Edwardian London in 1910, the notorious tale of Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve re-investigated by a prizewinning journalist. At a time when Edwardian Britain seemed a golden place, basking in its imperial glory, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife Belle lived among the suburban villas of North London, renting a house at 39 Hilldrop Crescent. After supper on 31 January 1910, their friends went home and Crippen killed Belle with poison, dismembered her body and buried some of her remains beneath the brick floor of the coal cellar. Crippen never admitted killing his wife and took the secrets of the crime with him when he was hanged, following his conviction for murder. It is assumed that Crippen killed for the love of his mistress, Ethel le Neve. They began living together as man and wife, but under intense suspicion they fled disguised as father and son. The chase - indeed everything about the murder - was reported in fine detail, in Britain, in America and the rest of the western world. Crippen was finally arrested and with Ethel was brought back to England for trial. David James Smith has investigated afresh this celebrated murder case, and his researches have uncovered unexpected and startling information about 'Chamber of Horrors' stalwart Dr Crippen, Belle and Ethel.

How did the case of the 'mild mannered murderer', Hawley Harvey Crippen, come to have such an enduring cultural resonance?

When Scotland Yard found the remains of Doctor Crippen’s wife under the cellar floor of their London home, a trial began that would fascinate and shock the world. In this carefully researched, gripping book, the whole remarkable story unfolds

It was an 'open and shut' case. Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American quack doctor, had murdered his wife, the music hall performer Belle Elmore, and buried parts of her body in the coal cellar of their North London home. But by the time the remains were discovered he had fled the country with his mistress disguised as his son. After a thrilling chase across the ocean he was caught, returned to England, tried and hanged, remembered forever after as the quintessential domestic murderer. But if it was as straightforward as the prosecution alleged, why did he leave only some of the body in his house, when he had successfully disposed of the head, limbs and bones elsewhere? Why did he stick so doggedly to a plea of complete innocence, when he might have made a sympathetic case for manslaughter? Why did he make no effort to cover his tracks if he really had been planning a murder? These and other questions remained tantalising mysteries for almost a century, until new DNA tests conducted in America exploded everything we thought we knew for sure about the story. This book, the first to make full use of this astonishing new evidence, considers its implications for our understanding of the case, and suggests where the real truth might lie.

"David James Smith has uncovered substantial fresh evidence that explodes popular myths surrounding this notorious crime. Here for the first time is the truth of the case: a dark, psychological drama, in which class and desire and social ambition become powerful motives for murder, and the popular belief in a young woman's innocence of the crime is destroyed."--BOOK JACKET.

One of the most notorious Victorian murders was committed by Dr George Henry Lamson, who stood trial in 1882 for poisoning his crippled brother-in-law Percy Malcolm John; he was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed.

Sarajevo, 28 June 1914: The story of the assassination that changed the world. A historical account of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Using newly available sources and older material, David James Smith brilliantly reinvestigates and reconstructs the events which subsequently determined the shape of the twentieth century. Young Gavrilo Princip arrived at the Vlajnic pastry shop in Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina on the morning of 28 June 1914. He was greeted by his fellow conspirators in the plot to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Archduke, next in line to succeed as Emperor of Austria, was beginning a state visit to Sarajevo later that morning. Ferdinand was not a very popular character - widely thought of as bad-tempered and arrogant and perhaps even deranged. To the young students he embodied everything they loathed about imperial oppression. They planned to kill him at about 11 o'clock as he paraded down Appel Quay to the town hall in his open top car. What happened in those few hours - leading as it did to the First and Second World Wars - is as compelling as any thriller.