HELP I need some new books - Recommendations?

[louisa]

Louisa- Another thought: A murder which is in many ways as mysterious and unsolved as the Julia Wallace case is that of Caroline Mary Luard- referred to variously as the Seal Chart or Igtham murder. There's little written on it- I first read about it in a book by Julian Symons called A Reasonable Doubt. It came out in 1960 and I don't know if it's still in print. (Probably not- a lot of the great true crime books I love are out of print!) But there is a more recent book (2007) called Edwardian Murder: Igtham and the Morpeth Train Robbery by Diane Janes that discusses it. I know Minette Walters wrote a short work of crime fiction based on it called A Dreadful Murder. Haven't read it, so if you do let me know what you think! Happy reading!

I already know that one and I agree, it's one of those fascinating whodunnits (my favourite type of murder, if you know what I mean).

I would never buy anything by Diane Janes after reading her take on the Birdhurst Rise murders. I mentioned this in my last post. I even wrote to her about it. She plays fast and loose with the facts of the case and that is one case that I know backwards, forwards and sideways. I actually visited the graves of the deceased a few years ago and took some photos. Yes, I know I'm strange.

I already know most of the famous British murders. I prefer those old British cases to the American ones.

Another great read is Murder at Wrotham Hill by Diana Souhami. I found that a very sad case but they got the person responsible so it isn't a whodunnit. Good book though.
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[Penny_Dredfull]

Louis- If visiting sites associated with famous murders makes a person strange then probably everyone on here is strange! I've dragged my nearest and dearest round every British and Continental holiday spot searching out murder sites. Sometimes they still exist, sometimes not.
Ok- no books by Diane Janes for you. Fair enough. But I will say one thing- reading multiple books on the same murder is by no means a bad thing. No one book is definitive, and it's good to get various perspectives and insights from different versions. Even when you violently disagree with an author's take on things, at least it allows you to reassess and reform your own thoughts and position. It's like having a discussion.
After all, there is no ONE book on Jack the Ripper. Many of us own multiple books on the subject- doesn't mean we agree with all of them! Some of them I like more than others, of course. But it's useful to know what's going on and being said on the subject. I would never say I had read one book on Jack the Ripper and so I know all about it and don't need to look further. If we all did that forums like this one wouldn't exist!

[Penny_Dredfull]

Louisa- Ok so you want little known British murders, preferably not pre-20th century? How about Handsome Brute: the Story of a Lady Killer by Sean O'Connor? It's about Neville Heath (1940's). It's not a whodunnit but I think it's very interesting. I visited sites associated with the Bournemouth part of his crime spree- well, it was better than the Labour Party conference that was going on there at the time!
I hope that's recherche enough for you. You know, there are many interesting cases that aren't well known, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's a book solely about them. In fact, that pretty much guarantees that there isn't.

[louisa]

Hi Penny,

I know the Neville Heath case very well. It was a BIG case in the UK and I have one or two books about it plus of course the case is listed in many compilations. He got what he deserved - vile man.

I absolutely agree with what you say about reading as many books as possible about a case, but sometimes you want to scream when you can see the author has simply written a book in order to make money. In the case of Birdhurst I think Diane James wanted to give a new slant on this old case and so came up with some idiotic theories. Here's one of them...

I'll quickly re-cap on the story.....the old lady (in her seventies) has just lost her son-in-law to an agonizing death. Her favourite adored daughter has just died the same agonizing death. Both deaths are now deemed suspicious and poisoning is the common theory - but who would do such a thing.

Old Mrs. Sydney knew who the culprit was. She told Dr. Binning she suspected her remaining daughter (Grace Duff) to be the poisoner.

The old lady had just one last dose of medicine in her Metatone bottle. She poured out the remaining two teaspoons into a wine glass, drank it and said (to her daughter Grace Duff who happened to be visiting) that it tasted gritty and an hour later she too was suffering the effects of severe arsenical poisoning. She died later that day.

