Book of the Week - The Invention of Murder - Episode 4

By Judith Flanders. 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. "The Invention of Murder" explores the Victorian 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. As the century progressed, so did advances in medical knowledge and expert witnesses were soon playing a major part in criminal trials. This episode looks at the sensational case of Adelaide Bartlett, who was accused of murdering her husband with chloroform in 1886. Newspapers and magazines pored over lurid details of the Bartletts' marriage and the case was responsible for inspiring a rash of fiction. Read by Robert Glenister. Abridged by David Jackson Young. Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.