Detection Most Ingenious -
a very british murder

In the second programme, the series moves forward in time to the Victorian Age as Lucy Worsley explores how science and detection had an influence on the popular culture of murder. This was the era when the Middle Class Poisoner emerged. There appeared both real and fictional detectives as new heroic figures in the battle against crime. Writers like Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins were fascinated by murder. And a whole genre of Sensation Fiction was consumed by readers of all classes. In popular fiction of this kind it was not unknown for a Lady Detective to be on the case. The late Victorian era then saw the strange co-incidence of Jack the Ripper terrorising London at the very same time that Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde introduced the idea of the serial killer to the British public. And for the first time the genius of Sherlock Holmes appeared in print.

Duration: 50 minutes and 49 seconds

Episode Number: 102

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About A Very British Murder:

Historian Lucy Worsley explores how British murders from the early 19th century became a stapleof an astonishing range of entertainments.

She explains how murders that both thrilled and terrified the public tell us about major cultural and social changes that were taking place in Britain.

She also explores how these crimes became popular forms of entertainment, inspiring everything from ballads, puppet shows, theatre melodramas, 'whodunnit' fiction and crime thrillers at the cinema.