SIX VENTURES IN VILLAINY

Hardback. This collection of criminals has been selected from the robust days of George III, and comprises two ventures in kidnapping, two pursuits of lechery and two examples of the results of cupidity. The first group includes the case of an ex-member of Parliament who had his wife seized in the middle of Oxford Street and carried off to the Pennines; the second group provides an account of Lord Baltimore's alleged rape of a puritan millineress in his efforts to stock the harem he had built in his ancestral home at Epsom; the third tells of a carefully planned attempt at committing the perfect murder, a murder which, though it took place in 1805, might well supply the plot of a modern detective story. The author has researched into criminal records and 'contemporary' reports. He informs the reader of all the circumstances surrounding each case and sketches in all the principal protagonists before reconstructing the crimes, which in all too many cases, did not reap their true deserts. Featuring The Stock Exchange Fraud, 1814; Richard Patch, 1805; Major George Johnston, 1811; Andrew Stoney Bowes, 1786; The Earl of Kingston, 1797; Lord Baltimore, 1768. Illus. 227pp. 8vo. h/back. F. in Nr. F. dw.