Camden New Journal - Books: The A

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

The Review - BOOKS
Published: 13 December 2007

Capital crime and punishment

The A-Z of London Murders.
By Geoffrey Howse. Pen and Sword Publishers £16.99

SAMUEL Johnson observed there was “in London all that life can afford”; a charming slogan which Geoffrey Howse’s grisly compendium of capital crimes proudly turns on its head.
Spend an hour in the company of his gazetteer chronicling seven centuries of London’s murders most foul and it’s hard not to imagine a pallid corpse behind every door or a dismembered torso in each bin bag.
Anthony John Hardy – the Camden Ripper – chose exactly this method of disposal when he murdered three working girls in Royal College Street in 2002. Mrs Styllou Christoffi, from South Hill Park, Hampstead, favoured fire to get rid of the evidence after she murdered her daughter-in-law 50 years earlier. She had previously killed her own mother-in-law by ramming a blazing torch down her throat.
Alongside The Kray Twins, Dennis Nilsen and the murderous butcher Louis Voisin reside famous executioners (the inept William Calcraft is a particular joy) and unsolved or well-known cases: The Cleft Chin Murder or The Islington Baby-Farming Case almost defy further explanation.
Archaic legal terms are also listed: under “Benefit of Clergy” a murderer could be freed if he was able to recite a passage from the Bible. The playwright Ben Johnson was thus exonerated after killing an irascible actor in a Shoreditch duel.
At times Howse comes across more like a Daily Mail hack circa 1900 than a historian. His introduction, where he debates the most “spectator-friendly method of execution” and complains of the “outside forces that wish only to pick the cherries off this wonderful cake… to strip Britain of its identity”, is probably best skipped.
If he just stuck to descriptions of the bloodied dagger he might make a killing.
SIMON WROE

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment:

» A-Z Book titles