{"id":8294,"date":"2019-12-11T07:15:31","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T12:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8294"},"modified":"2019-12-11T07:15:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T12:15:31","slug":"the-murder-of-harriet-monckton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8294","title":{"rendered":"*****The Murder of Harriet Monckton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"poison,<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Elizabeth Haynes \u2013 If you have people on your holiday\ngift list who are fans of historical mysteries, this might be just the book for\nthem! Author Elizabeth Haynes stumbled across a trove of documents in the UK\u2019s\nNational Archives relating to an obscure mid-1840s murder in the (then) small\ntown of Bromley, a few miles southeast of London. The coroner\u2019s jury verdict\nwas delayed several years because of the case\u2019s numerous uncertainties and the\nplethora of suspects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haynes uses those uncertainties to create a fictional story\nthat begins from the certain knowledge that on 6 November 1843, Harriet\nMonckton took or was administered poison, died, and her body stowed in the\nprivy behind the Congregational Chapel. When the next day she\u2019s noted as\nmissing, a search ensues. Even before her body is found, multiple efforts are\nunder way to mislead, mischaracterize, and otherwise frustrate any inquiries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story is imagined from the points of view of several\nreal-life people, chief among them: Harriet\u2019s friend, the schoolteacher Frances\nWilliams; Reverend George Verrall, her confidant; Thomas Churcher, a shoemaker\nin love with her; and Richard Field, Harriet\u2019s former mentor and lover, now\nmarried and living in London. Verrall and Churcher are the more obvious\nsuspects, though if a wider net were cast, Williams and Field or even Field\u2019s\nwife and Churcher\u2019s ex-fianc\u00e9e might be suspected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of these characters provides an account of their\nassociation with Harriet\u2014both in response to the coroner\u2019s questioning and in\ntheir private thoughts. It\u2019s a Rashomon-like treatment, with each not only\nseeing the sketchy facts in different ways, but recounting them to their best\nadvantage. Haynes gives each a distinct voice and point of view, not all\nadmirable. Her slightly old-fashioned writing style helps transport you to the\nera. All of their views, however revelatory, are one step removed from Harriet\nherself, but you finally do hear from her directly when Frances reads her diary.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haynes\u2019s Bromley is completely convincing, as are the reactions\nof the residents as one secret after another is revealed and as some secrets\nmanage to remain hidden. As the author says, \u201cThe impact on my life has been\nprofound, to the extent that I feel as if I have inhabited Bromley in 1843\nmyself.\u201d I felt it too. Even though the book\u2019s events took place a long time\nago, the tension was fresh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harriet is a character who isn\u2019t so much described as assembled. Like the build-up of daubs of paint that produce a portrait, Haynes\u2019s text-clues allow you, eventually, to see the dead woman, with all her flaws and vibrancy, as she was in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Arek Socha for Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Elizabeth Haynes \u2013 If you have people on your holiday gift list who are fans of historical mysteries, this might be just the book for them! Author Elizabeth Haynes stumbled across a trove of documents in the UK\u2019s National … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****The Murder of Harriet Monckton - a historical mystery story based on a real-life case from 1843 England. Lots of motives, not many clues.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1335,52,366,40,266,3,126],"tags":[1671,1672],"class_list":["post-8294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-crime","category-drama","category-fiction","category-history","category-mystery","category-reading-2","tag-elizabeth-haynes","tag-the-murder-of-harriet-monckton"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/poison.jpg?fit=229%2C338&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-29M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8295,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8294\/revisions\/8295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}