Now here's what Diane James has theorized: I haven't got the book handy so I'm paraphrasing.....

The old lady could take her grief no longer. She missed her beloved daughter and could not stand being alone in that empty house. She went upstairs and took her powder compact (where she had been concealing a stash of arsenic powder!). She returned downstairs and poured the powder into her medicine bottle. Then she drank it.

Now how in the world is a little old lady going to get arsenic powder into the narrow neck of a medicine bottle? And why would she want to? If she wanted to kill herself with arsenic all she had to do was go the kitchen and put the powder into a glass of water and drink it.

But the question is this.....Why would this lady wish to subject herself to the same agonizing death as she witnessed her daughter going through? And her son in law?

Totally barmy.

And it turned out that Grace had probably done away with a few others before she even started on her own family. All for financial gain.
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[Penny_Dredfull]

Louisa- Well, like you I don't agree with that theory about the Croydon poisonings , but Ms Janes is not alone in holding it, however barmy it is. I've seen others entertain that notion but I don't think it at all plausible either. As for having "done away with a few others before she even started her own family"- I'm not sure what you're referring to there. Now, I know that Grace lost a few babies in rather- shall we say- suspicious circumstances. I considered the possibility that she contrived their illnesses and deaths because she enjoyed the drama and the attention she got from the doctor- who seemed a plausible love interest. I thought to myself "Is this an example of what we now term Munchausen by Proxy?". It's a theory anyway. However, if she DID kill her own kids it wouldn't have been for financial gain- unless she's insured their lives. Maybe just snagging the doctor was the prize she was eyeing.


As for Neville Heath- I wouldn't exactly call that a "BIG case". It's known to people who are crime buffs- but until there's a major Hollywood movie or TV series about it I don't consider it to be well known amongst the general public. He's not Jack the Ripper or Ted Bundy- or even Ian Brady for that matter.

For pure enjoyment of unsolved crime I favour- apart from the Ripper, the Wallace case, the Seal Chart Murder and Croydon poisonings- Stinie Morrison and The Green Bicycle Murder. Louise Masset is also interesting- the first person to be hanged in Britain in the 20th Century- found guilty but protesting her innocence. She's mentioned in one book I've read but there isn't a book specifically about her.

[louisa]

Louisa- Well, like you I don't agree with that theory about the Croydon poisonings , but Ms Janes is not alone in holding it, however barmy it is. I've seen others entertain that notion but I don't think it at all plausible either. As for having "done away with a few others before she even started her own family"- I'm not sure what you're referring to there. Now, I know that Grace lost a few babies in rather- shall we say- suspicious circumstances. I considered the possibility that she contrived their illnesses and deaths because she enjoyed the drama and the attention she got from the doctor- who seemed a plausible love interest. I thought to myself "Is this an example of what we now term Munchausen by Proxy?". It's a theory anyway. However, if she DID kill her own kids it wouldn't have been for financial gain- unless she's insured their lives. Maybe just snagging the doctor was the prize she was eyeing.


As for Neville Heath- I wouldn't exactly call that a "BIG case". It's known to people who are crime buffs- but until there's a major Hollywood movie or TV series about it I don't consider it to be well known amongst the general public. He's not Jack the Ripper or Ted Bundy- or even Ian Brady for that matter.

For pure enjoyment of unsolved crime I favour- apart from the Ripper, the Wallace case, the Seal Chart Murder and Croydon poisonings- Stinie Morrison and The Green Bicycle Murder. Louise Masset is also interesting- the first person to be hanged in Britain in the 20th Century- found guilty but protesting her innocence. She's mentioned in one book I've read but there isn't a book specifically about her.

Hi Penny!

Are you in the UK or the USA?

The Neville Heath case was huge in the UK way back when it happened. It was the talk of the country.

