JAN BONDESON

When discussing unsolved murders of women in late Victorian London, most people think of the depredations of Jack the Ripper, the Whitechapel Murderer. But he was just one of a string of phantom murderers whose unsolved slayings outraged late Victorian Britain.The mysterious Great Coram Street, Burton Crescent and Euston Square murders were talked about with bated breath, and the northern part of Bloomsbury got the unflattering nickname of the murder neighbourhood thanks to its profusion of unsolved mysteries. Marvel at the convoluted Kingswood Mystery, littered with fake names and mistaken identities; be puzzled by the blackmail and secret marriage in the Cannon Street Murder; and shudder at the vicious yet silent killing in St Giles that took place in a crowded house in the dead of night.Rivals of the Ripper is the first to resurrect these unsolved Victorian murder mysteries, and to highlight the ghoulish handiwork of the Rivals of the Ripper: the spectral killers of gas-lit London.

When Jack the Ripper first prowled the streets of London, an evening newspaper commented that his crimes were as ghastly as those committed by Eliza Grimwoods murderer fifty years earlier. Hers is arguably the most infamous and brutal of all nineteenth-century London killings. Eliza was a high-class prostitute, and on 26 May 1838, following an evening at the theatre, she brought a client back to her home in Waterloo Road. The morning after, she was found with her throat cut and her abdomen viciously ripped. The client was nowhere to be seen. The ensuing murder investigation was convoluted, with suspects ranging from an alcoholic bricklayer to a royal duke. Londoners from all walks of life followed the story with a horror and fascination among them Charles Dickens, who took inspiration from Elizas death when he wrote the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist. Despite this feverish interest, the case was left unsolved, becoming the subject of penny dreadfuls and urban legend. Unusually for a crime of this early period, the diary of the police officer leading the investigation has been preserved for posterity, and Jan Bondeson takes full advantage of this unique access to a Victorian murder inquiry. Skilfully dissecting what evidence remains, he links this murder with a series of other opportunist early Victorian slayings, and, in putting forward a credible new suspect, concludes that the Ripper of Waterloo Road was, in fact, a serial killer claiming as many as four victims.

Narrado de forma apasionante y con ilustraciones de época, Enterrado vivo explora los ámbitos de la medicina, el folklore, la historia y la literatura para tratar de descubrir las causas del miedo de nuestros antepasados a ser enterrados vivos.

Este libro presenta cuentos asombrosos del rico folclore de los animales: un cerdo letrado que fue más admirado que Isaac Newton por el público inglés, un elefante al cual Lord Byron quiso emplear como su mayordomo y, desde luego, la extraordinaria Sirena de Fiji, una criatura londinense de la decada de 1820 que tenia un extraño parecido con un mono acartonado y desfigurado con una cola de pescado. Bondeson examina, con penetrante vision zoologica, algunos aspectos extraños, desconcertantes o macabros del reino animal y de su relacion con el genero humano.