EP41 "A Pickled Torso & A Mother's Intuition": Unhinged 1800's Murder Tales From Jolly Old England

In 1947, a huge collection of true crime stories from many of the extremely popular "murder pamphlets" floating around Victorian England were published in an Anthology called “The Fatal Caress…& Other Accounts of English Murders from 1551 to 1888”. We’ve decided today to bring you a few of these stories just as they appear in the Fatal Caress…and perhaps make you feel like you’ve picked up a murder pamphlet hot off the press in Victorian England while Jack the Ripper lurked behind every corner.

Be warned though…while we find it super interesting to hear about a crime exactly as it was written in the past, many of these stories are likely to make your blood boil because they provide painfully clear depictions of the horrible attitudes towards women, race, and class that were prevalent for hundreds of years–and still linger in how we handle crime investigations and the legal system to this day.

That being said, we believe by identifying these attitudes and calling them out together (and don’t worry, we do as we read these stories); we can get better at recognizing & rejecting them on our own.

Lights Out Campers.

Sources:

"The Fatal Caress...And Other Accounts of English Murders from 1551to 1888" Edited by Richard Barker, w/a preface by Anthony Boucher

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gutenberg-Bible#:~:text=The%20Anthology%20of%20Great%20Buddhist,extant%20movable%20metal%20type%20book.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/topics/murder-pamphlets/index.html

https://caasbrey.com/the-christmas-murders-the-gruesome-murder-of-hannah-brown/