Victorian History

This audiobook presents a fundamental reinterpretation of changes to crime control in the age of the new police. It breaks new ground by providing a highly detailed, empirical analysis of everyday crime control in Victorian provincial cities - revealing the tremendous activity that ordinary people displayed in responding to crime - alongside a rich survey of police organization and policing in practice.

On Halloween night, 1828, in the West Port district of Edinburgh, Scotland, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare would be accused of killing 16 people over the course of 12 months in order to sell the corpses as "subjects" for dissection.

On April 26, 1871, a police constable walking one of London's remotest beats stumbled upon a brutalized young woman kneeling on a muddy road - gashes were cloven into her skull, her left cheek was slashed open and smashed in, her right eye was destroyed, and above it a chunk of the temporal bone had been bashed out. The policeman gaped in horror as the woman held out her hand before collapsing into the mud, muttering, "Let me die", and slipping into a coma. Five days later she died, her identity still unknown.

In The Invention of the Modern Dog, Michael Worboys, Julie-Marie Strange, and Neil Pemberton explore when, where, why, and how Victorians invented the modern way of ordering and breeding dogs. Though talk of "breed" was common before this period in the context of livestock, the modern idea of a dog breed defined in terms of shape, size, coat, and color arose during the Victorian period in response to a burgeoning competitive dog show culture.

After the untimely death of Prince Albert, the Queen and her nation were plunged into a state of grief so profound that this one event would dramatically alter the shape of the British monarchy. For Britain had not just lost a prince: during his 20-year marriage to Queen Victoria, Prince Albert had increasingly performed the function of King in all but name. The outpouring of grief after Albert's death was so extreme that its like would not be seen again until the death of Princess Diana 136 years later.

Due to horrible physical deformities, he spent much of his life as a fairground freak. He was hounded, persecuted, and starving, until his fortune changed and he was rescued, housed, and fed by the distinguished surgeon, Frederick Treves. The subject of several books, a Broadway hit, and a film, Joseph Merrick has become part of popular mythology. Here, in this fully revised edition containing much fresh information, are the true and un-romanticized facts of his life.

The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than 100 passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly, an iceberg tore the ship asunder, and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and biscuits, and 13 souls. Only one would survive. This is his story.

A unique and fascinating look at Victorian society through the remarkable lives of an enlightened and philanthropic aristocratic couple, the marquess and marchioness of Aberdeen, who tried to change the world for the better but paid a heavy price. This is a true tale of love and loss, fortune and misfortune.

In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America. Hoping to win the wager and save her family's farm, Helga and her teenaged daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a revolver, and Clara's curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern Washington.

Everfair is a wonderful neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner", King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary utopia for native populations of the Congo, as well as escaped slaves returning from America.

When Ned meets governess Phoebe Baker, he becomes intent on gaining her affections. Phoebe wants nothing more than to keep her head down, teach her students, and go unnoticed-especially by the Earl of Ashby. But his rakish secretary has the infuriating habit of constantly crossing her path. Yet Phoebe cannot deny that her pulse quickens in Ned's presence. If this prim-and-proper governess lets her heart rule, will fate intervene where Ned's luck has forsaken him?

On Sarah A. Chrisman's 29th birthday, her husband, Gabriel, presented her with a corset. The material and the design were breathtakingly beautiful, but her mind immediately filled with unwelcome views. Although she had been in love with the Victorian era all her life, she had specifically asked her husband not to buy her a corset - ever. She'd heard how corsets affected the female body and what they represented, and she wanted none of it.

One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans.

During the upheavals of 2007-9, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of a Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue: Walter Bagehot. Banker, man of letters, inventor of the Treasury bill, and author of Lombard Street, the still-canonical guide to stopping a run on the banks, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that - decades later - inspired the radical responses to the world's worst financial crises.

Making Oscar Wilde reveals the untold story of young Oscar's career in Victorian England and post-Civil War America. Set on two continents, it tracks a larger-than-life hero on an unforgettable adventure to make his name and gain international acclaim. Combining new evidence and gripping cultural history, Michele Mendelssohn dramatizes Wilde's rise, fall, and resurrection as part of a spectacular transatlantic pageant. With superb style and an instinct for storytelling, she brings to life the charming young Irishman who set out to captivate the US and Britain with his words.

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in 19th-century Britain. It argues that it was in the 19th century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

The Vanishing Act brings together the first three gripping installments of the Shadows of the Past series, diving deep into the lives, disappearances, and legacies of three extraordinary women. Each case reveals the darker side of history, where secrets, scandals, and societal pressures converge into captivating mysteries that remain unsolved to this day.

The Victorian period may have come to an end over 120 years ago, but the Victorians continue to be a vital presence in the modern world. Contemporary Britain is still in large part Victorian in its transport networks, sewage systems, streets, and houses. Victorian cultural legacies, especially in art, science, and literature, are still celebrated. Much mythologized, inexhaustibly controversial, the Victorians are an inescapable reference point for understanding the modern histories not just of Britain and its empire, but of the world.

Number 4 Euston Square was a respectable boardinghouse, like many others in Victorian London. But beneath this ordinary veneer lurked a murderous darkness. On 8th May 1879, the corpse of former resident Matilda Hacker was uncovered in the coal cellar. The investigation that followed stripped bare the shadow-side of Victorian domesticity, throwing the lives of everyone within into an extraordinary maelstrom.

The Napoleonic Wars radically altered the old, established European power dynamics, and in 1795, the British, now emerging as the globe’s naval superpower, assumed control of the Cape as part of the spoils of war. In doing so, they recognized the enormous strategic value of the Cape as global shipping routes were developing and expanding. Possession passed back and forth once or twice, but more or less from that point onward, the British established their presence at the Cape, which they held until the unification of South Africa in 1910.