Dozens of murders liven up Judith Flanders’s omnibus of Victorian crime. But the real villains of the piece aren’t the poisoners and bludgeoners and throat slitters and dismemberers; they are, rather, the police, investigators, lawyers, coroners, judges, and journalists who pursued these malefactors. As Flanders describes it, crime and punishment in nineteenth-century Britain was a parade of inept investigations, suppressed or contaminated evidence, travestied courtroom proceedings, and botched executions.
A page of exercises from a Vere Foster copybook, first published in 1865. In the town of Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, set among hills and dairy farms two hours’ drive from Washington, DC, a sulfurous odor hangs in the air. It smells like ten thousand vats of cooking cabbage. It permeates everything. This is the not-so-sweet […]
Unbalanced tokens, check your syntax. Non-closure is at the end of this excerpt: re star players in the imperial drama; to suggest otherwise is largely beside the point63.4647