It's a bit before my time but it still makes interesting reading. I've got thousands of true crime books and I've read most of them a few times, some of them I almost know by heart - the Birdhurst one by Richard Whittington Egan is one of those.

I agree with your first paragraph - spot on! Before Grace Duff moved to South Park Hill Road she lived in the road the adjoins it - (temporarily forgotten it's name). There she had a paying guest - a lady (whose name temporarily evades me - begins with a K). This lady (according to her best friend) was afraid of Grace and called her 'wicked'. Grace was fleecing her of her money. Eventually the lady died and no sign of any money was found, although she was known to have quite a lot stashed away. Afterwards Grace seemed flush with cash.

The police were going to exhume the lady's body because if she had been found to be poisoned then it would have been conclusive that Grace was the poisoner. The police decided that they had already exhumed enough bodies.

I used to pass Birdhurst Rise whenever I went to Croydon. One ay I got out of my car and was having a snoop around (No. 29 is now a block of flats) and a lady came up to me (she lived in the next house) and said her mother knew the family well. We had a nice chat.


Louise Masset doesn't ring a bell. I will look that case up. Thanks.

[Mayerling]

Hi Louisa,

The Heath Case is big on the issue of legal insanity. Heath was a real sadist in how he killed his female victims. One was, I believe a prostitute, but the other was a woman he noticed and started pestering. When he went out with prostitutes he chose women who were willing to be masochistic in sex games. Since he was rather good looking, and had a surface charm (he had been to a public school in Britain), and always pretended he was socially in high rank - frequently in military ranks - it was easy to pick up women, or prostitutes. But they would end up in bondage situations, and his extreme form of punishment (usually whipping) could easily get out of hand. The police visiting the scene of the first known murder (two eventually were linked to him, but there was at least one more he was suspected in - in South Africa) they said it was one of the most sickening crime scenes they ever saw.

I certainly not go into details here (I suggest you read the volume in the Notable British Trials on Heath, or the old book, "Portrait of a Sadist" by Poul Sanders). What got the public upset was the second victim was almost thrown into Heath's hands by an act of questionable police procedure. They did not openly request Heath's "assistance" in the first murder investigation (no poster work was really used to show he was being sought). The second woman was (as mentioned) being pestered and pursued by Heath, and he finally cornered her - and killed her like he had the prostitute. This was hanging over the police during the arrest and trial of the killer.

Heath's sole defense in his trial (similar in a way to his contemporary, the "Acid Bath" killer Haigh) was to use the insanity plea. He knew that if he testified he would have to explain acts of military impersonations (and jail time) he had served since World War II began, and his credibility as a witness would be small. Instead he banked on his definite violent streak, and perverted sexual activity, as proof of his insanity. As Edgar Lustgarten makes clear in his essay on the case, it showed Heath was abnormal, but did it prove the legal - "M'Naghten" Rule Test, that he had a mental condition that could not tell legal right from wrong when he acted. Banking on his chosen psychiatrist, Heath offered no other evidence of innocence (if any were even remotely possible). The psychiatrist was not a good witness. Although he painted a seemingly provable case for Heath's condition, the prosecution clearly demolished it by basically a reduction ad absurdum argument of it's own. The psychiatrist said that Heath felt he was doing nothing illegal when he committed his acts - that apparently he felt his sadistic activities were normal and legal. This led the prosecution to show that if Heath felt it was necessary to satisfy his every craving by theft so he could buy things, etc. the psychiatrist's viewpoint meant since Heath would feel stealing to satisfy himself was a normal thing it was legal! This led the psychiatrist to try to backtrack and soon he was hopelessly befuddled (after Heath's execution, this psychiatrist - who may have known Heath from frequenting a special pervert's bordello Heath used - committed suicide).
Heath (like Haigh) was convicted and hanged.

There was a BBC series on television's Masterpiece Theatre in the 1990s based on a series of fictional novels, regarding a character named "Gorse" (which is like "Heath") who is tried and convicted in a series of murders. It was shown in the U.S.

