Murder Houses of London

Jan Bondeson

Jan 2014 · Amberley Publishing Limited

About this ebook

In that stately Fitzrovia house, the butler was murdered by a disgruntled pantry-boy; in that one, a king’s housekeeper lost her life. In that Kensington flat, a demented playboy murdered a prostitute for kicks; in that Gloucester Road basement, ‘Acid Bath’ Haigh was busy digesting the bodies of his victims. In those two elegant Chelsea houses, located in peaceful garden squares, a clergyman and his housekeeper were brutally done to death in 1870. In that peaceful little house, not far from Camden Road Station, a woman murdered her rival, dismembered the body, and disposed of it using an old-fashioned perambulator. In that peaceful pub near the Thames, the landlady was murdered in 1920, and the killer was never found. In one Islington house, George Joseph Smith disposed of one of his ‘Brides in the Bath’; in another, Annie Walters, the notorious baby farmer, was plying her deadly trade; in a third, a brilliant playwright was brutally murdered by his homosexual lover. This book deals with central London’s architecture of capital crime: houses inside which celebrated murders have been committed. Pursue Lord Lucan as he escapes from his elegant Belgravia house, leaving the dead nanny in the basement; prowl the Soho streets once haunted by an elusive serial killer; and follow in the murderous footsteps of the Blackout Ripper and the serial killer Patrick Mackay. And read about London’s many forgotten murders, where only the murder houses remain to tell a tale.

Ratings and reviews

A good book to reflect of the many places that murders have been committed and as the author often suggests, may make a great walking tour of areas if one is so inclined. I would have liked to seen more connection to the larger context of the time that the murders were committed, and after a while, it becomes quite repetitive. Some of these murders have been featured in other books of the author's and I did not find the intro to most chapters - murder houses that are no longer there - that enticing given the proposed angle of the work.

About the author

Jan Bondeson is a respected true crime writer, and author of ‘The London Monster’, ‘Murder Houses of London’, ‘Rivals of the Ripper’ and other books. He lives in Dunbar, Scotland.