- 2 minutes ago
First broadcast 30th September 2013.
Lucy Worsley explores how real-life crime, science and the art of detection had an influence on the popular culture of homicide during the Victorian Age.
Lucy Worsley - Self - Presenter (as Dr Lucy Worsley)
Ian Burney - Self - Expert in Victorian Poison (as Dr Ian Burney)
Simon Callow - Self - Biographer of Charles Dickens
Kate Summerscale - Self - Author of 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher'
Matthew Sweet - Self - Wilkie Collins Expert
Jennifer Carnell - Self - Biographer of Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Kathryn Johnson - Self - Curator, British Library
Michael Kirk - Self - Actor
Lucy Worsley explores how real-life crime, science and the art of detection had an influence on the popular culture of homicide during the Victorian Age.
Lucy Worsley - Self - Presenter (as Dr Lucy Worsley)
Ian Burney - Self - Expert in Victorian Poison (as Dr Ian Burney)
Simon Callow - Self - Biographer of Charles Dickens
Kate Summerscale - Self - Author of 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher'
Matthew Sweet - Self - Wilkie Collins Expert
Jennifer Carnell - Self - Biographer of Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Kathryn Johnson - Self - Curator, British Library
Michael Kirk - Self - Actor
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:04murder is the darkest and most despicable of crimes and yet we're drawn to it in real life
00:11and in fiction and that's because a murder is always a good story in the victorian age
00:18people started to relish a new type of murder they were attracted to hypocrisy and a respectable
00:26home to dark secrets to mysterious compulsions and unhinged minds and the victorians were also
00:39fascinated by two new developments in the fight against crime there was forensic science
00:45and the coming of a new kind of hero the detective
01:03in his essay called the decline of the english murder george orwell lays out the characteristics
01:10of an absolutely enjoyable crime first of all he sets the scene the perfect situation for relishing
01:17the details
01:26it is a sunday afternoon preferably before the war you put your feet up on the sofa settle your
01:33spectacles on your nose and open the news of the world the sofa cushions are soft underneath you
01:39the fire is well alight the air is warm and stagnant
01:44in these blissful circumstances what is it that you want to read about
01:50naturally orwell says we want to read about a murder
01:55but for him the most elegant crimes the ones that defined the genre didn't take place in the 1930s
02:02they were victorian at the top of the list of orwell's perfect crimes with those committed in the 1850s
02:10by dr william palmer for a really entertaining murder said orwell the murderer should be a little
02:18man of the professional class living an intensely respectable life somewhere in the suburbs
02:26well it's not quite the suburbs but this hun drum street in rougeley staffordshire is the
02:32rather unlikely setting for a despicable crime
02:38on the 20th of november 1855 a man called john parsons cook died in the upstairs room of that pub
02:45it was then called the talbot arms he'd experienced vomiting and horrific convulsions
02:53at first it seemed cook might have died of natural causes
02:57but william palmer the doctor who'd been treating him seemed to be in quite a hurry to get him buried
03:03and over the previous days there'd been a suspicious run of events
03:08picture the scene the week before cook's death it all starts with a big day out at the races john
03:15cook
03:15has gone to enjoy himself with his friend william palmer and cook wins a lot of money on the horses
03:20he and palmer toast each other with brandy but unfortunately the brandy doesn't do cook any good
03:27he falls ill he comes to stay here at the talbot arms and luckily his friend william palmer is on
03:33hand to look after him palmer gives cook a cup of coffee he gets ill again do you see a
03:38pattern if i
03:39were you i wouldn't accept a drink from william palmer palmer next gives cook a bowl of soup
03:44and within just a few days cook is dead the chambermaid described the violent arching of cook's
03:51back and the frightening grimaces of his face as he died symptoms of tetanus but also of poison
03:59the fascinating thing about william palmer as a murderer is that he was an upstanding member of
04:05the middle classes he didn't look like a villain at all these are the tools of his trade he was
04:11a
04:11respectable family doctor someone you hoped that you could trust with your life but as sherlock holmes
04:18would later say when a doctor goes wrong he's the first of criminals he has the nerve and he has
04:25the
04:25knowledge dr palmer became known as the rudely poisoner and his weapon of choice would have been
04:33kept in this little powder drawer at the bottom it was strychnine
04:38or was it it was extremely hard to detect this state-of-the-art poison
04:44certainly it looked like palmer had a motive money the dead man's betting book which allowed him to
04:51claim his big win on the horses had mysteriously disappeared palmer was found to have huge debts
04:57his wife had died the year before just after he'd insured her life for 13 000 pounds and his brother
05:06walter had died not long afterwards yielding another big cash windfall all this juicy detail was lapped up
