A Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) [Paperback]

Angus McLaren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1995 | ISBN-10: 0226560686 | ISBN-13: 978-0226560687

From 1877 to 1892, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered seven women, all prostitutes or patients seeking abortions, in England and North America. A Prescription for Murder begins with Angus McLaren's vividly detailed story of the killings. Using press reports and police dossiers, McLaren investigates the links between crime and respectability to reveal a remarkable range of Victorian sexual tensions and fears. McLaren explores how the roles of murderer and victim were created, and how similar tensions might contribute to the onslaught of serial killing in today's society.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This perspective study by a professor of history at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, is less a true-crime story than a sociological analysis. Cream, imprisoned for murder in the U.S., emigrated to England on his release and there fatally poisoned at least four prostitutes in 1891 and 1892 with strychnine, for which he was hanged. McLaren views Cream as partly a madman and partly a product of the culture of his day, a society in which independent women began to demand rights. Their rebellion changed attitudes toward abortion and prostitution, but above all increased feelings of misogyny. The book provides a searching look at a murderer, London society of the 1890s, the demimonde and the police. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Everyone is familiar with the case of Jack the Ripper, who, in 1888, gained notoriety (and legendary status) through his horrific murders. Why have we never heard of Dr. Cream, who only a few years later committed the same crimes, and many more of them? McLaren (history, Univ. of Victoria, British Columbia) offers a strictly factual rundown of Cream's use of strychnine on his patients, prostitutes, and possibly even his wife during a 16-year period. Our interest in the case is then developed and deepened by the second part of the book, in which McLaren investigates the societal backdrop against which the murders took place. McLaren outlines the position of women, and specifically prostitutes, at the time and gives an excellent chapter on illegal abortion that sheds light on what women endured to end pregnancies (some of Cream's victims came to him for abortion purposes). This is an excellent addition to academic and larger public collections.
- Linda Smith, Mobil Corp. Lib., Fairfax, Va.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 234 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (June 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226560686
• ISBN-13: 978-0226560687
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,030,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bad Medicine, July 4, 2000

By 

P A Brown (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) (Paperback)

Neill Cream, the doctor/serial killer was one of a number of Victorian medical murderers who flourished in 19th c. England. Feeding unwary prostitutues various poisons and then following their cases in the press, stirring up interest when the police failed to uncover the crimes, making near-confessions to other people are all now commonly recognized behavior patterns of sexual killers. Viewing this case in light of the recent science of criminal profiling, this book provides a most fascinating example of 20/20 hindsight. In late 19th c. England doctor-killers (among them Pritchard, Palmer etc), were seen as absolutely evil (especially after the unsolved Whitechapel horrors) and no attempt was made to understand the psychological quirks that led Cream et al. to the gallows (where he forever taunted crime buffs with with words "I am Jack..." as the trap fell). The study of killers such as Cream distanced by time and culture make them seem almost quaint, and certainly safe, compared with the grotesque sensationalism sexual predators attract today. With fewer graphic details, less scientifc jargon and the titalation of Victorian repression coloring the crimes, "Prescription for Murder" is an almost "cosy" true crime story. Admittedly, it is not over-burdened with an insistance on factual accuracy or with providing a throughtful historical framework, but it still a satisfying read for all true crime buffs. Especially those who like their thrills at a safe remove.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Victorian Attitudes Towards Women & Their Murder, February 15, 2010

By 

Jon Linden (Warren, N.J. United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) (Paperback)

Mr. McLaren's book is unique in its approach toward the analysis of the murders of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream and the reasons why serial murders of women, especially prostitutes occurred with a high frequency; committed by men who saw both prostitutes and women seeking abortion as less than full and productive members of society. His analysis of the murders of Dr. Cream is a virtual handbook explaining the phenomenon of the murders not only of Cream but also of such other notorious murderers such as "Jack the Ripper." While McLaren analyzes only the murders of Dr. Cream, he is able to postulate why such murders became so prevalent in the Victorian Era in London and other places in the world. His book is written in two parts:

1) The Crimes

2) The Context

McLaren seems to be the first person to analyze these murders and how they relate to societal attitudes. Others who wrote books on the murder of women occurring in this time period did little more than recount the horrific descriptions of the crimes. McLaren took a very sociological approach to the murder of these women and gives credible and comprehensible reasons for why such murders were easily accomplished; as well as why there were men who might be driven to enact these terrible person to person crimes.

In the first part of his book, McLaren describes the murders, the police, the suspects and finally the trial of Dr. Cream which resulted in his sentence of death by hanging. In the second part, McLaren covers such topical areas as prostitution, abortion, backmail, doctors, detectives, degenerates and the attitude towards women. What McLaren reveals in his careful study is that society was basically a male dominated social system. In the Victorian Era, women were not yet granted suffrage and were considered in many ways to be 2nd class citizens. In addition, men and especially doctors who controlled the attitudes and punishments for the society, looked upon women who might wish to engage in either prostitution or abortion as less than proper members of society.

McLaren found that many women of the period found that they could more easily work as prostitutes and be remunerated much more significantly as a prostitute than they could be as a factory worker or a secretary. For the most part, women who engaged in prostitution for a living did so without any interest or regard to the sex, but rather to the money. In the case of women seeking abortion, again the most common driving force behind the desire to terminate pregnancies was economic and not infanticide or cruelty. Most families were not able to support many more than 2 or 3 children. Birth control was new, expensive and proscribed by the Catholic Church and therefore preventive methods to control pregnancy were not often used and while women were inventive in the manner in which they tried to restrict unwanted pregnancies, the methods were crude and ineffective in comparison to the techniques available to women in the late 20th century and beyond.

Finally, because women were in essence discriminated against by men in Victorian society and other countries' social context, women who sought to obtain abortion or practice prostitution were considered less than human in many cases and their suffering or even murder was often thought to be a result of their crimes against God and therefore just punishment for their behavior.

McLaren writes a landmark study of women and these practices and why men would prey upon them with significant success. In addition, these societal attitudes may have been the cause for the serial murderer to be driven to commit the acts of brutality in the first place. Therefore, the prevalent feeling that these women deserved punishment for their actions allowed the serial killer to psychologically justify acts of murder against women who engaged in practices that were condemned on the surface, but which were utilized often by the same men who were speaking out against them.

The book is highly recommended to readers with interest in serial killings of the era and readers interested in the sociological perspective which by its very nature induced men to practice homicide against women who were engaged in practices that were so duplicitously condemned by men of the social era. The author does extremely careful research and even physical observation of the area of London where Dr. Cream's murders took place so as to integrate all available information into a theory explaining how so many of these homicides could have taken place. The book is a very serious study of the social mores of the times and the actions that people took in reaction to these sociological phenomena.

2 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I want my money back., March 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) (Paperback)

I thought a relatively exciting and thought provoking subject for good reading would be the Jack the Ripper murders. How could one take such a fascinating subject and make it boring? Angus McLaren must really have tried to structure his sentences so there was no cohesive thought, no sense of continuity from one paragraph to the next. Although it does serve admirably well as a sedative. At one point, I had to go look at the copyright date to see if this was written in the 19th century colloquial.