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    The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
    The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
    The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
    Audiobook19 hours

    The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime

    Written by Judith Flanders

    Narrated by Jennifer M. Dixon

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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 fiancee 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 4, 2019
    ISBN9781977349811
    The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
    Author

    Judith Flanders

    Judith Flanders is the author of several critically acclaimed and bestselling books: A Circle of Sisters (2001), which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award; The Invention of Murder (2001), shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-fiction; The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed(2003); The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London (2012), shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times History Book of the Year; The Making of Home (2014), Christmas: A History (2017) and A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order (2020). In her copious leisure time, she also writes the Sam Clair series of comic crime novels.

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    Reviews for The Invention of Murder

    3.5/5

    142 ratings11 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I just can't with this book. I've tried to read it three times (in fact, the last time I checked it out, I realized my bookmark was still where I had left off...on page 120.) It just feels really disorganized, and the writing was just not engaging enough for me. As a primarily fiction reader, I like non-fiction with a more narrative style. This just didn't quite do it for me.
    • 4/5
      Interesting book about the way Victorians looked at murder and executions as entertainmentand the development of detection and scientific rigor in police work.
    • 3/5
      A bit disorganized, but it's a good complement to the author's book about Victorian London.
    • 4/5
      In The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime, Judith Flanders investigates the phenomena of murder and crime in the Victorian era via landmark murder cases, trials, publications, and modern adaptations. Judith Flanders looks at more than 20 murder cases, from poisoners to Jack the Ripper. Flanders covers the establishment of a detective arm of the police force, scientific advances in forensic science and the macabre reactions to the murders in the form of theatrical performances, fiction novels, cheap narratives also known as “penny dreadfuls”, Madame Tussaud’s waxworks and in the newspapers of the day. Flanders describes the Victorian public as the creators of “murder- sightseeing” taking a macabre fascination in viewing crime scenes, hangings and court trials.Flanders adopts a thematic approach to each type of murderer. Chapters entitled, “Trial by Newspaper,” “Entertaining Murder,” “Panic,” and “Science, Technology, and the Law,” allow Flanders to approach the era from a many angles that allow the reader a wide-ranging understanding of this multilayered topic.Flanders’s The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime is an achievement of research and historical investigation. Flanders makes strenuous efforts to be as thorough as possible while crafting intriguing stories to keep her readers continuously engaged. Her text keeps the reader intrigued using incredible research into the crimes themselves, keeping the historical and modern relevance intact. This is far from a “dry” book. An entertaining, informative, yet gruesome book. One to read.
    • 4/5
      This was a more academic book than I was expecting, but that's all right - it just made the little flashes of humor all the more entertaining. Flanders discusses murder in the 19th century (not strictly the Victorian age, as the subtitle implies) and the ways it was talked about in popular media and literature. There's some kind of organizing principle I don't quite understand, since it's not entirely chronological, but I was in it for the murder and the crazy Victorian broadsides, so that's fine.
    • 5/5
      "Perhaps things change less than one thinks," writes Judith Flanders in The Invention of Murder (page 430 fn). Although the footnote refers to just one similarity between the Victorian press and the modern BBC, this footnote is the hallmark of the book. Flanders in no way belabors the similarities between Victorian sensation-seeking and the modern journalism, but the similarities are there to see throughout this book. (Note, references throughout are to pages of the first hardcover edition.)The "Cold Bath Field riot" of 1833, when newly formed police brigades moved in with brutal force to disperse a London crowd of protesting workers calling themselves the "National Political Union" (page 79). How much does this resemble modern-day police crowd "control" at political conventions and throughout the Occupy Movement?For a hanging in November 1849, "estimates of the numbers present ranged widely, from 30,000 to 50,000"; and for a public execution in 1859, a Liberal paper saw "several hundred" in attendance while a Tory chronicle estimated 12,000 t0 15,000 (page 170 and 170 fn). Crowd estimates are no more accurate today, with police reports minimizing the size and organizers' claims maximizing the estimates.The Victorian police were no strangers to entrapment and the use of provocateurs (page 428), just as today's FBI seemingly invents "terrorist" prosecutions; and the Victorian press was as quick to complain of being "shut out" of investigations as is any modern-day police-beat reporter (id).Flanders barely ever takes note of these similarities between the Victorian and modern eras, but the resemblances are all the more fascinatingly obvious for her not belaboring the point.This book will be particularly interesting to a reader with an interest in the Victorian novel. Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon make frequent appearances along with cameos from Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot, Margaret Oliphant and Charlotte Yonge. The comprehensive index will make The Invention of Murder a valuable tool of literary research, especially as to Dickens (and note that one fascinating Dickens reference, page 25 fn, involving the phrase "postponed pork" in Our Mutual Friend, seems to have been inadvertently omitted from the index).In addition to the comprehensive index, the book also includes forty-seven pages of endnotes of supporting references (the occasional textual footnote being for parenthetical comments) along with an extensive bibliography My only complaint is that there are numerous names of criminals, victims, and other characters who will not necessarily be familiar to a modern reader. Although the index is comprehensive, Flanders might have been well-advised to have also included a glossary of the criminal cases.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating.

      An interesting and well-researched book about how murder became entertainment, and how our modern attitudes were born.
    • 2/5
      This isn't a book I would normally read, my wife really enjoyed it. I didn't hate it, I just didn't enjoy it. Very repetitive.
    • 4/5
      An examination of how the murder genre started to gain traction in the Victorian era. It looks at the reporting of murders and how they both fed each other. How the views of the murders and snippets from these murders became part of fiction and fed other genres. I found it an interesting read, full of gruesome details of a variety of murders and executions.Interesting, traces some of the roots of modern crime fiction, but a bit repetitive occasionally.
    • 4/5
      It is surprising how few murders there were in the Victorian Age. We have a picture in our minds of a violent, largely uncaring society. Of course, our views are driven by exposure to the sensationalists of the times - Dickens, Conan Doyle and many others - all of whom had an interest in portraying the seamiest side of life. Victorians were just like us; they had a prurient interest in murders, especially where class and money were involved.As technology became more efficient, more widespread and more affordable through the 19th century the reporting of murder and the interests of the public became more sophisticated. We see the birth and early steps of the forensic sciences as tools to assist in the prosecution of murder. We see the growth of detection as a specific set of scientific skills in tracking down murderers.Judith Flanders describes and tracks all this with wit and with a strong grasp of the historical detail. She is a social historian of the first order, widely read and knowledgeable across a wide and surprising spectrum of cultural tropes. ‘The Invention of Murder’ uses the most widely known and discussed crimes of their day to show how the whole of society moved from a parochial, local view without much interest beyond the village to a more worldly, wider understanding of how different people from different places and classes interacted.This is a wonderful book full of insights and interesting tidbits of long forgotten people, places and times. I highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      Sub-titled 'How The Victorians Revelled In Death And Detection And Created Modern Crime' this book is of great importance to readers of both Crime Fiction and of Criminology. Judith Flanders is a fine writer who brings readability and (surprisingly,given the grim subject matter) a certain amount of humour to this account. Beginning with 'The Radcliffe Highway murders of 1811 and ending with the 'Jack the Ripper' killings in 1888,they cover some 50 murders of which only one remains unsolved,that of 'The Ripper'. In the course of the book,and dovetailing neatly with the factual murders,many broadsheets,plays and fiction (both lurid and classic) are discussed.In short,I cannot praise it enough.