05:14by victorian newspaper readers william palmer's was the first big crime to take place after the lifting of
05:21the newspaper tax in 1855 this meant that newspapers suddenly got a whole lot cheaper some that had
05:28cost four pence were now just a penny combined with a brilliant murder story the circulation exploded
05:34what the newspapers particularly liked in the palmer case was the detail of the scientific investigation
05:42in palmer's case it was compromised right from the start actually palmer himself was allowed to be
05:48present at the autopsy and during it he managed to jostle the person handling the stomach so that
05:54its contents spilled out later palmer tried to bribe the courier taking the victim's stomach down to
06:01london to make it disappear the illustrated times has got pictures here of the stars at the trial the
06:08analytical chemists explaining exactly how poisoning worked and the staffordshire advertiser have included
06:15a word-by-word transcript of all of their testimony the readers of all these newspapers were getting
06:21a very detailed lesson in the science of chemistry and in the absolute latest techniques of poisoning
06:29palmer's trial featured 60 witnesses and lasted a record 12 days but eventually he was sentenced to death
06:38the case gave the public a potent mix of science and murder and at saint bartholomew's hospital where
06:46william palmer trained to be a doctor the victorian pathology museum contains the fascinating gory stuff
06:54the bottled stomachs and contaminated organs around which the best murder trials now revolved
07:03palmer's crime represented a new kind of more sophisticated poisoning new substances in very
07:10small doses were increasingly difficult to detect in the body and these more elaborate crimes required
07:17more advanced scientific analysis by the toxicologists collections like this one helped these magicians
07:24of a modern age the toxicologists and the forensic scientists to understand the human body
07:30they needed to see lots of different organs so they could tell what was normal and what was abnormal
07:37this is somebody's stomach but it's been corroded away because they swallowed a strong acid
07:44and as the scientists were becoming more rigorous in their examination of the murder victim
07:49the police were also transforming themselves it all began in 1842 with the establishment of the metropolitan police
07:57detective forces scotland yard formed from a handful of the cleverest police officers they aimed to make
08:04policing a science through observation of crime and intimate knowledge of the criminal world
08:10this new detective squad which was very small at first would become the elite of the police force
08:17it wasn't their job to go out on the beach preventing crime their role was much more active than that
08:23they had to gather intelligence look for patterns find the evidence and go after the killers in other words
08:31it was much more exciting these detectives often came from the very same streets as the criminals
08:38they investigated so they understood the victorian underworld
08:48Charles dickens was very taken with the new detectives he loved following them around and spending time with them
08:56this is his magazine household words and from 1850 he published a whole series of articles about the detectives
09:03and he was doing something quite important he was making them look like they were respectable
09:08and even glamorous characters to his middle-class readers dickens loved the idea of these working-class
09:15heroes cerebral and brave at the same time sweeping up crime all over the city this essay is called the
09:24modern science of thief-taking and dickens here is really bigging up the detectives he says that these 42
09:31individuals don't wear a uniform but they perform the most difficult operations of their craft they're
09:38connoisseurs of crime they can walk into a crime scene and they can spot the hallmarks of a particular
09:44gang of criminals they can read tracks which are invisible to other eyes a few months later dickens
09:52invites the whole of the detective squad into the offices of household words for a party the detective
09:59police party over brandy and water and cigars they chat together about crime the most impressive
10:07detective present is called inspector weald who's a middle-aged man of a portly presence with a large
10:15moist and knowing eye a husky voice and a habit of emphasizing his conversation with the aid of a
10:23corpulent four finger now these very distinctive ticks belong to a real detective called inspector field and dickens
10:31uses his right name when he follows inspector field on his rounds of the slums of saint giles by night
10:39this essay called on duty with inspector field begins like this how goes the night saint giles clock
10:47is striking nine it's almost as if dickens is stalking inspector field and his description is full
10:57of admiration inspector field is tonight the guardian genius of the british museum he is bringing his shrewd
11:05eye to bear on every corner of its solitary galleries soon field emerges and leads dickens on a journey of
11:13discovery into london's criminal underbelly what i love about this essay is the window that it opens
11:20up into the squalid grimy horrible world of the slums of saint giles where inspector field is completely
