Famous Trials 6 - James H Hodge (ed)

Another in the endlessly fascinating series, this time comprising four cases, the Regency lowlifes Thurtell and Hunt, the appalling Nodder (the one with the Hitler 'tash on the cover), IRA bomber Peter Barnes, and the so-called vampire John George Haigh.

The Thurtell case is only really of interested to those of us interested in the Regency underworld, a sordid falling out among thieves, notably chiefly for the peripheral involvement of Pierce Egan.  I've been reading the book piecemeal over the last few weeks and, to be honest, can't remember how Hunt was involved.  The case of Frederick Nodder (1937) is an early example of a murdering paedophile, revolting as all such cases inevitably are.

The collection starts to come alive with the case of Barnes, who was  one of those behind the Coventry outrage of August 1939.  Coming just a week before the declaration of World War II the incident is forgotten now but was particularly nasty.  Someone, who was never discovered, left a bomb on a bike by Broadgate, smack in the city centre, round where Primark now stands.  Five people were killed and score injured, twelve grievously. Letitia Fairfield provides a useful background to the IRA campaign on the mainland between the establishment of the Free State and independence.

Haigh, though, is the star of the show, a smalltime crook straight out of the works of Patrick Hamilton.  Haigh, of course, is the acid bath murderer, who dissolved his victims in a Croydon lock-up.  He tried to save himself from the noose by claiming to be a vampire when in reality his motive was purely monetary.  Not much of a schemer, he rather gave the game away by asking one of the interviewing detectives whether anyone was ever released from Broadmoor.

As always, great fun for fans of the true-crime genre.

Famous Trials 4 - James H Hodge (ed)

Harry Hodge began the Notable British Trials series in 1905; Penguin began republishing collections of them as Famous Trials some forty years later.  I can't resist them.  Mainly the Penguin collections focus on famous murder cases, specifically notorious murderers like Crippen.  This volume however includes Harold Greenwood and my near namesake Robert Wood who were both acquitted of murder, and William Joyce - "Lord Haw Haw" - who was hanged for treason.  Joyce is the most fascinating case here.  J W Hall, himself a lawyer, argues that Joyce's actual status as the American born son of an Irish father who became a naturalised US citizen some ten years before William was born meant he should not have been hanged for treason.  Hall's intense scrutiny of the hoops British justice squirmed through in order to execute the only Nazi tried in the UK could be dry but is wholly enthralling.  It's worth acquiring the book for this alone.

The other two cases - where the accused were incontravertibly guilty - are less compelling.  Dr Pritchard, the Scottish Victorian poisoner, would be better considered by a forensic psychologist who might be able to explain the methodical destruction of two women he really seemed to love.  The case of Ley and Smith, which I had never previously come across, is a sordid business, notable only for the fact that Ley, who had a sort of motive and dreamt up the scheme, was spared the noose and sent to Broadmoor whilst his hired stooge Smith, who only dumped the body, was hanged.  Could the fact that Ley was rich and Smith wasn't have anything to do with it?  F Tennyson Jesse, usually so deft in bringing murder to the page (A Pin to See the Peepshow), misses a trick here - Ley's character is so extraordinary he belongs in a novel.