Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

Simon Winchester · 265 pages

Bedlam: London and its Mad

Catharine Arnold · 313 pages

Catharine Arnold takes us on a tour of Bedlam and examines London's attitude to madness along the way. We travel through the ages, from the barbaric `exorcisms' of the medieval period to the Tudor belief that a roast mouse, eaten whole, was the cure. We see the reforming zeal of eighteenth century campaigners and the development of the massive Victorian asylums. This was the era of the private mad

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

Michel Foucault · 299 pages

The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic

Darby Penney, Peter Stastny · 206 pages

Foreword / Robert Whitaker -- 1. He took them on their last walk -- 2. Who were the people that went to Willard and why did they go there? --3. How I would have furnished my room (if not for the voices) -- 4. In permanent limbo: she kept asking for dispensation (until her doctor turned into the devil incarnate) -- 5. Children were buried and she knit her life away -- 6. Like a fly in a spider web

The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London

Sarah Wise · 387 pages

Describes the 1831 murder of a young vagrant and the sale of his body to a London medical college, a case that led to the arrest of his killers, "resurrection men" who acted to satisfy the demand for fresh cadavers for the study of human anatomy.

Women of the Asylum

Jeffrey L. Geller · 366 pages

Jeffrey Geller and Maxine Harris have amassed twenty-six first person accounts of women who were placed in mental institutions against their will, often by male family members for holding views or behaving in ways that deviated from the norms of their day. Taken as a whole, these pieces offer a fascinating and frightening portrait of life both behind and outside the asylum walls. Geller and Harri

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

Deborah Blum · 327 pages

The untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. A pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York

Timothy J. Gilfoyle · 480 pages

A Pickpocket's Tale is a fascinating true-crime story. Gilfoyle uses George Appo's unpublished memoirs to re-create the world of the nineteenth-century criminal in astonishing detail. George Appo was half Irish, half Chinese who became a pickpocket at the tender age of twelve. he was first arrested at age fourteen and sentenced to a year on a prison ship for juvenile offenders served . In and out

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies

Paul Fischer · 416 pages

Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam

Pope Brock · 330 pages

In 1917, after years of selling worthless patent remedies throughout the Southeast, John R. Brinkley--America's most brazen young con man--arrived in the tiny town of Milford, Kansas. He set up a medical practice and introduced an outlandish surgical method using goat glands to restore the fading virility of local farmers.It was all nonsense, of course, but thousands of paying customers quickly tu

Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret

Steve Luxenberg · 401 pages

Beth Luxenberg was an only child. Everyone knew it: her grown children, her friends, even people she’d only recently met. So when her secret emerged, her son Steve Luxenberg was bewildered. He was certain that his mother had no siblings, just as he knew that her name was Beth, and that she had raised her children, above all, to tell the truth.By then, Beth was nearly eighty, and in fragile health.

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime

Judith Flanders · 556 pages

In this exploration of murder in the nineteenth century, Judith Flanders explores some of the most gripping cases that fascinated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction. She retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder--both famous and obscure--from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper to the tragedies of the murdered Marr family in Lon

Thunderstruck

Erik Larson · 480 pages

A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world's "great hush." In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men--Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication--whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy

The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse

Piu Marie Eatwell · 350 pages

"One of the most notorious and bizarre mysteries of the Edwardian age, for readers who loved The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. At the close of the Victorian era, as now, privacy was power. The extraordinarily wealthy 5th Duke of Portland had a mania for it, hiding in his horsedrawn carriage and creating tunnels between buildings to avoid being seen. So when, in 1897, an elderly widow asked the court

The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective's Greatest Cases

E.J. Wagner · 250 pages

From autopsies to zoology, how Holmes eliminated the impossible This unique book uses the legendary adventures of Sherlock Holmes as a jumping-off point to discuss the growth of forensic science during the Victorian era. The book explores the emergence of science from superstition, how forensic autopsies evolved from anatomical dissection, the huge advances in blood chemistry and poison detectio

The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief

Ben Macintyre · 320 pages

The Victorian era's most infamous thief, Adam Worth was the original Napoleon of crime. Worth learned early that the best way to succeed was to steal. And steal he did. Following a strict code of honor, Worth won the respect of Victorian society. He also aroused its fear by becoming a chilling phantom, mingling undetected with the upper classes, whose valuables he brazenly stole. His most celebrat

The Inheritor's Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science

Sandra Hempel · 278 pages

Explores how an infamous murder case led to the birth of modern toxicology.

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Hallie Rubenhold · 352 pages

Scotland Yard: A History of the London Police Force's Most Infamous Murder Cases

Simon Read · 480 pages

Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case

Chris Crowe · 144 pages

Presents a true account of the murder of fourteen-year-old, Emmett Till, in Mississippi, in 1955.

Stealing Lincoln's Body

Thomas J. Craughwell · 288 pages

A band of Chicago counterfeiters hatched a plot to steal the President's body from its tomb outside Springfield, Illinois, and hold it for a ransom of $200,000. The story shows how important this beloved President remained to public so unprepared for his violent death in 1865. The custodian of the tomb was so shaken by the incident that he willingly dedicated the rest of his life to protecting the

Bloody Crimes: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Chase for Jefferson Davis

James L. Swanson

On the morning of April 2, 1865, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, received a telegram from General Robert E. Lee. There is no more time. The Yankees are coming, it warned. Shortly before midnight, Davis boarded a train from Richmond and fled the capital, setting off an intense and thrilling chase in which Union cavalry hunted the Confederate president. Two weeks later, President Linc

Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist

Thomas Levenson · 318 pages

Already famous throughout Europe for his theories of planetary motion and gravity, Isaac Newton decided to take on the job of running the Royal Mint. This is a compelling book about crime, science and money, and transforms our image of Britain's greatest scientist.

Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West's Greatest Escape

Mark Lee Gardner · 309 pages

Recounts the thrilling life of Jesse James, Frank James, the Younger brothers, and the most famous bank robbery of all time -- the Northfield raid -- which led to a two-week chase ending with the bloody final shootout on the Watonwan River.