Britain Crime

When one hears the term “Victorian”, many images come to mind. For some, the term conjures up visions of lace and gloves and delicate fans. Others think of tight corsets and even tighter morals. Others, swayed perhaps by one too many British costume dramas, envision gentle elegance and long-lost beauty. Naturally, few people think of multiple dead bodies cast about in the streets or dark bedrooms, most mutilated to a shocking degree, and yet, those tragic images played a significant role not only in late Victorian London, but ever since.

In 1888, between August and November, the women of London’s East End were terrorized by a deranged serial killer. A man was stalking the streets at night, seizing random women who worked those streets and killing them. This man mutilated his victim’s bodies after death, removing body parts and organs.

It's easy to imagine Harold Shipman doting on his little grandkids, reading them stories from his lap and letting them play with his big, bushy beard. If you were told he was a doctor, I bet you'd imagine he was a good, kind and gentle one, with an easy, affable manner and deep care for his patients. Harold Frederick Shipman certainly projected all those qualities, but only so that he could hide the evil that lurked deep inside. Shipman abused his trust and used his position to kill.

The bright lights and city bustle of East London make it hard to imagine that only a century ago, the inhabitants were gripped by terror - the infamous Whitechapel Murders - or reign of terror of Jack the Ripper...Step back in time to the 1880’s where the scene was a maze of dark, foggy alleyways and narrow cobbled streets lit only by a few flickering gas lights.

The 2010 Northumbria Police manhunt was the biggest ever police operation in Britain. It was conducted across Tyne and Wear and Northumberland with the objective of apprehending fugitive Raoul Moat, the former Newcastle nightclub bouncer who had just been released from Durham jail. After killing one person and wounding two others in a two-day shooting spree in July 2010, the 37-year-old went on the run for nearly a week. The manhunt concluded when Moat committed suicide, having shot himself in the town of Rothbury, Northumberland, following a six-hour standoff with armed police.

The UK’s Most Infamous Prisons is a chilling, unflinching journey into the darkest corners of Britain’s prison estate, where high walls conceal not only the nation’s most dangerous criminals, but its deepest institutional failures. From the fortress-like corridors of HMP Belmarsh, dubbed “Britain’s Guantanamo,” to the violence-scarred cells of HMP Strangeways, this book explores the most infamous prisons in the UK. Each chapter focuses on a different institution, uncovering not just their notorious inmates, serial killers, terrorists, gang lords, but the grim realities of life inside.