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Inheritance Powder and a Long Drop: Three short articles on Victorian Crime and Punishment
This 'e-booklet' consists of FOUR articles on Victorian crime and punishment, based on cases reported by the press in 1847 and 1865. Using the reports as a start point and by adding new content, the pieces offer a taster, preceeding several longer, more detailed collections. The August 2013 edition adds an extra thousand word article - originally, there were only three.
The activities of 19th Century Poisoners is a fascinating, if macabre subject; true crime files are full of cases when they did not get away with it. In the days before the death penalty was abolished in the UK, this usually meant a hemp rope and a “long drop”.
The four articles presented here all detail a time when public execution was still a spectator sport. Only two cases ended on the gallows, their exit from this world witnessed by many thousands of people. The first in a planned series, Inheritance Powder and a Long Drop details the following cases:
1847: A twelve year old boy with possible mental health issues kills his sweet toothed grandfather with arsenic in a special jar of powdered sugar.
1850: In Victorian Cambridge - Elias Lucas poisons his wife with arsenic so he can continue his affair with her attractive younger sister. Both end up on the gallows.
1865: A wife poisons her husband to continue a relationship with his apprentice, and get her hands on all his money. All it takes is small but repeated doses of arsenic and strychnine.
1865: Guildford’s ‘Guy Men’ see their fifty year reign of organised disorder, violence and riots crushed. [Nothing to do with arsenic, only attempted murder, but still an interesting piece of social history in its own right]
The activities of 19th Century Poisoners is a fascinating, if macabre subject; true crime files are full of cases when they did not get away with it. In the days before the death penalty was abolished in the UK, this usually meant a hemp rope and a “long drop”.
The four articles presented here all detail a time when public execution was still a spectator sport. Only two cases ended on the gallows, their exit from this world witnessed by many thousands of people. The first in a planned series, Inheritance Powder and a Long Drop details the following cases:
1847: A twelve year old boy with possible mental health issues kills his sweet toothed grandfather with arsenic in a special jar of powdered sugar.
1850: In Victorian Cambridge - Elias Lucas poisons his wife with arsenic so he can continue his affair with her attractive younger sister. Both end up on the gallows.
1865: A wife poisons her husband to continue a relationship with his apprentice, and get her hands on all his money. All it takes is small but repeated doses of arsenic and strychnine.
1865: Guildford’s ‘Guy Men’ see their fifty year reign of organised disorder, violence and riots crushed. [Nothing to do with arsenic, only attempted murder, but still an interesting piece of social history in its own right]
14 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 8, 2012
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About the author
R.S. Pyne
76 books17 followersNow based in rural West Wales, R. S. Pyne is a freelance science writer/geoscience researcher with a PhD in Micropalaeontology from Aberystwyth University. She used to be an Iron Age Celt (not in a previous life; as a member of Prytani - The Iron Age Celtic reenactment society) and has a good appreciation of the weaponry of this period. Non writing interests include growing carnivorous plants and orchids, and cryptozoology.
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