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Tag Archives: death
“CHILD FOUND”
You have to wonder what was the eventual fate of this unfortunate baby girl — though perhaps being given up was the best that could have happened to her, given the alternative that parents often chose. Infanticide followed by … Continue reading
Just a graze…
Once upon a time the uncertainty and certainty of death hung over everybody, everywhere, all the time, as this brief report from the London Evening Standard in 1840 shows…
Giving it all away
On this day in 1852 there died a man who these days would have been given therapy for his condition. He was, in those unreconstructed times, called a miser. There is probably a pressure group somewhere railing as you read … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 19th century, Balmoral Castle, death, miser, Queen Victoria
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Who killed Harry Larkyns?
Nowadays the average twentysomething works their way through temporary though deep relationships before permanence happens in the shape of marriage (or something like it). For 19th century women it wasn’t so easy. So we can forgive, if that is … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 19th century, death, Flora Shallcross Stone, Harry Larkyns, Muybridge, San Francisco
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Murder in Acton; the final act
My search for more information — truth if you will — about a local murder from nearly 200 years ago is ended. I wanted to find out about why a girl who once lived just yards from where I am … Continue reading
Catherine Foster; the trial
The morning the Lent Assizes opened in Bury St Edmunds on Saturday March 27th 1847, 17-year-old Catherine Foster, dressed in deep mourning and ‘evincing little alarm at the awful position she stood in’, replied in a firm voice “not guilty” … Continue reading
5000 Spirits of a village, or the Layers of The Onion
Not a 100 yards from where I write this, in this sleepiest of sleepy Suffolk villages, a murder has been committed. The local paper, the East Anglian Daily Times, to which I am ever grateful for being a newspaper of … Continue reading
How to get attention; name your war after body parts
It’s an anniversary of sorts. It’s 200 years since the end of a war with a dull name and seven more years since the death that may have started it. The death was that of British Royal Navy sailor Jenkin … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 19th century, Battle of New Orleans, death, peace treaty, Treaty of Ghent, war of 1812
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“Useful present for a soldier”
Napoleon called the British a nation of shopkeepers. As the first Christmas of the 1914-18 war neared, those shopkeepers of Britain were concerned the country might be distracted from being a nation of customers. To remedy it for that year … Continue reading
Hunting for the bad, bad Benders
Not much is certain about the murderous Bender family except to say they were acknowledged to be America’s first serial killers — at least the first discovered. Were they a family? Probably not. Was Bender their real name? Almost certainly … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 19th century, Bender murders, Cherryvale, death, emigrants, Kate Bender, taboos, The Benders
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Acton Books 