The wicked boy : the mystery of a Victorian child murderer / Kate Summerscale.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book!

From the internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London

In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey.

Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy.

At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The narrative of Robert Coombes, a 13- year-old who killed his mother in 1895, offers a fascinating glimpse into Victorian and post-Victorian life in England and Australia. School systems, sporting events, news coverage, the penal system, and the Victorians' appetite for sensationalism are all revealed in the early segments of this story. Summer-scale thoroughly researched news accounts, court records, institutional histories, and military data of the day. Coombes was tried for his mother's murder and sentenced to detention in the Broadmoor asylum, the same institution that concurrently housed Dr. W.C. Minor, one of the major contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary. Coombes thrived at Broadmoor, a surprisingly humane institution, and when he was older, he was declared to have been cured and released. He immigrated to Australia, distinguished himself during combat in World War I, and lived out a quiet life Down Under. Connie James's British accent helps immerse the listener in the setting. Verdict Victorian England unfolds realistically in this gruesome tale of matricide. Though the driving force behind the work is a search for Coombes's motivation, listeners will also learn a great deal about society at the turn of the 20th century. ["For true crime readers, history buffs, and fans of the grittier side of Victorian life": LJ 6/1/16 review of the Penguin hc.]-Ann Weber, Los Gatos, CA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Summerscale (The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher) bolsters her reputation as a superior historical true crime writer with this moving account of Victorian-age murder that is a whydunit rather than a whodunit. In East London during the summer of 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes and his younger brother, Nattie, attended a heralded cricket match on their own, telling neighbors that their mother was in Liverpool visiting family. In fact, Emily Coombes was already lying dead in her bed behind a closed door, having been fatally stabbed by Robert. Horrifically, her corpse remained undetected for well over a week while the brothers acted as if nothing were amiss. Upon arrest, Robert claimed he acted after his mother had beaten Nattie, and before she could do the same to him. The resulting trial focused on the question of Robert's mental state, whether he was really the wicked boy of the book's title, and how the penny dreadfuls he was so fond of may have warped his mind. Summerscale's dogged research yields a tragedy that reads like a Dickens novel, including the remarkable payoff at the end. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Book Review

An investigation of a late-19th-century crime in which a 13-year-old boy murdered his mother.In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes stabbed his mother, and he and his brother, 12-year-old Nattie, stole her money and took off to watch the local cricket match. Their father was a ship's steward, kind and caring but often absent. Leaving their mother's body upstairs in her bed, the boys enlisted the aid of John Fox, a fellow from the docks who had done odd jobs for their parents. With a look at late-19th-century social mores, the availability and quality of education, and the poor state of psychological help, former Daily Telegraph literary editor Summerscale (Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady, 2012, etc.) exposes how the young killer's mind worked. Robert, an excellent student, was a voracious reader of the penny dreadfuls, adventure books aimed at the young. He was eccentric, morbid, prone to terrible headaches and periods of withdrawal, and obsessed with ghastly murderers. His mother comes off as a harridan: she often beat the boys, including once for stealing food (she often didn't feed them), and she even threw knives at Nattie, who seems to have been oblivious to the direness of the facts but followed Robert without questions. After two weeks, the body was discovered in an advanced state of decay. The trial process was quick and fair, and Robert was remanded to the notorious insane asylum Broadmoor, where he was put in the gentlemen's wing. The author explains the surprisingly kind treatment there, and she follows Robert's transfer to a Salvation Army colony and move to Australia, where he finally found the adventures he had dreamed about. This well-written story is not so much a true-crime tale or murder mystery as an excellent sociological study of turn-of-the-20th-century England. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Kate Summerscale, formerly the literary editor of the Daily Telegraph , is the author of The Queen of Whale Cay , which won a Somerset Maugham Award and was short-listed for the Whitbread Biography Prize. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher was a #1 bestseller in the UK, has been translated into more than a dozen languages, was short-listed for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, and won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the British Book Awards Book of the Year. Summerscale lives in London.