The Victorian era in England, spanning the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901, is often associated with staid social mores, repressed sexuality, and a strict class hierarchy. But beneath the veneer of respectability and etiquette, Victorian society had a dark side—one plagued by poverty, disease, vice, and shocking acts of murder most foul.
While violent crime made up only a small percentage of total crime in Victorian England, a number of particularly brutal and lurid murders became sensational media spectacles. These killings both horrified and fascinated the Victorian public, dominating the headlines for weeks and sparking feverish speculation and moralizing.
Some of the most notorious Victorian murders remain unsolved puzzles to this day, revealing the inadequacies of criminal investigation techniques at the time. Others were "crimes of the century" that sent the perpetrators to the gallows and served as fodder for popular songs, plays, and penny dreadfuls. A few even provided inspiration for enduring fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
What all these shocking cases had in common was the way they titillated the Victorian imagination and exposed the social ills and anxieties lurking beneath the era‘s facade of progress and propriety. By taking a closer look at the most infamous Victorian murders, we can gain insight into this tumultuous period of change that laid the foundations of modern British society.
Murder by the Numbers
First, it‘s important to put Victorian murder rates in a historical context. Quantitative analysis of homicide indictments in England and Wales shows that murder rates fluctuated during Queen Victoria‘s reign but were significantly lower than in previous centuries:
| Years | Homicides per 100,000 |
|---|---|
| 1810-1819 | 1.8 |
| 1820-1829 | 1.6 |
| 1830-1839 | 1.5 |
| 1840-1849 | 1.5 |
| 1850-1859 | 1.7 |
| 1860-1869 | 1.6 |
| 1870-1879 | 1.5 |
| 1880-1889 | 1.4 |
| 1890-1899 | 1.0 |
Source: Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England: 1750-1900
As the data shows, the homicide rate in England and Wales hovered around 1.5 per 100,000 people for most of the Victorian period before dipping to 1.0 by the 1890s. In comparison, the United Nations reports the homicide rate in the UK was 1.20 per 100,000 in 2018, only slightly lower than Victorian levels.
However, these numbers don‘t tell the full story. The Victorian era saw the rise of sensationalistic new mass media in the form of cheap newspapers. Editors discovered that sordid crimes sold papers, so the most violent and lurid cases received outsized coverage.
The result was the perception that murder was more prevalent than the statistics showed. As one contemporary complained in an 1862 letter to The Times, "Day by day we are becoming a more nervous and excitable people… the constant publication of the details of crimes of violence is one of the most fruitful sources of this morbid feeling."
Policing and Criminal Justice in Victorian England
To understand why many Victorian murders went unsolved requires examining the limitations of policing at the time. London did not have an organized professional police force until 1829 when Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police.
Early Victorian "bobbies" were poorly trained and equipped. They did not carry weapons and had to rely on physical force and the authority of their uniforms. Forensic science was in its infancy, so police lacked modern investigative tools like fingerprinting and blood type analysis. Photography was a new technology and not yet widely used in investigations.
Combined with a lack of police procedural standardization and communication between jurisdictions, it‘s no surprise many Victorian killers escaped justice. As crime historian Judith Flanders notes, "The creation of the police in 1829 did not result in the immediate detection of crime, or in criminals being brought to justice with any more efficiency than before."
The Victorian justice system could be harsh on those murderers who were caught and convicted. The Bloody Code of the early 1800s made over 200 crimes punishable by death, though judicial leniency and Royal pardons were common. The number of capital crimes was reduced over the Victorian era until the Death Penalty Abolition Act of 1965 ended executions.
Victorians were both repelled and drawn to the spectacle of public hangings, which drew large crowds eager for morbid entertainment. As social historian David Taylor argues, "For many people, an execution was simply a good day out, a diverting spectacle in an age before mass, commercialized leisure."
10 Shocking Victorian Murders
With this historical context in mind, let‘s examine 10 of the most infamous murder cases that both appalled and captivated Victorian society:
-
The Red Barn Murder (1828) – Maria Marten was shot dead by her secret lover William Corder after giving birth to their illegitimate child. Corder buried Marten in a red barn on his farm before fleeing. He was caught, convicted, and executed in one of the first trials to use forensic evidence.
-
The Bermondsey Horror (1849) – Frederick and Marie Manning murdered Marie‘s lover Patrick O‘Connor to rob him, buried him beneath their kitchen floor, then fled. They were captured and became the first married couple to hang together in England since 1700, in front of a jeering crowd of 50,000.
-
The Waterloo Bridge Mystery (1857) – Businessman Thomas Briggs was robbed and beaten to death in the first murder to take place on an English train. A German tailor named Franz Muller was convicted of the killing based on circumstantial evidence and public prejudice stirred up by the press. He protested his innocence until his public execution.
