John J. Eddleston

If you have read Eddleston's other books on capital crimes in 20th-century Britain -- in particular his Encyclopaedia of Executions, you're not missing much here. Mainly I read the book to see why Eddleston thought Louisa Masset, whom I wrote about on the blog Executed Today, was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. The evidence seemed pretty convincing to me.

In this book Eddleston just briefly summarizes each of the nine cases, using the same material as in his other books, then adds a few paragraphs of his own opinion that there was reasonable doubt, or the defendant wasn't mentally competent to be executed, etc. It's a good read if you want to hear a bit about some of the more ambiguous cases in recent history, but there's really nothing here that wasn't in the other books he wrote before.… (mere)

This was an ambitious project -- the book covers every execution in Great Britain from 1900 until the death penalty was abolished in 1964. Most of the entries were no longer than a page, and I don't think any ran past four pages. It's the kind of book that you ought to keep on your bedside table or toilet tank for years, taking dips as you feel like it, but as it was a library book I had to read it straight through.

I was surprised at how ordinary the murders were. For the most part, it was just the usual assortment of jealous lovers, drunken husbands, robbery-murders and rape-murders. The book actually starts to get boring when you read too many stories straight through because they're almost all the same. The lack of a name index was a major flaw, I feel, although the executions were indexed by the prison they took place in.

A good book for death penalty buffs and British history buffs, but not to be read too much at once.

I used this book as one of my sources for several of my guest entries on the death penalty blog Executed Today, including the ones for George Joseph Smith, the so-called "Brides in the Bath" murderer, Louisa Masset, the first person executed in Britain in the 1900s, and Wasyl Gnypiuk, who allegedly murdered a woman in his sleep.… (mere)

A laconic account of all 20th-century London murders that resulted in execution. It only goes up to the 1950s because after that Britain abolished their death penalty. There are some illustrations and photographs of the premises of the crimes and the judges who presided over the trials, but no pictures of the murderers or victims.

Most of the murders were unexceptional: domestic homicides and family annihilations, jealous lovers, drunken fights, robberies. The most interesting murder, I thought, was the first one, where a woman battered to death her three-year-old for no apparent reason and left his body in a railroad station toilet.

I didn't find this book very interesting, and there were a lot of typos. I would recommend it only to people who are really obsessed with London crimes.… (mere)

This is actually an excellent and not over-sized encyclopedia which may be of great interest to ordinary people (not experts) interested in the Ripper killings in 1888. The encyclopedia includes entries on most suspects, including the ones which has only come to light in recent years, the police officers involved in the chase, the victims and witnesses and some other people connected with the case.

As is the case with all Ripper scholars, Eddleston has his own "favourite" Ripper candidate, but he doesn't let it destroy the arguments for or against the other suspects.

If you're very much into the case already, there isn't likely to be all that much new stuff for you in this encyclopedia, but it really is an excellent little work of reference.… (mere)