Jack the Ripper and Abraham Lincoln By Tony McMahon – Troubador: publisher – out on May 28, 2024 Order your copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Ripper-Abraham-Lincoln-greatest/dp/1805143646/ Astonishing new evidence reveals that a man suspected of being Jack the Ripper in 1888 was also implicated as a plotter involved in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. A…
Werewolves and London go together like… Well, they certainly get matched quite often, most famously in the 1981 movie, An American Werewolf in London. As the video below explains, with myself as your host, London has been a recurring venue for our lupine friends. What is a werewolf? What are the origins of the Werewolf…
In 1820, a group of English radical activists plotted to kill the entire British government while they were sat down to dinner in central London. The Cato Street Conspiracy – so-called from the place where they met to plot – was uncovered and the ringleaders executed in a public and grisly manner. One of those…
Beneath what is now the London School of Economics lies the remains of a “molly house” – a gay bar basically – once located in the long demolished warren of streets that made up Clare Market. The White Swan pub was on the corner of Vere Street, which you can no longer find. This drinking…
The death of Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe remains a mystery – was he murdered or was his death faked? Tony McMahon investigates
This is a curious and terrible story I heard about years ago and found again in an old book on London history dating from the 1870s in my library. The story goes that when King Edward I of England expelled all the Jewish people from his kingdom, one ship captain deliberately murdered a group of…
Tony McMahon looks at movies about London ranging from Alfred Hitchcock to Stanley Kubrick and the Ealing Comedies for the 1940s and 1950s
Elizabeth Brownrigg was a brutal eighteenth century murderer with a violent streak who tortured her female charges, eventually killing one of them. But she came to grisly end herself. Elizabeth was married to James Brownrigg, a plumber who moved with his wife in to Flower-de-Luce Court off Fleet Street. It was the year 1765 and…
In a seventy year old guide to Soho in my London book collection, there’s a chapter titled: Wide Boys, Spivs, Dippers and Steamers. It details the murky criminal underbelly of London’s entertainment district. Because mid-twentieth century Soho was a dangerous place. But also exciting. As the book puts it: One has only to take a short…
