WHERE MURDER LIVES: posted March 6
Over the last month I've been researching the string of infamous murders committed between Crippen in 1910 and Christie in 1953 in preparation for the talk I gave at the launch of the new book - Death Watch - in Ely on March 4. In 1946 George Orwell wrote an essay which tried to encapsulate the appeal of such cases - and tried to analyse the reasons for an apparent change in the style of murder as the decades passed. In The Decline of the English Murder he pointed out that in many of these crimes - which include The Brides in the Bath, Seddon, Smith, and the Voisin Case - the key elements which seemed to excite the public where sex, money, class, and the fact that these were often domestic killings. The Christie case, although post-dating Orwell's essay - seemed to be a throw-back to this rather sordid 'Golden Age'. The News of the World led the market in covering these crimes, and a leisurely Sunday afternoon read was one of the illicit pleasures of the pre-War years. I was interested in looking at the houses where these crimes took place, becuase I was trying to explain why I'd chosen to set Death Watch in a working class terrace street in King's Lynn. An oddity became apparent. In the two cases I dug down into - Crippen and Christie - the scene of crime turned out to be an end of terrace house. I wanted to include a modern case and lit upon the Cromwell Street killings of Fred and Rosemary West. Again - an end of terrace. Coincidence ? Or could there be some psychological reason for the killer's choice of house ? I think that both Crippen and Christie rented their homes - so they had a choice. Did they, perhaps subconsciously, decide to go for the one house in such streets where you only have neighbours on one side ? The house in Rillington Place is most certainly a lonely outpost - up against a dividing wall to the railway. (See picture). My audience at the launch of Death Watch found the idea amusing, but perhaps not too persausive. But it might just make me think a little the next time I find myself approaching the front door of an end of terrace house.