BERKSHIRE MURDERS

Softcover. The author looks at a series of 'horrid crimes' which took place in the county over the previous 200yrs. They range from well documented 17th-century murders to 20th-century crimes which called upon the most sophisticated police procedures. There was the case of a sinister multiple murderess who posed as a foster mother and was responsible for the deaths of over a hundred children. What drove Annie Chamberlain to shoot her brother and then herself on a Newbury farm in 1891? And what was the real life murder story behind Oscar Wilde's 'Ballad of Reading Gaol'? Here too are the men behind the scenes, like bungling William Calcraft, Britain's longest serving executioner. And those who spent their lives fighting crime such as PC Thomas Shorter, murdered in 19th-century Hungerford. Illus. + Index. 128pp. trade size softcover. F. with no creasing to covers, appears unread.