UBC: Summerscale, The Wicked Boy

[truepenny]

The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London by Kate Summerscale

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Like her previous book, The Suspicions of Mr WhicherThe Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective (which is excellent), this is a book about Victorian England, children, and murder. Specifically children who commit murder. Constance Kent (in TSoMrW) murdered her half-brother. Robert Coombes, the eponymous wicked boy, murdered his mother (with the clear connivance of his younger brother). Summerscale starts with the murder and traces Robert's life thereafter, from the trial to Broadmoor to Australia, and to an adulthood where he served honorably in WWI, took in a boy who had been savagely beaten by his stepfather, was an reclusive but valued member of his community, and basically lived an honorable and worthy life.

Summerscale points as best she can to the evidence of what caused Robert's horrible crime--and it was horrible, premeditated and vicious--the signs that his mother was abusive and erratic, that her sons were frightened of her, that Robert was under enough stress and sufficiently trapped (he tried to run away twice and was brought back both times) to cause him to dissociate from reality. In the week after the murder, while his mother's corpse lay on her bed, Robert seems to have been trying to recreate, in an ineffective and literally childish way, the circumstances of one of the penny-dreadfuls he read voraciously, in which boys, conveniently unfettered by the presence of parents, go out and have wonderful adventures. As Summerscale notes, it's hard to tell from the evidence of the trial whether Robert truly understood either what he had done or what the consequences might be. The judge refused to let the jury bring a lesser charge, so they did the only thing they could do to keep from sending a 13 year old to the gallows: they found him guilty but insane. And although they brought that verdict out of mercy, Summerscale suggests that it was actually also true.

Summerscale is an excellent writer and a scrupulous historian. Five stars.



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Comments

[sovay]

Summerscale starts with the murder and traces Robert's life thereafter, from the trial to Broadmoor to Australia, and to an adulthood where he served honorably in WWI, took in a boy who had been savagely beaten by his stepfather, was an reclusive but valued member of his community, and basically lived an honorable and worthy life.

That sounds like a good match to the book about Anton Woode.

[truepenny]

Yes, although Summerscale shows Kreck up pretty badly.

[sovay]

Yes, although Summerscale shows Kreck up pretty badly.

In the ways she writes about children who kill, or just generally as a writer and historian?

[truepenny]

Both.

Tho' to be fair Robert Coombes makes a much more interesting subject than Anton Woode. His crime (premeditated matricide) is more suggestive of true evil than Woode's (impulsive murder & robbery which wouldn't even have happened if Anton hadn't had a shotgun) and his resurrection is far more dramatic. Woode lived an uneventful mediocre bourgeois life, leaving essentially no trace of himself; Coombes was at Gallipoli, was actively admired by his neighbors, helped a child who desperately needed help. It's like the difference between The Murder of Helen Jewett and The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, better material infinitely better handled.