Poisoned Britain: Arsenic, Teacups and the Domestic Murders That Changed British Crime (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798195439576)

The cup was already on the table.

In this atmospheric work of British true crime history, Poisoned Britain explores the real poisoning cases, arsenic murders and domestic crimes that shocked Victorian, Edwardian and modern Britain.

Murder did not always arrive with a knife in the dark. It arrived as tea, medicine, jam, chocolate, flypaper, morphine - or a dose that looked like care.

Poisoned Britain uncovers the domestic murders that changed British crime: servants accused from below stairs, wives judged by scandal, doctors trusted at the bedside, carers who turned dependence into opportunity, and ordinary households where illness hid something far darker.

From Eliza Fenning and Madeleine Smith to Dr Crippen, George Chapman, Mary Ann Cotton, Graham Young and Kenneth Barlow, these are not simple tales of monsters and victims. They are cases of trust, access, class, gender, Old Bailey trials, forensic uncertainty and the terrifying question at the heart of every poisoning:

Who was allowed close enough?

Atmospheric, precise and deeply unsettling, Poisoned Britain reveals how the most intimate crimes in British history were often hidden in the safest-looking places - the kitchen, the sickroom, the nursing home, the marriage bed, and the cup placed gently into someone's hand.