A Victorian Murder. A Victorian Madman. A Modern Judgement.

Gateshead, April 1866

Five-year-old Sarah Melvin was walking along Split Crow Lane looking for her father when she disappeared. Later that night a couple walking home from the pub tripped over her body.

Sarah was the child of Irish immigrants who had been drawn to the North-east in search of work. Poor, perceived with prejudice, they quickly came under suspicion of killing their own child.

The true murderer was a misfit whose social awkwardness stopped him ever rising above apprentice. He would eventually make clear exactly why he killed Sarah - and the reason would scandalise the whole country, yet to him had a dreadful logic.

Told here for the first time, this is an extraordinary story of sexual deviance and murder, offering a chance to reassess a most unexpected judgement with new insight. In lively, empathic prose, Jane Housham explores psychiatry, the justice system and the media in mid-Victorian England to reveal a surprisingly modern state of affairs.