The Pleasures and Problems of Consuming True Crime as Theatrical Entertainment in Nineteenth-Century London

Abstract

Now a pillar of popular culture, the multi-media genre of ‘true crime’ has roots in nineteenth-century England. Particularly in London, a burgeoning media landscape increasingly catered to public interest in sensational homicides. Like other purveyors of true-crime entertainment, theatre managers at licensed playhouses wished to capitalise on murders making national headlines but encountered considerable – at times insurmountable – obstacles in their path. The likelihood of censorship plus that of public uproar ensured that melodramas inspired by recent slayings seldom showed at licensed playhouses. The rarity of such plays might suggest that theatre contributed little to London's abiding homicide fixation. However, the public interpreted two key spheres of what I call ‘true-crime culture’ through the lens of theatrical production – the administration of justice and the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. Training its attention on the cultural impact of two of Britain's most notorious miscreants, John Thurtell (1794–1824) and Maria Manning (1821–49), this essay shows how theatre-going, in general, and the uniquely controversial dramaturgy of a play based on Thurtell's transgression, The Gamblers (1823), gave rise to a set of affective, aesthetic, and ethical assumptions, which in turn coloured contemporary perceptions of salacious murder trials, public executions, and the Chamber of Horrors.