Murder at No. 4 Euston Square: The Mystery of the Lady in the Cellar

I had already read another of the author's books, and enjoyed it so I thought I'd give this one a go. I rather like the author's writing style, there is some humour to be found in some of his turns of phrase, even if the subject is grim. The author takes us back in time and paints a picture so real we feel we are there.Hannah Dobbs is the housemaid who sees all and knows all and ends up making money out of her time working as a maid in the household. She writes a 'pamphlet' which gets published for all to read and her revelations are shocking. Even I, a hardened reader of true crime, found some of it upsetting.As her allegations could not be proved, she was denounced as a fabricator of stories, which she may have been. However, she kept true to the tiniest details. Could her memory for the complicated sequence of events and the details of the horrors she said she witnessed, really have come totally from her imgagination? I'm really not so sure.Severin's lapse into mental failure may have been because of the traumas. Or maybe he was always a little odd. They say everyone has their dark side, don't they?

It was ok, found it overly long and also dragged a bit at times. I also thought the end quite disappointing. The books conclusion is a series of theories and conjecture on what remains an unsolved crime. I have read worse though!

Just finished this gory, sad, lustful, historic and somewhat still unsolved true Victorian murder mystery. BYE IT. It’s a great read 📚

Haven’t read it, I bought it as a present and the sleeve is tatty and doesn’t look as pristine as a new book should. Suspect it has been sent back and sent out again. Very disappointed with how it looks.

A great story well researched and written.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Great story, well told.

The most famous murder mystery of Victorian times is of Jack the Ripper, but The Lady in the Cellar is a true story that, even though there are not a string of deaths, is almost as lurid and interesting as the better-known Ripper story. The story is that a woman's body was discovered in a cellar in a respectable boarding-house in London, and the investigation into this -- one that revealed a seedy and rather astonishing underbelly to the veneer of Victorian politeness and reserve that we associate with the era.It's really interesting, and a great insight into both the people of the time, but also its journalism, and how the police worked without any of the modern techniques that we take for granted. Whilst with this sort of book one is never quite sure that the 'facts' presented are definitely what happened, it's a really interesting, well-written and vivid account that I'd say would be enjoyed by anybody interested in crime or the history of the era. What's most amazing is that events like this, which would be big news, are forgotten with the passage of time. It makes one realise that what we think of as being sensational and unforgettable crimes and events today will mean nothing to future generations.

This book does make for an interesting read although it may not be what you are expecting. The blurb for this says that the author, Sinclair McKay sheds new light on this mystery, known at the time as the Euston Square Murder, but does he really?We are thus transported back to 1879 when a decomposing body of a woman is found in the coal cellar of number 4, Euston Square (don’t take a trip to find it, as it is no longer there). The building was a boarding house in what was a respectable square at the time, and thus it was a surprise to come across a corpse buried amongst the coal. The author uses at times a slightly novelistic approach to make us think of how people may have reacted at certain times, and what they could have been thinking, but we are made clear that this is just supposition, and thus the story is based on the facts known.We thus read of trying to identify the body, and when that has been done of the arrest and trial of the prime suspect, and what happened from then on but I should point out that if you are a true crime aficionado this book may only just whet your appetite, however if you are more into the social history of the period, especially with a place such as London, then you will probably get more out of this book.Taking in crime, the effects of the Press and the problems of trying to solve a crime such as this without today’s modern plethora of techniques so we see how one person was committed, the effects that crime has on marriages and children, as well as the other long-term effects and damage that can occur. Of these themes of course people still suffer, but hopefully find more help and compassion than bygone times.We are reminded of the tactics of the Press, which to be honest were worse than the scandal that was caused this century, and reading this whole story you sort of come away with an impression that under the laws of today no one could really have had a fair trial due to the speculation in the media and the cooperation with the police in creating it. We also see here how what started off as a murder trial, in the long run became something else, and also the lack of any real evidence towards a person being found guilty of a crime. Indeed, the only crime that could have been proven was that a dead body had been removed and a failure to report it given, as there was no clear evidence of an actual murder taking place.In all then this does make for an interesting read, but I don’t see how it sheds new light on a mystery, that will likely always remain so. But at the end of the day, if there were no mysteries life would become pretty dull. A thank you has to go to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC.