Famous Trials

Famous Trials

by Harry Hodge

Descriptions of four famous murder trials that took place in Great Britain and were famous in their day: Madeleine Smith, whose innocence or guilt has never been solved; Oscar Slater, who was first declared guilty and later proved innocent, with the help of famous figures such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Hawley Harvey Crippen, a seemingly mild-mannered man who murdered his wife and brutally destroyed her body; and William Palmer, a man from a respectable Victorian family with a taste for the racetrack and murder. The facts of the four cases and their trials can be found in other places; the pleasure of this little book is in the elegant prose used to retell those facts.

Genres: True Crime, Crime

155 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1941

Reviews

[Chris Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this in a charity shop as it looked promising even though it was a 1954 edition; the trials never change though so the content and recorded transcripts are still there.
I thoroughly enjoyed every page. The background for the crimes and trials is fascinating. They are described adeptly and with great skill and just enough information to make them page turners.
Even though, some of the trials are very well known, I still enjoyed reading about the various twists and turns and the skill of the counsels representing the accused.
Also the way the perpetrators were brought to justice is nothing short of genius without all the latest technology we have today.
I am in the process of obtaining another edition in the series.

[Jolie Beaumont · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this slim volume in a second-hand bookstore, not knowing what to expect. As it turns out, the book is a little gem. The premise is an examination of four murders that made the front pages in the Victorian and Edwardian eras and the trials that followed. The facts of the cases are presented, the witnesses are evaluated - and so are the performances of the lawyers and judges. What sets the book apart is the prose, which is both a pleasure to read and an unwitting vehicle for presenting social attitudes of pre-World War II England, an era which has vanished along with the Victorian and Edwardian worlds that the book describes.