-
The Road Hill House Murder (1860) – 3-year-old Francis Saville Kent was found with his throat slit in the outdoor privy of his wealthy family‘s country home. Investigators used new forensic techniques to build a case against the boy‘s 16-year-old half-sister Constance, who confessed and served 20 years in prison.
-
The Madeleine Smith Affair (1857) – Glasgow socialite Madeleine Smith was accused of poisoning her secret lover, Pierre Emile L‘Angelier, with arsenic after he threatened to expose their affair and interfere with her respectable marriage plans. Smith was found "not proven" under Scottish law in a sensational trial.
-
The Murder of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1864) – 4-year-old Saville Kent, who served as the model for the famous children‘s book character, was abducted from his bed and had his throat cut. His 16-year-old sister Constance later confessed to the killing out of jealousy at Saville being sent to live with wealthier relatives.
-
The Murders of Jack the Ripper (1888) – Over 10 weeks in 1888, a serial killer brutally murdered and mutilated at least 5 women in London‘s impoverished Whitechapel district, sending taunting letters to police and sparking a media frenzy. Despite an extensive manhunt, the Ripper‘s identity remains a mystery.
-
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1785) – Before the Victorian era, murderous barber Sweeney Todd allegedly slit the throats of his customers and gave the corpses to his mistress Mrs. Lovett to bake into meat pies. His story became a Victorian urban legend and popular penny dreadful serial.
-
The Lambeth Poisoner (1892) – Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, who previously served time for poisoning in the U.S., murdered four London prostitutes with strychnine and was suspected of more. He attempted to frame other men and claimed to be Jack the Ripper before being hanged.
-
Amelia Dyer (1896) – Trained nurse Amelia Dyer turned to baby farming, adopting unwanted infants in exchange for money. Over 30 years, she is believed to have killed up to 400 babies, strangling them with white tape and dumping them in the Thames. She was hanged for her crimes.
Several common threads emerge in these notorious cases. Many of the victims were women, often of lower class origins, reflecting the vulnerable status of females in Victorian society. The poor and marginalized fell prey to killers but received less attention than rarer middle- and upper-class victims.
The murderers came from a range of backgrounds, from respectable professionals to working-class laborers, indicating that the potential for violence lurked in all strata of Victorian society. Some killers had financial motives, while others were driven by lust, revenge, or madness.
Intense press coverage and the ineffectiveness of police could impede investigations while fueling an insatiable public appetite for sordid details. As scholar Christopher Pittard notes, "The [Victorian] public was encouraged to play armchair detective, scrutinizing the evidence and speculating as to the identity of the murderer."
The Cultural Legacy of Victorian Murder
The impact of Victorian murders extended far beyond the courtroom. These crimes took on powerful cultural meanings and inspired works of fiction that have endured into the modern day.
Dr. Thomas Neill Cream‘s activities in London fueled theories that he could be Jack the Ripper, a notion promoted in the popular graphic novel From Hell. However, most experts consider this unlikely as Cream was in prison during the majority of the Ripper killings.
The enigma of the Ripper‘s identity has inspired over 100 nonfiction books and a panoply of fictional representations in films, television, comics, and video games. The Ripper murders have been depicted in everything from big-budget Hollywood productions to low-brow slasher horror films.
Amelia Dyer‘s baby farming atrocities inspired Catherine Moreland‘s infanticides in Kerry Greenwood‘s Cocaine Blues mystery novel. And the Demon Barber of Fleet Street graduated from an urban legend and Victorian penny dreadful to the musical stage in Stephen Sondheim‘s Sweeney Todd.
Perhaps the most famous Victorian-inspired detective is Sherlock Holmes, whose brilliant deductions were modeled on surgeon Joseph Bell, lecturer to Conan Doyle at the University of Edinburgh. Holmes, often assisted by Scotland Yard detectives, used logic, observation, and early forensic methods to solve grisly murders.
The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde also took inspiration from Victorian cultural anxiety about outwardly respectable men harboring inner wickedness. As historian Judith Flanders argues, the story reflected "the fear of the middle classes that they will be destroyed by something that seems to come from within their own ranks."
Conclusion
The most notorious Victorian murders were more than just morbid crimes. They reflected deep-seated fears and fascinations in a tumultuous society being transformed by urbanization, industrialization, and shifting class boundaries.
Victorians were both appalled and excited by the potential for evil that seemed to lurk within outwardly civilized society. The public devoured sensationalized media accounts that revealed the inadequacies of policing and criminal justice.
While the Victorian era is long past, our fascination with these murders endures to the present day. We are still drawn to the grisly details, the investigative puzzles, the insights into history and society. By studying Victorian murders, we not only learn about the victims and perpetrators but hold up a mirror to our own cultural obsessions and anxieties.
As Judith Flanders puts it, "The stories of [Victorian] murder retain their power not because we want to understand the past, but because we want to understand ourselves." These crimes shocked the Victorians, but perhaps the most shocking revelation is how much we still have in common with them.
