A review by silvermadeleine
The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders

dark informative mysterious medium-paced

4.0

I now know that I was wrong to believe that true crime ghouls were a 21st century phenomenon. Back in the 19th century they were attending hangings en masse, paying to be shown crime scenes, purchasing china figures representing murderers, and spending their last tuppence on hysterical large-type broadsides. Judith Flanders is an excellent writer with a wealth of Victoriana knowledge at her fingertips, though the litany of crimes committed grew wearisome. They were sordid and depressing murders, mostly men killing men they wanted to rob or women whose presence had become inconvenient. I would have liked some discussion of what this all says about human nature, but I suppose that was beyond the scope of the book. Some bits I'd like to remember:

• "Penny-bloods" was the original name for the lurid stories, aimed at working-class youth, renamed "penny-dreadfuls" in the 1860s.
• Boy-detectives also first appeared in the 1860s.
• During Victoria's 63-year reign, 26 percent of convicted murders were men who had killed their wives, while 1 percent were women who had killed their husbands. That meant a lot of publicity when a woman did kill her husband.
• There were very few poisoning cases, though they figured large in the public imagination.
• The English police force was entirely male until 1883, when two women were hired to look after female prisoners at police stations.