Yorkshire's Murderous Women: Two Centuries of Killings - Softcover

Wade, Stephen

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9781845630232: Yorkshire's Murderous Women: Two Centuries of Killings

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845630238 ISBN 13: 9781845630232

Publisher: Wharncliffe Books, 2007

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The criminal history of Yorkshire has its share of nasty and brutal murders and the majority of these killers have been men. Statistics show that most homicides are men. But the records over the centuries have tales of women killers and in these tales the murders are often cases of poisoning. Stephen Wade has investigated records across the country to find out stories of women in the years between the middle of the eighteenth century and the mid twentieth century who have taken lives through jealousy, hatred or sheer desperation. Some of the tales are sad, melancholy accounts of infanticide committed in hard times often when women were under terrible stress and suffering from poor health and mental problems. Other stories are about murders that took away an unwanted partner or brought some easy money to the killer's pockets.Beneath the murder stories there are tales of courtroom trials that went wrong and false accusations, along with verdicts that sent women to Van Dieman's Land or to gaol for life.Here are some of the most dramatic stories of women who killed, including Louie Calvert, serial killer, the Beverley case of extreme cruelty on a child; and the Hull wife who wanted her husband out of the way - for good. Stephen Wade is a freelance writer and social historian with a special interest in crime and law and order in the North. His recent books include Yorkshire's Unsolved Murders and Wharncliffe A-Z of Yorkshire Murder. Stephen has also authored several of Wharncliffe's 'Foul Deeds' titles. He also teaches the history of crime at the University of Hull and works as a writer in prisons.

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Synopsis:

The Idea of the 'gentler and fairer sex' is hard to find in these stories of murder by women in all parts of Yorkshire. Some are tales of marital tension and tragedy, while others are sad accounts of infanticide while under mental duress. The media like a crime of passion story, as in the life and death of Ruth Ellis, and Yorkshire has its own women killers in that category, but the glamour is an illusion: women killing their partners or husbands is never melodramatic and always terrible, as these tales show. Here the reader will meet the Leeds double murderer Louie Calvert, Mary Bateman the poisoner, the Hull woman who hired a hit-man and many more tales of violence and death across the Ridings. But behind these stories, Stephen Wade also explores the uneasy relationship between social change and the criminal law, so the courtrooms as well as the murder scenes have their absorbing and dramatic stories.

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