William Roughead (1870–1952)

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"They say that even of a good thing you can have too much. But I doubt it...{T}o my mind, one cannot have too much of a good murder."

Roughead was a crime reporter in Edinburgh for many years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During that time he attended every criminal trial of significance in that city. This book includes his analysis of many of those trials, as well as of other earlier notorious crimes. The book is arranged in chapters, each devoted to a particular crime, roughly arranged in chronological order.

I found much of each narrative to be repetitive. For each of the major witnesses, Roughead reports, often verbatim, what the witness initially told investigators, what he said in later interviews (sometimes several), what he said to others, and what he said at trial. Very often there is only a little variation, as Roughead painstakingly analyzes and compares the similarities and differences of all the various witnesses. As an attorney, I understand that the specific words used by a witness, and all the nuances of various statements are important in establishing the credibility of or impeaching a witness. And perhaps in contemporaneous day-to-day reportage this type of detail was appropriate. However, in a compilation such as this, I would have preferred perhaps a little more amalgamation of the various statements and testimony, with the author briefly commenting on similarities and discrepancies, instead of reciting numerous statements word-for-word. This repetitiveness made it difficult for me to maintain my concentration on the book.

There are some very interesting facts included in the book. For example, I learned that trials used to proceed non-stop, 24 hours a day, until resolved. Some cases went on for days, which meant that basically no one would be paying attention for large portions of the trial. I was also disconcerted to learn that a defendant could be found guilty and sentenced to death on a jury verdict of 8--guilty, 7--not proven.

I also was much taken with Roughead's literary style. He uses formal Victorian/Edwardian language, and we are never quite sure when he is being intentionally humorous and pulling our leg, or when he is serious. For the most part, I think the humor was intentional and this kept me reading. For example:

"Although in her private capacity of friend and relative of the prisoners {the witness} had told extra-judicially everything she could against them.., she is said to have shrunk from the painful necessity of swearing to her story in the witness box. She therefore disappeared from the Ken of the Lord Advocate...."

or the delightfully understated:

"To poison a person in such a condition seems, to the lay mind, a superfluity of naughtiness."
and
"No sooner had he insured this mansion against fire than it was burnt down. Such accidents will happen in the best of families."

or one of my favorites, describing the two criminals who murdered, and sold the cadavers to a medical school for dissection:

"The firm of Burke and Hare--purveyors-extraordinary to Surgeon's Square, began business in earnest. During the nine months of their joint adventure they successfully carried through sixteen capital transactions. These at least were all that their natural modesty would allow them to claim, but there is reason to believe that they had other affairs to their credit. The firm kept no books...."… (more)

"One cannot have too much of a good murder", 25 April 2016

This review is from: Classic Crimes (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
Covering twelve major cases from Scotland and England in the 18th and 19th centuries, this is a brilliantly written book. As I started, I did wonder how a work on crimes - some of which are well-documented by other writers - was chosen as a New York Review Book. But the author's pithy turn of phrase and legal know-how add much to his accounts. Thus (in discussing alleged poisoner Madeleine Smith):
"It was through these rusty bars that the white hand of Madeleine was wont to proffer for the refreshment of her unpleasant wooer those midnight cups of cocoa or chocolate, of whose baneful effects he complained to his complaisant confidante, Miss Perry."
Other cases include Burke and Hare, Deacon Brodie, the Road Hill case (recently re-examined in "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher") and the Balham Mystery (also discussed in Elizabeth Jenkins' "Dr Gully"). There are innocents who were jailed through police bungling and undoubted killers who got away with it.
Fascinating read.… (more)

William Roughead was a Scottish lawyer who practiced at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century. But what really fascinated him was crime, especially murder, and especially the drama of the trials, and he became a connoisseur of Scottish murder trials, attending as many as he could and writing detailed descriptions of them for a series called Notable British Trials, as well as shorter but perhaps more literary versions, aimed at a more general audience, of ones that struck his fancy for one reason or another. This volume collects twelve of those tales, ranging from ones Roughead only read about because they happened before his time to ones he not only attended but in at least one case participated in.

In most of the stories, Roughead briefly describes the people involved in the crime and the crime itself, and its aftermath, and then devotes most of his time to how the case unfolded at the trial. What makes these stories much more than a legal tale is how Roughead tells them: he brings his "characters" to life, with insight into their personalities; he makes wonderful biting remarks that reveal pretension and stupidity; he is content to leave threads untied, as they are in real life but rarely in fictional mysteries; and his point of view is clearly though largely obliquely expressed, especially in the several cases that involve miscarriages of justice. The cases vary widely, and some are inevitably more interesting than others, but I found the book as a whole fascinating for what it revealed about life in earlier times, and how in some ways things never change. In particular, aside from the fact that people still murder for money or to get rid of their husbands or wives, I was fascinated by the way the news media of the day -- dozens and dozens of newspaper reporters, first without and then with photographers -- crowded the trials and relayed the proceedings to large and eager audiences. Sound familiar?

Roughead's writing style takes getting used to. It is old-fashioned, filled with words, and occasionally discursive and, as Luc Sante says in the introduction to the edition I read, Roughead "seldom fails to introduce a barrister without summarizing the now obscure highlights of his illustrious later career," but after a while I got into the rhythm of his prose and rather enjoyed it.… (more)