Fifty-five-year-old Lillian Wright lived in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England. Born in 1925, she had spent much of her adulthood in the town, a hub for the region’s fishing industry that was then grappling with economic shifts amid North Sea oil booms and declining trawler fleets. In 1980, Lillian was retired or semi-retired, her days filled with … More Lillian Wright
Gladesmore Community School, located on Prospect Place in Tottenham, North London, England, was a microcosm of the area’s diverse yet tense demographic landscape in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The school served a predominantly working-class neighborhood, home to large Caribbean, African, and growing Southeast Asian communities, including many Vietnamese families who had resettled in … More Arif Roberts
Fifty-six-year-old William “Bill” Murfitt had built a reputation as a hard-driving, modernizing farmer with a lively social life. He and his family had leased Quays Farm in Risby, Suffolk, England earlier in the decade and were well known in the Bury St. Edmunds area. On the morning of May 17th, 1938, Bill collapsed and died … More William “Bill” Murfitt
On June 30th, 1926, forty-three-year-old James White died in Acorn Wood, on the outskirts of Nottingham, England. Early press digests and later crime compendia preserve a brief but striking outline: White was found at the foot of a tree as if he had run into it—yet the medical opinion was that the collision wasn’t what … More James White
On the cold Monday night of February 4th, 1929, the quiet clifftop bungalow colony of Limeslade, above the Mumbles on Swansea Bay in Wales, was shattered by a scream. Minutes later, forty-three-year-old Kate Jackson lay outside her back door with devastating head injuries. Within six days she would be dead, and a century later her … More Kate Jackson: The Limeslade Mystery
Sidney Marston was born on May 24, 1911, in Kings Norton, a district within Birmingham’s sprawling metropolitan borough. Described as a thickset young man who could “look after himself,” he worked as a grocer’s assistant, embodying the unassuming working-class life of interwar Britain. Birmingham in 1932 was a booming industrial hub, fueled by factories and … More Sidney Marston
Sixty-one-year-old Albert Keen was a hardworking man of the land, serving as farm foreman at Rodsall Manor in Surrey, England under Sir Laurence and Lady Guillemard. He and his fifty-four-year-old wife Annie lived a modest, contented life in a remote cottage tucked away near the crossroads at Cutt Mill, a spot midway between their home … More Albert & Annie Keen: The Cutt Mill Murders
In the bleak winter of 1932, the quiet coastal town of Silloth in Cumbria, England, became the unlikely scene of a chilling mystery that has lingered for nearly a century. On January 8th, a local fisherman discovered the body of twenty-eight-year-old Nancy Patterson washed up on the shore, her dark clothing sodden and clinging to … More Nancy Patterson
Born in 1850 in the village of Broadstairs, Kent, England, Margery Wren was the younger daughter of house-painter William Wren and his wife Elizabeth. Alongside her sister Mary Jane, who was five years her senior, Margery fled the drudgery of rural life for the bustle of London, where she worked as a maidservant. Census records … More Margery Wren
Derby Road, a unassuming thoroughfare lined with modest homes and local businesses in the quiet village of Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, was the epicenter of community commerce. It was here, at number 10, that seventy-four-year-old Alfred Bowler ran his small shop, serving neighbors with everyday essentials. Bowler, a widower known for his hardworking nature, had built … More Alfred Bowler
Crime Immemorial 