A thoroughly modern moral panic in Victorian London

History: Murder by the Book: By Claire Harman, Penguin Viking, €17.25

On a May morning in 1840, the residents of Mayfair in London were horrified by a murder in their midst. Lord William Russell, an elderly gentleman from a well-known aristocratic family, had been found in bed with his throat cut. The state of the house suggested that intruders had attempted to rob Russell’s home and murdered him in the process.

The idea ...