Product Description

London 1849: the city is filthy, plagued, criminal and filling up with refugees from the Irish Famine and the revolutionary wars on the continent...but it is on the brink of reform as stations are built, rioters pardoned and the Great Exhibition planned. The heaving city is the backdrop for the most sensational crime and trial of the decade: the Manning murder case. Throughout the sticky summer the people of London obsessed over the fate of a dominant mysterious woman and her weak husband as the full detail of their slaughter of her lover unfolded. London 1849 follows the murder, trial and execution of the couple, interweaving the scene that was London at the time: crime, noise, cholera, overpacked slums, prostitution, law and order, prisons, fashion, shopping, finance, transport, Marx and Dickens.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #336559 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 280 pages

From the Back Cover

Maria and Frederick Manning came from Taunton to live in the London district of Bermondsey in 1849. They murdered Maria's lover, Patrick O'Connor, for his money. They fled, were captured, tried and hanged at Horsemonger Lane Prison, Southwark, before a roaring crowd.

1849 London was a sprawling and overcrowded city. Its streets varied from the wildly fashionable to the fetid, rife with crime, disease and prostitution. Foul water, filth-choked sewers and cholera killed thousands. The city was jammed with carts, cabs, omnibuses and new railways, yet Londoners continued to find new ways to educate and entertain themselves.

Michael Alpert has used the full records of the trial and the police files of the case, together with contemporary journalism and fiction, to recreate ordinary people's day-to-day London life in 1849.

About the Author

Michael Alpert taught history at the University of Westminster. His interests range widely and his publications include Two Spanish Picaresque Novels (Penguin).

Customer Reviews

A great story
A mystery is all the better if set in Victorian England, this book is one of those great murder stories.