Great and Horrible News: Murder and Mayhem in Early Modern Britain

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My only disappointment was that almost all the cases were set in the south of England, and it would be great to see a second volume of stories from north of Watford! What I especially like is that it seems to give a really interesting perspective not just on the crimes, but on what they mean within the larger society and how each influenced the other. My library gave me the option to let them know I want it added to their collection, so I did that to both the print and the audio versions. It’s informative and interesting, and it’s also a little appalling to see perspectives from the 1600s coming back into fashion today.

The one example you cite about the housemaid being repeatedly raped by her employer reminded me of the Madame Restell book I read about abortion in the 1800s – sadly not much had changed between the time period of this book, and the one I read. It was interesting to see how suicide acts were treated as self murder meaning the family left behind could lose it all, but if a noble person took their life it was treated differently! But these moments were rare and I never felt she extrapolated unreasonably – I always felt her assumptions, if that’s what they were, were more likely to be true than not.But because they are nine quite distinct stories I was able to read one a day and then move on to something not quite so grim! I found it interesting about how suspicious deaths were investigated and what type of 'forensics' were available to them at the time. I’m interested in that period too from a historical perspective, but so often history only deals with the monarchs and the aristocrats so it’s always great to get a bit of insight into the social history, and this book really does that very well, I felt. She takes us beyond Nathaniel's conviction to his time in Newgate, describing the appalling conditions in which prisoners were kept.

Yes, I prefer nonfiction to avoid embellishment as much as possible, but although she did it once or twice here, on the whole I felt she justified her stories with original documentation.Throughout history crime has been both private and public, in this book Adams reflects that our current obsession with true crime is actually centuries old. If I have a criticism, it’s that sometimes I felt she perhaps embellished the bare bones a little to improve the storytelling aspects – I wondered more than once how she could have known what someone’s motivation was or how she could be so sure what had happened when she didn’t cite a specific source. I liked how they were more of a personal nature as some of the information came from peoples diaries. The stories go into detail the law that was broken- at times by both the victim and the perpetrator- and raised the question of whether the actual law had, in part, helped cause the crime itself. This story is used as a basis to discuss women's vulnerability to their masters, the horrific misogynistic laws around bastardy and infanticide, and early forensic ways of differentiating between stillbirth and infanticide.

I had never heard of any of the cases presented in this book, which is a wonderful surprise, since it seems we tend to get a lot of the same historical true crimes over and over (understandably, since not all crimes have left a lot of records behind). And she shows that, while we may no longer gather to watch gruesome public executions, the public fascination with crime and punishment hasn’t altered much in the intervening centuries. While some involved wealthy or well known figures, others were ordinary citizens who might have been otherwise lost to memory if they hadn't met a grisly end.Each one is like a short story in the way it's written, but backed up by remaining documentary evidence. Very interesting and easy to read accounts of murder, crime and punishment in 1500-1700, particularly interesting were the accounts of trials. In this book, Adams uses examples culled from court and coroner records, news sheets and from letters and journals to examine how crimes were dealt with investigatively and through the criminal justice system, and how victims and criminals were perceived by the public.