The Murderer's Companion

Rating:
Summary: Wry and erudite reporting of Victorian-era British crimes.
Review: William Roughead was an Edinburgh court reporter from roughly 1890 -- 1930. His work gave him a front-row seat at some of the most grisly crimes and subsequent trials of his day. More, it sparked his interest in the frailties and foibles which lead humans to do, not to put too fine a point on it, the damndest things, particularly the murder of their spouses, acquaintances, lovers and other strangers.

He brought to his work a first-rate mind, a first-rate education, a broad reading of the classics and a deft and pointed sense of humor and an innate ability to write with clarity and felicity. Happily, he applied these attributes to his write-ups of some of the more murderous Britons (especially Scots)who have resorted to the usual means -- poison, say, or knives, guns, ropes, bludgeons and, now and then, bare hands -- to rid themselves of vexing problems or acquire to themselves added assets. He was, in fact, the Godfather of all true crime writing as we know it today. But always with the delicate touch of wry humor.

Note his footnoted comment regarding Mrs. Bravo's statement ("he said, 'I've taken some of that poison, but don't tell Florence.'") to the coroner regarding her departed spouse: *It was, presumably, to keep the matter secret from his wife that a few seconds earlier he had shouted on the landing, 'Florence! Florence!'") Or his comment on the murderous parson, Dr. Pritchard, who expressed to the divine attendant at his hanging a gratitude the latter had shown up to see him off wearing his gown and bands. Roughead wrote: "Dr. Pritchard was, I regret to say, an Episcopalian."

In an aside commenting on Pritchard's diary entry which minimizes his wife's tortuous death from strychnine poisoning (". . . No torment surounded her bedside,")Roughead parenthetically inserts, ". . . oh, Dr. Pritchard!")

Elsewhere, Roughead treats us to a ditty on an 1828 crime, composed on the spot by no less than Sir Walter Scott (a true crime devotee himself, as it turns out):

His throat they cut from ear-to-ear,
His brains they battered in.
His name was Mr. William Weare;
He dwelt at Lyon's Inn.

Roughead's professional access to complete court transcripts regarding the cases on which he wrote, not to mention access to police interrogation notes, coroner's reports, forensic pathology findings, newspaper reports and the like -- even evidence, in some cases -- make his expositions exceptionally complete and fascinating. His erudite expression and his pixie-ish humor make them pleasurable and memorable.

We may think our age has cornered the market on bizarre murder schemes, but this is not so, not by a long shot. As Roughead's reporting makes appallingly clear, since Cain solved his problem in The Garden only the players have changed. For true crime devotees who seek an evening's crime reading which can raise both eyebrows and hackles and provide any number of chuckles along the way, William Roughead is absolutely must reading.