When Queen Victoria came to the throne, she was a naive girl. Her mother had shielded her entirely from the harsh realities of life. Her first Prime Minister was Lord Melbourne, a man with whom she quickly developed an incredibly close relationship.

The bond they shared bears a great resemblance to the later pairing of Queen Elizabeth II and Winston Churchill. Melbourne was Victoria’s friend, confidant, and trusted advisor. Both young queens relied heavily on their first Prime Ministers to navigate the pressures of the crown.

Lord Melbourne helped shape the monarch that Victoria would eventually become. Naturally, this intrigued me. I wanted to look deeper into his past. I already knew from various biographies of the young queen that Melbourne was a widower who had tragically lost his son.

What I did not expect to find as I dug into his domestic life was a story completely dominated by his wife. She was arguably even more fascinating than he was. Furthermore, she possessed a strange, tentative connection to one of my absolute favourite books: Frankenstein.

This is the story of Lady Caroline Lamb, the woman who would marry into the Melbourne title; a soul never content with life.

Lady Caroline

Caroline was born on 13th November 1785. She was the only child of Frederick Ponsonby, the 3rd Earl of Bessborough, and Henrietta Spencer. Their marriage was notoriously unhappy. This fractured domestic environment probably shaped Caroline’s unique, unpredictable personality.

From her earliest years, Caroline refused to be conventional. Peers described her as volatile, intense, and deeply temperamental. She defied the strict gender boundaries of her era, routinely wearing trousers and riding horses bareback across open fields.

In 1802, she debuted to high society’s prospective bachelors. The elite nicknamed her the “Fairy Queen”. It was during this season that she caught the eye of William Lamb, the man we know today as Lord Melbourne. Unfortunately, William was only a second son at the time. Lacking status and fortune, he was not permitted to propose. Then, fate intervened.

William Lamb

When William’s elder brother, Peniston, died unexpectedly, William’s financial and social stature increased overnight. He was now the heir. At the end of the traditional period of mourning, he proposed to Caroline, and the couple were wed on 3rd June 1805.

Their marriage was never destined to be smooth sailing. The chaos began at the wedding itself. Caroline threw a violent temper tantrum at the reception, forcing staff to escort her away from her own guests.

The couple would go on to have one son, Augustus, who survived infancy. Augustus was born with severe learning difficulties; mentally, he never progressed past the age of a seven-year-old. He passed away in 1836 at the age of twenty-nine.

Long before his death, however, the marriage had eroded. Records show the couple were living largely separate lives as early as 1810.

Lord Byron

For those who know the history of Gothic literature, Lord Byron was the infamous poet staying near Mary Shelley in Switzerland when she conceived Frankenstein. Byron was a man who cared nothing for the sanctity of marriage. He found it incredibly easy to draw the restless Caroline into a passionate affair.

Byron was not Caroline’s first extramarital indiscretion. That title belonged to Sir Godfrey Webster, though that brief liaison lacked the consuming fire of her next relationship. During her time with Byron, the couple went so far as to perform a mock marriage ceremony. Caroline completely committed herself to the poet, conveniently ignoring the fact that she already had a husband.

When Caroline first met Byron, he had just become an overnight celebrity following the publication of Childe Harold in 1812. She pursued him relentlessly. While Byron initially revelled in the intense attention, he quickly grew exhausted by her obsessive, public behaviour. The advice of an unusual confidante compounded his exhaustion.

The End of the Affair

In a strange twist of history, Byron was intimate friends with William’s mother, Elizabeth, the Lady Melbourne of that era. Operating with a distinctly cynical view of marriage during the late Georgian period, Elizabeth’s own life was scandalous; rumours persist regarding the true paternity of her children. Regardless of her own morals, she conspired directly with Byron to end his affair with her daughter-in-law.

You might assume she did this to protect her son William, who had chosen to wait out the scandal. You would be wrong. Many historians believe she broke up the affair purely so she could take Caroline’s place in Byron’s bed.

Whatever the ultimate truth, the rejection devastated Caroline. Her mental health spiralled into a dangerous decline. She became utterly consumed by Byron, tracking him down at his London rooms and bombarding him with frantic letters.

On 5th July 1813, she encountered Byron at a high-society ball for the first time since the breakup. Overwrought with emotion, she picked up a broken glass bottle and publicly slashed her own arms. Polite society was horrified by the display and promptly shunned her.

Novelist

Following this highly public breakdown, family members suggested she be sent away to the countryside to recover. Instead, Caroline played one final, dramatic card: she wrote a scandalous novel based entirely on her affair with Byron, titled Glenarvon.

Published anonymously in 1816, Glenarvon became an immediate bestseller.

