The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place, by Kate Summerscale

 

... "everything in life is but a peep-show"

9781526660480

Bloomsbury Circus, 2024

300 pp

hardcover

Before I get started here, let me just say that the entire month of February was just horrible.  My very sweet spouse had three  surgeries during that time, one of which was unexpected and directly on the back of the second after his blood pressure dropped so low during recovery that I actually thought that this was it.  The good news is that it wasn't his time, apparently, and little by little as he's been regaining his physical strength, I've been working on getting back to some semblance of mental normalcy, not always an easy feat.   But here I am again after this sort of forced hiatus, ready to get on. 

Most of my reading was done via audiobooks for passing long, quiet hours, but I did manage to get my hands on a physical copy of Kate Summerscale's newest book, The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place.  I bought mine at Blackwell's (postage to US included in price!) because the US release isn't until May 6th and I didn't want to wait.  I've read several of this author's books, including The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (which I loved), The Wicked Boy (which I didn't love) and The Haunting of Alma Fielding, and I think with The Peepshow she brings much less of the extraneous detail she usually brings to her books for the reader to wade through, and more of an opportunity to draw connections between that time and our own.  It is both a true crime sort of read and a social history and really, I believe it is her best work yet. 

You can look up 10 Rillington Place online if you've not heard of the crimes that occurred there, but in a nutshell, it was the address in the Notting Hill section of North London that was the home of John Christie, who lived there with his wife Ethel in the ground-floor flat.  In 1948, Timothy Evans and his wife Beryl arrived at this place and lived upstairs from the Christies, and in 1949, Beryl and their baby Geraldine were killed, with Timothy being charged with and tried for the baby's death.  John Christie served as a witness against Evans at his 1950 trial, and Evans was found guilty of and hanged for the crime.   Later, after Ethel had supposedly gone off without him, Christie eventually left the flat, another tenant who had permission from the landlord to use the Christie kitchen started cleaning and found a space to hang a shelf for his radio.  He discovered that the wall where he wanted to put his shelf was hollow, and there he discovered a hidden cupboard. When he used a light to look inside, he made the horrific discovery of what seemed to be the body of a naked woman. Eventually the police would find the bodies of several other women both inside and outside the Christie flat, along with evidence that would point to Christie as their killer.  Christie by this time was on the run, and would eventually be found, charged and tried for his crimes.  

In putting her book together, Summerscale tells of events through the eyes of  two reporters: Harry Procter, a successful and highly-driven tabloid journalist,  and author Fryn Tennyson Jesse, who approached events from a much different perspective, and whose analysis of the case would eventually appear in the volume of the Notable British Trials series featuring the trials of both Timothy Evans and John Christie in 1957.  

contemporary headlines, from Murderpedia

Procter, as she quotes another journalist here,  

"did not just report a story; 'he infiltrated it, embedded himself, then owned it, then manipulated its protagonists as puppeteer-in-chief so that everything fell into place, as, and when, and exactly how, he wished.' " 

In the book that had inspired him to become a reporter, The Street of Adventure, author Philip Gibbs wrote  that "everything in life is but a peep-show," and that reporters felt like "the only real people in the world."  When he got wind of the story at 10 Rillington Place after the first bodies had been discovered and Christie had gone on the run, Procter went to the scene only to realize, "with a shock," that he had been there before when he worked for The Daily Mail.  It was during the time when Tim Evans had been charged with murder, and Procter had interviewed Christie about his neighbor.  Christie had been polite and soft spoken, and at the time, Procter saw no reason at all to suspect that Christie might have had anything to do with the deaths.  Now though, he not only "cursed himself for not having questioned him more closely" at the time, since it was obvious that Christie must be behind the current murders, but as Summerscale writes, Procter considered it possible that Christie just might have framed Evans for something Christie himself had done, and may have helped to send an innocent man to the gallows.  His personal stakes were high in getting Christie's story, both in terms of somehow making Christie feel the need to confess to the murders of Beryl and her baby and of course, reporting the story that would completely make his career.   Fryn Tennyson Jesse, who had been "gripped" by the coverage of the murders, was, as the author notes, "part of a golden generation of female crime writers. One of her books, Murder and Its Motives focused on (as noted here) "Six spectacular murders of the past century," and she had also written a novel called A Pin to See the Peepshow, which author Sarah Waters described in a Guardian article as "an achingly human portrait;" a  "thinly fictionalised account of the life of ... Edith Thompson, one of the three main players in the 'Ilford murder' case of 1922. "  She had also written essays in the Notable British Trials series.  Summerscale states that Jesse, now sixty-five, was going blind, was "frail" and a morphine addict, and was "afraid that she was being forgotten," so she "hungered for a story that would restore her."  If she could do the write up of the Christie case for Notable British Trials, it would be just what she needed.    Neither Procter nor Jesse could fathom Christie's lack of moral responsibility for his deeds, another factor bringing the two strands of reporting together.  

