Trial of Louise Masset - Notable British Trials No. 85

For anyone interested in the history of crime and punishment, the Notable British Trials series has long been a rich source of reliable information. The original series, published by William Hodge and Company, became extremely well-known, and its recent revival by Mango Books is welcome. The second of the "Mango" titles has now been published; it is the Trial of Louise Masset, edited by Kate Clarke.

I must admit that I knew next to nothing about this case, sometimes known as "the Dalston mystery", before picking up this book. It deals with that most horrible of crimes, the murder of a very young and defenceless child. The body was soon identified as three-year old Manfred Masset. His mother Louise was the prime suspect right from the outset.

Louise was a governess in her mid-thirties. Manfred was illegitimate, and in the late 1890s, that was of course a source of social stigma. The position of an unmarried mother was extremely difficult and stressful. Louise vehemently denied killing her own child. On her account she'd already arrived in Brighton, where she was planning to spend the week-end with her new lover, Eudore Lewis (Eudore is a new name to me, I must admit.) The couple registered in the hotel under false names, claiming to be brother and sister.

Louise's denials didn't persuade the police. Eventually, they failed to persuade the jury. She was sentenced to death, and became the first person to be executed in Britain in the 20th century, a miserable distinction. But as Kate Clarke explains, the case was less straightforward than it might seem. There are some remarkable ingredients, not least the involvement of Arthur Newton, the dodgiest solicitor of his era, who would later act for Dr Crippen. Train times come into the story, rather as in a mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts. All in all, a welcome addition to an excellent series.

The Return of Notable British Trials

Regular readers of this blog will know of my enthusiasm for true crime cases, and books about them. It's this interest that fuelled my novel Dancing for the Hangman, my non-fiction book Urge to Kill, and my CWA anthology Truly Criminal. And I've enjoyed many fascinating conversations with criminologists - only the other day I had a very pleasant lunch with someone who did ground-breaking research on the legendary Wallace case, and who turns out to live just a few miles away.

Given all that, I was naturally delighted to learn from Kate Clarke that the Notable British Trials series of books is to enjoy a new lease of life, after a hiatus lasting more than half a century. This is, I imagine, another spin-off of changes within the publishing industry, and the economics of publishing, and very welcome it is. The new publishers, taking a licence from the rights owners, are Mango Books, evidently a young and forward- looking company.

Adam Wood, who runs Mango, told me: "One of the intriguing parts of identifying cases which should be added to the NBT series is whether a transcript of the trial is available. We prepared a list of cases which were obvious omissions in the original series, but on further investigation realised that none existed in the obvious places and that's probably why William Hodge didn't include them. Thankfully, with the British Newspaper Archives now available online, we are able to access contemporary newspaper reports of trials, many of which are very detailed. This means we're able to piece together a trial without a formal transcript, or at least a complete one. It's been a lot of fun walking in the footsteps of the likes of William Roughead and W. Teignmouth Shore."

The first title in the series will be The Trial of Israel Lipski, to be edited by experienced true crime writer M.W. Oldridge. Two more forthcoming titles will feature a pair of railway-related mysteries - more "blood on the tracks"! I've read a number of the original books in the series, and found them very helpful with a range of projects, as well as fascinating in their own right. So I'm certainly awaiting the publication of the new titles with eager anticipation. 

Kate Paul's Journal

I've mentioned Kate Clarke's writing about real life crime several times on this blog. Her career as a true crime specialist got off to a cracking start with the much-admired Murder at the Priory, co-written with Bernard Taylor, and since then she's produced a range of interesting books, as well as contributing an essay to Truly Criminal, last year's CWA anthology of work about real life cases, some of them notorious, some pretty obscure..

I've never met Kate in person, but she's a terrific correspondent. Some time ago, she sent me a copy of her Journal, published under her maiden name, Kate Paul. It took me far too long to get round to reading the Journal, but once I made a proper start on the story, I was hooked. It is, simply enough, a diary of a young woman's life experiences from the late 50s onwards, and it's fascinating on more than one level.

First, for the insight it gives into a young woman's mindset as she embarks on adult life, trying to work out her attitudes to the world in general, and more specifically the men she knows, art (which she studied at college), and teaching. Second, for the picture it gives of English society at the time, seen through the eyes of a young person shortly before the Beatles arrived on the scene, and the cultural changes we now associate with the Sixties really got going. And as a bonus there are mentions of some of the extraordinary people she got to know. Kate's circle in those days included David ("Dave") Hockney, Spencer ("Spence") Davies (later to have a big hit with "Keep on Running") and Julie Christie.

