'Ghoulishly entertaining' Jacqueline Banerjee, Times Literary Supplement 'This is a great book for dipping into . . . the cases themselves are written engagingly and with appealing dramatisation of key events.' Kim Fleet, Crime Review A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes, but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians. These include the story of a teenage man who married an actress, only to be shipped off to Australia by his disgusted parents; and the Italian ice-cream man who only meant to buy his sweetheart a hat but ended up proposing marriage instead. When he broke it off, his fiancée's father sued him and the story was dubbed the 'Amusing Aberdeen Breach of Promise Case'. Also present is the gruesome story of the murder of Patrick O Connor who was shot in the head and buried under the kitchen flagstones by his lover Maria Manning and her husband, Frederick. The couple's subsequent trial caused a sensation and even author Charles Dickens attended the grisly public hanging. Drawing on a range of sources from university records and Old Bailey transcripts to national and regional newspaper archives, Michelle Morgan's research sheds new light on well-known stories as well as unearthing previously unknown incidents.

ミシェル・モーガンが描くのは、ヴィクトリア朝の潔癖な表層の下に蠢く、血生臭くも滑稽な人間模様の真髄です。膨大な資料から緻密に掘り起こされた事件の数々は、単なる猟奇趣味に留まりません。著者の筆致は、当時の人々が何に驚き何を愉しんだのかという時代の熱狂を生々しく再現し、読者を霧深きロンドンの深淵へと誘います。 本書の白眉は、凄惨な殺人から滑稽な訴訟までを、文学的・社会的な文脈で鮮やかに捉え直した点にあります。虚飾の道徳観の裏で愛憎や欲望に悶える人々の姿は、現代の私たちが抱える業そのものです。事実は小説よりも奇なりを体現する、人間の狂気と躍動感が交錯する至高の歴史ノンフィクションです。