Kate Summerscale Meet the Author


Kate Summerscale

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Kate Summerscale is at home with crime.

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The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher unravelled a true Victorian

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mystery with meticulous and atmospheric relish,

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and in The Wicked Boy, she's back on that same fertile ground,

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on the trail of a terrible murder in the East End of London.

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It was matricide.

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The story takes us from the East End to the Old Bailey to the dark

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confinement of Broadmoor, and eventually to the colonies.

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The story ends in Australia.

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It's a dark and violent story, but one that has heroism

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and redemption at its heart, too.

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Welcome.

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Tell us how you came across the story.

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What led you on the trail into this very dark mystery or happening?

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I came across the story in an old newspaper.

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There was a report of these two boys, aged 12 and 13,

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who had been found living in a house in east London with the corpse

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of their murdered mother.

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And one of the boys immediately confessed to having committed

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the crime, and both were arrested and charged with murder.

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What is interesting is you were able to discover quite a lot

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about the story relatively easily, and begin to piece it together.

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The newspaper coverage at that time, 1895, was really fantastic,

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so in the local press, the East London press

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but also the national press, this story was covered in detail

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with a lot of colour, and with images, courtroom sketches

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of the boys, pictures of the house.

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Those were the days!

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You wouldn't get it now.

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No.

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So there was instantly, as soon as I had decided to look

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into the story and started researching, a lot of detail

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about the events of that summer, and the trial of the brothers.

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When people come to read the book, the account of the trial is,

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apart from being dramatic as all these things

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are because the stakes are so high, really quite shocking.

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Robert Coombes, the older of the two brothers, the 13-year-old,

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his lawyers were pleading that he was insane at the time

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of the crime, and the judge was really having none of it,

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and tried very hard to steer the jury towards

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a straightforward guilty verdict.

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But one way and another, they resisted, so for as much

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as the judge was a stereotype of the harsh Victorian morality,

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the jury showed something different, which was a capacity for mercy.

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One of the things that emerges in the public

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debate that was reflected in all the newspaper coverage that

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you spoke of was the influence of the so-called Penny Dreadful,

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the supposed influence.

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These rather shocking adventure stories, as many people

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thought they were.

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Tell us how big their influence was at that time,

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and what the debate around them was.

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As soon as the boys were arrested, the police collected evidence

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from the house, and among the evidence they collected

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was a pile of Penny Dreadfuls, sensational comic story books

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for boys, and the inquest jury seized on this,

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because it was a huge moral panic at the time,

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the effect of the Penny Dreadfuls on the youth of Britain.

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Rather like the video game today, people said, they watch these things

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and they go out and do the same thing.

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Just so.

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They were modelling their behaviour on the criminals and the violence

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that they found in these books, that was the assumption.

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What are your reflections, having looked at the case of these

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boys who were ending up at the Old Bailey,

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off to Broadmoor?

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It is a terrible story of cataclysmic

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disruption to their lives.

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Morally, do you think they were treated in a way

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that we would now approve of?

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Was it fair?

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I think it was very strange to try children at that age,

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and they were considered children even by Victorian standards,

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and the older boy, even, had only just left school,

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the younger boy was still at school.

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Very strange to try them as if they were adults,

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but of course we still do now, and in fact, I was surprised

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by the fact that the jury showed a certain tenderness

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and pity towards the...

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It is an interesting aspect of the story, isn't it?

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They didn't behave according to type as it is often presented.

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No, and within my own lifetime I have been aware of the public

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reacting to juvenile, horrific juvenile crimes, murders,

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with a lot more rage and loathing towards the perpetrators

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than was certainly the case with the jury in this,

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so in that sense, there was a certain merciful,

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forgiving aspect to it, and also, in what actually

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went on at Broadmoor.

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You would think a 13-year-old boy being sent to Broadmoor,

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and he was by some stretch the youngest patient there,

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would be a thing of horror, but in fact he was treated

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with extreme kindness, as were most of the inmates there.

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One of the things you have done in the book is to paint a very vivid

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picture of the world of London, East London

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particularly at the time.

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This was the London of Sherlock Holmes, it was the London

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of Jack the Ripper.

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To try to understand why these boys committed the crime,

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I need to understand exactly what their days were like,

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what they were surrounded by, what their ideas about having fun

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were, or what their futures were going to be like.

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The story also has a pleasing element of redemption

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at the end, or recovery, I suppose you could call it,

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when he goes to Australia.

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I had been gripped by the story at first, a mixture of horror

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at what he and his brother had done, but also a sense of pity

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for what they had done to themselves as well as to their mother,

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and mystification about why, and what could possibly become of them.

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It was rather wonderful to discover that he was discharged at the age

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of 30 after 17 years in Broadmoor, and was able to serve

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in the First World War, to distinguish himself as a soldier.

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With acts of kindness?

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With acts of kindness.

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He was a stretcher bearer at Gallipoli, so although he served

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nobly, he didn't fight.

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He had non-combat roles, as a stretcher bearer and also

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as a band leader.

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You clearly find it frankly exciting to discover a letter

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in the National Archives at Kew or, as you did, to talk in Australia

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to someone who had actually shaken hands and actually much more that,

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shaken hands with one of the boys.

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Once the book had been commissioned, I had no idea that there was this

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sort of final act to the boy's life, and that there was a person,

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I discovered, still living, who had known him, to whom he,

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the boy who had killed his mother, had done good to this man

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still living, had really changed his life.

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But the living person did not know about the crime in the boy's

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childhood, and so I was confronted with this situation where the past

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that I was researching had come hurtling into the present,

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and had the capacity to affect lives now.

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Kate Summerscale, thank you very much.

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Thanks.

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Good

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