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The Littlehampton Libels: A Miscarriage of Justice and a Mystery about Words in 1920s England
The Littlehampton Libels tells the story of a poison-pen mystery that led to a miscarriage of justice in the years following the First World War. There would be four criminal trials before the real culprit was finally punished, with the case challenging the police and the prosecuting lawyers as much any capital crime.
When a leading Metropolitan Police detective was tasked with solving the case, he questioned the residents of the seaside town of Littlehampton about their neighbours' vocabularies, how often they wrote letters, what their handwriting was like, whether they swore-and how they swore, for the letters at the heart of the case were often bizarre in their abuse. The archive that the investigation produced shows in extraordinary detail how ordinary people could use the English language in inventive and surprising ways at a time when universal literacy was still a novelty. Their personal lives, too, had surprises. The detective's inquiries and the courtroom dramas laid bare their secrets and the intimate details of neighbourhood and family life. Drawing on these records, The Littlehampton Libels traces the tangles of devotion and resentment, desire and manipulation, in a working-class community. We are used to emotional complexity in books about the privileged, but history is seldom able to
recover the inner lives of ordinary people in this way.
When a leading Metropolitan Police detective was tasked with solving the case, he questioned the residents of the seaside town of Littlehampton about their neighbours' vocabularies, how often they wrote letters, what their handwriting was like, whether they swore-and how they swore, for the letters at the heart of the case were often bizarre in their abuse. The archive that the investigation produced shows in extraordinary detail how ordinary people could use the English language in inventive and surprising ways at a time when universal literacy was still a novelty. Their personal lives, too, had surprises. The detective's inquiries and the courtroom dramas laid bare their secrets and the intimate details of neighbourhood and family life. Drawing on these records, The Littlehampton Libels traces the tangles of devotion and resentment, desire and manipulation, in a working-class community. We are used to emotional complexity in books about the privileged, but history is seldom able to
recover the inner lives of ordinary people in this way.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published August 15, 2017
11 people are currently reading
253 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 16, 2018
To be honest, what happens in this book blew me away.
a longer post is here at my reading journal:
http://www.nonfictionrealstuff.com/20...
A series of poison pen letters being circulated in a small English village is the subject of Agatha Christie's 1942 novel The Moving Finger, yet there are a number of other books in which they appear as well. Dorothy Sayers, Edmund Crispin, and John Dickson Carr spring to mind immediately as just a few examples; in the hands of these authors murder generally followed as a result. In The Littlehampton Libels there are no killings, but the poison pen letters circulating in the 1920s within Littlehampton, a "middling town" along the Sussex coast (and beyond), eventually merited police investigations, resulted in four different trials, widespread news coverage, imprisonment, and, as the title reveals, "a miscarriage of justice." The stories of the two women involved, according to the author, is a
"kind of English story told over and over in fiction and film but rarely in works of history..."
And it all began with "a quarrel between neighbors."
In this truly splendid work of microhistory, written in a way I personally believe the best histories should be written, the author traces not only the events in this case, but uses his investigation to also examine how, as he says, these
"outlandish insults form part of a larger story of individuality and originality in unexpected places."
There's much, much more of course as you can discover at my reading journal, but the long and short of it is that while this book is likely not going to appeal to a wide audience, it certainly gives credence to the idea that quite often truth is stranger than fiction. Never a dull moment here, I knew it was going to be something right up my alley when I first read about it and I don't regret forking over more than I generally pay for a book to read it. Very highly recommended.
a longer post is here at my reading journal:
http://www.nonfictionrealstuff.com/20...
A series of poison pen letters being circulated in a small English village is the subject of Agatha Christie's 1942 novel The Moving Finger, yet there are a number of other books in which they appear as well. Dorothy Sayers, Edmund Crispin, and John Dickson Carr spring to mind immediately as just a few examples; in the hands of these authors murder generally followed as a result. In The Littlehampton Libels there are no killings, but the poison pen letters circulating in the 1920s within Littlehampton, a "middling town" along the Sussex coast (and beyond), eventually merited police investigations, resulted in four different trials, widespread news coverage, imprisonment, and, as the title reveals, "a miscarriage of justice." The stories of the two women involved, according to the author, is a
"kind of English story told over and over in fiction and film but rarely in works of history..."
And it all began with "a quarrel between neighbors."
In this truly splendid work of microhistory, written in a way I personally believe the best histories should be written, the author traces not only the events in this case, but uses his investigation to also examine how, as he says, these
"outlandish insults form part of a larger story of individuality and originality in unexpected places."
There's much, much more of course as you can discover at my reading journal, but the long and short of it is that while this book is likely not going to appeal to a wide audience, it certainly gives credence to the idea that quite often truth is stranger than fiction. Never a dull moment here, I knew it was going to be something right up my alley when I first read about it and I don't regret forking over more than I generally pay for a book to read it. Very highly recommended.
December 6, 2022
One of the best history books I’ve read in a while. Hilliard achieves an incredibly detailed study of the lives of people in an ordinary seaside town in the 1920s. A scandal around libellous letters reveals a complex universe of the written word. The case gives us a window onto the vibrant world of working-class life, and to the nuances of policing, gender, sexuality, local politics, and social dynamics. I love this!
December 18, 2018
I absolutely loved this book. Such an intriguing case and a wonderful insight into 1920s working class life. And it was all the more interesting for me because I live on the road where it all took place!