It did not take long for high society to decode the characters and identify the author. Outraged by the exposure, the aristocracy completely cast her out. No one would associate with her, except for William. Remarkably, her husband stood faithfully by her through the entire social ruin.

Till Death Us Do Part

When news reached Caroline in 1824 that Byron had died in Greece, she collapsed into a hysterical fever. She smashed furniture in her grief and galloped wildly on horseback through the family park. Doctors resorted to heavy doses of laudanum and brandy to quiet her frayed nerves. Through it all, William remained at her side, caring for her.

Ultimately, her volatile behaviour took an unsustainable toll on William’s peace and his rising political career. The couple officially separated in 1825. William left Caroline behind at the country estate while he relocated to London to focus on parliament.

As the years advanced, Caroline grew noticeably calmer. Observers noted that she finally seemed to develop a genuine, quiet fondness for her husband. In October 1827, her health failed as she developed severe dropsy.

In January 1828, realising the end was near, she sent for William. He rushed to her side, and she passed away with him present on the 26th of January. Her official cause of death was severe oedema, brought on by years of heavy self-medication and chronic alcoholism.

William Lamb went on to inherit the title of Lord Melbourne, eventually becoming Prime Minister and the young Queen Victoria’s closest mentor. He died on 24th November 1848 at his family home, following a painful physical decline after a major stroke.

He spent his final years isolated at Brocket Hall, largely forgotten by the political world and cut off from Queen Victoria; a lonely retirement that deeply saddened him.

Subscribe today: I spend hours digging through archives, old testimony, and forgotten files to bring these cases to life. Free posts are just the beginning, paid subscribers keep this work possible and get access to my full vault of articles.

If you’ve enjoyed this story and want to see more, please consider upgrading. It’s readers like you who keep Murder Mayhem UK alive.

Subscribe now

The race was on to map the world. The Victorian era saw the British Empire expand, and much of the world was mapped. One area remained undiscovered, though. That was the North West Passage.

The Franklin Expedition hoped to map this passage along the top of North America. They wanted to find a way to travel directly from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Many expeditions had failed. But the trip backed by the British government and led by Sir John Franklin would be different. Or would it?

HMS Erebus and Terror

Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary of the Admiralty, conceived the mission. He took two of the finest ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Both had been Navy bomb vessels converted for this type of exploration. He kept their full sailing rigs but also equipped both with coal-powered steam engines and screw propellers for extra power.

Both ships had iron sheeting reinforcing their hulls, a propeller that retracted in the ice, and steam engines. They also had futuristic technology. This included a water purification unit, one of the first cameras, and an insulated diving suit. Lastly, they carried two inventions to improve the lives of the crew exponentially: internal heating and canned food.

The task was then to find someone to lead the mission. Several applied. Two who were deemed unfit to lead the mission were given individual Captain roles on the ships. The group eventually settled on Sir John Franklin to lead both vessels. Franklin was a veteran of two previous Arctic expeditions. He had his critics, but overall, public opinion was high for a successful mission.

Lastly, fully equipped with 134 recruited crew members, the two ships set sail on 19th May 1845.

Stromness

The two ships were flanked by two tugs to carry additional coal and an additional supply ship. As they entered the North Sea, the challenge of the voyage was realised. They hit a horrendous storm. Franklin would not turn back. The tugs turned back, but the Erebus, the Terror, and the supply ship reached Stromness on 31st May.

The ships needed supplies. However, the town did not trade until Monday, so the ships sat in port. The sailors enjoyed some downtime, although Franklin banned drinking.

The weather eventually died down. On 3rd June, the two ships and the supply ship sailed into the Atlantic. Once the convoy reached Disko Bay in Greenland, the support vessel left the two large ships. A couple of the men who had fallen ill returned with it, reducing the total crew to 129.

Towards the end of July, two separate whaling ships saw and interacted with the two vessels. This was the last time either of the ships or any of the crew would be seen, sparking a mystery of what happened to the Franklin Expedition that has endured for centuries.

Missing

Most in England expected to hear from the expedition in one to two years. None more so than Lady Franklin, a close friend of Charles Dickens, who was waiting for news of her husband.

When the expedition failed to report, most in Parliament presumed the crews had perished. Lady Franklin would not take this as an answer. Along with Dickens, who wrote many articles, she lobbied to have a search mission sent for the two ships.

In 1859, Sir Leopold McClintock sailed out to search for the Franklin expedition. McClintock had been a favourite to lead the original voyage but had been persuaded by his wife that the mission was too dangerous. However, he could not say no to rescuing his friend John Franklin.

There was no sign of either ship. However, the search team found two stone-built cairns on King William Island. In them, they found two handwritten notes.

What Happened to the Franklin

From the notes they found and subsequent exploration, it appears that the two ships became stuck in the ice. The year they travelled, the North West Passage was particularly cold and the ice floes larger than average. The year also boasted a cold summer, causing few of the ice floes to melt. The two ships became stuck and then waited for a summer thaw that never came.