 What stands out about Christie here is that he was a man who outwardly resembled any number of men his age of the time, looking respectably average in his suit and his spectacles, while speaking softly and serving in a number of respectable positions.  When he was being sought by the police, it seemed that people saw him everywhere because he seemed so ordinary.  Summerscale gets behind that veil of respectability to reveal  a virulent racist who couldn't stand the fact that West Indian people were living in his building, even blaming the horrific odors of decomposition on his upstairs neighbors, an idea that was readily accepted by people who came into his apartment.  He was also a complete misogynist who viewed himself as passive while the women he victimized were the aggressors, and even to the last he  refused to show any sort of remorse for what he'd done.   If this book were only about John Christie and his crimes it would still be very good, but the author goes deeper into the lives of the many victims (doing so with the great care that these women truly deserve) as well as the social, political and economic landscapes of the time, while also diving into the power/machinations of the press  and the readers who lapped up every word. The dustjacket blurb says that her mining of the archives "sheds fascinating light on the origins our fixation with true crime," and although there is no definitive answer behind the biggest question of them all (i.e. who really killed Beryl and Geraldine Evans),  the blurb  also notes that Summerscale does "suggest" a possibility. 

I can only begin to imagine how much research went into writing this book and it shows.  I absolutely did not want to put this book down while reading and when I had to do so, I couldn't get back to it fast enough.  I found it to be an enlightening piece of social history,  a book that I can highly recommend.  

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Deborah Blum

9781594202438
Penguin Press, 2010
319 pp

hardcover

One day I left this book downstairs in the kitchen right next to the coffee maker intending to take it upstairs later,  and the next thing I knew there's a post on my husband's facebook page with a photo of this book that reads as follows:

"Hmmmmm, first she has me get more life insurance - then I see this book.  #‎eatouttonight‬?"

I didn't really ask for more life insurance, but his post is kind of spot on regarding this book -- one of the main points in Blum's study is that for a very long time, people who were so inclined could get away with murder when it came to poisoning.  With very few exceptions, in this period of time there were a wide range of toxic poisons that were basically undetectable, used as a weapon to get rid of unwanted people.  That all starts to change with the advent of serious forensic medicine during the 1920s, especially under the auspices of two major figures:  Dr. Charles Norris, and Dr. Alexander Gettler.  Norris was New York's Chief Medical Examiner, while Gettler was a brilliant toxicologist -- together the two started to change not only the way in which science was used in crime cases, but also the emphasis on how government should work to protect its citizens.  Beyond being just plain interesting, it's also a very good look at politics of the time, at the failures and dangers of Prohibition, and at the unsuspected dangers that lie hidden in some every-day products and how science worked to study them and ultimately lead the fight in making lives safer.  

Each section is related under a title heading bearing the name of a poisonous substance.  In each there is a case centered around that specific substance that opens the discussion, then a bit about the history, followed by a bit of scientific info and how scientists came to realize just how very deadly these substances could be. Then it's back to the case and the work of Norris and Gettler in trying to solve the many riddles each case presented, along with warnings to the public based on their findings.  Just as an example, let's take the chapter on Cyanides.  This section whets the reader appetite by starting with two deaths attributed to alcohol but which were in reality caused by poisoning by potassium cyanide.  As the author notes, by the time the true cause was discovered, "the killer, whoever he was, was long gone."  We then move into a bigger, more high-profile case having nothing to do with alcohol, but rather with the deaths of two people in an upscale hotel in Brooklyn.  A man and his wife were discovered dead in their locked room,  and while the ME's office realized it was poison, how exactly they died was a true mystery.  Before getting on with the case, though, Blum gives her readers a brief history of cyanides (there's more than one), the science behind them, and how they work on the human body.  Then we go back to earlier scientific attempts at cyanide detection, Gettler's work and the work of the police in trying to solve this strange crime.   Blum  adds in another earlier case from 1898 to further illustrate how a poisoner had escaped detection and justice, finally following the hotel case to its solution, prosecution and aftermath.  Fascinating stuff, actually, and while I don't even pretend to get the actual science of it all, Blum's brief explanations are enlightening and very interesting to read. 

