A Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream

by Angus McLaren

Book Overview

From 1877 to 1892, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered seven women, all prostitutes or patients seeking abortions, in England and North America. A Prescription for Murder begins with Angus McLaren's vividly detailed story of the killings. Using press reports and police dossiers, McLaren investigates the links between crime and respectability to reveal a remarkable range of Victorian sexual tensions and fears. McLaren explores how the roles of murderer...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226560678
• ISBN13: 9780226560670
• Release Date: April 1993
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Victorian Attitudes Towards Women & Their Murder

Mr. McLaren's book is unique in its approach toward the analysis of the murders of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream and the reasons why serial murders of women, especially prostitutes occurred with a high frequency; committed by men who saw both prostitutes and women seeking abortion as less than full and productive members of society. His analysis of the murders of Dr. Cream is a virtual handbook explaining the phenomenon of the murders not only of Cream but also of such other notorious murderers such as "Jack the Ripper." While McLaren analyzes only the murders of Dr. Cream, he is able to postulate why such murders became so prevalent in the Victorian Era in London and other places in the world. His book is written in two parts: 1) The Crimes 2) The Context McLaren seems to be the first person to analyze these murders and how they relate to societal attitudes. Others who wrote books on the murder of women occurring in this time period did little more than recount the horrific descriptions of the crimes. McLaren took a very sociological approach to the murder of these women and gives credible and comprehensible reasons for why such murders were easily accomplished; as well as why there were men who might be driven to enact these terrible person to person crimes. In the first part of his book, McLaren describes the murders, the police, the suspects and finally the trial of Dr. Cream which resulted in his sentence of death by hanging. In the second part, McLaren covers such topical areas as prostitution, abortion, backmail, doctors, detectives, degenerates and the attitude towards women. What McLaren reveals in his careful study is that society was basically a male dominated social system. In the Victorian Era, women were not yet granted suffrage and were considered in many ways to be 2nd class citizens. In addition, men and especially doctors who controlled the attitudes and punishments for the society, looked upon women who might wish to engage in either prostitution or abortion as less than proper members of society. McLaren found that many women of the period found that they could more easily work as prostitutes and be remunerated much more significantly as a prostitute than they could be as a factory worker or a secretary. For the most part, women who engaged in prostitution for a living did so without any interest or regard to the sex, but rather to the money. In the case of women seeking abortion, again the most common driving force behind the desire to terminate pregnancies was economic and not infanticide or cruelty. Most families were not able to support many more than 2 or 3 children. Birth control was new, expensive and proscribed by the Catholic Church and therefore preventive methods to control pregnancy were not often used and while women were inventive in the manner in which they tried to restrict unwanted pregnancies, the methods were crude and ineffective in comparison to the techniques available to women in the late 20th