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The
Official Website of S. C. Lomax
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Deadly
Derbyshire: Tales of Murder and Manslaughter c. 1700-1900
‘Completely fascinating … Well
researched’ – A review by staff at Waterstone’s in
Deadly Derbyshire is a guide to murder and manslaughter committed
within the confines of the county and across the full extent of the county
area during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is based on extensive
searches of the newspaper archives, uncovering a large number of cases never
before written about in any book about death in the county. This compendium
complements and aims to accompany other books published by Pen and Sword
Books, including Foul Deeds and
Suspicious Deaths in and Around Chesterfield, More Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in and Around Chesterfield
and Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in
and Around Derby, to produce by far the most comprehensive series of
books about Derbyshire’s deadly past to ever be published. There are tales of
murder and manslaughter in many of their manifestations, committed for many
motivations. There are cases of murder for greed, to abate financial
distress, for sex, for jealousy, for revenge, for convenience and cases where
manslaughter was committed due to mental illness at a time when psychiatric
problems were barely understood by the medical community let alone the people
at large. Furthermore, there are cases where violence erupted with fatal
consequences due to alcohol, usually involving arguments over trivial matters
that resulted in bloodshed. Chapters include
the murder of Elizabeth Goodwin at Wigwell Hall rear Wirksworth, a case which
was highly prominent in newspapers across the country but which has barely
been written about since. This lamentable tragedy saw Goodwin, an upper class
niece of a well respected magistrate, killed by her rejected lover, showing
that murder does not discriminate by class. There are also less commonly
known cases such as an instance of murder and suicide, which took place at
Stoney Houghton near Pleasley in April 1868 and a fatal fight over three eggs
which resulted in a killer receiving a prison sentence of just two years in
1858. Other cases include the murder of a police officer who was shot dead in
the line of duty, numerous children, and some adults who were dumped in
rivers and canals and whose identities were as much a mystery as those who
ended the victims’ lives. A dual in the name of honour is recounted, as
is the case of a man who murdered his wife and who found himself on the last
ship to transport convicts to The less well
known cases are of equal, and occasionally arguably greater, interest from a
criminological point of view. The fact they have never before been written
about in the form of a book is not because of a lack of interesting points of
the offences but is often because no one was brought to trial due to the
suicide of the culprit or because no killer was ever identified. If a trial
had commenced it is likely that these little known crimes would have provoked
as much, if not more, interest among the people of Derbyshire of the time,
and would have interested maintained to those of us who study historic
criminal cases, than some of the better known murders that have filled
numerous books in the past. |
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Website created by
S. C. Lomax in September 2004. |
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