Book Review: "Scotland Yard: A Bloody History" by Simon Read

How do I explain this? I was bored and got a book on my phone again! This book, entitled Scotland Yard: A Bloody History, gives us a history of one of the most famed institutions in Britain in various crimes that are gruesome to say the least. But, from ignoring a letter concerning how to do fingerprinting some decades before fingerprinting would be a method to solving crimes all the way to crimes that were probably on par of that of Jack the Ripper in terms of horror - this book holds no punches. It gives us a fun, intriguing and yet, informative narrative about the birth of a police system which not only has its successes but also its drawbacks.

One of the most interesting things about this book is that there are various crimes that show us how the development of Scotland Yard happened. It goes through various grisly murders, for example (but not limited to): a rich man who was lying in a pool of his own blood in a bed, a watchmaker who was murdered but also hated and finally of course, various prostitutes turning up dead around England years before Whitechapel would be horrified by a monster stalking the night streets. About the case of the watchmaker though - I have to say that the more that turned up about the case the more strange it turned out to be. The man was discovered to be hated even by his own wife. His maid also disliked him. His neighbours didn't like him too much and on top of this, he had a violent temper to the point that his wife had requested police protection from this temper of his. Honestly, I couldn't feel sorry for him, but it was odd that there was a market for the watches.

There's another story about a man who runs off to America and guess what? The police in America actually find him. I'm not going to lie, for the time and place (England to America) it was pretty impressive that they didn't lose him. By this time, the police didn't necessarily have a good reputation, but it didn't have a bad one either. There is something really cool about that redemption from not being able to solve certain cases and losing out on the fingerprinting thing. Of course though, all of this - the good and the bad - leads to one of the only men in history to win against the police: Jack the Ripper. Simon Read makes an excellent analysis of the fact that these men were great at what they developed, but nonetheless, they were still human beings boxed up by technological advancements which were not moving nearly as quickly as the development of new types of crime.

Between the crimes and their developments, there's comments about the way in which the executioner would often botch a hanging by not measuring the rope correctly. This meant that more than often, the hangings could be quite gruesome and thus, the criminals in question would become martyrs, especially if they were doing their crimes for a more political cause. The gruesome hanging would therefore be the final nail in the coffin against Scotland Yard and thus, reigniting the fears of a police state mentioned earlier in the book.

Another topic covered in the book is teenagers who kill. The example given is a girl who was 15 years' old who went to work in houses as a nanny. Back in those days, character references weren't required and thus, a 15-year-old girl was often offered sympathy for not having enough, so were given jobs in the domestic space of a richer household. This teenager in question was tried for several murders of children and even the police noticed that wherever she was, a child would die in mysterious or dire circumstances. She was almost found out when she tried to strangle a child named Charlie and he shouted, causing his mother to walk into the room. On trial, our murderess would say very little and as the investigation went on, Scotland Yard could find little to no evidence of her murders.

Stagnated by the time and its constraints, Scotland Yard could only charge her for the attempted murder of one child. She would get a ten year suspended sentence. It really makes you wonder about whether she did do it and if Scotland Yard had more resources and the time was more advanced, she would have been sent to hang. Simon Read definitely tells the history of Scotland Yard with questions - like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces only fit together if you accept that some of them are going to have nothing on them and make no difference to the final picture.

Of course, we get all of the strange details regarding Jack the Ripper. I'm not going to go too much into this story because I think practically everyone has done it to death. What you do need to know though is all of those failings and successes over the course of the history of Scotland Yard up to this point will be relevant in coming to terms with why this case went the way it did.

All in all, there is plenty in this book to look at and analyse, even the idea that detectives themselves can turn out to be criminals. There's so many things I loved about this book and yet, Simon Read's writing is probably what makes it even better.