11:27at home and completely in charge he isn't different from these people he's one of them he's risen up for
11:34his own abilities and this gives him the power to pass between worlds from the slums to the middle-class
11:40newspaper officers just like charles dickens did himself given dickens's empathy for the police
11:49detectives it's no surprise that the real inspector field soon got a fictional counterpart inspector
11:56bucket in bleak house bears a striking resemblance to inspector field right down to the plump pointing
12:02forefinger he's one of our very first fictional police detectives but dickens wasn't just taken with
12:11detection he also had a keen interest in crime and brutality more generally i've come to dickens's
12:17own house to hear from his biographer simon callow he moved in uh uh parts of society that were unknown
12:27to most
12:27of his readers uh he specialized in um the underbelly and it's very notable that whenever he went to any
12:37new town pretty well the first visit he made every time was to the police station when he went to
12:42america
12:42he went to the new york precinct and they took him round the underworld basically they took him to the
12:51brothels to the to the the gambling dens to the places where the criminals hung out he seemed to need
12:58to know about all of that dickens's interest in the unvarnished detail of murder was evident in his famous
13:05public readings from oliver twist especially the killing by bill sykes of his girlfriend nancy dickens
13:13appeared in tales with a white starched shirt and bow tie he stood at a lectern which he designed himself
13:22which had a a little rectangle a metal rectangle over it uh through which gas flowed and which lit up
13:32so he was gas lit within this frame and then he'd give himself you know just like a musician he
13:39wrote a
13:39score for himself and uh it's fascinating that uh you see he rewrote some of the scenes to make them
13:46tighter and more uh vivid uh and he gives himself notes all the way through so for example it less
13:55is
13:55so marked it's so heavily with his pen almost breaking on the page is the word terror underlined twice
14:03to the end and he maintained that atmosphere of of extreme dread all the way through but the moment
14:15that people remembered most of all it was a ghastly figure to look upon the murderer staggering backward to
14:25the wall and shutting out the sight with his hand seized a heavy club and struck her down and then
14:34dickens just repeated this he did this sometimes he didn't seem to stop at all this was the thing
14:42that that frightened his audiences so much so they actually began to see her face disintegrating under
14:48his fist i mean it was it was a sort of psychotic performance really absolutely extraordinary dickens
14:59brought these terrifying accounts of murder and the criminal underworld to a new novel reading audience
15:05who found they could now enjoy stories of violence with a clear conscience
15:11and they liked it even more when murder left the grimy back streets and entered the country house
15:20in 1860 one real life case seized britain's attention
15:29road hill house in the wiltshire village of road became the scene of a dreadful incident
15:36i've been given rare access to the very house where a shocking murder took place
15:42on the night of the 29th of june 1860 the kent family one by one went up to bed
15:51on the first floor the man of the house mill inspector samuel kent joined his second wife mary
16:01their five-year-old daughter slept in their room opposite the nursemaid elizabeth goth
16:08shared the nursery with one-year-old evelyn and three-year-old francis savel
16:18the second floor the second floor housed the cook and the housemaid
16:26and the less favored offspring of samuel kent's first marriage mary ann and elizabeth in their 20s
16:38constance age 16
16:43and william 14
16:51the house was completely secure
16:55there were high walls around the garden there was a guard dog on the prowl out there
17:01the doors were all locked and the shutters were barred
17:04by midnight there were 12 people inside the house totally sealed off from the world
17:23but in the morning one of the children was missing
17:26three-year-old francis savile kent was no longer in his cot
17:33the family and servants searched the house and then the gardens
17:40it seemed that someone inside the house must have spirited the child away
17:54finally they searched the outdoor privy and down beneath the seat in the chamber was the body
18:01of the little boy he'd been wrapped in a blanket and his throat had been cut so deeply that his
18:06head
18:07was almost off
18:17soon as in all the best detective stories a series of clues emerged
18:25the first clue was the clue of the blanket from the boy's bed his body was discovered wrapped in
18:31this but now suspicion fell on his nursery maid elizabeth because she seems to have changed her
18:37story about when she noticed that the blanket was missing the second clue was the clue of the breast
18:44cloth victorian women wore these to pad out their corsets and one was discovered in the privy
18:50the police now tried to discover whose it was by trying it onto the various female servants who did
18:57it fit well it fitted elizabeth the best it's notable that they didn't try it on to the young
19:03ladies of the household as if they were somehow above suspicion the next clue was the clue of the bloody
