All articles in True Crime
18th April, 2018 in Folklore, Local & Family History, True Crime
Who put Bella in the wych elm?
Watching the many detective series on television it is easy to form the opinion that murderers are always caught. Sadly, that is not the case and one mysterious death in Worcestershire has gone unsolved for seventy five years. At the height of the Second World War four young…
2nd March, 2018 in True Crime
How did Fleet Street’s crime journalists get their scoops?
Chain-smoking, heavy-drinking, sometimes pill-popping, long hours, last-minute travel, often strained marriages, the pressure and hunger on to get the story, particularly murder, the bloodier or more chilling the better, Fleet Street’s Murder Gang, a name given to crime jour…
10th November, 2017 in History, Society & Culture, True Crime
Chloroform: 170 years of controversy
Chloroform, discovered in 1831 by three independent researchers – an American, a German and a Frenchman – has had a multitude of roles. Initially viewed with suspicion, chloroform gained immense popularity after it was administered to Queen Victoria during childbirth. Used in the…
23rd October, 2017 in Local & Family History, True Crime
The lost girls of Liverpool
Child murder is as rife today as it was in our ancestors’ lifetime. There are two unsolved child murders in Liverpool that have always struck a very tragic chord with me. Some people speculate that they were both carried out by the same hand; I am prone to agree. Margaret ‘Madge’…
20th October, 2017 in True Crime
The notorious case of Dr Crippen
In 1893, Hawley Harvey Crippen married his second wife, Cora Turner, in Jersey City, America. Seven years later, in 1900, they moved to London. Crippen was employed as a representative for Munyon’s Remedies, a company making homeopathic remedies while Cora, using the name Belle E…
11th May, 2017 in Biography & Memoir, History, True Crime
The assassination of Spencer Perceval, British Prime Minister
On Monday 11 May 1812, an unremarkable, anonymous man, just over 40 years of age, made his way to the Palace of Westminster, the seat of government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. No one could have known that on the inside left of his overcoat he had a special…
2nd April, 2017 in History, True Crime, Women in History
The mysterious Princess Caraboo
On the evening of Maundy Thursday in 1817, a young woman wearing colourful Eastern dress was seen wandering through the sleepy village of Almondsbury, Gloucestershire 8 miles north of Bristol. She was wearing a black stuff gown with a muslin frill at the neck, a red and black sha…
22nd February, 2017 in History, True Crime
The myth of highwayman Dick Turpin outlives the facts
Georgian highwayman Dick Turpin, like America’s Jessie James or Australia’s Ned Kelly, lives on in our collective imagination more as a myth than as a man. Nearly everything we know about him – or think we know about him – is false. He didn’t make a midnight ride to York, his fai…
21st February, 2017 in History, True Crime
Napoleon is dead! The Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814
For as long as they have existed, stock markets have attracted fraudsters. An early stock exchange scam, involving one of the greatest seamen of the age, Lord Cochrane, is a powerful and fascinating tale of greed, deceit and public humiliation. In February 1814, news arrived in D…
20th September, 2016 in True Crime
Re-examining the case of ‘Jack the Stripper’
The ‘Nude Murders’ shook London in the early 1960s. Like the gruesome crimes that the killer was named after they too have remained unsolved. Half a century on true crime author and former Flying Squad detective Dick Kirby re-examines the case of ‘Jack the Stripper’, bringing a c…
22nd August, 2016 in True Crime
The Monte Carlo Casino: From empty tables to a magnet for millionaires
The tiny principality of Monaco is the second-smallest sovereign state in the world, and could easily fit into London’s Hyde Park with room to spare. Yet it has become one of the world’s most prestigious and wealthiest resorts. But in earlier times things were very different. In…
10th June, 2016 in Transport & Industry, True Crime
A short history of the British Transport Police
The first police force in England was born in London in September 1829. At this exact time, the first passenger carrying railway trains were being introduced. Both innovations were to have massive effect. During the 1830s and 1840s most cities, towns and counties of England, Scot…