As you probably well know, true crime tales abound on the internet. Unlike political stories, an interesting crime story will weave a spell and may have a surprising thing or two to teach us about the human animal. (And crime news is much less depressing than political news, no matter what my husband says.)
While many devotees of matters criminal like to follow current stories, I prefer mine all neat and tidy and solved and filtered for high aesthetic value by the passage of time.
Unfortunately, a lot of true crime on the internet is hopelessly ill-bred claptrap. But sometimes I come across a very well written essay on some criminal subject. Many of the best tales come from Great Britain, that kingdom which has so carefully recorded its most stunning murder cases in a language more or less accessible to an American audience. Recently I've seen several good accounts, and you may enjoy some of these stories as much as I did.
'He Will Not Dye in His Bed' -- From the Old Bailey archives: Jonathan Edelstein explores a sensational murder in the upper classes circa 1692 in The Case of the Telltale Handkerchief. The moral of the story: No matter what their social status, murderers can make the stupidest mistakes.
'I am now to end a Scandalous Life' -- The Irish blog Fustar has a guest post by one Copernicus, who manages to cram several interesting ideas into one essay about the parallels between blogging and early crime broadsides in his book review of James Kelly's Gallows Speeches from Eighteenth Century Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts, 2001). The piece ends with an absorbing example of a Last Speech by a priest who confessed on the scaffold to being a "perfect child of Belial" (Belial meaning a demon, or a lawless, worthless person) before he was hung for a string of crimes. I have to put this book on the wish list. I'm sure it's fascinating to read what people said in their last moments before they were executed. Shivers!
Worst Britons in History - BBC History Magazine has assembled a list of the worst Britons of the past 1,000 years, including turncoats, perjurers, and Jack the Ripper.
More Rules for Murder - One of my favorite writers on the internet, Linda Stratmann, hasn't updated her site in ages, but it's worth seeking out, especially How To Get Away With Murder. It reminds me of Edmund L. Pearson's famous essay, "Rules for Murderesses." Some of Linda's rules include:
"Rule 1. If you wrap the corpse in paper, do not use a piece which has your name on it."
If you have any reading suggestions, do let us all know.
Thanks for the mention. I'm a law student and civil servant so it's nice to get a shout out on a site like this. We at fustar are dedicated to investigation of the human condition as revealed in popular culture through the ages, so if you liked what you saw, we are nominated in the culture section of the Irish blog awards. Voting is here - http://awards.ie/blogawards/vote-now/ - and we'd really like the chance to dress up in glitzy frocks and make tearful acceptance speeches.
Posted by: copernicus | February 15, 2006 at 07:03 PM
Oh, and don't hesitate to order the book from Charlie Byrne's a nifty little bookshop in the mediaeval town of Galway, where the fustarers did their undergrads. There's a link in the post. One of our pious hopes in posting on Gallows Speeches was that maybe one or two more copies of this worthy book might be sold having found it in cheap piles in a bargain shop. Anyway, it's only a couple of meagre bucks and it's hardback!
Posted by: copernicus | February 15, 2006 at 09:03 PM
Love the site!!!
Posted by: C A Brown | March 18, 2006 at 08:46 PM