review. Book reviews – Everything Is Better With Dragons

23 January 2020 | Unbound | Paperback | £9.99 | #KillingBeauties
ISBN: 978-1-78965-065-5

England, 1655. Following the brutal civil wars the country swelters under a cloud of paranoia, suspicion and the
burgeoning threat of rebellion. With the fragile peace being won by Cromwell’s ever-efficient Secretary of State John
Thurloe, the exiled king Charles Stuart sends two spies on a dangerous mission to wrest back the initiative. These spies
are different, however: they are women. Their task? To turn Parliament’s spymaster into their unwitting accomplice.
Killing Beauties is a dark tale of subterfuge, jealousy and betrayal.
It is sometimes said that women are written out of history, but often they are not yet written in. Killing Beauties is based
on the true stories of two female spies from the 1650s and gives them the voice that only fiction can. Pete Langman.

Madness, Murder and Mayhem

Published By: Pen & Sword

Publication Date: 2nd October 2018

I.S.B.N.: 9781526734556

Format: Hardback

Price: £15.99

Blurb

Following an assassination attempt on George III in 1800, new legislation significantly altered the way the criminally insane were treated by the judicial system in Britain. This book explores these changes and explains the rationale for purpose-built criminal lunatic asylums in the Victorian era.

Specific case studies are used to illustrate and describe some of the earliest patients at Broadmoor Hospital – the Criminal Lunatic Asylum for England and Wales and the Criminal Lunatic Department at Perth Prison in Scotland. Chapters examine the mental and social problems that led to crime alongside individuals considered to be weak-minded, imbeciles or idiots. Family murders are explored as well as individuals who killed for gain. An examination of psychiatric evidence is provided to illustrate how often an insanity defence was used in court and the outcome if the judge and jury did not believe these claims. Two cases are discussed where medical experts gave evidence that individuals were mentally irresponsible for their crimes but they were led to the gallows.

Written by genealogists and historians, this book examines and identifies individuals who committed heinous crimes and researches the impact crime had on themselves, their families and their victims.

Continue reading “November Bonus Review #4: ‘Madness, Murder and Mayhem’, by Kathryn Burtinshaw and Dr. John Burt”