Book of the Week - The Invention of Murder - Episode 1

By Judith Flanders. "We are a trading community - a commercial people. Murder is, doubtless, a very shocking offence; nevertheless, as what is done is not to be undone, let us make our money out of it." Punch, 1842 Over the course of the nineteenth century, murder - in reality a rarity - became ubiquitous: transformed into novels, into broadsides and ballads, into theatre and melodrama. Seeing therein the foundation of modern notions of crime, "The Invention of Murder" explores this fascination with deadly violence by relating some of the century's most gripping and gruesome cases and the ways in which they were commercially exploited. The Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811 were particularly dreadful: two separate sets of killings in which seven people lost their lives. It was a case that shocked the nation - this was half as many people as had been murdered in the entire previous year throughout England and Wales - and forced the establishment to rethink the policing of major cities. Read by Robert Glenister. Abridged by David Jackson Young. Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.