Something for ‘the Silly Season’: Policing and the Press in Israel Zangwill’s The Big Bow Mystery (1891)

Abstract

In this chapter I focus on Israel Zangwill’s subversive and intriguing The Big Bow Mystery (1891), a crime novel published in the immediate wake of Arthur Conan Doyle’s successful Sherlock Holmes stories for The Strand.1 ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ appeared in July 1891; just over a month later, on 22 August, and running in daily instalments until 4 September, The Big Bow Mystery was published in London’s only politically Radical daily newspaper, The Star. At the time of the novel’s publication, Zangwill — a young writer with a growing reputation for witty and political material — was the paper’s literary columnist. The paper had been founded in summer 1888 by the pioneer of New Journalism T.P. O’Connor as ‘the Radical evening organ for the metropolis’ (The Star 17 Jan. 1888: 1). It soon became known for its stirring and direct editorials in support of Home Rule and the reform of Scotland Yard, and for its sensational crime reportage. The paper became particularly notorious for its prurient and sensational coverage of the Whitechapel Ripper murders in the summer of 1888, during which time its circulation soared to over 300,000 copies daily.2 In summer 1891, the paper’s editor contacted Zangwill requesting something ‘original’ for ‘the silly season’: a piece of fiction that would capture and reflect its readers’ interest in crime, politics and sensation (Zangwill, ‘Of Murders’ 202).