19:11newspaper at first the police thought this came from the morning star which might have suggested
19:17a stranger the kent family didn't read the star but this was a red herring it turned out that it
19:23was
19:23from the times instead but the most exciting clue was something notable by its absence when the laundry
19:31came back there was something missing what had happened to the night dress of constance kent the
19:37daughter this was a real mystery but at this stage the finger of suspicion was pointed at elizabeth the
19:44nursery maid the local police though failed to find enough evidence to prosecute her enter a new
19:52investigator two weeks after the murder detective inspector jonathan wicher was called in from london
20:00amidst huge public expectation and pressure from the press
20:04a leading figure of scotland yard he was described as the prince of detectives which are set to work
20:11conducting interviews and examining the evidence soon he came to a conclusion mr wicher believed that
20:18the missing night dress was the key to the whole thing and the night dresses owner constance who was
20:24only 16 years old became his prime suspect he was convinced that she sneaks down these servant stairs
20:32got the body of her sleeping half-brother from the nursery and then carried him down and out to slit
20:39his throat
20:44constance was arrested charged and released on bail but without the still elusive night dress
20:50witcher couldn't make a case the accusation by a working-class detective of a nice middle-class girl
20:56caused public outrage which was criticized for intruding on the family's grief and tarnishing
21:02constance's name the charges were dropped kate somerscale author of a best-selling book on the murder
21:09has discovered that this story hooked the public not content with reading about the crime they were
21:15determined to find their own solution kate is showing me some of the letters members of the public wrote to
21:21the police this is um from a woman in london and she says i fancy that step by step i
21:28can trace
21:30the crime and that the murderer is the brother of william nutt and the son of law of mrs holly
21:36the laundress this is brilliant it's like she's solving the crime herself from um westbourne grove
21:42yes exactly well this one is suggesting that the police check whether any chloroform
21:50was purchased in the neighborhood because if the boy had been sedated with chloroform
21:56then that would explain why the parents didn't wait but you think surely the police forces this
22:01themselves well yes and in witcher had to give his responses to all these letters such as this one
22:09i have read the annex letter offering suggestions relative to the murder at road but there is nothing
22:14in them to assist in the inquiry so each time one of these letters came in he had to read
22:19it and
22:20respond to it as time went on then what happened to which is public status there was a great deal
22:27of
22:27sympathy for constance and her family and all the loathing that might have been reserved actually
22:34for the murderer if they had been found at that point was turned on witcher he became
22:40a sort of scapegoat for people's disquiet and upset about the murder itself
22:46in fact it turned out that witcher was right all along in 1865 constance kent confessed to killing
22:54her little half-brother motivated by resentment of her stepmother it came too late the murder of
23:02francis savile kent destroyed not only witcher's reputation but the image of the police detective as
23:08a hero and saw the birth of what we'd call the armchair detective this is the grave of the victim
23:16francis savile kent you can't make it out but it says here he was cruelly murdered
23:23and one result of his death was this new appetite in the middle classes for the intellectual rigors of
23:30detection his death made retired colonels and housewives and all sorts of respectable people
23:36become amateur detectives and largely without success the epitaph goes on to say that god must
23:45search out the solution to this crime because only he knows the secrets of the heart
23:53the case at road hill house with its dark desires hidden behind a genteel facade
24:00also inspired a great work of crime literature
24:05in 1868 wilkie collins published a book called the moon stone t.s elliott described this as the first
24:13the longest and the best of english detective novels whether it's a true detective novel or not
24:19it's a bit of a moot question but it'll definitely keep you turning the pages
24:24basically it's about a stolen diamond but i've come to a tobacconist because colin's expert matthew
24:30sweet promises me cigars hold the secret to the novel's plot right then shall we go for these ones
24:37will you please show us what to do now that we've picked these two what you need to do is
24:44to cut
24:45cut the little end off here cut that and now i'm just going to char the end for you turning
24:50it around turning it so you get it nice and evenly i think that's nearly there right thank you very
24:57much now draw and then blow it out that's really nasty yeah i'm sorry you are going to explain in
25:08a
25:08minute why we're smoking cigars it's all going to be revealed okay i have to take that control
25:13matthew's first puff yes draw in there you're away
25:22good smoking excellent like a pro
