The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale
An engrossing and scrupulously even-handed account of a crime that shocked Victorian London
“Early in the morning of Monday 8th July 1895, 13 year old Robert Coombes and his 12 year old brother Nattie set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday; the boys told neighbours their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next ten days Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes' house, a strange smell began to emanate from the building.”
I was a huge fan of Kate Summerscale's first book, The suspicions of Mr Whicher. This book is similar in that it recounts a scandalous crime that caught the imagination of the Victorian public (although in this book, there's little doubt as to who is responsible). It's a scrupulously even-handed recitation of the days after the murder, the uncovering of the crime, and trial. The book also follows the convicted through the years after the murder, and shows a tale of rehabilitation and eventual redemption. It ultimately highlights what the Buddhists would call 'the innate goodness in everyone'.
One of the pleasures of reading this book is its capacity to immerse readers in the late-Victorian period. Her research has been really thorough. In the epilogue, she mentions studying penny dreadfuls, the school board system, the London docks, pawnbroking, mental degeneration, cattle ships, the politics of East London, household budgets, child labour, the law on insanity, and child protections from prosecution, amongst other topics. The section that most interested me concerned conditions on Broadmoor – I was reading a lot about the history of psychiatry at the time, and what I read painted an overwhelmingly negative picture, so it was refreshing to read about the liberal and restorative regime that flourished in Broadmoor at the end of the nineteenth century.
Summerscale quotes judiciously from contemporary sources to show how the Victorians viewed the crime, and sets it within the context of wider debates about crime and poverty. Some of the attitudes discussed are jarring to modern ears, such as this commentator arguing for euthanasia for child criminals:
“We must all be conscious of a pang of regret that these boys are not to be hung. It would be well if we could choke all such moral abortions at birth, as we now choke physical ones, but since we cannot diagnose them at sight, it is surely wise, cheaper and kinder to dispose of them at once, when they do declare themselves, with no more excitement or doubt than the housemaid gives to the crushing of a beetle.”
What I read this week
I seem to have read quite a bit in the past few days. I've finished Alphabetical Diaries, and I'm still making up my mind what I thought about it. I'm actually just about to start re-reading it to decide.
I also finished Happy Medium, the romance I started a few days ago. Having said that I loved The Summer Girl by Elle Kennedy and that it was my favourite romance of the past few years, I would have to say that Happy Medium has supplanted it, it’s so funny and warm-hearted. I already have a review written for Instagram, so look out for that in the next week or so.
I started Beatrice's Fate by Camilla Galbiati, an author based in the west of Ireland. She's just self-published this historical romance, which I was attracted to because it's principally set in Bergamo and Venice, two places I love, and I also like to support indie authors. The first chapter or two was quite slow to start but I've been quickly drawn in. I think it might be the kind of novel that has rather too much action for my tastes, but we'll see.
I've been continuing my listen-along of Vilette. Like most Victorian novels, Vilette sometimes meanders into cul-de-sacs where the author rather forgets their characters and writes on a subject in which they're particularly interested, so I've just spent half an hour listening to Lucy Snowe detail the evils of Catholicism and the superiority of Protestantism. There is some relation to the plot – Lucy is growing closer to Paul Emmanuel, a Catholic, who is concerned about the state of her soul - but ten minutes would have more than sufficed to cover the topic, the remainder was in there because the subject was a pet interest of Charlotte (that is, if biographies of her are anything to judge by).
Finally, I started a few romance novel, What Happens in the Highlands by Kelsey McKnight. This is a fairly formulaic romance aimed squarely at the American market (the protagonist's best friend went on holiday to Scotland, met a Scotsman, had a whirlwind romance, and naturally, they're getting married in his castle). It was recommended by someone on Instagram, so I thought I would give it a go. I could actually see someone like Catherine Walshe making a really amusing tale out of this, but so far, I haven't really felt much of anything about it.
Have a lovely start to the week. I'll be back on Thursday this week with Swimming in the Dark, a great novel by Tomasz Jedrowski.