{"title":"Virginia Mcconnell","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"arsenic-under-the-elms-book-virginia-mcconnell-9780275962975","title":"Arsenic Under the Elms","description":"A high-profile murder can function as a mirror of an era, and attorney and crime researcher Virginia McConnell provides a fascinating view of Connecticut in Victorian times, as glimpsed through the unrelated, but disturbingly similar murders of two young women near New Haven in the late 1800s. The colorful characters involved in the commission, investigation, and prosecution of these crimes emerge as real, vibrant individuals, and their stories, compelling in themselves, reveal much about Victorian sex and marriage, drugs from arsenic to aphrodisiacs, early forensic medicine, and 19th-century courtroom procedures.  Both victims in these sensational killings were young women from the New Haven area. The first, Mary Stannard, was a 22-year-old, unmarried mother who worked as a domestic and believed herself to be pregnant for a second time. The man accused of her murder, Reverend Herbert Hayden, was a married lay minister whose seduction of Mary was fairly common knowledge. Upon hearing from Mary of her pregnancy, he assured her he would obtain some quick medicine for an abortion and they agreed to meet in the woods. Mary's body was found clubbed and poisoned, her throat slit; chemical tests revealed she had been given 90 grains of arsenic. Hayden's wife perjured herself on the witness stand to protect him (subsequently becoming a darling of the press) and despite convincing forensic testimony from Yale professors, the minister ultimately went free.   Three years later, another woman of relatively low social stature was found floating face-down in Long Island Sound off West Haven. This strikingly pretty 20-year-old daughter of a cigar-maker came to be known as The Belle of New Haven, and though she had been seen frequently in the company of young people of questionable character, had never been a loose girl. The autopsy of Jennie Cramer revealed that she had not drowned, but had been savagely raped and poisoned with arsenic just before her death. Three people were put on trial for her murder: two scions of the wealthy Malley department store family, and their prostitute friend from New York. It was believed that the victim was killed to prevent her disclosure of the date rape by one of the young men, but they were likewise acquitted. Arsenic Under the Elms meticulously reviews the evidence, the personalities involved, and the society that produced them, resulting in a mesmerizing contribution to the literature of true crime.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346507436305,"sku":"CIN0275962970G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347684790545,"sku":"CIN0275962970A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52484765581585,"sku":"NLS9780275962975","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52815084355857,"sku":"CIN0275962970VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0275962970.jpg?v=1751457638"},{"product_id":"sympathy-for-the-devil-book-virginia-mcconnell-9780275970543","title":"Sympathy for the Devil","description":"On the day before Easter Sunday 1895, four women entered the Emmanuel Baptist Church in San Francisco's Mission District to decorate the altar with flowers. When they opened the door to the little room containing the library, they were greeted with a horrible sight: the stabbed and strangled body of 21-year-old Minnie Williams, her blood coating the floor and spattering the walls. A search of the church revealed another grisly discovery in the belfry: the decomposing body of another young woman, reported as missing ten days before. She, too, had been strangled. But unlike the victim in the library, Blanche Lamont was lovingly laid out as if for burial. Clues led the police to a friend of both victims, a medical student who was also the assistant superintendent of the church's Sunday school. But those who knew Theo Durrant denied that this highly respectable young man could have had anything to do with these horrible crimes.  The young man who committed these two apparently motiveless murders was depicted by the popular press at the time as a monster, a devil in disguise, only pretending to be religious. McConnell demonstrates that he was exactly what he seemed to be: a genuinely good man whose life went terribly wrong because of the biological, genetic, and mental problems from which he suffered -- problems he was not even aware of. Sympathy for the Devil examines the extensive and sensational press coverage of the case (criticized by the Governor and by the California Supreme Court), the effect of the murders on San Francisco, and also analyzes what turned an apparently upstanding young man into a vicious murderer.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50917382160657,"sku":"CIN027597054XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51382715941137,"sku":"GOR002800262","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51780392943889,"sku":"CIN027597054XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52670046830865,"sku":"NLS9780275970543","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/027597054X.jpg?v=1751985815"},{"product_id":"ready-set-tap-for-moms-book-virginia-mcconnell-9781470008147","title":"Ready Set Tap for Moms","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51252108460305,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51252110852369,"sku":"NIN9781470008147","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1470008149.jpg?v=1751306264"},{"product_id":"fatal-fortune-book-virginia-mcconnell-9780275984731","title":"Fatal Fortune","description":"Ultimately, Shepherd and his wife Julie were accused of killing not only Billy McClintock, but Billy's mother and a doctor friend of the family.  This case caused a major sensation in Jazz Age Chicago, a society fascinated with murder and mayhem.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52472203903249,"sku":"NLS9780275984731","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780275984731.jpg?v=1759837722"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-virginia-mcconnell.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}