25:28so what role does cigars play in the story of the moonstone well the cigar strangely is the engine
25:34of the plot in the moonstone without the cigar the moonstone diamond would never have been stolen
25:39because the hero franklin blake is a cigar smoker who stops smoking and then because he's sleepless
25:47and because he's ratty and because he gets into an argument with a doctor he finds that his drink has
25:52been spiked with opium so this puts him into a very strange psychological state during which he commits
25:58the robbery that he himself wants to see solved you make that sound really neat and orderly and sensible
26:04but it takes place over 800 pages and there's so many twists and turns along the way twists and turns
26:10and all in this kind of with this strange kind of narcotic thug waiting for us at the end of
26:15the story
26:15the moonstone is a highly original story but the detective element clearly draws on the road hill house
26:22murder he takes in a way the detective character from the road hill house story so mr witcher becomes
26:31sergeant cuff this detective who is called in when the local police fail and puts the finger of blame on
26:38the daughter of the household but then fails in his investigation you know it comes to a dead end for
26:45him
26:45but there's also the detail of a clue in the story um witcher's suspicions were founded upon an anomaly
26:52in the laundry list at road hill house um this night shirt that should have been there but wasn't
26:58now um there's a night shirt in this story too it's smeared with paint um franklin blake has been
27:05sleepwalking through the house and his body is rubbed against um a wet architrave of one of the doors and
27:11the paint has come off on the night dress so what's the case for the moonstone being the first proper
27:17detective fiction there are things in the moonstone that later become fixtures of the genre you've got
27:23the country house mystery um you've got uh this questionable servants um you've got the detective
27:30who comes into a kind of complacent household who resist him who don't want that kind of detective
27:37gaze directed upon them you know looking in their drawers inspecting the business of their personal
27:43lives another thing in the moonstone that really looks forwards to detective stories is the planting
27:49of the clue isn't it the way that if you're paying attention you know that this normal detail of daily
27:55life the cigar is going to hold the secret of the whole plot well yes i mean it's the classic
27:59clue isn't
27:59it you can imagine something like this reproduced in a cluedo set along with the length of rope
28:04and the revolver and the classic idea is that this is an object that can be read you know it
28:09looks
28:10ordinary the world is full of them and yet if you know how to look at this if you you
28:14know if you see
28:15how long it's been burning where it comes from where it was bought who might use a cigar like this
28:20then it becomes legible and it might perform some very important role in a story or a puzzle
28:26well in this particular story it's the explanation for the whole of everything absolutely yes yeah
28:35the moonstone was part of a new wave of writing in the 1860s known at the time as sensation fiction
28:44novels designed to quicken the pulse of middle-class readers what could be more sensational than murder
28:50and detection the queen of sensation fiction was mary elizabeth braddon she really was one of the 19th
28:59centuries most prolific and successful novelists her first smash hit lady audley's secret was set here
29:08ingotston hall became audley court a place full of secrets glamour and crime
29:16the book's plot revolves around bigamy and murder
29:21george tallboys comes back from australia after years away seeking his fortune
29:28he expects to find his wife at home waiting for him but instead hears that she's died
29:36he goes with a friend robert audley to visit audley court where he hears about the new
29:42young lady audley it's george's supposedly dead wife remarried
29:49with a shameful secret about to be exposed she arranges to meet george here
30:01this is the famous lime tree walk from lady audley's secret in the story it leads to a well
30:08down which lady audley pushes her husband
30:11mary elizabeth braddon said that the whole story was inspired by a walk that she took here
30:17she said that this secluded spot suggested something uncanny
30:23in the book the mystery is investigated by robert audley himself who's turned amateur detective
30:31i'm really fascinated by braddon whose own life seems to reflect her taste for sensation
30:37so i've come to meet her biographer jennifer carnell so this is a photograph of mary elizabeth braddon
30:44and is that her hair that's her hair probably from when she was a toddler she's not exactly the sort
30:50of glamorous lady audley type character i was expecting no she's much more of a slightly matronly look to
30:56her and she was incredibly prolific it was nearly 80 different novels that she wrote and the early ones
31:02were published with the support of that i don't know how to describe him john maxwell he was a sort
31:06of partner in life he was he was a very pushy publisher good at publicity very different to her
31:12so she had the skill at writing and he had the salesmanship but there was a problem with maxwell
