Customer Reviews

On Murder (Oxford World's Classics)

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Robert Morrison's edition of de Quincey's various essays on murder is in keeping with the tradition of Oxford classics one of the best available - the text, as far as I can determine, is accurate and the footnotes informative. The major flaw is that Morrison, in his introductory materials as well as footnotes, consistently treats the guilt of John Williams in the Ratcliffe Highway murders and his "suicide" at Newgate as matters of proven fact. In their 1990 book "The Maul and the Pear Tree," the most recent historical look at the murders. P.D. James and T.A. Critchley make a strong case that Williams was in fact as much an innocent victim as those murdered and that his convenient "suicide" was a murder carried out by incompetent, corrupt local police (remember, this was well before the days of Scotland Yard) who were worried that if WIlliams got a chance in court to recuse the "confession" into which he had been bullied, public outrage over the murders would turn against them instead (James and Critchley suggest the real killer may have been "Long Billy" Amplas, a hulking merchant sailor of criminal habits and homicidal temper known to have been in the vicinity of both crimes, but admit that at this point the trail is too cold to be sure). Morrison was aware of "The Maul and the Peartree," since he quotes it in a footnote, but apparently ignored its carefully-reasoned conclusions, possibly because it would have been less compelling to present de Quincey's work while noting that it may have been based on a blatant miscarriage of justice.