Louise Masset is an interesting case. An attractive French woman, she fell in love with a younger man who did not know she had a son named Manfred who was about seven or so. He was an illegitimate boy, and she had been hiring various women to look out for Manfred's care while she paid them from her work as a governess. The younger man was possibly to marry her, but Manfred's existence might have prevented this. One day she announces she is taking the boy out of the hands of the foster mother she was paying to care for him, saying they were going elsewhere together. Subsequently Manfred is found dead in a lavatory in a train station, and witnesses recall seeing him near there and headed there with Louise. The murder weapon turns out to be a brick or stone (I can't recall which) that the police subsequently find Louise could easily have obtained near where she lived. She is convicted for Manfred's murder, and (despite a large petition for mercy) hanged - as rightly pointed out it was the first execution in the 20th Century in Britain (although it was technically 1900, as many people claim that is the last year of the 19th Century).

At her trial and after she claimed that she was innocent, and had handed her son to two women who claimed they would take care of the boy for monthly stipend. The police claimed they checked into this - maybe they did, or maybe they gave a cursory look at the alibi and did not go deep enough. In any case it was rejected.

The reason I take a quizzical view about the police involvement in double checking Louise's story is that in 1914 a similar type of murder of a child, Willie Starchfield, and his father John Starchfield was tried and for the killing. But Starchfield was acquitted due to the chain of witnesses against him being shown to be faulty. While some have since insisted John Starchfield may have been the killer but was "lucky to get away with it", the extent of the police investigation to prove the case against him was really shown by a brief attempt, after Starchfield's acquittal, of bringing charges against John Starchfield's estranged wife, who had been living with their son Willie. This sudden prosecution collapsed, probably because it looked odd to the public that if one parent's guilt was shown to be questionable due to police bungling, why not the other's.

In Louise Masset's case, a few years after her execution two women, Annie Sachs and Annie Walters, were tried for multiple murders of babies and children by their "Baby Farm" enterprises. There is no way to know now if Louise was unlucky enough to have been telling the truth, and dealing with these two as that will-o'-a-wisp pair of women she gave Manfred to, or simply lying with such a story. But I find it too much of an odd coincidence of dates of crimes to simply dismiss the thought about it.

Jeff

[louisa]

Hi Jeff

Thanks for that.

I think I've read a short version of the Louise Masset case. I have an idea that one edition of the Murder Casebook series (a collection of magazines - around 135 of them, published by Marshall Cavendish in the 80's) was partially devoted to the murder.

I don't have any books about the case though. Yet.


Regarding Neville Heath - it's worrying to think he had so many willing women who were happy to indulge in those kind of perversions.
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[Penny_Dredfull]

Louisa- I'm in the UK.
Yes, Heath was a bit of sensation back in the 1940's, but he's hardly a household name now. Like I said, the man (or woman!) in the street is more likely to know the names of Jack the Ripper, Ian Brady or Peter Sutcliffe, even, than the name of Neville Heath. The Israel Lipski murder was well-known and in the popular imagination at the time of the Ripper murders, but who- apart from Ripperologists- knows of him now?
That's interesting what you say about Grace Duff's lodger- may I ask where you read this piece of information? I don't remember it from the Whittington-Egan book.

[Penny_Dredfull]

Mayerling- I agree with you, the Louise Masset case is very interesting. True, there were cases of murderous baby farmers which lent some plausibility to her tale. But we will never know. And the murder weapon was a brick, by the way- although the child was also apparently suffocated. The brick was supposed to be identical with ones found in a rockery in the garden of the house where Masset lived. The bundle of Manfred's clothes found at Brighton station was contained in a piece of paper said to be torn from a larger piece at the child's foster mother's home. Also, the black shawl in which the child's body was wrapped was testified by a draper to be similar to one he sold Masset a few days prior to the murder. All of this, taken together with her supposed motive of ridding herself of her illegitimate child who was an obstacle to her being with her lover, hanged her.

