This is Mr Dickens’s compendium of murder –a dictionary of atrocious acts, dreadful deeds, and hideous horrors. Dickens asks the question: ‘Is it in the interest of any man to steal, to gamble, to waste his health and mental faculties by drunkenness, to lie, forswear himself, indulge hatred, seek desperate revenge, or do murder? No. …
Author: jcbriggsbooks
A is for Arsenic.
White Arsenic comes in the form of a white powder which has no taste – this renders it most dangerous. Alfred Swaine Taylor who is called the father of forensic science observes that ‘most of those persons who have been criminally or accidentally destroyed by arsenic have not been aware of any taste in taking …
B is for Bayham Street in Camden Town
B is for Bayham Street in Camden Town. There’s Buckingham Street and Bentinck Street, too - all places where Dickens lived at some time. No wonder Dickens was fascinated by murder - each of these streets is associated with murder. Doctor W.H. Crook was found murdered in a brick field in the Caledonian Road. His …
C is for: Courvoisier, Francois Benjamin.
He was the Swiss valet of Lord William Russell, third son of the Marquis of Tavistock and uncle to the future Prime Minister, Lord John Russell with whom Dickens dined on several occasions. Whether they talked of this brutal murder, we don’t know. On May 6th, 1840, Lord William was found with his throat cut …
D is for Dadd, Richard
Their way lay through a deep and shady wood cooled by the light wind which gently rustled the thick foliage … The ivy and moss crept in thick clusters over the old trees and the soft green turf overspread the ground like a silk mat. They emerged upon an open park with an ancient hall …
E is for Eliza: there are three of them.
The first is Eliza Burgess. In January 1840, twelve jurymen assembled at the Marylebone Workhouse to hear the inquest on a dead baby. The mother, 25 year old Eliza Burgess, was suspected of having killed her new-born child. One of the jurors was the 28 year old Charles Dickens who lived at number 1 Devonshire …
F is for Fenning: the second Eliza.
Dickens refers to Eliza Fenning in a letter in 1863 to his friend John Forster. Dickens is editing an article by a writer George Thornbury who had submitted the article for his magazine All The Year Round about the case of Eliza Fenning who was hanged for the attempted murder of her employer, his wife …
G is for Grimwood: the third Eliza
In 1838, Eliza Grimwood was murdered in a house of ill-fame at number 12 Wellington Terrace, Waterloo Road. Her throat was cut. Dickens wrote up the story in Three Detective Anecdotes as the tale of The Countess. Inspector Field of Dickens’s article On Duty with Inspector Field investigated, and the case demonstrates the painstaking search …
G is also for Greenacre
G is also for Greenacre: at the end of 1850, Dickens was sitting for his portrait with the artist William Boxhall. The picture was never finished. WP Frith said that Dickens told him: Well I sat a great deal, and the picture seemed to me to get worse – sometimes it was like Ben Caunt …
H is for Hardman
H is for Hardman From the Lancaster Guardian, Saturday 5th September 1857: The sentence of death passed upon Edward Hardman at the last Lancaster Assizes, for the wilful murder of his wife, by the administration of poison, was carried into effect at on Saturday… Edward Hardman was hanged at Lancaster gaol two weeks before Dickens …