As a slice of social history, it really is hard to beat. If I were ever to write a story set in the early Sixties, I'd refer to the Journal for insight into how young people thought and behaved at the time. Kate was, as the photograph of her makes clear, most attractive, and yet it's clear that she also felt, at times, insecure and melancholic. In some ways, one would have thought the world was at her feet, and yet clearly it often didn't seem like that to her.

The Mass Observation archive at Sussex University has a good many of Kate's early papers, many of which relate to the period covered by the journal. For researchers into the period, I suspect this is treasure trove. And I hope that in the fullness of time, Kate's researches into criminal cases will also be properly archived. Her work on two principal subjects, British society during her lifetime, and criminal behaviour, is quite invaluable.

(Incidentally, my thanks to those who have pointed out the glitches on my website and blog over the past week or so. I thought the Russians or Chinese were hacking away, but it turns out the explanation is a more prosaic I.T. problem. So if you've seen and been perplexed by an early draft of this post previously, my apologies.)

The A-Z of Victorian Crime

The A-Z of Victorian Crime is a newly published (by Amberley) book compiled by four historians of crime - Neil R.A. Bell, Trevor N. Bond, Kate Clarke, and M.W. Oldridge. The field of Victorian crime is immense, and in their introduction, the authors explain how and why they have focused on certain subject areas rather than others. As ever with a book of this kind, it's well worth reading that intro before one starts to dip in to the detailed entries. For example, Thomas Wainewright misses out because his crimes occurred before Victoria came to the throne, though his trial took place at the start of her long reign.

I think that the overwhelming majority of readers will indeed treat this as a book to dip into, a point of first reference, rather than as a volume to be read from cover to cover at one or more sittings. I approached it in that way, and started by looking up cases with which I was familiar - examples including Christiana Edmunds and Florence Maybrick. The entries I consulted struck me as put together very competently. The challenge for the writer is always: what do I leave out? My feeling is that the approach to the necessary selectivity is perfectly sound. The same is true of the suggestions for further reading, though I felt these could usefully have been expanded somewhat without adding too much to the overall length of the book.

The real pleasure of such a book, however, in my opinion lies in chancing upon stories and pieces of information with which one was previously unfamiliar. I'd never heard of Percy Lefroy Mapleton, for example, or of Celestina Sommer or of Mary Ann Britland. Many of the entries deal with murder cases, but there are also, for instance, entries covering hangmen and police officers. Several of the entries are written with a touch of dry humour which also works pretty well.

All in all, this book makes a useful and very readable addition to the library of any true crime fan. By its nature, it offers a jumping-off point for discovery; anyone wishing to get to know the cases in depth will need to do quite a bit of further research (which is why I'd have favoured more clues about further reading). But I suspect it will also find a market among general readers who wish to know more about Victorian crime without becoming bogged down by minutiae.

Fatal Affairs by Kate Clarke

Fatal Affairs, written by true crime expert Kate Clarke, and recently published by Carrington Press, is in effect a companion volume to her earlier, enjoyable book Lethal Alliance,and demonstrates the same depth of research. Fashions ebb and flow in true crime, just as they do in crime fiction, and collections of essays are not as common as they were some years ago, when writers like Jonathan Goodman and the admirable and under-estimated Douglas Wynn produced some excellent examples. But it's often a very good way of showcasing material about real life crime.

This book focuses on 18th century crimes. It contains three essays, of which by far the longest concerns the most famous case, that of Mary Blandy, whose emotional attachment to Captain William Henry Cranstoun led her to poison her father, a crime for which she was hanged. Cranstoun fled to France, but he did not exactly "get away with it" as he died "in agony" not long afterwards. It's a good story, well told here.

The other two essays deal with cases that previously I wasn't familiar with at all. One concern Elizabeth Jeffries, who was linked with Mary Blandy in the sense that the pair corresponded whilst they were both in prison. The Jefrries case is an extraordinary (or perhaps all too ordinary?) example of sex abuse in the family long before the subject became a common element in crime ficton and discussions about real life cases. She was groomed and abused by her uncle, whom she murdered after falling for a young man called John Swan.

Katharine Nairn married young, and promptly fell for her hsuband's brother, Lieutenant Patrick Ogilvie. It goes without saying that this proved a disastrous mistake - especially for Patrick. The author describes the case as "extraordinary", and rightly so. This extensively researched and copiously illustrated book offers insight into a time very differenr from our own, and into relationships that were doom-laden in more ways than one. 

Lethal Alliance by Kate Clarke - review

At around the turn of the year, I was delighted to receive a copy of Kate Clarke's latest true crime book, Lethal Alliance. Like many a good book these days, it's published by a small press, Carrington Press. There isn't a biographical note, but Kate Clarke is a very experienced true crime specialist, and once co-wrote a book that was short-listed for the CWA's Gold Dagger for non-fiction.

