The Apprentice of Split Crow Lane: The Story of the Carr's Hill Murder - Softcover

Housham, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178648160X ISBN 13: 9781786481603

Publisher: riverrun, 2017

Synopsis

A Victorian Murder. A Victorian Madman. A Modern Judgement.

Gateshead, April 1866

The Apprentice of Split Crow Lane takes the forgotten case of a child murder in 1866 as a springboard to delve deeply into the pysche of the Victorians. What Jane Housham finds, in this exploration of guilt, sexual deviance and madness, is a diagnosis that is still ripe for the challenging and a sentence that provokes even our liberal modern judgement.

Set around Gateshead, it is a revelatory social history of the North - an area growing in industry and swelling with immigration, where factory workers are tinged blue and yellow by chemicals, the first tabloids are printed, children are left alone by working parents and haystack fires sweep the county in rebellion against the introduction of the police force. Into this landscape, a five-year-old Irish girl named Sarah Melvin sets out over the fell to look for her father, and a troubled young man makes a frightening leap of logic to save his own skin.

Told here for the first time, this is an extraordinary story of sexual deviance and murder. In lively, empathic prose, Jane Housham explores psychiatry, the justice system and the media in mid-Victorian England to reveal a surprisingly modern state of affairs.

About this title

Review:

Gripping - reveals a society in moral turmoil (William Shaw)

Well-written and excellently researched, this chilling tale of a Victorian sex murder opens out into an investigation into the workings of the lunatic mind and the asylums which treat it (Julie Peakman)

This was a fascinating read, particularly for those who are interested in Victorian provision of the criminally insane . . . She also gives us a flavour of the population of the time, of the haves and the have-nots and really conjures up details of the place where the crime was committed in astonishing detail . . . enlightening and clear-sighted (Cleopatra Loves Books)

Housham is a dogged researcher and evocative writer. She sheds a powerful light on the era, skilfully describing the febrile, lawless atmosphere of 1860s Gateshead (Jenny McCartney Mail on Sunday)

Book Description:

The investigation into a Gateshead child murder reveals the Victorians - their classes, their justice and their scandals - as never before

About this edition

• Publisher: riverrun
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 178648160X
• ISBN 13: 9781786481603
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368