If you were intrigued by the purported diary of Jack the Ripper or other books that have convinced experts that the notorious murderer was a Liverpool cotton broker named James Maybrick, read this true-crime biography of Maybrick’s wife. In 1889, in one of the great trials of history that produced major changes in English jurisprudence, she was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged for Maybrick’s murder. This book takes you from the shipboard meeting of the 18-year-old American girl and the 42-year-old Englishman in 1881 to her death in 1941 as a lonely derelict whose past was unknown. You get details of the reprehensible treatment of Mrs. Maybrick by her husband’s family. You learn what happened when she weekended in London with Maybrick’s handsome associate. You watch as Maybrick succumbs to an arsenic diet. You discover why the press found her guilty before the trial, yet England’s leading barrister proved her not guilty in the public mind despite a hanging judge and jury. You learn the details of the uproar that followed, the last-minute-before-hanging commutation to imprisonment, the 15-year trans-Atlantic effort to get her released, her return to America and acclamation, and her years as "the cat woman" in a tiny cabin in rural Connecticut.

Florence Maybrick was the first American woman to be sentenced to death in England--for murdering her husband, a crime she almost certainly did not commit. Her 1889 trial was presided over by an openly misogynist judge who was later declared incompetent and died in an asylum. Hours before Maybrick was to be hanged, Queen Victoria reluctantly commuted her sentence to life in prison--in her opinion a woman who would commit adultery, as Maybrick had admitted, would also kill her husband. Her children were taken from her; she never saw them again. Her mother worked for years to clear her name, enlisting the president of the United States and successive ambassadors, including Robert Todd Lincoln. Decades later, a gruesome diary was discovered that made Maybrick's husband a prime Jack the Ripper suspect.

For many intelligent people, the stuff of history does not consist of the kind of dry-as-dust investigations of diplomatic, economic, or political history that most university historians research and write about, but the famous topics of “history’s mysteries”- who was Jack the Ripper? Was there a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy? Did Richard III murder the Princes in the Tower? What are the mysteries of the ancient Pyramids? Not only have a great many books and articles been written on these and similar topics by so-called “amateur historians,” but they have generated societies, conferences, newsletters, and television programmes. Many people who are not academic historians take a keen interest in these topics, and have in some cases made themselves real experts on them, with interesting theories of their own. Despite all of this, however, these topics are virtually ignored by academic historians and can be treated with contempt. In Shadow Pasts, William D. Rubinstein a well-known and widely published history professor, examines seven of the most famous and interesting topics which have been discussed, debated, examined, and written about by “amateur historians. Each of these mysteries and the theories surrounding them are examined in detail, with Professor Rubinstein presenting his own original and sometimes surprising conclusions about what really happened.

In this revised and expanded edition, leading forensic scientist John Trestrail offers a pioneering survey of all that is known about the use of poison as a weapon in murder. Topics range from the use of poisons in history and literature to convicting the poisoner in court, and include a review of the different types of poisons, techniques for crime scene investigation, and the critical essentials of the forensic autopsy. The author updates what is currently known about poisoners in general and their victims. The Appendix has been updated to include the more commonly used poisons, as well as the use of antifreeze as a poison.

Updated and expanded edition of the fullest ever collective investigation into Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel Murders. This volume collects not just all the key factual evidence but also 20 different arguments as to the identity of Jack the Ripper, such as that advanced by Patricia Cornwell. Contributions are from the world's leading Ripperologists, including William Beadle, Melvyn Fairclough, Martin Fido, Shirley Harrison, James Tully and Colin Wilson. The identity of Jack the Ripper has plagued professional historians, criminologists, writers and amateur enthusiasts. The many suspects include Montague John Druitt, Walter Sickert, Aaron Kosminski, Michael Ostrog, William Henry Bury, Dr Tumblety and James Maybrick. The only certainty is that Ripperologist have not found an invididual on whom they can all agree. The essays are supported by a detailed chronology, extensive bibliography and filmography.

Shani D'Cruze and Louise A. Jackson provide students with a lively overview of women's relationship to the criminal justice system in England, exploring key debates in the regulation of 'respectable' and 'deviant' femininities over the last 4 centuries. Major issues include: - Attitudes towards murder and infanticide - Prostitution - The decline of witchcraft belief - Sexual violence - The 'girl delinquent' - Theft and fraud. The volume also examines women's participation in illegal forms of protest and political activism, their experience of penal regimes as well as strategies of resistance, and their involvement in occupations associated with criminal justice itself. Assuming that men and women cannot be studied in isolation, D'Cruze and Jackson make reference to recent studies of masculinity and comment on the ways in which relations between men and women have been understood and negotiated across time. Featuring examples drawn from a rich range of sources such as court records, autobiographies, literature and film, this is an ideal introduction to an increasingly popular area of study.

Challenging the respectable image of Victorian society, this irreverent, revisionist collection explores the sinful side of middle-class Victorian leisure, highlighting the problematic relationship between public respectability and private pleasure.

The definitive work on Jack the Ripper and the various theories from the time of the murders to the present day