Alfred Swaine Taylor and The Poisoned Chocolates Case
It might seem odd to think that Alfred Swaine Taylor, who died in 1880, could have anything to do with Anthony Berkeley’s 1929 novel The Poisoned Chocolat...
Category: History
Guest blog: The Mystery of the Sailor in the River
A guest blog for Wivenhoe’s History about a sailor who drowned in the River Colne in 1850. But all was not as it seemed. (A shorter version of this text w...
A trip to London
Having travelled to Rugeley and to Edinburgh in pursuit of Alfred Swaine Taylor for my book Fatal Evidence, it was time to go to London and Kent. He was born in...
A reading from Fatal Evidence
Alfred Swaine Taylor and the arsenic in the wallpaper
Real-life ecclesiastical sleuths: Reverend Cancellor & The Eastbourne Manslaughter
At depth of night, this thought on home had shone; ‘Our distant child draws safe his sleeping breath.’ E’en then the cherish’d boy, th’ expected son, Was dying ...
Real-life ecclesiastical sleuths: Reverend Wilkins & The Tragedy at Wix
Ecclesiastical sleuths are not unknown to crime fiction and drama – there’s Father Dowling, there’s G K Chesterton’s Father Brown, and J...