The Good Old Days: Crime, Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London, by Gilda O'NeillPoisoned Lives: English Poisoners and their Victims, by Katherine Watson

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Good Old Days: Crime, Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London, and: Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and their Victims Barry Godfrey (bio) The Good Old Days: Crime, Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London, by Gilda O'Neill; pp. xiv + 286. London: Viking, Penguin Books, 2006, £16.99, £7.99 paper. Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and their Victims, by Katherine Watson; London and New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2003, £8.99 paper, $21.95 paper. Nostalgia, Werner J. Dannhauser observed, "predominates as the non-philosophical or sub-philosophical response to the past and the passing of time. It is the unthinking man's way of coming to terms with history" (History and the Idea of Progress, ed. A. Melzer, J. Weinberger, and M. R. Zinman, [1995] 118). Yet there are many literary (if not scholarly) evocations of some previous era when juvenile delinquents were clipped round the ear by stern-looking police constables, criminals shrugged and confessed, "It's a fair cop Guv," and people could leave their doors open with impunity. Fortunately, Gilda O'Neill is critical of this tired trope. The Good Old Days adopts Henry Mayhew's mid-Victorian format of examining London's street dwellers, tricksters, con men, prostitutes, the "low-life," and weightier criminals, and exploring how they were viewed by contemporary commentators and by the people charged with controlling this layer of society in the world's largest and most important city. There are similar books (Kellow Chesney's The Victorian Underworld [1970]; William Fishman's East End 1888 [1988]; and for a slightly later period, Raphael Samuel's East End Underworld [1981]), and they contain many of the same characters, though O'Neill devotes more space to the Whitechapel murders of 1888. The illustrations, photographs, and glossary of slang terms are useful, and O'Neill's approachable and engaging style will make her work accessible to a general readership. In fact, one wonders whom the book is aimed at. Because it consults contemporary sources and speaks with authority about the lived experiences of East End [End Page 135] dwellers, it seems to bridge the gap between scholarly treatise and the mass of oral memoirs about that part of London. Academic researchers and students, though, will likely judge O'Neill's book an interesting read, while regretting that she does not examine her lively material through the lens of more academically rigorous studies of London's crime and criminals in this period. The Good Old Days is aimed at those with a keen general interest, and its unsentimental approach to the past is to be commended rather than condemned. O'Neill writes in conclusion: "Rather than being the good old days, we have seen that . . . [Victorian England] could be a bloody and an awful place in which to live—unless you were fortunate enough to be a member of the privileged classes and, even better, if you were male into the bargain" (259). Any book with a wide audience that concludes with "I don't believe the answer [to crime] lies in a return to Victorian values" deserves approval (261). Lack of academic rigour is not an allegation that could be leveled at Katherine Watson's detailed and well-referenced Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and their Victims. It will be one of the main points of reference for historians of poisoning (the list of primary sources is particularly useful), and will, one suspects, be a useful read for historians of forensic science. The meticulous depiction of poisoners from the eighteenth century to the present day is complemented by overarching discussions of the increasing capacity of the scientific detection of poison in the body; the methods, motivations, and opportunities for poisoning; and the impact these cases had on public conceptions of female crime and femininity itself. Although the Whitechapel murders have had a more lasting legacy, Watson points out that two of the most famous murderers convicted in England were poisoners (although both were actually American citizens). Watson manages, however, to avoid running through a list of famous poisoners. Her work instead interlinks themes and concerns, which allows a full exploration of the victims and perpetrators without any chronological simplicity. Each case is separate and...