Drew Gray – författare

The most captivating and intriguing 19th-century murders from around the world are re-examined in this disquieting volume, which takes readers on a perilous journey around the world’s most benighted regions. In each area, murders are charted with increasing specificity: beginning with city- or region-wide overviews, drilling down to street-level diagrams and zooming-in to detailed floor plans. All the elements of each crime are meticulously replotted on archival maps, from the prior movements of both killer and victim to the eventual location of the body. The murders revisited range from the ‘French Ripper’ Joseph Vacher, who roamed the French countryside brutally murdering and mutilating over twenty shepherds and shepherdesses, to H.H. Holmes, who built a hotel in Chicago to entrap, murder and dispose of its many guests. Crime expert Dr Drew Gray illuminates the details of each case, recounting both the horrifying particulars of the crimes themselves and the ingenious detective work that led to the eventual capture of the murderers. He highlights the development of police methods and technology: from the introduction of the police whistle to the standardization of the mugshot and from the invention of fingerprinting to the use of radio telegraphy to capture criminals. Disturbing crime-scene photographs by pioneers of policework, such as Alphonse Bertillon, and contemporary illustrations from the sensationalist magazines of the day, including the Illustrated Police News and the Petit Journal, complete the macabre picture.

From dark crimes of passion to shocking tales of grave robbing, gruesome murders, dens of iniquity, Victorian séances and haunted houses – not far beneath London’s everyday bustle and glitter there has long been a fascinatingly rich underworld of criminality, superstition, scandal and macabre debauchery. In Dark London, social historian Dr Drew Gray, a specialist in the history of crime and punishment, delves into the city’s grim yet compelling past, uncovering the people and places that shaped its darker identity.  Across more than 100 real-life cases and curiosities, he explores how London became both the heart of a growing empire and a stage for vice, greed and human fallibility. Highlights include: The London Burkers, a notorious gang of resurrectionists whose leader confessed to stealing and selling nearly 1,000 bodies to London’s medical schools in the 1830s. The Whitechapel Murders of 1888, still the world’s longest running serial murder mystery. The prisons of Newgate and Pentonville, where shifting attitudes towards justice revealed the tension between punishment, reform and moral control. The legend of Spring-heeled Jack, the terrifying, leaping figure who caused panic across London’s streets. The Great Stink of 1858, when London’s polluted Thames brought the city to a standstill and forced a revolution in sanitation and public health. Dark London brings together the history of the city’s seamier side, picking out the most scandalous, curious and bizarre aspects of London’s shadowy underbelly.