The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
This month we’re looking at the history of murder, making this weeks book The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders. So let’s do this.
Now, obviously, the Victorians did not INVENT murder. People had been killing people for thousands of years before that, as referenced in last weeks book, Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder. Hell, the author of this book even references that first and most well known murder, Cain and Abel. However, the revellry described by Flanders is ghoulishly real...hence the cocktail choice.
And Flanders goes on to detail all the high ticket, highly publicized, murders that occurred starting with the December 7, 1811 murder of Timothy Marr, his wife, their baby, and Marr’s 14 year old apprentice, all the way through the epitome of 19th century murder, Jack the Ripper.
Now, unlike Jack the Ripper, the Marr murderer was caught. Or at least, SOMEONE was caught, the accused being John Williams, who was also accused of the murder of the Williamsons from the same general area. Two hundred years later, who’s to say if he was really the killer?
The wheels of justice spun fast...I mean FUCKING FAST, two hundred years ago. Less than a year later, Williams was executed for the murders. Said execution, by law, had to occur within 48 hours of a guilty verdict. Off of laughably scant evidence, by 21st century standards. Basically, everyone just agreed he must have done it. There was no RIGHT to an attorney in Britain at this time. You could have one...if you could afford one.
And from the time of the murders, the murder locations were put on the tourist map. No joke, murder tourism was a thing and landlords charged people to come and see where the crime occurred. This lasted up until May 22, 1835, which is when the first Madame Tussaud’s Wax museum opened in London and she started localizing the murder tourism industry into one building, buying the clothes the victims were wearing from their families, and creating graphically reproduced diaorama’s of the murder scenes, with the killers standing over the victims. I mean, the murder tourism continued after, but Madame Tussaud’s was a sensation, and her people swooped in early and often to buy up what they could.
But before there was Madame Tussaud’s, there were the newspapers. Who sensationalized every murder beyond the sensation of the crime itself, blatantly plagiarizing each other and repeating themselves, even in the same edition of the paper. The people didn’t care. And while Flanders doesn’t directly cite that infamous of aphorisms “If it bleeds it leads” it’s quite possible that some 19th century London newspaperman coined the phrase. Because HOLY SHIT did the papers revel in murder.
And not just the original crime, although that got plenty of press. The papers would run hourly updates on trials, with the jury deliberating for as little as 8 minutes before finding the defendant guilty. I learned that when a convict was hung for murder, his body was automatically turned over to the medical colleges, which always had a dearth of corpses on which to study anatomy. And yes, Flanders included those most infamous of body snatchers, William Burke and William Hare, one of whom was granted pardon for testifying on behalf of the crown. The other one was hung...and fittingly enough, turned over to the medical school he had previously supplied with corpses for practice.
She includes the sad story of Eliza Fenning, who was tried on April 15, 1815 on four counts of attempted murder. Because the family Eliza worked for had all fallen ill and then recovered. Unfortunately for Eliza, this happened during the height of the poison panic. When the news papers had managed to whip the middle class in to a frenzy of fear that the poor were revolting against them all and poisoning their employers.
A little fear, some bullshit, literally not at all scientific tests that “proved” the presence of arsenic, and poor Eliza was found guilty on all four counts. Even worse, the sentence for attempted murder was the same as for successful murder….death by hanging. The jury reached this conclusion after conferring for 10 minutes. So you know, justice was really served.
The key difference between attempted murder and actual murder is that the body of the condemned was NOT automatically sent to the medical schools for anatomy lessons. The family of the condemned could BUY the body back from the state. Lovely, right?
The press was divided on whether or not justice was done with this one. Regardless, the poor girl hung in a public execution. She was only 24. England would not take executions from public to private until 1868. Up until then, every execution Flanders discusses in this book was widely attended, with crowds of several thousand attending, a festive air would prevail, with hot food and beer being sold, and those with rooms overlooking the gallows renting out window space to make a quick shilling.
With the rise in “crime”….in quotes because there wasn’t so much a rise in crime as a rise in panic brought on by the press, Sir Robert Peel saw his chance to make a historical mark by pushing through laws establishing the first police force. And Flanders includes more details on this throughout, but that’s not, at heart, what this story is about.
It’s not even about the pervasiveness of murder in the 19th century, or even how spectacular the murders were, which some of them were, to be honest, rather more garden variety in comparison to others, but the press had a field day. And would serialize them into stories. Stories like...Great Expectations. I knew, intellectually, that Charles Dickens works were originally serial stories in the papers. I did NOT know just how heavily his stories pulled from true crime as reported in the 19th century papers. Until Flanders pointed it out.
And not just Dickens. Virtually every piece of what we today see as great works of 19th century British literature were, at the original time of publication, seen as penny-blood schlock. Penny-bloods were the precursors to Penny-dreadfuls. If I had to guess, the primary difference was the inclusion of some element of the supernatural that took it from blood to dreadful, although that is only a guess as Flanders does not specify the difference, other than to point out Penny-bloods came first, and were used to promote stories that later became literature.
And she meticulously tells us which work by which author was either based off of or included elements from true crimes that actually happened in the 19th century, up to and including Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. Race horses and race dogs were named after famous killers as part of the pop-culture of the day, with very few victims being so honored. To be fair, it’s only social pressure and fear of cancellation that keeps some people from engaging in such activities today.
And throughout the whole thing, I could see the author’s point. I mean...even today, the press covers crime stories, the more spectacular the better, and uses this to spread division and hatred. Which is not at all different from what was happening 200 years ago. The press are fucking vultures, circling around any story, the more sensational the better, rarely reporting just the facts, but always searching for the angle that will get them more sales, more clicks, more likes, more views.
So I think the author did a hell of a job proving her central theses. The Victorians absolutely revelled in death and detection and that directly led to the creation of modern crime, where people can and DO commit increasingly horrific crimes, just to see their names in print.
And whereas we glorify all of this on celluloid...like Netflix’s series on serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer, The Menendez Brothers, and Ed Gein...and who knows who’s next, and fictional slashers like Freddy Krueger and Michael Meyers, in the 19th century they had plays. Plays that were hurriedly written and sometimes even performed WHILE THE TRIAL WAS ONGOING. With the play actors acting out the murder. At least one enterprising attorney got an injunction against a play for sabotaging the jury pool, which is insane to think that such a thing would be needed. I mean...in America we have or at least at one point had the belief in innocent until proven guilty. One could certainly argue that the press is no better at condemning someone untried. I mean look what they did to Kyle Rittenhouse, Nicholas Sandmann, OJ Simpson, Casey Anthony, even more contemporary to this book, Lizzie Borden.
But in 19th Century England, the judges were just as prejudicial as the playwrights and would practically direct juries to guilty verdicts. Pretty sure there are examples in America of juries being just as expeditious...especially in the wild west and the deep south for example, the trial system in Victorian England was beyond the pale when it comes to speedy trials….convictions...and executions.
But, after reading this book, I do think all of this began with the Victorians. And handily continued into the 21st century with influencer culture pushing the drive for more public and more nauseating acts of violence. All for the glory of 15 minutes of fame.
Although, you could certainly argue that quite a few of those condemned in England in the 19th century, were absolutely not seeking fame and glory. I think it quite likely that a terrifying percentage of them were completely innocent sacrifices on the alter of a police force who needed to be seen to be doing something. Even at the expense of the innocent, to the satisfaction of the guilty who literally got away with murder.
