The Victorian Underworld - Softcover

Donald Serrell Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1471916634 ISBN 13: 9781471916632

Publisher: The Murder Room

Synopsis

'Donald Thomas introduces us to the slums and fetid courtyards of nineteenth-century London and in doing so provides a sweeping portrait of the vast world that did not accept "Victorian Values". The villainy is outstanding. It is also entertaining. The author has a practised eye for the best anecdotes and presents amazing characters, some of whom come equipped with names that sound positively Dickensian ...a wonderful profile of Victorian London' The Spectator

About this title

About the Author

Donald Thomas was born in Somerset and educated at Queen's College, Taunton, and Balliol College, Oxford. He holds a personal chair in the University of Wales, Cardiff, now Cardiff University. His numerous crime novels include two collections of Sherlock Holmes stories and a hugely successful historical detective series written under the pen name Francis Selwyn and featuring Sergeant Verity of Scotland Yard, as well as gritty police procedurals written under the name of Richard Dacre. He is also the author of seven biographies and a number of other non-fiction works, and won the Gregory Prize for his poems, Points of Contact. He lives in Bath with his wife.

From Kirkus Reviews

Highlights of Victorian low-life, from costermongers' barrows, East End brothels, and ``penny gaffs'' to Scotland Yard, the court system, and the prison hulks. Any reader looking for the real-life context for Bill Sikes, Prof. Moriarty, and Raffles the Gentleman Thief will find a vivid, occasionally lurid one in this true-crime history by novelist-biographer Donald Thomas (The Rippers Apprentice, 1989; Henry Fielding, 1991; etc.). Concentrating on London, this history leans heavily on such notable sources as Henry Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor, the priapic memoirs (by a diarist known only as ``Walter'') entitled My Secret Life, and Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Through these and other sources, Thomas covers the environs of working-class criminals (sometimes known as ``the poor who fought back''), from the slums of Whitechapel and the tenements of ``The Devil's Acre'' in Westminster, colloquially called ``rookeries'' and ``rabbit-warrens.'' These firsthand accounts of thieves and prostitutes, dodgers and doxies, come alive through Mayhew's investigations and Walter's confessions. Thomas, on his own merits, proves best on more intricate crimes: the Great Bullion Robbery, in which several hundredweight of gold was stolen from railway safes designed by the redoubtable locksmith John Chubb; the career of the forger ``Jem the Penman,'' actually the successful barrister James Saward; and a notorious case in which an arch con man corrupted three detectives to cover his tracks. After this comprehensive chronicle of crime, Thomas concludes with the punishments, newly designed prisons, and miscarriages of justice. Strangely absent is the most notorious Victorian criminal, Jack the Ripper, whose killings were unlike any in England before and struck at the era's heart. Otherwise, the only thing missing is Thomas's own insights into Victorian morality and criminality, for which the richness of the material cries out. A colorful survey of what one reformer called ``Darkest England,'' though Thomas is content to watch from the shadows. (60 b&w illustrations) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Murder Room
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1471916634
• ISBN 13: 9781471916632
• Binding: Paperback