Read more
Bestselling author Sinclair McKay gives a gripping account of a murder in the heart of Victorian London, which intrigued and scandalised Bloomsbury society.
List of contents
Preface – The Dislocation of the Dead
1 The Day Before
2 ‘There Is Something in the Cellar’
3 The Man from X Division
4 A City of Disappearances
5 ‘I Am Not a Judge of Human Bones’
6 Superior Apartments in a Quiet Home
7 ‘A Mass of Light-Coloured Ringlets’
8 The Canterbury Dolls
9 The Book of Dreams
10 ‘No, Not Me’
11 The Brothers Bastendorff
12 The New Age of Light
13 He Kept Company with Her
14 The Boiling Bones
15 ‘Everything Was Sweet’
16 ‘It Was Not My Place’
17 ‘Working Women Like Herself’
18 Avowed Admirers
19 ‘The Expected Child’
20 ‘Oh God! What a Sight Met My Gaze!’
21 She Had No Character
22 ‘I Have Disgraced You Before all the Country’
23 ‘I Depend Upon My Character’
24 ‘Such a Strange, Brotherly Part’
25 Disintegration
26 A Length of Washing Line
27 The Stain That Would Not Go
Notes
Picture Credits
Afterword: A Bloomsbury and Somers Town Walk
Afterword Two: Illustrated Murder and Mayhem! – The Victorian Press
Selected Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Biography
About the author
SINCLAIR MCKAY is the acclaimed author of history and historical true crime including the best-selling The Secret Life of Bletchley Park. HIs previous Aurum titles include Mile End Murder, The Lost World of Bletchley Park, The Secret Life of Fighter Command and The Secret Listeners for Aurum, as well as histories of Hammer films and the James Bond films. He writes features for the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday and lives in London.
Summary
Someone must have known what happened to Matilda Hacker.
For someone in that house had killed her.
So how could the murderer prove so elusive?
Standing four storeys tall in an elegant Bloomsbury terrace, No. 4, Euston Square was a well-kept, respectable boarding house. But beneath this genteel Victorian London veneer lay murderous intrigue. On 9 May 1879, the body of a former resident, Matilda Hacker, was discovered by chance in the coal cellar. The ensuing investigation – led by Inspector Charles Hagen, rising star of the recently formed CID – stripped bare the dark side of Victorian domesticity.
In this true-crime story, Sinclair McKay meticulously evaluates the evidence in first-hand sources. His gripping account sheds new light on a mystery that eluded Scotland Yard.
‘With the gusto of a penny dreadful, Murder at No. 4 Euston Road dodges any stodgy courtroom testimony that can weigh down true crime stories and sticks to the juicy details. It is hard to avoid the comparison with Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and it has similar historical richness and plot twisting…’ The Spectator
'Sinclair McKay is an accomplished and talented author with a rare skill... True crime fans and history buffs will enjoy this book, coming away with an enthralling true crime story and a new knowledge and understanding of Victorian London.' Crime Traveller
‘Gripping, gothic and deeply poignant’ Mail on Sunday
‘A meticulously researched book’ - Brian Viner, Daily Mail
