London: Aldine Publishing Co., [1890]

‘Penny dreadfuls’ like this one were cheap paperbacks with brightly coloured covers designed to attract an audience of working teenagers. The stories were short but action-packed and often violent: this crime story describes attacks with pistols, daggers, an axe, vitriol (strong sulphuric acid) and finally torture with hot irons – all in 32 pages!

In real life rather than fiction, the most common weapons used were those which happened to be within reach at the time. Stabbing with a knife, razor or other sharp instrument seems to have been one of the most usual murder methods, either in the home or in street fights. A Times newspaper report from 1883 describes how a prison warder was stabbed by an inmate with a knife taken from the prison workshop.

Bludgeoning to death with some form of blunt instrument also features frequently in nineteenth century newspaper reports. Eliza Tripp’s husband beat her over the head with the fire tongs (she grabbed a knife and fought back and survived), while a Mr Briggs was battered to death with his own walking stick by a stranger in a London first-class railway carriage. In another railway carriage murder, a Mr Gold was shot with a revolver, but murder by shooting was relatively uncommon, despite the development of the revolver which allowed the user to fire several shots without re-loading.

Poison was of course widely reported as a murder weapon but as the nineteenth century progressed, new legislation made it more difficult to obtain poisons. All the same, chemists sometimes failed to ask the proper questions of people buying poisons and to keep required records, enabling such unpleasant characters as one John Thomson to commit crimes; he murdered his girlfriend and attempted to murder two of his acquaintances by giving them prussic acid mixed with beer and whisky. As more chemical tests for poisons were established, it became more difficult to escape detection.

1890.8.388