The biggest focus in this book is how science as a tool in bringing killers to justice (and to exonerate the wrongly-charged innocent) began to be taken seriously, especially in the courts where it was previously undermined or derided.  Because of the beliefs espoused by Norris that a medical examiner should take his job seriously, that he or she has a duty to the public and to the course of justice, and that he/she should be a scientist and not an unqualified political appointee who makes money off of dead bodies and granting favors to highly-placed people, forensic medicine and forensic science  in general became a powerful force which is heavily relied on today, nearly a century after Norris & Gettler first got things rolling in this country.   However, beyond that, the author reveals how after Gettler, Norris and a few others took on the science behind some products that people used in their lives on a daily basis and discovered that these things were killing people, one of the most important outcomes was the sharing of their findings with government officials, with hopes that the government would take steps to protect its citizens.   Norris often had to fight not only city hall, but other government agencies whose interests coincided with big business -- for example, in his fight against leaded gasoline and especially against cheap, poisoned alcohol served to the poor during Prohibition.   Sometimes he won and sometimes he wasn't so lucky, but as things turned out, he was right.  One of the most fascinating stories in this book, for example, was about radium -- previously believed to be a substance very good for one's health and bottled in tonics or in "radium water" etc.,   Gettler and another scientist discovered just how very lethal it was and were beyond instrumental in getting these products banned.  

One interesting side note re a case I already know something about: Gettler was the guy who proved that Ruth Snyder was lying about her injuries on the night she and Judd Gray killed her husband, ultimately leading to their conviction, imprisonment and electrocution for the murder. And, as it turned out, he also proved that Ruth's husband would have died soon anyway -- ironically, his "brain was sodden with bootleg alcohol," which not only would have been lethal on its own, but also trashed Gray's testimony that Snyder came at him and he had to defend himself.  Snyder was so out of it, Gettler noted, that he "couldn't have even been propped upright to fight." 

from PBS online 

I first came across this book when one night, I couldn't sleep and decided to watch anything I could find remotely interesting at 2 a.m. and chose an American Experience episode with this title. I was hooked and then discovered that there was a book and that's all it took.  I enjoyed The Poisoner's Handbook -- one thing it did for me was that  it hit home that in some ways a lot has changed (and happily so) since that time but in others, a lot remains the same.  Today, like in the 1920s, many pro-business interests in government continue to represent the interests of corporations at the expense of the people who work in their industries; there are still people who for some reason I do not fathom continue to insist that science is wrong, undermining the work of skilled, brilliant people for some political or financial reasons.  One more thing -- this book takes more of a journalistic approach making it highly accessible to everyone, which is a good thing.  I have only one negative thing to say and that's that each chapter ends in some sort of anecdote which not only adds unnecessary fluff but gets tiresome after a while. A lot of readers might enjoy that, but I'm all about keeping the flow going so I didn't.  But that is just such a nit-picky kind of thing that really did not make my interest flag or prevent me from being absorbed in this book, and I highly recommend it, especially to people who are into historical true crime.  

A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, by Kathryn Harkup

9781472911308
Bloomsbury Sigma, 2015
320 pp

hardcover

A is For Arsenic is most definitely a niche read, but it's a  must-have for diehard Christie fans.  I count myself in that category, and so does the book's author, Kathryn Harkup:  she's  described on the back-cover blurb as a "chemist, author and Agatha Christie fanatic." She combines all of these attributes in this book which focuses on fourteen different poisons (arsenic through Veronal -- alpha by poison) used by Christie to kill off several of her victims in  her novels and short stories.

After a brief introduction in which we discover (among other things) that Agatha Christie was a trained  apothecary's assistant (dispenser) with an incredibly in-depth knowledge of poisons, Harkup wastes no time getting into the meat of this book.

Let's take the opening chapter, which happens to be "A is for Arsenic." Each entry follows pretty much the same pattern, so I'll just offer a brief look at the first.  The Christie title she associates with arsenic is Murder is Easy (aka Easy to Kill).   Harkup start with a short summary of the book (no spoilers)  then moves into "the arsenic story," which gives a bit of info about the history of this poison, "long the preserve of the rich and powerful." This particular part also goes into past crimes where arsenic was the poison of choice, as well as how scientists came up with tests designed to prove forensically that arsenic was used. From there it's "How Arsenic Kills,"  which gets into arsenic's chemistry, the symptoms one might show when poisoned with it, and the resulting consequences and effects on the body.  The next section asks "Is there an antidote?" followed by "Some real-life cases." [As a sidebar, I'll just mention that Harkup mentions one of my favorite cases here, that of Madeleine Smith, the Glasgow poisoner who got away with murder.]   Then we get move to  "Agatha and arsenic," where the author goes back to Murder is Easy, once again spoiler free.

As an added bonus, there's an entire appendix in the back, "Christie's Causes of Death," which is a table listing each story or novel written by Christie:  the UK title, the murder method of choice, followed by the American title.  Here's a sample (and I apologize for the blur -- photography just isn't my thing):

The only  drawback I can see with this book is that each chapter has a subsection about the science of the particular poison -- scientific jargon that I'll admit goes over my head at times. I'll also admit to skimming through many of these sections precisely because I am not by any means a science person. Ask me a question about religions, philosophy or history and I can talk your ear off, but science, well, to me it's often mystifying.   However, aside from that aspect, the book is one I'd highly recommend to anyone who is a true Christie devotee, and it's a very welcome addition to my quickly-growing collection of crime-fiction reference books.