Georgian London with Lucy Inglis

(this is the rescheduled event from the Wood Green Literary Festival)

Tuesday November 5th at 7.00pm

Lucy Inglis is a historian, writer and blogger, whose award winning blog "Georgian London" is the largest body of study on eighteenth century London freely available online.

Lucy's previously spoken at venues such as UCL, the Courtauld Institute, the Institute for Contemporary Arts and the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.  She's an engaging and lively speaker and considering the topic, we are in for a real treat.

Georgian London's Criminal Underbelly

In her presentation, Lucy looks at London's special relationship with crime and her criminals. Bow Lane Magistrates Court, presided over by blind John Fielding, was a free to the public theatre of felons. Some, like footman turned highwayman (and international tennis champion) John Parry had short, glittering careers like celebrities before coming to a knotty end at Tyburn. Others, like Elizabeth Brownrigg, a midwife and sadistic childkiller, were so despised her family had to change their names after her execution.

The murder of children had always had the city in uproar, not least when homeless Italian boy, Carlo Ferrari, who made a precarious living with his sideshow of white mice, was murdered by a pair of bodysnatchers who had decided to prey upon the living. The pair were caught, unlike the Ratcliff Highway Murderer of 1811. Although John Williams found guilty and buried upon his knees, impaled through the heart, it is unlikely he was the serial killer responsible for the seven murders, including the hacking to death of a three month old child in a crib, the brutality of which terrified the local population in a way that foreshadowed the coming of another East London 'ripper'.

Tickets for this are just £3 available HERE