The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals cover art

The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals

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The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals

By: Michelle Morgan
Narrated by: Anne Dover
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About this listen

 'Ghoulishly entertaining' Jacqueline Banerjee, Times Literary Supplement

'This is a great book for dipping into . . . the cases themselves are written engagingly and with appealing dramatisation of key events.'
Kim Fleet, Crime Review

A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era.

The tales include murders and violent crimes, but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians. These include the story of a teenage man who married an actress, only to be shipped off to Australia by his disgusted parents; and the Italian ice-cream man who only meant to buy his sweetheart a hat but ended up proposing marriage instead. When he broke it off, his fiancée's father sued him and the story was dubbed the 'Amusing Aberdeen Breach of Promise Case'. Also present is the gruesome story of the murder of Patrick O Connor who was shot in the head and buried under the kitchen flagstones by his lover Maria Manning and her husband, Frederick. The couple's subsequent trial caused a sensation and even author Charles Dickens attended the grisly public hanging.

Drawing on a range of sources from university records and Old Bailey transcripts to national and regional newspaper archives, Michelle Morgan's research sheds new light on well-known stories as well as unearthing previously unknown incidents.©2018 Michelle Morgan 20th Century Crime Europe Great Britain Modern Murder True Crime Celebrity Marriage Inspiring

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Critic reviews

Ghoulishly entertaining. (Jacqueline Banerjee)
This is a great book for dipping into . . . the cases themselves are written engagingly and with appealing dramatisation of key events. (Kim Fleet)
All stars
Most relevant
anyone could have written this. useful when ill in bed for 2 days though. too little historical perspective and scholarly interpretation of the historical accounts

mediocre retelling of simple tales

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Good narrator and an interesting listen if you like this kind of thing like me!

Great

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This collection of 19th century true crime cases ranging from the interesting, to the fairly mundane. Many of these cases can't be described as Scandalous in my opinion, but more ordinary run of the mill murder cases, with details common to many murder cases which are easily forgotten.

judging form the title, one might assume that all of these cases take place in Victorian Britain, but there's a couple of American cases seemingly thrown in for no apparent reason. There's also at least one case of a French woman merely commiting suicide due to the loss of interest by her boyfriend. putting this story in the collection seems odd to me, since it's not particularly scandalous or interesting. just a sad story about suicide.

I kind of get the feeling that the author didn't put much emphasis on which cases should be in this book. it feels more like she spent a lot of time in some law libraries, and just added the cases she liked, and then a couple more just for filler. since some just don't feel like they really belong.

that being said, it's still an interesting book for anybody with an interest in historical true crime, i just think the title is a bit redundant, since many of the cases featured aren't all that scandalous or salacious in my opinion,...and the random American cases peppered in here and there makes me wonder what the motivation there was. anyway, it's still worth listening to if you're a fan of true crime! overall I enjoyed it for what it was, and I'm sure you will to if the topic is one that interests.

An interesting enough collection of true crime.

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very good, history , so enjoyed this book,read well, had listen all the way through, shall listen again

so enjoyed this book

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Full of murder in Victorian times but it took 5 or 6 hours to get to the first scandal and there weren't many after that.
For some reason I found this a very monotonous and tedious listen but I made it to the end.
I'll not listen again.

Monotonous

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