Her subject is two distinct "lethal alliances", though as she emphasises in her introduction, the cases discussed bear no resemblance to modern cases such as Brady and Hindley, and Fred and Rose West. Here we are dealing with two nineteenth century cases. The first, set in Brighton, involved the fatal attraction that a doctor named Beard had for au attractive unmarried woman called Christana Edmunds. The second, set in London, concerned Sarah Gale's attachment to James Greenacre.

I was already familiar with, and very interested by, the Edmunds case. This is because it is referenced by two of the greatest Golden Age writers, Anthony Berkeley and John Dickson Carr. Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case draws on some material from the Edmunds story, while Carr's The Black Spectacles takes a case similar to that of Edmunds as the starting point for an unusual and intriguing mystery.

Lethal Alliance told me plenty that I didn't know previously about the Edmunds case. Her weird campaign of poisoning resulted in a trial where she was found (controversially, as Kate Clarke explains) to be insane. She spent the rest of her life in Broadmoor. It's a sad tale of delusion. The Gale-Greenacre case, dating from the 1830s, is an extraordinary reminder that there is nothing new about the dismemberment of luckless murder victims. Overall, if you are interested in real life cases with a historical dimension, I think you will find much of interest in  Lethal Alliance. 

Bad Companions by Kate Clarke

Bad Companions, written by Kate Clarke, and published by The History Press, is a collection of six long essays about true crime cases with a common theme - the killers were all women, and the crimes were all based in London. Kate is a highly experienced true crime writer, and this book displays her usual sound research and readable literary style.

I'd heard of a couple of the cases, but most were new to me. They are a varied bunch, and the result is a fascinating book that gives the reader an insight into a different world, when you might be hanged for various crimes less than murder. And the first killer discussed in the book, Catherine Hayes, was burned at the stake. Her crime was "petty treason" - that is, the murder of her husband. I don't approve of wives murdering their husbands, for all kinds of good and obvious reasons, but the punishment was not only horrific but also a spectacle feasted upon by eighteenth century ghouls.

Catherine, with the help of two men friends, had her dead husband's head cut off, and a number of equally scary crimes are described. But Kate Clarke avoids the sensationalism that mars some true crime writing, and her account of Kate Webster's murder of her elderly employer, whose body she then proceeded to mutilate, burn and boil, gains in strength because much of it is taken from Webster's own words -when, facing execution, she finally made a clean breast of things.

Among the other cases, Eliza Fanning's conviction for poisoning some dumplings seems very much like a miscarriage of justice. And that's another problem with the death penalty - there's no putting right miscarriages after a wrongly convicted person has been executed. The brutality of Elizabeth Brownrigg towards her female servants, culminating in a vicious murder, is also very striking. Bad Companions shines a light on bygone times which were fascinating but frightening. Reading this excellent book makes one very glad to be living in the twenty-first century.

Deadly Service

Kate Clarke is someone I’ve never met in person, but she once was shortlisted for a CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, and I’ve been delighted to make her acquaintance through cyberspace in recent times. She’s written a number of very interesting books, and I’ll have more to say about another of them some other time. Today, though, the focus is on her recent title Deadly Service, accounts of seven cases where employees were accused of killing their employers.

Kate kindly agreed to provide me with a guest blog post on the theme of the book:

“I have often wondered what ignites and unleashes an uncontrollable fury in servants who kill their employers, exposing the smouldering resentment in those who finally rebel against a life of servitude. Surprisingly, perhaps, this type of killing is relatively rare and when one considers the degradation and exploitation experienced by generations of servants, it is remarkable indeed that so few have resorted to murder.

Surely it could not have been merely the fussy, ostentatious ways of Mrs Julia Thomas that drove her surly housekeeper, Kate Webster, in 1879, to push her down the stairs and then systematically dismember her body and boil the bits in the kitchen copper?

Could it be that the obsequious widow, Jane Cannon Cox, was so determined to maintain her luxurious life-style as companion to the wealthy Florence Bravo, that, in 1876, she was prepared to kill Charles, her mistress’s new husband, with enough antimony to ‘kill a horse’?

Is it really possible that something as innocuous as a broken iron could have unleashed such an orgy of violence in the gruesome case of the two maids, Christine and Léa Papin, who, in France in 1933, mercilessly beat their mistress and her daughter to death and literally scratched their eyes out?”

Intriguing, don’t you think? The butler may not have done it as often as cliché suggests, but you don’t have to be an employment lawyer, to appreciate Deadly Service!

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