31:17there was a slight problem because he did already have a wife and children even wife and children
31:22his wife had become insane after the birth of her last child and had gone back to her family in
31:28ireland
31:28so for many years she's been living with john maxwell they have children together but then it
31:33all goes wrong yes his first wife died and maxwell sent a telegram to ireland saying he wasn't going to
31:39go to the funeral he didn't feel well the irish family was so incensed they put a notice a death
31:44notice in the london newspapers saying that mrs john maxwell had sadly died and unfortunately many
31:51people thought that this meant braddon had died and the letters and telegrams of condolence arrived at the
31:55house and then obviously as she was very much alive the cat was out the bag you couldn't make
32:00it up it's like it's from one of her own stories can you tell me how she targeted her work
32:05at
32:05different audiences she was quite clever in that and unusual too she was writing for the middle classes
32:11and that's the big three volume volume novels and she also wrote for poorer people the working class
32:17this is a penny dreadful which is clearly aimed at people who are servants we've got an article here
32:23addressed to female servants what would the other readers have been like shop girls young clerks and
32:29teenagers as well also read these kind of magazines this is clearly quite a cheap publication it's called
32:35the halfpenny journal and each weekly number starts with the story called the black band it's not signed
32:42but this is by braddon isn't it it is it ran for almost a year it was her longest book
32:47she ever wrote
32:48and uh it's got extraordinary number of murders plots poisonings jewels this is a female another
32:54female murderess who's fainting away here she's been discovered so this is even less plausible than
33:00lady audley you would describe this as sort of trash would it is it is it's campy fun but at
33:05the same
33:06time people who haven't got much money are enjoying this they're lapping it up yes tell me about the
33:11different types of detective that we get in the two types of writing you get a great difference in the
33:16detectives for example in the black band braddon praises them as the friends of the people they
33:22are here to uphold justice and they're magicians of modern life with their incredible detective skills
33:27and up-to-date ways of solving crimes but in the middle class sensational they're seen as the intruder
33:33and they're not allowed to solve crimes and you know the amateur detective if there is one will
33:38always prevail over the professional now everybody at all levels in society wanted to read about murder
33:50and detection the middle classes had their expensive novels there were cheap magazine stories for the
33:57workers and authors rushed to meet this new demand producing a whole array of different types of story
34:04and different types of detective to suit every taste and they included novelties such as boy detectives
34:11and even the female detective my friends suppose i am a dressmaker i'm aware that the female detective may
34:22be regarded with even more aversion than her brother in the profession but criminals are both masculine and
34:30feminine indeed my experience tells me that when a woman becomes a criminal she is far worse than the
34:36average of her male companions and therefore it follows that the necessary detectives should be of both sexes
34:46all of a sudden we get not one but two female detectives appearing in fiction each of them is
34:53the heroine of the heroine of her own book one book's called the female detective the other one's a bit
34:59more
34:59racy it's called the revelations of a lady detective each heroine miss gladden and mrs paschal is a female
35:07first because she's a professional she makes her living through sleuthing
35:16it's pretty incredible that the first girl detectives appeared in the 1860s
35:24this was a time when ladies movements were restricted by the decades in practical fashions
35:33particularly the crinoline which ladies actually referred to as the cage
35:42but in the book called the revelations of a lady detective mrs paschal isn't going to let a
35:47giant skirt get in her way the heroine of the story is chasing a criminal he goes down a hole
35:57into a
35:57cellar she can't follow him because of her crinoline so her words she takes off the obnoxious garment
36:04it's a brilliant little moment of female emancipation
36:09these two groundbreaking books were published within months of each other in 1864 and since
36:15they're rather rare i've come to see them with the curator catherine johnson at the british library
36:21are these filling the gap between cheap and disposable magazines and more expensive hardback novels
36:28probably nearer to the the cheap magazine at the time the original edition of this book came out a
36:35three volume novel would have cost something in the region of ten and sixpence per volume which was
36:41round about an average working man's wage so it was way out of his pocket this is priced at sixpence
36:48as
36:48you can see at the top looking at that cover there at the revelations of the lady detective what would
36:53a reader have seen looking at that image they might have been shocked as you can see at the top
37:00she's
37:00quite clearly smoking you can see the puff of smoke although she has correctly got gloves on