In the spring of 1847, the party travelled across the ice to Point Victory and deposited the written record into the cairns. They then returned later to the notes to add to their story, stating that John Franklin had died in June 1847.

Trapped in ice and drifting south, Captain Crozier abandoned ship on 22nd April 1848.

Weakened from starvation and scurvy, 105 surviving men had fled across the land to find civilisation, dying en route. Very few bodies have ever been recovered from the expedition. However, those who have, with modern technology, may tell a different story as to the decline of the men.

Modern Exploration

Few bodies have ever been found of the crew; however, those that have have been the subject of speculation in modern exploration. Testing the bodies, scientists found that all had a high level of lead in their blood. Further investigation pointed to the revolutionary tinned food that had been stored on the ships.

The Franklin Expedition was one of the first to carry tinned food. However, these had been made at speed, and the solder that had been used to produce the tins leaked into the food, causing many of the crew to become ill with lead poisoning.

Following this conclusion, the team looking into the exhibition discovered the ships almost perfectly intact in the ice. HMS Erebus was discovered in 2014, and HMS Terror in 2016. It is hoped that the ships will contain more answers to what happened to the Franklin Expedition and the men who set sail over 150 years ago.

Subscribe today: I spend hours digging through archives, old testimony, and forgotten files to bring these cases to life. Free posts are just the beginning, paid subscribers keep this work possible and get access to my full vault of articles.

If you’ve enjoyed this story and want to see more, please consider upgrading. It’s readers like you who keep Murder Mayhem UK alive.

Subscribe now

It would be an understatement to say that the British love tea. This was as true in Victorian London as it was during the Second World War, when Winston Churchill had severe reservations about rationing it.

The problem the Victorian government had with this tea drinking was the money it was costing them to buy it. Tea was a Chinese import and, along with silk and porcelain, could only be purchased from the Chinese government who would accept nothing but silver as payment.

Vast amounts of British silver were leaving the country, and very little would return, as China had much of what it needed to sustain itself. Diplomatic missions failed. The Qing Dynasty maintained that they needed nothing the British were selling.

The British needed a solution quickly. What could they possibly sell that the Chinese wanted more than anything? The solution was easy, but horrific: the British Empire became drug lords.

Read more

The Irish Potato Famine was the worst in Europe during the 19th century. Had the British government acted differently, it is without question that they could have saved lives.

The famine not only explains the historic animosity between Ireland and England but also profoundly changed the culture and demographics of many countries, including the USA.

Causes

The famine spanned the years 1846 to 1849; however, the failure of a large percentage of crops in 1845 was the initial problem. In the 1840s, rural inhabitants in Ireland were desperately poor, and 80% of their food came solely from the potato.

The British market took most of the cereal grown in Ireland for themselves at inflated prices, which left potatoes as the primary accessible source of food.

The humble potato was easy to grow in the Irish soil. It was a hardy food that could withstand the weather and yield large crops. Irish landowners would allocate small, private plots of land within their farms to labourers so they could grow their own food. These small plots of land were enough to sustain an average family.

Although not an extensive diet, this system worked well for the poorer families until the potato crop was hit by Late Blight Disease. The lack of variety in the potato crops meant that the disease travelled fast.

Blight destroys both the leaves and the edible roots of the potato and is caused by a type of water mould. The moist weather of 1845 helped it spread to an epidemic level by 1846. Within two weeks, the crops had rotted and were inedible. The famine would last another three years.

It had been raining a lot, even more than usual for Ireland. In October 1845, almost overnight, a dense blue fog settled over our puddled potato fields. An odour of decay permeated the air. When the wind and rain died away, there was a terrible stillness. The potato crop was ruined, destroyed (we learned later) by the fungus Phytophthora infestans. - John David Cantwell

Incidentally, blight disease appeared again in history in 1946, destroying half the tomato crop in the USA.

British Response

During the 1800s, Ireland came under British rule. It was part of the British Empire, which clearly puts into perspective how bad their response was. At best it was inadequate; at worst, criminal.

The government initially donated to and invested in soup kitchens during the first wave of the famine. They gave the Irish £7 million. However, to put this into context, it was one-tenth of the money they raised a few years later for the victims of the Crimean War.

Sir Robert Peel attempted to abolish the Corn Laws that were crippling Ireland for years. In 1845, Peel recognised how the laws stopped cheaper corn from getting to starving people and realised that a humanitarian disaster was inevitable. Early in 1846, he attempted to repeal the Corn Laws to alleviate the famine. He faced a bitter rebellion from other members of his party led by Benjamin Disraeli. They argued that Peel was betraying his own party and the wealthy landowners who elected him. He was forced to resign.

