![]() ![]() One infamous scene involved a slit throat and a botched burglary. The other hot conversation topic was a critically mauled yet commercially popular book published the year before: William Harrison Ainsworth’s “Jack Sheppard,” a so-called “Newgate novel” that glamorized vice and made heroes of villains - in this case, a dastardly housebreaker. ![]() The crime became the talk of the town, gripping Londoners far and wide, high and low. If an unassuming minor aristocrat couldn’t sleep safely at night in the city’s most exclusive and well-protected neighborhood, then who could? These were fractious times in the capital in which the unemployed and disenfranchised were rallying to be heard. The murder and bungled robbery prompted a quote from the queen (“Too horrid!”) and generated panic. In the early hours of May 6, 1840, Lord William Russell was found dead in his bed at his London home, his throat so savagely cut that his head was almost severed. ![]()
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