18th century… The Fine Art of Murder 24 Jul 202024 Jul 2020 Stephen Basdeo This website usually deals with the 'fun' side of crime history by discussing mobsters, outlaws, and highwaymen. Yet not all portrayals of crime and criminals were wild and…
19th Century… Lines Written by a New York Homeless Woman 30 Jun 2020 By Stephen Basdeo I recently came across a fascinating book titled Darkness and Daylight; or, Lights and Shadows of New York Life (1891), which formed the basis of another post…
19th Century… Jack’s Story: The True Story of a Poor Boy in 19th-Century New York 24 Jun 2020 By Stephen Basdeo I recently came across a fascinating book titled Darkness and Daylight; or, Lights and Shadows of New York Life (1891). Inspired by books such as Henry Mayhew’s…
Author Who Outsold Dickens… Stephen Carver’s “Author Who Outsold Dickens” (2020): Biography of a Crime Novelist 23 Mar 202023 Mar 2020 By Stephen Basdeo When I was doing my MA dissertation on the cultural history of crime, my supervisor, Dr Heather Shore, advised me to read two now largely forgotten novels:…
17th century… “The Truth and Nothing But the Truth”: Its first use in popular culture 20 Mar 2020 By Stephen Basdeo ‘The truth and nothing but the truth’—it’s a well-known phrase used in courts of law and most of us have probably heard it in some police procedural…
16th Century… Gamaliel Ratsey (d.1605): The Man whose Life Kick-started the “True Crime” Genre 18 Mar 2020 By Stephen Basdeo Gamaliel Ratsey was born in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire, during the late sixteenth century.[1] Little is known of Ratsey’s early life; his father, Richard, and his wife had…
