“I can’t teach you, but I can show you.” With these words, Kentucky balladeer Doc Hopkins shared his musical knowledge with a willing student, summoning an independent streak deeply embedded in the American character. His words capture the informal creativity and colloquial practice that marks folk tradition as it extends from the countryside to the city and back again.Stephen Wade recounts creators and conservators like Doc Hopkins, many of them born in the closing years of the ni...

Historical accounts of Englishwomen who have killed, their varying motives, and their final fates.Yorkshire history has its share of nasty and brutal murders, and the majority of these killers have been men. Statistics show that most homicides are men. But the records over the centuries have tales of murderous women too. Stephen Wade has investigated records across England to find stories of women from the mid-eighteenth century to mid-twentieth century who have ta...

The word 'murder' has always attracted widespread local and national media coverage. Once known, the story becomes the subject of discussion in a variety of places throughout the land. Some grisly tales become part of a culture that lives on for generations, whilst others, even by some of the worst serial killers, are soon forgotten. In this book experienced crime historian Stephen Wade has gathered together a collection of murders covering the entire twentieth century. Although famous in ...

A breathtaking history of Britain's executioners—from the seventeenth court of King Charles II to the UK's last official hangman of the twentieth century.In 1663, Jack Ketch delighted in his profession and gained notoriety not only because of those he executed—dukes and lords—but for how often he botched the job. Centuries later, in 1965, after nearly six hundred trips to the gallows, Albert Pierrepoint retired as Britain's longest-running executioner. Between them...

A captivating history of doing time throughout the centuries: from England's medieval dungeons to America's supermax detention facilities.The first prisons were castle hellholes, places of neglect, oblivion, and slow death. Every civilization has had its dissenters, deviants, and political offenders, and so prisons became essential to the retention of power. As the centuries passed, and prisons were needed for other reprobates—such as debtors and common thieves—leg...

From Oscar Wilde to the Kray brothers—a unique history of the lives and crimes of the United Kingdom's most famous, and infamous, inmates.Their names can chill the blood of true-crime aficionados: Peter Sutcliffe, aka The Yorkshire Ripper; child-torturer Ian Brady; cannibal Dennis Nilsen; serial killer Beverley Allitt. Some are tinged in glamour: beautiful nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis, hanged for a crime of passion. While others hold a bizarre fascination, like bar...

The disturbing, criminal history of Britain's "World Capital City of Pop"—home of murderers, thieves, bodysnatchers . . . and The Beatles.The city of Liverpool, England, was like every other city energized by the Victorian boon in industry and trade. It is best known today as the home of the British Invasion and music that changed the world. But Liverpool's history has a less harmonious side, and a dark past that reaches back centuries. True crime historian, Stephe...

The history and mythology of hangmen in Yorkshire—an account of crime and punishment in England from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century.From the eighteenth century, York was one of the places employing its own hangmen, copying London and Newgate, even to the use of the word Tyburn to define it's Knavesmire gallows, also known as the 'three-legged mare'. That was where highwayman Dick Turpin met his fate. Later, in the Victorian period, Armley Gaol in L...

The detective is a familiar figure in British history. This work looks at famous cases such as the Ripper murders and the beginnings of the Special Branch and Detective Branch of Scotland Yard. This history covers various aspects of crime history, including the career of Jim 'the Penman' Saward, a notorious forger, and more.

The history of the old county of Yorkshire has been concerned with the great and the good, the ambitious and the downright unscrupulous. Its broad acres has had more than its fair share of highprofile murders, especially though not exclusively in its burgeoning urban centres. Now there is a reference work to bring together most of the principal murders, from the mid-eighteenth century when Dick Turpin went to the York gallows, through to the end of hanging in 1964.In a time-span of two cen...

"Aspects of Huddersfield, the first in the highly successful Aspects series to feature Huddersfield and district, contains a wealth of pinpoint detail of the history of the town. The story of the coming of the ""wireless"" to Moorside Edge, which made Huddersfield the radio centre for Northern England, sits alongside the proceedings of the Manorial Court at the Manor of Honley in the 18th and 19th centuries. A fascinating collection of the Legends of the Colne Valley, sits easily with Earl...

Tracing Your Police Ancestors will help you locate and research officers who served in any of the police forces of England and Wales from the creation of the Metropolitan Police by Sir Robert Peel in 1829. Assuming that the reader has no prior knowledge of how or where to look for such information, Stephen Wade explains and describes the various archives and records and provides a discussion of other sources. Case studies are used to show how an individual officers career may be traced and...