A Treasury of Victorian Murder Compendium


By Rick Geary (NBM/Comics Lit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-704-1

Master cartoon criminologist Rick Geary has been sifting through humanity’s dark drives for years: researching and presenting a compelling cavalcade of corruption with his series of graphic novel/true-murder mystery reconstructions, each beguilingly combining a superlative talent for laconic prose, incisive observation and forensically detailed pictorial extrapolation with his formidable fascination for the darker aspects of human history.

Geary’s unblinking eye has of late been examining the last hundred years or so in his Treasury of XXth Century Murder series, but first began his graphic assignations with Mankind’s darker aspects in a delicious anthologised tome entitled A Treasury of Victorian Murder in 1987. Now that initial volume and three of the eight that succeeded it (Jack the Ripper from 1995, The Fatal Bullet from1999, and 2003’s The Beast of Chicago) have all been re-issued in a splendid morbidly monochrome deluxe hardback – because, after all, bloody murder is always a black and white affair…

Geary’s fascination with his subject is irresistibly infectious and his unique cartooning style a perfect medium to convey the starkly factual narrative in a memorable, mordant and undeniably enjoyable manner.

The basic premise is simple. The feel and folklore of Queen Victoria’s evocative era is irredeemably ingrained in the psyche of the contemporary world, and that first flourishing of social modernity invested crime and especially murder with a whole new style and morbid appeal to the general public. Each of the cases the author adapts was big news at a time when burgeoning technologies, rising literacy levels and crass populism first began to stoke the fires of an insatiable hunger for gory news. Moreover, many of the cases still resonate with today’s catalogue of atrocities and will stir familiar feelings in readers of a later century – especially the unsolved ones.

The eponymous first volume begins with a stunning background feature depicting ‘Celebrated Events of the Victorian Age’, ‘Illustrious Personages’, ‘Statesmen, Explorers and Innovators’, stars of ‘Literature and the Arts’ and naturally many of the most notorious ‘Murders and Murderesses’ before setting the scene and tone with compelling illustrations of ‘Picadilly Circus, London 1887’ and a dissertation on the Victorians’ obsession with death.

Following the text page ‘Introductory Remarks to the First Three Murders and Bibliography’ the still-unsolved case known as ‘The Ryan Mystery’ is diligently laid out, wherein a brother and sister were brutally slain in Lower Manhattan in 1873, after which ‘The Crimes of Dr. E.W. Pritchard’ outlines the deadly narcissism and fraudulent career and just deserts (the last man to be publicly executed in Scotland) of a very nasty physician who outraged sensibilities with a campaign of genteel slaughter in 1865 Glasgow, before concluding with an early fully-documented account of that now-common miscreant, the child-killer in the salutary tale of ‘The Abominable Mrs. Pearcy’, whose atrocities in Hampstead, Hertfordshire dumbfounded the Empire in 1890…

Geary chose a novel methodology for the next, book-length saga – presumably because the case has been the subject of so much investigation and bowdlerisation over the years.

Jack the Ripper – a Journal of the Whitechapel Murders 1888 -1889 is “compiled from the journals of an unknown British Gentleman… who closely followed the increasingly savage killings” and wittily narrates a day by day account of the horror that stalked Whitechapel and gripped the world as it became the first media-led, press-fed cause célèbre.

Following a comprehensive map of ‘Whitechapel and the Crimes of Jack the Ripper, 1888‘, Geary – producing some of the most moodily inspired art of his prodigious career – unravels, reworks and remixes all the myths, facts and exploitative stunts of assorted participants. Also included are some potential early murders missed by the police and possible copy-cat crimes from that frenzied period of London life, in a truly captivating take on the most famous murder-mystery in history.

With an Introduction and full Bibliography this graphic exposé is still one of most engaging of expeditions into the legend of Saucy Jack…

If the Ripper has moved far beyond the realm of cold, hard plain facts, the next tale is its very antithesis: a phenomenally well-documented and demystified political assassination that allows the wryly witty Geary to fully exploit his ironically charged talents…

The Fatal Bullet – a True Account of the Assassination, Lingering Pain, Death and Burial of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States begins with a simple comparison of ‘The Two Roads’ which led the politician and his killer Charles J. Guiteau to their respective fates, before ‘The Journey Home’ begins the sorry tale with the interment of the nation’s lost leader.

