Murder Capital

Suspicious deaths in London, 1933–53

Author:
Amy Helen Bell
Search for other papers by Amy Helen Bell in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close

Murder Capital is a historical study of suspicious deaths, unexpected deaths whose circumstances required official investigation, in mid-twentieth-century London. Suspicious deaths – murders in the family and by strangers, infanticides and deaths from illegal abortions – reveal moments of personal and communal crisis in the social fabric of the city. The intimate details of these crimes revealed in police investigation files, newspaper reports and crime scene photographs hint at the fears and desires of people in London before, during and after the profound changes brought by the dislocations of the Second World War. By setting the institutional ordering of the city against the hidden intimate spaces where crimes occurred and were discovered, the book presents a new popular history of the city, in which urban space circumscribed the investigation, classification and public perceptions of crime.

Abstract only
Log-in for full text
  • Collapse
  • Expand

    • Full book download (PDF with hyperlinks)
All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 1656 313 20
Full Text Views 678 81 0
PDF Downloads 1143 124 1