37:05she's lifting up a padded coat a duster coat and at the bottom you can see she has a crinoline
37:12but it
37:13is rather daringly it's showing not her ankles but a considerable amount of leg that cover image is not
37:19of a respectable woman in 18th century prints if you hold up your dress and show your ankle you are
37:23a
37:24prostitute indeed what other unladylike things does the lady detective do she tells us that she has
37:31one of mr colt's revolvers although perhaps disappointingly we never see her use it but
37:36perhaps she found a great comfort with the enormous weight of it in her pocket this is what i like
37:40about
37:40the female detectives though they are sort of bursting through the boundaries aren't they they're not
37:44staying at home they're out and about they're doing things it's something different though it's
37:47interesting at the beginning of this it's almost as if she has an excuse she says that um she had
37:53to
37:54undergo this career as a detective because her husband died and left her very poorly off and so
38:00the implication is that she wouldn't undertake something so daring and unusual if she hadn't been
38:07bereft of the support of her husband she justifies herself quite hard doesn't yes i like the bit where
38:12she actually lists her qualities she says my brain is vigorous and subtle i concentrate all my energies
38:20upon my duties i have nerve and strength cunning and confidence resources unlimited good on her sadly
38:29these two books were a bit of a false start because there wouldn't be any more fictional lady detectives
38:34for over 20 years
38:38but it wasn't just the detectives who came in many different guises the later 19th century saw a growing
38:45fascination with the psyche of the killer in 1886 robert louis stevenson wrote a book called the strange case
38:54of dr jekyll and mr hyde and introduced us to a new type of murderer dr jekyll and mr hyde
39:02broke new ground
39:03because the violence in it was motiveless it was animalistic it turned out that the killer mr hyde
39:09was the alter ego of the virtuous dr jekyll the book was a huge success and it quickly became a
39:16stage
39:16play with an actor called richard mansfield in the lead it opened in 1888 here in london at the lyceum
39:28theater for the first time victorian audiences encountered the idea of the split personality
39:40the transformation scene was said to be so alarming that women fainted
39:44and had to be carried from the theater these days we're so familiar with the image of jekyll drinking
39:51the potion and turning into hyde but it's hard to imagine that it originally took place in reverse
39:56from the murderous hide to the nice dr jekyll but how did richard mansfield do it the actor michael
40:04kirk helped me to recreate the melodrama of his performance so there's just one actor a massive
40:12theater a bit of light a bit of music he's going to completely transform himself from bad guy to good
40:17guy how does he do it will you show me right first of all the physicality so we're going to
40:23go on our
40:23toes put your weight on your toes and lean forward this is um mr hyde the murderer this is mr
40:30hyde on his
40:31toes walks on his toes so you've got that now bend your body right over and straighten your fingers and
40:40go
40:41feel the energy right to the end of those fingers and a slightly deformed shoulder put the
40:47shoulder up shoulder up one shoulder up okay so that's it yeah yeah the lear of a fiend
40:56the lear of a fiend the howl of a wolf
41:03okay yeah and now we're serious serious seriously now over there over there it's doctor who lanyon
41:11dr lanyon he's my friend he was your friend he isn't your friend anymore okay he's my enemy he's
41:18your enemy
41:20okay down there is the potion and you're going to prove to dr lanyon how you do it and you
41:27say to him
41:27behold man of disbelief behold man of disbelief behold behold take the glass take the glass no
41:39no don't take the job don't take it don't say that you're taking the glass just take it with a
41:45sweep
41:462 000 people watching you and you put yes i'll drink this down
41:52placed on the table oh the pain in the glass the pain turn away the agony into the stomach
42:02and suddenly amazing relief and totally strengthen you'll feel your whole body going upright
42:10and it all relaxes and there is your friend and you turn to him and you say
42:18learn to lanyan lanyan lanyan the play dr jekyll and mr hyde opened in what would turn out to be
42:27a
42:27particularly fearful summer in 1888 there's a series of brutal murders in white chapel
42:36these unsolved crimes would grip the nation and even a century later we're still addicted
42:43the uncaptured killer would become the 19th century's most notorious murderer
42:49the image of this killer is strangely intertwined with that of mr hyde
42:56the murder of the prostitute martha tabram in the east end which some consider to be the first of this
43:02group of crimes took place just two days after dr jekyll and mr hyde began its west end run
43:11over the next two months five more women were killed in truly horrifying ways
43:19as the victims were discovered a pattern began to emerge they'd had various internal organs removed
43:26rather skillfully this gave rise to speculation that the killer could have been a trained doctor
