The Art of English Murder

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post, but I’ve been inspired by the most exciting book I’ve read in a long time, Lucy Worsley’s The Art of English Murder. It’s a very broad introduction to the British national obsession with murder, both factual and fictional. She gives overviews of many famous 19th century murder cases and also documents the history of detective fiction. As a huge fan of British murder mysteries, especially Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, I was naturally drawn to this book. For a long time, I’ve been trying to find a guide to the real life cases Sayers often refers to, and this is it! Now I know all about serial poisoner William Palmer, the elusive Madeline Smith and many more. I particularly enjoyed Worsley’s discussion of Charles Dickens, and his interest in crime, criminals, and London’s first detective squad! I’ve seen other reviewers complain that Worsley “spoils” the solution of the mysteries of some novels, so I won’t go into as much detail as she does, but I’ll just say that the detective, Inspector Bucket, and the murderer of Bleak House (my favorite Dickens novel), as well as Nancy in Oliver Twist, were based on real people. I was also fascinated to read about Dickens’ reaction to being one of the spectators gathered to see the public hanging of Maria and Frederick Manning. He and his friends rented a room across from the jail where the execution took place, but he was so disturbed by the hanging and the crowd’s response to it that he became a strong opponent of the practice of public executions. I was much less interested in the chapter on Wilkie Collins, since I’m not a fan of his work, but I’m sure that those who are will enjoy that. I was a little sad that Worley ignored the mystery elements in the works of Anthony Trollope, my favorite Victorian author. The Eustace Diamonds centers around a jewel robbery and shows a fair amount of the methods used by the police to solve the crime; and Phineas Redux starts out as a political and personal novel and about halfway through turns into a full-on murder mystery!) In general, I found Worsley’s appraisal of literature less interesting than the earlier chapters on real murders. I’m already an expert on Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, so I didn’t need that part of the book, though I did enjoy reading about the Detection Club, a society of which those authors were members, along with other prominent mystery writers. Some reviewers of this book criticize it for its inaccuracies, but I think if you view it as an introduction to other, perhaps better researched works, I don’t think that has to diminish this book’s value. (I don’t know enough about the topic to know if the book contains inaccuracies myself.) In fact, The Art of English Murder has already spurred me on to two great books that are in-depth histories of crimes Worsley describes. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale documents the famous Rode Hill House murder, the real life country house murder in a middle class family that launched the whole literary genre. Death at the Priory, by James Ruddick, tells the story of the infamous poisoning of Charles Bravo. This crime, the murder of a tyrannical husband, in which his wife was a suspect, throws a spotlight on the cracks in the surface of the traditional Victorian gender roles. I also read the very interesting bestseller, an example of the sensation fiction genre, Lady Audley's Secret. Next on my to read shelf are a few more in the same vein: Poisoned Lives: Victorian Poisoners and Their Victims; The Poisoner: The Life and Crimes of Victorian England's Most Notorious Doctor; and Did She Kill Him?: A Victorian Tale of Deception, Adultery, and Arsenic.

Titanic: A Selected Bibliography

I've developed something of an obsession with the Titanic over the past year or so, and I've listened to several books about it, greedily devouring as much information as I could. There are so many books on this topic, but here are the ones I've read!

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord was the first major book to take on the story of the Titanic, and it's a very good introduction to Titanica. Lord's book doesn't provide a lot of background on the voyage, or the personalities, but simply documents the sinking meticulously, from the moment the ship struck the iceberg. This book is well-researched, well-written and insightful. (Also, it was the basis of the best film to date on the Titanic sinking, the 1958 British film of the same title.) However, if you're like me, you may be hungry for all the background and follow-up information not included here.