The TV series about a character named "Gorse" which you mentioned is called "The Charmer" and starred Nigel Havers as Ralph Earnest Gorse. It was made by LWT but was also shown on Masterpiece Theatre in the US. It was loosely based on the 1950's Gorse Trilogy by Patrick Hamilton which was in turn loosely based on Nigel Heath.

[Penny_Dredfull]

Louisa- Inside Neville Heath was a sadistic monster, but he also had a charming, persuasive and outwardly convincing exterior. The women he met were taken by his pretense of being, not just respectable, but a gallant war hero. I don't think they had any inkling of his perversions (much less shared them) until it was too late.

[louisa]

Louisa- I'm in the UK.
Yes, Heath was a bit of sensation back in the 1940's, but he's hardly a household name now. Like I said, the man (or woman!) in the street is more likely to know the names of Jack the Ripper, Ian Brady or Peter Sutcliffe, even, than the name of Neville Heath. The Israel Lipski murder was well-known and in the popular imagination at the time of the Ripper murders, but who- apart from Ripperologists- knows of him now?
That's interesting what you say about Grace Duff's lodger- may I ask where you read this piece of information? I don't remember it from the Whittington-Egan book.

After I shut the computer down last night I immediately remembered the name of Grace Duff's lodger - it was a Miss Kelvey.

The Duff family lived in the road immediately to the north of the South Hill Park Road. When the family moved Miss Kelvey went with them. Then of course when Edmund died the family moved to Birdhurst Rise. I took a photo of the house during my visit there.

It's all there in the RWE book.

The baby Suzanne - poor little thing. What you said about Munchausens by proxy could be right. I think Grace got a taste for being made a fuss of and enjoyed being the centre of everyone's attention and pity. A victim. And it seems that she didn't mind seeing people she was supposed to love, suffer.

Another theory that I've heard about was that the poisoner was Grace Duff's son John. The timeline could fit as the poisonings seemed to happen when he was on holidays, but I still think Grace is the most likely suspect. She had the motives - and access to the poison.

I should know every single detail but I'm getting a bit forgetful in my old age, which is probably why I can keep re-reading the same books!

Neville Heath isn't a household name nowadays but he was back then.

I know his name well because I read a lot of compendium type books where the murder gets a chapter to itself. I think I have a couple of books about it as well.

If I read about an interesting case then I'll go out and buy a book about it.

.

[louisa]

Louisa- Inside Neville Heath was a sadistic monster, but he also had a charming, persuasive and outwardly convincing exterior. The women he met were taken by his pretense of being, not just respectable, but a gallant war hero. I don't think they had any inkling of his perversions (much less shared them) until it was too late.

I may be wrong but I think at least one of the victims was willing to be whipped. What was the name of the one found dead by the chambermaid in the hotel bedroom?

Unless I'm thinking of another case.



I used to be a bit of a ripperologist - I've lost count of the books I've got about it. I haven't bought any for about 5 years now though.

It suddenly occurred to me, after reading all the theories about and the potential suspects, that probably none of them are the Ripper.

I suspect the Ripper was some obscure ordinary little man whose name has never even been mentioned anywhere. We'd all be surprised if we knew his name because it wouldn't mean a thing to anyone.

It could be the same with the Wallace case, for all we know.


A depressing thought really, because it's good to speculate.
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[Penny_Dredfull]

Louisa- I think now that the info about Grace Duff's lodger is to be found in Diane Jane's book. No? I remember now- Ms. Maria Kelvey.

[louisa]

Louisa- I think now that the info about Grace Duff's lodger is to be found in Diane Jane's book. No? I remember now- Ms. Maria Kelvey.

Yes, she got the names right.

Did I tell you she wrote me a long, long letter back in reply to my one to her?

She was outraged that I had dared to criticize her book.