43:33people now began to confuse the real murderous doctor with the fictional one in dr jekyll and mr
43:39hyde one newspaper said that mr hyde is at large in whitechapel some people were even more confused than
43:47that they began to suggest that richard mansfield the actor who played mr hyde could be the killer himself
43:53after all every night he proved that he could transform himself from a respectable looking doctor
43:59into a murderous monster
44:05man of disbelief behold
44:31and if even an honorable doctor could harbor the brutal instincts of the psychopath
44:37anybody walking the streets was in danger the serial killer could be anywhere
44:43the fear and excitement escalated when a letter arrived at the offices of the central news agency
44:50it began dear boss and it went on to mock the police who couldn't catch the murderer
44:56it was signed jack the ripper introducing for the first time an irresistibly catchy name
45:04in fact the whole thing became something of a theatrical event for victorian londoners
45:09and an interactive one too once again ordinary people started writing into the newspapers and the police
45:15that this time they didn't just suggest solutions they sent letters purporting to be from the ripper himself
45:24now why would you pretend to be jack the ripper
45:28perhaps people wanted to just see their letter in the paper perhaps they wanted to mock the police for
45:34having failed to solve the crime or perhaps they just did it for fun one of the people prosecuted for
45:41sending hoax jack the ripper letters was maria coroner 21 years old worked for a mantle maker
45:47when she appeared in court she was described as a pleasant looking young woman of greater
45:52intelligence than is common for one of her class when she was asked about her motive she said she'd done
45:59it in a joke
46:02so for some people jack the ripper seems to have been light entertainment right from the start
46:07even at the same time as the killer spread fear and panic in london today on a rainy friday night
46:14the
46:15east end is seething with ripper tours crisscrossing each other's paths i'm going to warn you now this is
46:22the real story the ripper story is a massive subject tv documentary study but for all different types of
46:28reasons um therefore there's lots of questions and actually the big question is who done it before
46:33the murders took place the impoverished east end was already a tourist attraction where posh
46:38people might go slumming to see how the poor lived so perhaps it's not surprising that the ripper's
46:44crimes were soon drawing in the crowds these tours have quite a history they've been going on for at
46:52least 100 years possibly longer the first formal recorded tour took place in 1905 and it was led by
47:00dr frederick brown the police surgeon who'd carried out the post-mortem on one of the original victims
47:07his tour group consisted of members of an exclusive club a literary club called the crimes club one of
47:14them was sir arthur conan doyle the inventor of sherlock holmes
47:18the legendary amateur detective first appeared the year before jack the ripper but he wasn't an
47:25immediate hit sherlock holmes took off in an age scarred by the ripper perhaps the dismal failure of the
47:32police to find a culprit created a desire for a fictional sleuth who was never wrong
47:39sherlock holmes was the perfect detective to comfort the nervous middle classes
47:45he was up against killers who were psychotic and ruthless but there was something of the machine
47:50about sherlock himself he used his flawless logic to solve crimes that had defeated the plodding
47:57members of the police he elevated detection into an elegant crossword puzzle the very first time we
48:04see sherlock at work at a crime scene was in an empty house on the brixton road
48:12in a study in scarlet holmes's distinctive and rather novel approach is immediately seen
48:22he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket with these two
48:28implements he trotted noiselessly about the room sometimes stopping occasionally kneeling
48:35and once lying flat upon his face in one place he gathered up very carefully a little pile of
48:44grey dust from the floor and packed it away in an envelope finally he examined with his glass the word
48:51upon the wall going over every letter of it with the most minute exactness
48:59holmes uses the bloody finger marks which spell out the german word for revenge to draw some clever
49:06conclusions about the appearance of the murderer his scientific approach to the crime scene the idea of
49:13reading minute forensic clues was genuinely pioneering and it would actually inspire real life policing
49:23the idea that every criminal action leaves a print a trace a hair a speck of dust gave a sense
49:30of
49:30discovery and excitement to the solving of crimes and the process of detection became ever more
49:36fascinating as sherlock holmes put it there's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless
49:44scheme of life and our duty is to unravel it and isolate it and expose every inch of it
49:51by the end of the victorian age the pieces were nearly all in place for a new
49:55age of detection to begin in real life and in fiction too crimes will be solved scientifically
50:04methodically neatly and to the complete satisfaction of the reader
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