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The case of the murderous Dr. Cream, the hunt for a Victorian era serial killer, Dean Jobb

eng

individual biography

no index present

non fiction

The case of the murderous Dr. Cream

Dean Jobb

the hunt for a Victorian era serial killer

'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 15 years, Dr Thomas Neill Cream poisoned at least ten people in the United States, Britain and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedents. Structured around Cream'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 Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help. Dean Jobb vividly recreates this largely forgotten historical account against the backdrop of the birth of modern policing and newly adopted forensic methods, though most police departments still scoffed at using science to solve crimes. But then most police departments could hardly imagine that serial killers existed - the term was unknown at the time

adult