Railway Crimes Committed in Victorian Britain

Railway Crimes Committed in Victorian Britain written by Malcolm Clegg and published by Pen & Sword Books - £20 - Hardback - Pages 160

The vast majority of Britain’s railways were built between 1830 and 1900 which

happened to coincide with the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). By the turn

of the Nineteenth/Twentieth Century, over one hundred different railway companies

were operating in Britain on more than 22,000 miles of railway track.

Although these new railways brought prosperity to the nation and enabled goods and passengers to be speedily transported the length and breadth of the country for the first time, this remarkable feat of engineering brought with it some unwelcome side-effects, one of which was crime. Wherever crowds of people gather, or unattended goods are being transported, a few unscrupulous individuals and career criminals will usually emerge to ply their trade. Some railway staff members are also unable to resist the temptation of stealing money or goods passing through their hands.

This book gives an insight into the nature and types of crime committed on the railways during the Victorian era, incorporating such offences as theft, assaults and murder, fraud, obstructing the railways and various other infringements of the law.

Over seventy different cases mentioned in the book are true accounts of events which took place on the railway during the Victorian era, the details of which were obtained as a result of hours of researching British Newspaper Archives of that period. The author hopes that readers will get as much pleasure from analysing the various cases cited in the book, as he himself derived from researching and writing about them.

An interesting book, Railway Crimes Committed in Victorian Britain that does exactly what it says on the tin. A wide variety of crimes were committed on the railways and surrounds. The crimes listed range from the serious right down to the almost trivial, but It’s a good read to see a lot about the social issues and crimes going on at the time. While some stories or incidents got a few pages of writing, quite a few, the least serious got a paragraph. But like I said well written and a good read about crime on the railways. Certainly one for those interested in railways or the Victorian era.

Investigating the Almost Perfect Murders

Investigating the Almost Perfect Murders written by Anthony Nott and published by 

Pen & Sword Books - £14.99 - Softcover - Pages 197

Anthony Nott joined the Metropolitan Police in 1971, which was a very different world from that of today. He describes his early experiences in the Met, including the arrest of a man for murdering a prostitute in Kings Cross. He was present when a fellow police officer was almost stabbed to death and witnessed an act of police brutality when he interrupted the beating of a petty criminal in a cell by the CID.

He transferred to the county force of Dorset in 1976 where, not long after his promotion to detective sergeant, he engaged in what would be a ten-year long investigation into the disappearance of Monica Taylor and the eventual conviction of her husband, Peter, for what was almost the perfect murder – Monica’s remains were never found. He then recounts a series of murder cases in which he was involved from the murder and decapitation of a woman in Bournemouth and the random killing of another, to the extremely violent killing of a gay man in Boscombe Gardens, Bournemouth, in which it took two years to bring the killers to justice.

While a detective chief inspector in Bournemouth in 1994, the chance visit of a detective sergeant from Guernsey, who was investigating a life insurance fraud, led to the re-opening of a missing person enquiry from eight years earlier, and resulted in the conviction of Russell Causley for murder, despite his wife’s body never being recovered.

This book provides an insight into the methodical and transparent way in which the police investigate complicated crimes from riots to the almost perfect murders.

Well, this book was a fascinating read indeed, both meticulous and detailed which I suppose comes from the author as the book follows his life in the police force in which he endeavours to work and succeed on some tricky cases. The book follows a good number of different cases ranging from riots and crowd control all the way up to almost getting away with the perfect murder. The book was very interesting and it was nice to read a good number of different crimes that were British rather than from the US. A good book very well worth reading if you're into crime especially true British crime.