The case of the murderous Dr. Cream : the hunt for a Victorian era serial killer / Dean Jobb.
Material type:
TextPublisher: Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Edition: First editionDescription: 416 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781616206895
- 1616206896
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
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Dr. James Carlson Library | NonFiction | 364.1523 J62 | Available | 33111010593255 | ||||
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Adult Book
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Main Library | NonFiction | 364.1523 J62 | Available | 33111010730972 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A true crime page-turner about a Victorian doctor, a serial killer ahead of his time, using poison for an international murder spree that kept ahead of the burgeoning field of forensics. "A tour de force of storytelling." --Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Chief Inspector Gamache series
Winner of the 2022 CrimeCon True Crime Book of the Year Award
Longlisted for the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Don't miss Dean Jobb's A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue, coming June 25, 2024!
"When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals," Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most baffling investigations. "He has nerve and he has knowledge." In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Largely forgotten today, this villain was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper.
Structured around the doctor's London murder trial in 1892, when he was finally brought to justice, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help.
Dean Jobb transports readers to the late nineteenth century as Scotland Yard traces Dr. Cream's life through Canada and Chicago and finally to London, where new investigative tools called forensics were just coming into use, even as most police departments still scoffed at using science to solve crimes. But then, most investigators could hardly imagine that serial killers existed--the term was unknown. As the Chicago Tribune wrote, Dr. Cream's crimes marked the emergence of a new breed of killer: one who operated without motive or remorse, who "murdered simply for the sake of murder." For fans of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City , all things Sherlock Holmes, or the podcast My Favorite Murder , The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream is an unforgettable true crime story from a master of the genre.
"Jobb's excellent storytelling makes the book a pleasure to read." -- The New York Times Book Review
Includes bibliographical references (pages 333-401) and index.
Prologue: ghosts -- "The first of criminals." "A great sin-stricken city" ; "Detective-fever" ; Ellen Donworth ; Matilda Clover ; "A human 'were-wolf'" -- The Lambeth poisoner. Louisa Harvey ; Blackmail ; "A bad man with no refinement" ; Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell ; Bitter medicine ; "A strange customer" ; The suspect ; "You have got the wrong man" -- The trusted hand. Jarvis of the yard ; "A young man of rare ability" ; "The animal spirits within" ; Flora Eliza Brooks ; Student no. 2016 ; A premature death ; The licentiate ; Catharine Hutchinson Gardner ; By some person unknown -- Inquest. Missing links ; Resurrection -- Crimes and punishment. Mary Anne Matilda Faulkner ; "Pure cream" ; Ellen Stack and Sarah Alice Montgomery ; A despicable scheme ; Daniel Stott ; "Crooked Cream" ; Inmate no. 4374 ; "As innocent as the child unborn" ; Chasing shadows -- "Jack the poisoner." "A systematic and deliberate course of action" ; "A murder so diabolical" ; "Insane in no legal sense" ; Dead man's walk ; "I am Jack" -- Epilogue: "an Elizabethan tragedy of horrors" -- Cast of characters.
"Framed around one salacious trial in 1891 London, a fascinating and vividly told true-crime narrative about the hunt for one of the first known serial killers, whose poisoning spree in the US, Canada, and England coincided with the birth of forensic science as well as the public's growing appetite for crime fiction such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels"-- Provided by publisher.
Framed around one salacious trial in 1891 London, Jobb provides a fascinating and vividly told true-crime narrative about the hunt for one of the first known serial killers. Dr. Thomas Neil Cream used poison on vulnerable and desperate women, many who had turned to him for medical help. Cream's poisoning spree in the US, Canada, and England coincided with the birth of forensic science as well as the public's growing appetite for crime fiction. -- adapted from jacket