The Invention Of Murder (Book of the Week)
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4
Monday 10 to Friday 14 January 2011 09:45-10:00
The Invention Of Murder explores the 19th-century fascination with violent crime and its commercial exploitation.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, murder - in reality a rarity - became an obsession with British society: transformed into novels, into broadsides and ballads, into theatre and melodrama. Seeing therein the foundation of modern notions of crime, "The Invention of Murder" explores this fascination with deadly violence by relating some of the century's most gripping and gruesome cases and the ways in which they were commercially exploited.
Part 1 - The Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811 were particularly dreadful: two separate sets of killings in which seven people lost their lives. It was a case that shocked the nation - this was half as many people as had been murdered in the entire previous year throughout England and Wales - and forced the establishment to rethink the policing of major cities.
Part 2 - Despite rising crime figures - and increasingly crowded cities - the public were reluctant to accept the establishment of an organised police force. This episode examines the reasons for that unwillingness and offers a fascinating insight into the origins of modern policing.
Part 3 - The decreasing age of the British population - in the 1820s half the country was under 25 - meant there was a lucrative market for lively entertainment. Children flocked to penny gaffs: unlicensed theatres which offered cheap entertainment, often dramatisations of notorious murders. One of the most infamous, the Red Barn Murder of 1828, was being performed as a melodrama even before the prime suspect was put on trial.
Read by Robert Glenister. Judith Flanders's The Invention Of Murder has been abridged by David Jackson Young.
Producer/Kirsteen Cameron for the BBC
Parts 1-3 of 5
Replies
The Invention Of Murder by Judith Flanders
Part 4 - As the century progressed, so did advances in medical knowledge and expert witnesses were soon playing a major part in criminal trials. This episode looks at the sensational case of Adelaide Bartlett, who was accused of murdering her husband with chloroform in 1886. Newspapers and magazines pored over lurid details of the Bartletts' marriage and the case was responsible for inspiring a rash of fiction.Part 5 - The public imagination was particularly stirred when new technology was used to bring criminals to justice. This episode looks at one such case in which an enterprising railway clerk used the electric telegraph to send a description of a suspected murderer ahead of the train he was travelling on, so that the suspect could be met by police at his journey's end. And, bringing us right up to the final years of the century, how the funeral of an acclaimed actor - and murder victim - was captured on film for posterity.
Read by Robert Glenister. Judith Flanders's The Invention Of Murder has been abridged by David Jackson Young.
Producer/Kirsteen Cameron for the BBC
Book of the Week - The Invention of Murder 04.mp3
Book of the Week - The Invention of Murder 05.mp3
I was going to upload this and include 3 Judith Flanders interviews from Woman's Hour, BBC London and RTE - further to my message Rik I was hoping that they would be OK to include as Miscellany.
I wouldn't upload them on their own in this group but just as an extra.
If anybody would like them, and I'll be checking with Rik first to see if it's OK, I can upload them here.
They can be listened to, as well as the book, on Judith Flanders' web site. I don't know if they will be removed after a week like BBC iPlayer content is. If you're familiar with source code (or not - it doesn't really matter) you can use your browser's 'view page as source' on her site and download them as mp3s yourself.
Actually many of you spoken word lovers might want to remember that tip. You can use the source option for a lot of audio (and video) which comes wrapped in stream only flash tags. Another method is to check your browser's cache as sometimes you'll find it as an audio file (usually mp3) that way.
I think I might buy this book to read myself. I wonder if there are plans for an unabridged release?
By the way Holmes completists - In the 4th part Glenister quotes from A Study In Scarlet.