The Maul and the Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders 1811

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Matching these were two related cases which occurred in December 1910 and January 1911; the Houndsditch murders and the Siege of Sidney Street which left three police officers dead and three more seriously injured. On 28 June, Dinah Angel arrived at 16 Batty Street, Whitechapel, looking for her daughter-in-law Miriam who had failed to uphold an appointment to meet. I also love my Brit-Box-(Worsely has a television version of this book currently airing on this service) and Acorn TV subscriptions too. Great crime series- from dark and gritty to light and cozy. After maintaining his innocence throughout his trial, Muller reportedly confessed on the scaffold prior to his execution on 14 November. Can I visit the crime scene? Worsley describes the fact that hangings and murders provided entertainment to the public, even so much so that the people bought trinkets as souvenirs. Continuing on with the entertainment theme, Worsley introduces sensational journalism, the theatre, Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, a puppet show, and detective fiction. In addition, she talks about the founding of the organized police force, detective work, ‘Penny Bloods’ (the precursor to crime fiction), poisonings, and forensic science.

In the early hours of 3rd January a long file of police officers wound their way through the silent streets of the East End to Sidney Street, which runs from Commercial Road in the south to the junction of Whitechapel and Mile End Roads to the north. The officers had not been told what their mission was but they knew that it was dangerous because the married men had been excluded. Some were armed but their weapons, antique revolvers, tube rifles and shotguns, were more suited to a museum than a gun battle.

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This book has been written to accompany a television series of the same name and does, as a consequence jump around a little in subject matter. The book begins and ends with discussion of an essay - the first being, "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" by Thomas De Quincey and finishes with an appraisal of "The Decline of the English Murder" by George Orwell. This is not really about crime, as such, although many crimes are discussed - it is about how, especially since the nineteenth century, the British began to "enjoy and consume the idea of a murder."

The Ratcliffe (sometimes Ratcliff) Highway dates from at least Saxon Britain, running east from the City of London, London's historic core, along the top of a plateau near the edge of the eponymous "red cliff" which descended onto the low-lying tidal marshes of Wapping to the south. [2] Jamrach, the famous dealer in wild animals. According to one source the animals (including lions) were kept in cages in the basement. [3]The hours passed without discernable benefit for the besieging force. Midway through the morning Home Secretary Winston Churchill gave permission for the army to be used and in a short time a detachment of the Scots Guards turned up. Their participation transformed the situation. Equipped with powerful Lee Enfield rifles the soldiers virtually shot the second floor to pieces, forcing the duo to move downstairs and fire from the first and ground floor windows. But here too they were subject to a galling fire. liners, who ask no questions, but man their vessels with refuse of all kinds,- the scurf of the earth, growls an old It would transpire that the body was that of Italian immigrant Carlo Ferrari, enticed from his usual sales spot in Covent Garden, taken to a hovel in Nova Scotia Gardens, Bethnal Green, and murdered for profit. Who did it? Also present in the property were Marr’s wife Celia, the couple’s recently born son, also named Timothy, and James Gowan, Marr’s apprentice. The narrative explains how and why the readers’s original delight in the gory even sordid murders gradually developed into a preference for the more genteel country house murder mystery.