Vintage Victorian murder

by Gerald Sparrow

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805510451
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: Hart Pub. Co
• Length: 223 Pages
• Weight: 2.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Tales of Victorian Murders

Gerald Sparrow has written over 30 books, most about crime. He had been a distinguished judge in the criminal courts of England, his knowledge of crime came from his experiences in law courts and his hatred for murder. Sparrow favors the death penalty as a deterrent to murder. He looks back to Victorian times as some golden age of justice! Yet the number of offences liable to the death penalty were greatly reduced in the early 19th century. If we know anything from two centuries of criminology it is that a bad economy causes more crime. There are other factors but Sparrow ignores them as well. Victorian England was ruled by an oligarchy of powerful land owners with wealthy business men (p.23). The one outlet for this oppression was to get drunk (p.24). Prisoners had almost no rights. The aim of the penal system was to terrorize the people as a salutary deterrent (p.26). Punishment must be painful for deterrence, but no greater than necessary. The quotes from an 1882 essay were more liberal than in earlier times. Public executions were ended (p.28). In Anglo-Saxon times the punishment for murder was usually a fine (wergild). William the Conqueror abolished the death penalty (p.29). Sparrow's admiration for the Victorian age he never knew should tell you about his philosophical outlook. The chapters in this book will entertain you with stories you have never read before. Sparrow ("The Victorians") thinks they were all heroes (p.35)! The legal profession is "ready to grovel to authority to protect its own strange but lucrative monopoly" (p.36). Sparrow's description of an ordered society on page 41 reminds me of Orwell's "1984". Was it really like that? The Maybrick trial provides a summary of this case which obsessed people of that era. Mrs. Maybrick had a young lover, her older husband used arsenic and strychnine to keep his sexual powers. The trial of William Palmer for murder excited the public. Surgeon Palmer bet on horse races, he won and lost money. His friend John Cook died of a strange illness, the life insurance benefitted Palmer. The post-mortem of Cook revealed no unhealthy organs. All evidence was circumstantial. Strychnine was not found in Cook's body although he seemed to die from tetanus. The case came down to motive, opportunity, and cause of death (p.113). Convicted, Palmer "died like a gentleman" (p.116). Were the peoples of India "happy and prosperous" under British imperialism (p.121)? Historical records suggest otherwise. A series of reforms followed the Indian Mutiny (p.129). The longest chapter deals with the 1820 "Cato St. Conspiracy" which seems to haunt his mind as "The Ultimate Horror". "Murder in the Sun" tells about the opium trade in Victorian Siam; is it still going on? The last chapter tells about the business of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh Scotland, and compares this to modern practices. Who provides this "raw material" today?