Murderous Derbyshire

This is a new paperback version for 2011. It includes absorbing real life accounts of nearly every reported murder that took place around Derby during the twentieth century. It features well-known cases and those which are lesser known but equally fascinating tales of jealousy, revenge and tragedy. The people whose stories are told in this volume all had one thing in common. All of them were accused of taking the life of at least one other person, faced a trial for that crime, and were sentenced to hang by the neck until they were dead. Some, such as John Silk, who beat his mother to death, Percy Atkin, who buried his wife alive, or Albert Burrows, who claimed four lives and threw the bodies down a disused mine shaft, did pay that ultimate penalty. All the others, with one exception, had their death sentences commuted to one of life imprisonment, the exception being Ernest Prince whose murder conviction was quashed on appeal and a manslaughter verdict substituted. The killers in this book have claimed the lives of spouses, parents, friends and strangers, for motives ranging from anger to jealousy, and old-fashioned greed. Read their stories for yourself and decide if those who died at the end of a rope all deserved that fate, and equally, if all those who escaped that terrible fate, should have done so.