The Titanic: Disaster of the Century, by Wyn Craig Wade was actually the first Titanic book I read, and it is an excellent and thorough book. Wade tells the story of the Titanic's fatal voyage through the lens of the American senate inquiry, spearheaded by Michigan Senator William Alden Smith. Before reading this book, I hadn't even known that there was a senate inquiry! If there's one fault in Wade's book, I think it is his praising Senator Smith at the expense of Titanic's officers, particularly the high-ranking surviving officer, Charles Lightoller. Lightoller's testimony seemed evasive and misleading to Smith, but I think we have to keep in mind Lightoller's natural instinct to preserve the reputations of his dead colleagues and to avoid blaming the White Star Line--his employer! Still, this is a wonderful book, particularly notable for Wade's analysis of the historical import of the disaster and his theory that the sinking of the Titanic was the true marker of the end of the Victorian era.

I read two books that consist of  first-hand accounts of the sinking: Titanic: Voices From the Disaster
by Deborah Hopkinson and Titanic: A Survivor's Story, by Colonel Archibald Gracie. Colonel Gracie's short memoir provides a lot of information about the way the lifeboats were loaded, since he was very active in assisting the crew, as well as providing a picture of first-class life on board ship. And Titanic: Voices from the Disaster gives a larger variety of passenger accounts. Many from that book are quoted extensively in other books I read, so I wouldn't consider either of these essential reading.

I almost didn't bother with Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From by Richard Davenport-Hines, because I assumed it would also be familiar ground after the many books I'd read, but I'm so glad I did! Most of the survivor accounts you read are from first-class passengers, because more of them survived! And there are efforts to remember the third-class passengers, because they died in the greatest numbers. This is the first book I read that conveyed the second-class passenger experience to me, and I couldn't help being surprised that I'd barely thought about the second class, when it's where I would have been had I been on the Titanic! This book is not just about the Titanic, it's also a social study of the Edwardian class system.

But if you're looking for information on the glamourous first class, that's here too! Every book on the Titanic mentions Archibald Butt--a well-known figure on the Titanic, who had been a highly valued aide to both Presidents Roosevelt and Taft--one of the most regretted heroes who died on the Titanic. But it wasn't till this book that I learned that Butt (a 46 year old bachelor, who was not only intimate with two presidents, but also a favorite of two first ladies!) was traveling with his housemate, homosexual painter Francis Davis Millet! Davenport-Hines' book also gave me  a new perspective on one of the vilified passengers on the Titanic, Lady Duff-Gordon. Other books depict her as a terrible snob, but I learned from this book that she had been a daring businesswoman and fashion designer--introducing some of the less restrictive corseting for women, so deeply linked with women's suffrage and the more liberated 1920s. It's not that I think Lady Duff Gordon's past history changes her callous attitudes during the Titanic sinking, but it brought something home for me: none of us can ever know how we would behave in a situation like this. The passengers and crew were just human beings in a desperate situation, and some of them behaved the way we'd all hope we would behave, and others didn't.

Titanic's Last Secrets: The Further Adventures of Shadow Divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler
by Brad Matsen is an account of a 2005 deep sea diving team excavating the wreck of the Titanic, and this book really focuses more on the excavation than on the Titanic's history. There is some interesting background information on Harlan and Wolff (Titanic's ship-builders ) and its head, William Pirrie, and his nephew, the brilliant designer Thimas Andrews, who designed Titanic and went down with her. The main this book draws is that materials used in the Titanic's construction were somewhat to blame for the damage the iceberg caused--a fact perhaps proved by changes and reinforcements made by Harlan and Wolff to Titanic's sister ship, Britannic.

The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathia, the Californian and the Night the Titanic Was Lost by Daniel Allen Butler might be my favorite book on the Titanic. This book focuses on the wireless operators of three ships, the Titanic, and the two ships in her vicinity in the night she sunk, The Carpathia, and the Californian. Wireless technology was very new at the time and could only be operated by carefully trained technicians, but since the importance of the work wasn't fully appreciated yet, the salaries were so low that the career attracted a certain type of young man--very young and forward thinking, and excited by the future. Titanic's sinking would prove a pivotal moment for wireless telegraphy. The regulations that allowed the Californian to have only one wireless operator, who slept through Titanic's distress signals, though only 10 miles away would be changed after that highly publicized disaster. This book paints a vivid picture of these overworked, underpaid, brave young technological pioneers.

