Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder: The Unsolved Murder that Shocked Victorian England

Murphy, Paul Thomas

ISBN 10: 1605989827 / ISBN 13: 9781605989822

Published by Pegasus Books, 2016

A bright, square, and overall a nice copy. Seller Inventory # BOS-G-02d-02300

Synopsis:

On April 26th, 1871, a police constable walking one of London s remotest beats stumbled upon a brutalized young woman kneeling in the muddy road, her face smashed and battered. The policeman gaped in horror as the woman stretched out her hand to him, collapsed in the mud, muttered let me die, and slipped into a coma. Five days later, she died, her identity still unknown.Within hours of her discovery, scores of Metropolitan Police officers were involved in the investigation, while Scotland Yard sent one of its top detectives to lead it. On the day of her death, the police discovered the girl's identity: Jane Maria Clouson, a sixteen-year-old servant to the Pooks, a respectable Greenwich family. Hours later, they arrested her master's son, twenty-year-old Edmund, for her murder.Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke LaneDownton AbbeyUsing an abundant collection of primary sources, Paul Thomas Murphy creates a gripping narrative of the police procedural and the ensuing legal drama, with its many twists and turns, from the discovery of the body until the final judgement and beyond. For while the murder of Jane Clouson has for nearly one hundred and fifty years remained unsolved, much of the evidence remains, and Murphy, applying contemporary forensic methods to this Victorian cold case, reveals definitively the identity of Jane Clouson's murderer and provides the resolution that Jane's angry supporters long ago demanded.

Review: Entertaining. This highly readable story still shows the cleverness of the police and the frustrations of prosecutors.

An impressive, exceptional, original, and deftly crafted read from beginning to end, Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane clearly demonstrates author Paul Thomas Murphy as painstaking researcher who can draw from a diversity of primary sources to produce a gripping and compelling narrative. While Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane is very highly recommended for both community and academic library collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists of academia and non-specialist general readers with an interest in Victorian England's darker history that this outstanding work is also available in Kindle, as well as in a complete and unabridged Audio Book CD format.

Although Murphy is mainly interested in the advances of forensic science, his lively narrative, with its unambiguous tone of outrage, is also a takedown of the social system.

I would like to have been taught by Paul Thomas Murphy. He's the most free-spirited of scholars.--John Sutherland

Murphy displays a novelist's gifts in this fascinating true crime account. Murphy captures the drama of the flawed investigation, and the legal proceedings that followed. His solution to the crime--based on current forensic science--is likely to be the last word on the case.

This fascinating account of a Victorian murder, complemented by the added strength of a rich description of the period's society and judicial system, should be a solid addition to academic and true crime collections.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane:...
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Publication Date: 2016
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good