collect the suspects together in a room a time or two, it would have been very unlike your favorite warm and cozy murder mystery. I’m not knocking Cozy mysteries here, as I enjoy a good one every now and again. I’m just making a distinction. The reality, by all accounts was much darker, and the darker fiction leans into this reality.
Okay, I’ll list two more nonfiction books:
Murder in the First-Class Carriage: The First Victorian Railway Killing, by Kate Colquhoun
And
Gaslight Villainy: True Tales of Victorian Murder by Grahame Farrell
Do you want me to stop? I could keep going, you know . . .
Just one more then:
Murderesses in Victorian Britain by Christina Croft.
Ok two, and this is the final one, really, I swear.
Victorian Murderesses by Mary S. Hartman.
Though these last two books appear to have almost identical titles, they are two distinctly separate books. I haven’t read the first one. I’ve owned the second for a number of years and have read some of it.
I’m not saying that you have to embrace the darkness. You are more than welcome to take a look, however. Go ahead and scamper down the dark alley, the one with the gaslight that has gone out. Don’t wear shoes that will clatter and scuff against the loose cobblestones beneath your feet. You’ll probably feel a brush of the smattering of tall weeds that have grown up between the stones. They grow fast due to the chamber pots being emptied here—but the smell has probably already given that away. Just watch your step. Stay close to the wall, and when you get to the end of the alley press your back up against that dirty, grimy wall and peek around the corner into the small—wait, did you hear that cough? Someone is there, very close. And don’t jump at the sound of the clattering hooves and the carriage going by on the main street behind you. You are in the shadows, the darkness of the alley, remember. There’s that cough again, more violent this time, consumption, tuberculosis. You can almost hear the blood spatter as it spews forth. Perhaps it’s a murder you are about to witness. A dog barks in the distance. A baby cries, from somewhere up above, a muffled sound. Okay, peek now, quick! A window opens above. A woman is humming, trying to quiet the baby. She stops, leans out the window. “Who’s there?” she says, looking down into the alley. Shh. Stay still.
Don’t worry, you are actually sitting comfortably in your favorite reading chair. You’re safe. Just know this isn’t a “Cozy mystery.” Those are good also, when you’re in the mood. Maybe later you can read one of those.