MURDER & CRIME: DEVON

Softcover, 1st edn. With its beautiful coastline and mild climate, Devon is well known as a tourist destination, but its many historic towns and windswept cliffs have darker and more sinister stories to tell. These tales from Devon's past reveal the county's connections with world-famous crime and murder cases. Within these pages are accounts of Robert James Lees, the Ilfracombe spiritualist who claimed to have unmasked Jack the Ripper; Charles De Ville Wells, the Plymouth-based fraudster who famously broke the bank at Monte Carlo; Herbert Rowse Armstrong, the former Newton Abbot solicitor who remains the only member of his profession to be executed for murder; Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire's son who was assassinated in Dublin; Oscar Wilde, whose downfall was initiated by an incriminating letter sent from Babbacombe; and Robert Hichens, the helmsman of the 'Titanic' who later in life was jailed for attempted murder in Toquay. The author links all the stories to the extraordinary life and crimes of John 'Babbacombe' Lee who, having served life imprisonment after escaping the death penalty at Exeter Prison, was paroled a century ago and immediately sold his amazing story 'The Man They Could Not Hang'. Profusely illus. + Bibliog. and Sources. 95pp. 8vo softcover. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. with no creasing to covers.