The Lady in the Cellar: Murder, Scandal and Insanity in Victorian Bloomsbury

by Sinclair McKay

'Gripping, gothic and deeply poignant' Mail on Sunday

Standing four storeys tall in an elegant Bloomsbury terrace, number 4, Euston Square was a well-kept, respectable boarding house, whose tenants felt themselves to be on the rise in Victorian London. But beneath this genteel veneer lay a murderous darkness. For on 9th May 1879, the body of a former
resident, Matilda Hacker, was discovered by chance in the coal cellar. The ensuing investigation stripped bare the dark side of Victorian domesticity, revealing violence, sex and scandal, and became the first celebrity case of the early tabloids.

Someone must have had full knowledge of what had happened to Matilda Hacker. For someone in that house had killed her. So how could the murderer prove so elusive?

In this true story, Sinclair McKay meticulously evaluates the evidence and, through first-hand sources, giving a gripping account that sheds new light on a mystery that eluded Scotland Yard.

• ISBN13: 9781781317983
• Publish Date: 6 September 2018
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 18 January 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Aurum Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

This reads like a murder mystery, but unlike a murder mystery this one isn't solved at the end. There's a body under coals, badly decomposed. The house belongs to a family who take in boarders and this appears to be a boarder who has left. It has all the elements of a good mystery. Eccentric people, immigrants trying to make good, a maid that may or may not be the lover of several of the characters and was accused herself but she turned it around on almost everyone else and added some gothic spice to the mix. Fueled by popular newspapers this was a mess of a case from the start and it's still not clear who dunnit.
Interesting read.

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Lady in the Cellar is a new true-crime book from journalist & author Sinclair McKay. Released 30th Oct 2018 on Quarto's White Lion imprint, it's 320 pages and available in hardback and ebook formats.

This is a meticulously researched and written book. The narrative, as it is, it not fictionalized in any meaningful degree and is mostly written from historical records and court transcripts. It can be slow going and actually reads like a court transcript with a great deal of 'he said, she said, and do you recall'.

The biggest takeaway for me was in the descriptions of Victorian life and the living arrangements of otherwise relatively wealthy people in England at the time. The society was so rigid and set that people falling outside the 'norms' (i.e., wealthy unmarried women without close family supervision, girls/women who didn't conform to the life choices which were societally acceptable, some immigrants, etc) were often in complete free fall and vulnerable to exploitation and murder. The other really interesting aspect of this book for me came in learning more about the attitudes toward mental illness. The fact that several people who lived in the boarding house at the same time suffered from poor mental health to one degree or another which might have led to the murder and subsequent breakdowns of the people involved was handled deftly by the author.

The speculative conclusions offered seemed logical and even likely to me.

I found the book interesting but somewhat dry reading. It will likely appeal to lovers of true crime/court procedurals or die-hard fans of Victoriana.

Well done, four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.