June 13, 2019
The perfect blend of gossip, scandal, and sociological/socio-economic history. I was thrilled by the personal drama, but I also learned quite a lot about working-class life in Britain during the 1920s. The link between creditworthiness and credibility, and how important credit was to the economic survival of working-class people, was a revelation.
December 9, 2024
"The tragicomedy of someone who could not perform the ordinariness expected of them": the book's last line is a jewel in this simple and profound work of microhistory. Hilliard's understated and precise style suit the subject matter, a case of libel at a time when libel was a criminal matter in Great Britain, well.
July 27, 2024
Full disclosure: My husband's grandmother was one of the named peripheral Littlehampton residents who received obscene letters. We discovered this book when the movie came out and his British cousins told us the story of the letters. How this wasn't a general part of their family lore through the decades speaks more to their proper, low-key upbringing than anything else. My family is Sicilian, and not only would we have been told about this story from birth, even after a hundred years we'd still be planning vendettas against the perpetrators' descendants!
This book is meticulously well-researched and flawlessly executed. The facts speak for themselves.
The movie, however, in that current British trend of retrofitting period piece films to be inclusive for woke, politically correct reasons even when it is ridiculous and historically fake to do so, has people of color in roles that are untrue. The movie doesn't give two shits about history or actual facts. Yes, there was one policewoman. She was white. Bill was white, as was everybody. That's a statement of fact, not a racist remark. In that time and place, the ethnic groups would never have co-existed like that. It injects such a false note into the movie it is impossible to watch.
I know it's a British film directive to give acting jobs to people of color, but it is ruining all period pieces made in Britain. There are enough new works that can be inclusive from the start; why change history?
What supporters of this idiotic trend, and the trend to remove "offensive matter" from books like "Gone with the Wind" don't seem to grasp is that if you work hard enough to portray the idea that it was inclusive back then, or remove anything offensive, you are at some point going to eliminate the history and proof of institutionalized racism itself.
This book is meticulously well-researched and flawlessly executed. The facts speak for themselves.
The movie, however, in that current British trend of retrofitting period piece films to be inclusive for woke, politically correct reasons even when it is ridiculous and historically fake to do so, has people of color in roles that are untrue. The movie doesn't give two shits about history or actual facts. Yes, there was one policewoman. She was white. Bill was white, as was everybody. That's a statement of fact, not a racist remark. In that time and place, the ethnic groups would never have co-existed like that. It injects such a false note into the movie it is impossible to watch.
I know it's a British film directive to give acting jobs to people of color, but it is ruining all period pieces made in Britain. There are enough new works that can be inclusive from the start; why change history?
What supporters of this idiotic trend, and the trend to remove "offensive matter" from books like "Gone with the Wind" don't seem to grasp is that if you work hard enough to portray the idea that it was inclusive back then, or remove anything offensive, you are at some point going to eliminate the history and proof of institutionalized racism itself.
August 29, 2018
Christopher Hilliard quotes Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in the epilogue to this book, to the effect that, “We’ll-behaves women seldom make history.” Hilliard’s microhistory explores Edith Swan and Rose Gooding and the libels that plagued the beach town of Littlehampton, England in the early 1920s. The mystery is who is the misbehaving woman; to unravel it we have to know about lower class literacy, the claustrophobia of women’s early 20th century lives, and how the British legal system navigated neighbors’ daily grievances. For more than three years this neighborhood was tortured by hundreds of expletive-filled letters, and Hilliard thinks he has the answer. The books is a reminder of how many rich stories have yet to be told.
October 9, 2025
A riveting account of the true crime public scandal behind todays BBC film, Wicked Little Letters. It took three trials and acres of newsprint to convict modest little Edith Swan of sending the vile and vulgar communications she tried so hard to convince the world had really been written by her more "vulgar" neighbor. Before that date, many barristers and judges were convinced that such a well-spoken woman could never behave so fiendishly in secret - just as a Fall River jury could not believe Lizzie Borden, Sunday school teacher, could take a hatchet to her relatives. But we know better nowadays - don't we, children?
October 29, 2024
This book is not a just a narration of a legal case but also sheds light on the everyday life of ordinary people living in a small post-war town.
It was very interesting learning about the habits and beliefs of early 20th century people and comparing them with those a century later.
It was also educational as I became more familiar with legal terms and procedures.
Lastly, the author mentioned the book “Criminal Days” by Travers Humphreys a few times and would like to know if anyone has read it and could share their opinion.
It was very interesting learning about the habits and beliefs of early 20th century people and comparing them with those a century later.
It was also educational as I became more familiar with legal terms and procedures.
Lastly, the author mentioned the book “Criminal Days” by Travers Humphreys a few times and would like to know if anyone has read it and could share their opinion.
September 1, 2024
The book that Wicked Little Letters was based on..... Interesting, at least it revealed the "diversity untruths" which were apparent in the film.
A factual account which filled in more details of this historical (1920s) court case of ordinary working class women and the language that was available to them at that time.
A factual account which filled in more details of this historical (1920s) court case of ordinary working class women and the language that was available to them at that time.
April 16, 2025
I came to this via the movie, Wicked Little Letters and you can see why it was an inspiration. It's not just a good story, it's a good book. Hilliard connects the libel letters to the generational shift in education, and the shift in the law from judging character to judging evidence (still not complete of course).
What a thoroughly good book.
What a thoroughly good book.
December 8, 2025
Read this for class.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews