In this book, After the Battle have explored entirely new ground to investigate 150 years of murder and present it through our "then and now" theme of comparison photographs. Scene of crime plans, photographs from police files as well as from the Press, focus on a wide variety of murders committed between 1812, when a Prime Minister was shot in the House of Commons, to killings on the streets of London in the 1960s.
Included are many of the "headline" murderers like Jack the Ripper, Dr Crippen, Kennedy and Browne, the "Black-out" Ripper, John Haigh, John Christie, Donald Hume, Ruth Ellis, Ronald Marwood, Guenther Podola and the Roberts Gang, along with other less notorious, but equally important murders.
Extracts from eyewitnesses and investigating officers, original statements taken by police including from the murderers, newspaper articles published at the time, pathologist accounts and even descriptions given by executioners are all blended with photographs of the murder scenes as they appear today.
Homicide is not a subject for the faint-hearted and many of the photographs are distressing which is why the book is made available with that warning.
Far too often it is the perpetrator who is remembered while their victims, many lying in unmarked graves, remain lost to history. So this book sets out to redress the balance by tracking down the last resting places, even going as far as to mark two wartime graves of taxi drivers killed by American servicemen.
Research also resulted in achieving formal recognition by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for one of the victims of Neville Heath, murdered while she was serving her country yet omitted from the commemorative records until now.
Controversially, comes the revelation that 17 murderers who served in the Army during the war, and who were executed for their crimes, now have their names commemorated on the Brookwood Memorial to the Missing in Surrey.
Murders Covered . . .
May 11, 1812 - The Death of a Prime Minister
December 13, 1867 - The Last Public Execution
December 1887-September 1889 - "Jack the Ripper"
February 1, 1910 - Dr Hawley Crippen
December 16, 1910 - The Houndsditch Murders
January 1, 1911 - The Murder of Leon Beron
June 17, 1919 - Riot by Canadian Troops at Epsom
June 22, 1922 - The Assassination of Sir Henry Wilson
October 4, 1922 - The Bywaters/Thompson Affair
September 27, 1927 - Police Constable George Gutteridge
November 6, 1930 - The Strange Case of Alfred Rouse
August 7, 1934 - Death at the Palace Cinema
July 14, 1938 - The "Lovers Lane" Murder
March 13, 1940 - The Shooting of Sir Michael O?Dwyer
February 1942 - The "Black-out Ripper"
April 30, 1942 - Double Execution for Murder
October 7, 1942 - The "Wigwam" Murder
December 27, 1942 - The First American Execution in Britain
September 28, 1943 - Rape and Murder at Marlborough
December 8, 1943 - The Birch Taxi-cab Murder
March 5, 1944 - Execution by Firing Squad
February 14, 1944 - The "Cabbage Patch" Murder
August 22, 1944 - The Killing of Betty Green
October 7, 1944 - US Deserter tried in a British Court
December 3, 1944 - The Murder of Sir Eric Teichman
December 8, 1944 - Captain Ralph Binney, R.N.
June 21, 1946 - Wanted for Murder: Neville Heath
April 29, 1947 - The Killing of Alec de Antiquis
February 18, 1949 - John Haigh and the Acid-bath Murders
October 4, 1949 - Donald Hume: "I got away with murder!"
June 4, 1951 - Gun-battle at Chatham
1943-1953 - 10 Rillington Place, London,W11
November 2, 1952 - Christopher Craig and Derek Bentley
July 2, 1953 - The "Teddy Boy" Murder
April 8, 1955 - Ruth Ellis: The Last Woman to be Hanged
May 24, 1957 - The Slaying of Countess Teresa Lubienska
December 14, 1958 - The Murder of Police Constable Ray Summers
July 13, 1959 - The Death of Detective Sergeant Raymond Purdy
June 3, 1961 - Police Murders in West Ham
August 23, 1961 - Rape and Murder on the A6
August 12, 1966 - The Shepherd?s Bush Murders
February 21, 1968 - Death in a London Street
Murderers Commemorated on the Brookwood Memorial in 1958