The other thing I loved about this book is Butler's psychological analysis of the two captains of the Carpathia and the Califorian. On the one hand, we have Carpathia's Arthur Rostron, who immediately jumped out of bed and ordered his ship to speed 60 miles through and ice field to the Titanic's rescue as soon as his wireless officer Harold Cottam woke him up to report on the distress signal he'd received: a fearless hero and natural leader of men. Then we have Stanley Lord, Captain of the Californian, a petty tyrant, whose men were too terrified to tell him that they thought the rockets that a listing ship 10 miles away was setting off were distress signals, and who wouldn't get out of bed to see the rockets and form his own opinion. It is a powerful contrast, and Butler described it so well. This is truly a must read for any Titanic buff.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage

I recently listened to A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage, (Thanks, Audible Black Friday sale!), a fascinating book. The author's basic thesis involves the way six beverages have been instrumental to key movements and developments in Western Civilization. Since the first five out of these 6 beverages are particular favorites of mine, this was a natural for me. Also, I love history, particularly the history of food and drink. Here are some of the interesting things I learned!

Beer: I'm a big craft beer drinker and it was news to me that beer was--though probably not the first alcoholic beverage created, the first to be a staple. Its widespread consumption is ancient Mesopotamia coincided with the shift from hunter/gatherer society to an agriculture based model. Apparently the beer they drank was pretty different from the beers of today, since it contained no hops.

Wine: Wine was probably invented/discovered before beer, but it was more difficult to produce--since it had to be in a climate where grapes could be grown. The ancient Greeks used wine to one-up their neighbors in the Middle East, and wine became a symbol of their intellectual superiority--largely due to the fact that it was often consumed at symposia, even though these often resembled modern frat parties more closely than the intellectual discussions described by Plato! Greek wines were also probably very different than our wines today.

Spirits: This was one of the weaker parts of the book. I couldn't glean a central thesis, because this chapter was unfocused. Spirits are of more recent date than beer and wine--because the technique of distillation came later. Their role in eighteenth century economics--rum in the triangle trade, especially--is also touched on.

Coffee: I knew next to nothing about early European coffee culture, so this may have been my favorite part of the book. Coffee's popularity began with Muslim cultures, where alcohol is forbidden, so a non alcoholic beverage that provides a stimulant was welcome. The thing I found so interesting though, was that during the Enlightenment period in London--coffee houses were everywhere--and that people used them as the essential meeting places, to exchange ideas, receive messages, and often conduct business transactions. Next time you sit at Starbucks doing work and sending messages from a computer, you can feel that you're taking part in a 350-year old tradition!

Tea: This was interesting, but head less information that was new to me. Tea's cultural importance was as the symbol for British Imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Tea was brought to Europe from China during the 16th century and planted in India by the British. It represented to worldwide scope of the British Empire, and as all American children learn in school, its symbolic representation of that empire made it an ideal player in a famous demonstration of the independence of Britain's American colonies, the Boston Tea Party.

Cola: Probably my least favorite of these 6 beverages, but still a very interesting segment. Like tea in the British empire, Coca-Cola has been the symbol of America as the 20th century super power. I was very interested to learn about the history of carbonated water and the different flavor mixes that would be added to it at turn of the century American drugstore counters. Coke and its major rival, Pepsi also played key roles in late 20th century political conflicts--both the Cold War and the various Arab/Israeli conflicts.

I learned a lot and was always entertained by this book. My only complaint is that it was too short! The segment on spirits especially seemed to get short shrift. I wanted more! And I would have liked to see him follow each of the beverages up to the present day, rather than just focusing on them only in their respective moments.