Back to the Classics: Mystery & Crime

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018.

Classic Crimes - William Roughead

William Roughead (1870 – 1952, said “rockheed”) was a Scottish solicitor who attended and wrote about all the major trials in Scotland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His writing pioneered the genre we know now as true crime. A young Dorothy Sayers devoured his long journalism about murders and trials. Later in life she called Roughead "the best showman who ever stood before the door of the chamber of horrors."

The New York Review of Books collected a dozen pieces in this volume. Any serious student of the late Victorians or Edwardians, of the true crime genre, or gender or cultural studies should read this book. Most of the cases involved the ingredient that George Orwell said was necessary for a “good murder” -  respectability - the desire to gain a secure position in life.

Plus, the writing style is resolutely old-fashioned. This makes the vocabulary quaint but surprisingly agreeable and the jokes under-stated but comical.

From The Audlamont Mystery:

Perennially hard up, he was ever hankering after money, “and for money,” says his wife, “he was prepared to sacrifice everything.” In 1886 he took over the lease of a large place, Cheyney Court. No sooner had he insured this mansion against fire than it was burnt down. Such accidents will happen in the best regulated families.

From Dr. Pritchard Revisited:

…It was further supposed that, as she lay late reading, she fell asleep, and the curtains caught fire from the gas jet. No sign of the supposititious volume was seen among the debris, nor, more remarkably, could any trace be found of a certain article of jewelry for which Dr. Pritchard claimed compensation under his policy. So, as the Insurance Company refused to pay, the Doctor suffered both in pocket and repute, for not only was he held to have made a fraudulent claim, but there were those who whispered that the girl had been drugged, otherwise she must at the first touch of fire have tried to save herself. Accidents will happen in the best regulated families, and no one who thought they knew the respectable practitioner believed him capable of so dastardly a deed. Verily, urbane manners and an attaching smile are valuable assets.

Just wonderful. The deliberately awkward “lay late reading.” “Gas jet” an engaging period artifact. The difficult term “supposititious” links coherently to the previous “supposed” but sends us reading gluttons to the online OED anyway, not an easy thing for a writer to do. Lots of passive voices as intricate as “was he held to have made” but the agents are always clear. “At the first touch of fire” is satisfyingly macabre. The factual observation about accidents approaches byword status and its repetition makes the writing feel as familiar as an oft-read Holmes story. “So dastardly a deed” makes us wonder if Roughead is  teasing us. Then, another dry observation of a fact of urban life then and now and the uses of “verily” and of “attaching” in its rare if not archaic sense of “attractive, insinuating” persuade us, as a matter of truth, his tongue is firmly, indubitably, in cheek.

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