From there the story harks back and simultaneously examines both participants’ oddly ‘Parallel Lives’, tracing their different responses to their nation’s call during the War Between the States whilst in ‘A Deadly Campaign’ as Garfield is literally called by duty to public office, his increasingly delusion stalker Guiteau insinuates himself into the politician’s orbit before at last shooting the great man on Saturday, July 2nd 1881.

‘The Long Summer’ then describes the nightmarishly bizarre and appallingly prolonged death throes of the President – including many of the positively baroque remedies and solutions prescribed by a phalanx of eminent physicians and inventors, all desperately seeking to find and extract the shell lost somewhere in the fallen leader’s body…

When Garfield finally passed on September 9th all that was left was the trial of his clearly deranged killer, as remarkably recorded in ‘Conclusion: At the Bar of Justice’…

This stunning compilation then concludes with a genuinely terrifying tale of modern murder with The Beast of Chicago – an Account of the Life and Crimes of Herman W. Mudgett, known to the world as H.H. Holmes, H.M. Howard, D.T. Pratt, Harry Gordon, J.A. Judson, Edward Hatch, A.C. Hayes et al. – a jolly catalogue of criminality and carnage describing the astounding killing career of a bogus doctor and mesmerising psychopath whose official body count was twenty-seven souls, but may well have topped two hundred.

Attributed as America’s first documented serial killer, Mudgett/Holmes seemingly did it all first: a serial bigamist and conman, he hunted and slaughtered for fun and profit, lured victims to a purpose-built killing ground in the placid heart of a quiet suburb, seduced women, abducted children, corrupted and controlled entire families – making them his accomplices and even proxy killers – and, when finally caught, cultivated notoriety with an aplomb that guaranteed him a place in history…

His worst recorded atrocities took place during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition; a vast trade fair in Chicago where he had constructed a unique hotel and guest house dubbed “The Holmes Castle”…

Following maps of the sites, floor plans of his Castle and the 1894 escape route that revealed ‘The Desperate Journey of H.H. Holmes’, Geary treats us to a elucidatory Prologue ‘This is Chicago!’ to set the stage , before beginning the horrific tale of woe in ‘Dr. Holmes Comes to Town’ wherein the dapper, personable medical charlatan and insurance fraudster’s early life is disclosed before he inveigles himself into a position of respectability in suburban Englewood and commences to build his dream palace…

‘The Castle’ was an incredible, insane machine designed to lure in travellers and generate missing persons, and although its unique amenities were never fully understood or its death toll confirmed, Holmes’ secondary business – selling display skeletons to medical institutions – did extremely well in the four years that it was open for business, after which time Holmes took his incredible seduction and slaughter show on the road, or rather rails, during ‘The Desperate Journey’.

With events and disappearances spiralling, Holmes made a rare mistake and was briefly imprisoned for fraud. Unable to help himself, he then cheated his cellmate – a professional train-robber – who exacted vengeance by telling the authorities the truth about his boastful bunk mate…

With only a hint of the true extent of the bogus doctor’s crimes disclosed in ‘The Castle Revealed’, Holmes remained ‘The Prisoner’ for the rest of his short life, but even incarcerated with every day bringing fresh revelations of his horrific crimes, the first American Psycho succeeded in taking hold of his story and skilfully manipulating his own legend and myth…

As ever, Geary presents facts and theories with chilling pictorial precision, captivating clarity and devastating wit, and this still broadly unresolved mystery is every bit as compelling as his other homicidal forays: a perfect example of how graphic narrative can be so much more than simple fantasy entertainment.

With the inclusion of highly informative pictorial background essays and maps throughout, this big book of death is a sublimely readable successor to that era’s “Penny-Dreadfuls”: a startling yet accessible read that will engross fans of graphic narrative and similarly entice followers of True Crime thrillers. This merrily morbid murder masterpiece should be mandatory reading for all comic lovers, mystery-addicts and crime-collectors.
© 1987-2003, 2012 Rick Geary. All Rights Reserved.