Martin Baggoley was born in Eccles . He spent several years working in London and Salford as a civil servant, before qualifying as a probation officer in 1976. Since then, he has worked in the Greater Manchester area, and during this period gained a masters degree in criminology. He has written for a number of UK and American professional journals on criminal justice issues. His main interest is the history of crime and punishment and for this book, he has combind his professional experience and academic expertise with his interest in local history.

Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths Around Folkestone takes the reader on a sinister journey through the annals of crime in Folkestone, Hythe and the surrounding area. Along the way we meet villains, murderers and victims of many kinds, including cut-throat soldiers, a 'baby farmer', a Jack the Ripper imposter, two inexplicable suicides and five individuals who died violent deaths in the 'House of Horror'. There is no shortage of harrowing and revealing incidents of evil to recount, many of which will be unfamiliar to the reader. Infant murders were once so rife in Folkestone it was termed the 'infanticide capital of Kent'. This fascinating book recalls many such grisly events, as well as sad or unsavoury individuals who have darkened this otherwise pleasant corner of the Garden of England.

Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Coventry takes the reader on a sinister journey from medieval times to the twentieth century, meeting villains, cut-throats, traitors, witches, martyrs and suicidal lovers along the way. David McGrory records crime and punishment in the city in all its shocking variety. Among the many awful episodes he recalls are the brutal execution of a regicide as well as martyrdoms and a witchcraft murder in the medieval period. He retells the story of a triple execution at Gibbet Hill, chronicles poisonings and drownings in the Georgian and Victorian eras, and describes a murderer's lonely suicide in much more recent times.

London's West End is associated with fashion and glamour but for centuries it has had a far darker side. Geoffrey Howse has uncovered an astonishing catalogue of sinister deeds, some of them famous but others long forgotten. Read about spying, treason, embezzlement, regicide, robbery, forgery, religious persecution, suicide, murder and mutilation; and 'witness' horrendous punishments such as drawing, hanging, disemboweling, quartering, castration, beheading and burning. Earlier cases include the execution of Scottish patriots (1305/6) and three monks who dared to question the supremacy of Henry VIII in 1535. Such events attracted great public attention, as did the extraordinary execution of Charles I in 1649 and, in 1820, the hanging and mutilation of the Cato Street Conspiritors. The foul murder of the famous actor William Terriss, by a madman, in 1897, is featured as are several notable cases from the twentieth century including the horrific wartime murders of Gordon Cummins, the strange disappearances of the socialist MP Victor Grayson and Lord Lucan, the Charing Cross Trunk Murder as well as the mysterious death of boxer Freddie Mills.

London's East End has been associated with some of the worst elements of human depravity, where foul deeds and murder were commonplace; and the area's notoriety was added to by the horrific murders committed by Jack, the Ripper. For centuries the East End's notoriety for foul deeds has remained unsurpassed in the annals of crime in this country.

We are all drawn to understand the circumstances that lead others to commit unforgivable acts of violence - the moment that turns a caring human being into a killer, the series of events that drive ordinary people to murderous acts of inhumanity, or the slow, premeditated steps of the callous criminal. And the circumstances - and the twisted motivation - behind such violent acts are the subject of Caroline Maxton's fascinating investigation of individuals whose misdeeds have tarnished the history of the Croydon area. She investigates a wide range of murders and unexplained deaths, some of which are truly stranger than fiction. The events cover a span of several centuries, and the locations will be chillingly familiar to the inhabitants of Croydon. Local crimes that hit the national headlines, like the Bentley case of 1952, are covered in fresh detail, but the author concentrates on less well-known but equally intriguing, and shocking, episodes - the bizarre 'mustard and cress' murder of 1870, the brutal murder of Eliza Osborne in 1877, the Kenley Stud Farm mystery of 1921, the Birdhurst Rise poisoning of the late 1920s, the notorious unsolved murder of 11-year-old Miles Vallint of 1959.

A young waylaid and battered with a hedge stake while returning home from Mansfield on a summer evening; four family members butchered in a blazing house just off Commercial Street; an old farmer speared with a hay fork in the mire of a rural farmyard. Such cases detailed here show how often violent death has visited Mansfield in the past.