The Dublin Railway Murder: Victorian real-life whodunnit derailed by too much detail

Thomas Morris is successful in recreating an 1850s Dublin that had been shocked to the core by a railway cashier’s violent death, but the story loses its way amid the minutiae

Dublin’s Broadstone railway terminus as it appeared in 1860, where chief cashier George Little had been murdered four years earlier. Picture: James Spollin

HISTORY

The Dublin Railway Murder: The Sensational True Story of a Victorian Murder Mystery

By Thomas Morris

Harvill Secker, €20.25

On November 13, 1856, George Little, the chief cashier of Dublin’s Broadstone railway terminus was brutally murdered in his office. The hapless clerk’s throat was severed, leaving him lying in a pool of blood until his body was discovered the following day.

The door was locked, seemingly from the inside. There was no sign of ...