On the early morning hours of May 6, 1840, Lord William Russell was brutally murdered by having his throat cut to the point that his head was almost decapitated. His coins, rings, money, and some silverware were taken. In the course of the investigation by the police, they will find that his valet Francois Courvoisier, a native Swiss who had come over to make a living in service, would be the main suspect. The missing items would be found where only the valet had access to. And no one came in from the back door and the front door was locked.
But what makes this case so interesting is that people blamed a book that was turned into a hit play for what happened. The book was called Jack Sheppard and it was written by William Ainsworth who was friends with Charles Dickens who both wrote books in the genre of the Newgate Prison style where it celebrates criminals and the life only to have them pay for their crimes in the end. Dickens book that was written in this style was Oliver Twist. The middle and lower classes loved these books and with books being cheaper to produce and lending libraries being available more people were reading more books.
But with the death of Lord Russell and the attempt on Queen Victoria's life by Edward Oxford people were seeing these books and the plays they were based on as dangerous and were demanding that they be stopped. They believed that these things caused people to go astray. And it didn't help that young juveniles claimed that they were wanting to be Jack Sheppard. Even Courviseier would claim to be influenced by the book in one of his many confessions.
This is what Edgar Allen Poe had to say about the Jack Sheppard book: "His marvels have a nakedness which repels. Nothing he relates seems either probable or possible or of the slightest interest. His hero impresses us as the merest chimera, with whom we have no earthly concern, and when he makes his final escape and comes to the gallows, we would feel a very sensible relief, but for the impracticality of hanging up Mr. Ainsworth in his stead."
Also the book contained songs and one of the songs "Nix My Dolly, Pals, Fake Away" goes like this: "In a box of the stone jug [Newgate Prison cell] I was born,/ Of a hempen widow [widow of a hanged man] the kid forelorn,/ Fake away! [Carry on thieving!]/ And my noble father, as I've heard say,/ Was a famous merchant of capers gay [Dancing-Master, i.e. hanging on the scaffold],/ Nix my dolly, pals, fake away, [Never mind, pals, carry on thieving]/ Nix my dolly, pals, fake away." If you go to this address you can hear the tune it was placed to on a music box: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOnLyRB10vg.
This was an interesting book that shows how things haven't really changed as today people blame mass shooting on violent video games and violent movies when they are no more to blame then Jack Sheppard was to blame for the death of Lord Russell or the attempt on Queen Victoria's life. But with the attention, the case gave these Newgate Prison books they soon stopped being published. Will that happen to the movies and video games? I somehow doubt it. We have changed as people and evolved and believe in the first amendment. This book ushered in the Victorian era, a very prudish era in England where they placed fig leaves over the naked body parts. I give this book four out of five stars.
Listed on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Book-Shocked-Dickenss-London-ebook/dp/B07F5ZK1WC/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=murder+by+the+book&qid=1566995019&s=gateway&sr=8-1
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