Enter John Russell, as Prime Minister, who had a completely different outlook. He maintained the exports of grain and stated that he would not be sending aid to Ireland; they should rely on their own reserves. Russell’s government dismantled much of Peel’s food relief system. After all, they believed the Irish were to blame due to their high Catholic birth rate.

They argued that private enterprise and local Irish property owners should bear the burden of the crisis; the landowners should feed their workers. This started an even bigger cycle of poverty. Workers could not pay their rent as they starved, which meant that landowners no longer had an income to support them. Workers and tenants were promptly evicted.

By 1847, when the famine reached its peak, their answer was to argue that the 1834 Poor Law, which was established in Ireland in 1838, should be used. The workers should be sent to the workhouses—workhouses that were severely overcrowded and left them labouring under horrific conditions.

In 1848, when the crop failed again, people took to the streets of Dublin to cry out for food. The British Parliament was so nervous about the possibility of rebellion that it suspended habeas corpus so that people in Ireland could be arrested without a warrant.

They continued to export grain from Ireland. Had Russell closed the borders and kept the food in Ireland, few would have starved. As it was, the death toll kept growing. You can only imagine the anguish farmers felt watching grain being loaded onto ships bound for other countries whilst their wives and children starved.

Despite the fact that many of us were starving, our country kept having to export foods to England—oats, bacon, eggs, butter, lard, pork, beef, and fresh salmon. In return, Britain did open up soup kitchens for us, but of 2000 planned, only half were in operation in 1847. - John David Cantwell

Queen Victoria’s Response

Queen Victoria’s response to the famine was mixed. It is documented that she became very distressed by the reports from Ireland, especially when she heard that they were not even burying their dead properly, putting them into the ground without rites or coffins. However, she was also critical of the Irish, especially when they started attacking some of the wealthy landowners.

Many nicknamed her ‘the Famine Queen’, accusing her of neglecting her people. However, she donated £2,000 (worth roughly £200,000 today). It was the largest single donation to Irish relief, but it was criticised for not being enough. Being a great writer, she published two letters urging the public to donate to Ireland.

Personally, she rationed bread in her household, ordered swaths of Irish poplin, and agreed to order that days of fasting be observed in support of the poor.

However, despite this, it remains one of the darkest moments in her reign.

Changing Demographics

Not every country and government had the same barbaric response to the famine; many raised money to help the Irish support themselves. By August 1847, it is thought that three million people were relying on soup kitchens to survive.

Many landowners, faced with the prospect of supporting families, chose to offer them the chance to emigrate to the USA. Many Irish accepted, although this in itself was not an easy option. There are 17,500 documented deaths on the ships that transported the Irish. The demographics of the world changed.

Two million Irish emigrated to the US between 1841 and 1850. Forty-nine per cent of immigrants into the US at that time were Irish. One million Irish starved or died from famine-related diseases such as typhus.

Smallholdings in Ireland disappeared, and large landowners bought these holdings. The poor got poorer and the rich got richer. The Corn Laws themselves were more about a battle between the old aristocratic elite and the urban working class.

In 1844, the population of Ireland was registered as 8.4 million; in 1851, it had dropped to 6.6 million. When Ireland achieved independence from British rule in 1921, the population was half of what it should have been. Immigration, lower birth rates, and starvation had decimated the population.

Some historians have called the deaths of more than a million starving people a genocide. It was a genocide caused mostly by bigotry and ignorant neglect, not deliberate mass murder, but still, the loss of life is something all British people should feel shame about.

Subscribe today: I spend hours digging through archives, old testimony, and forgotten files to bring these cases to life. Free posts are just the beginning, paid subscribers keep this work possible and get access to my full vault of articles.

If you’ve enjoyed this story and want to see more, please consider upgrading. It’s readers like you who keep Murder Mayhem UK alive.

Subscribe now

America has been unlucky enough to have four Presidents assassinated, each with its own traumatic story. There have also been several attempts on others. When I wrote the story of James A. Garfield’s assassination for my article last Wednesday, the thought struck me that I could not think of a British Prime Minister who had been assassinated.

History books show that although we have several famous Prime Ministers who have had attempts on their lives, only one has ever been killed. His name is largely forgotten in history. This is the story of Spencer Perceval.

Read more

When we talk about presidential assassinations, we talk about Lincoln and JFK. Some might also mention the many failed attempts on Trump, but few mention James A. Garfield.

Garfield was a huge loss to the political landscape, and had he lived, he could have accomplished much in his career. Sadly, a combination of a lone gunman and an incompetent doctor saw that this was never to be.

Garfield’s Rise

It was the year 1880, and the US stood at a crossroads. Was it possible to give enslaved people full rights as citizens? The existing patronage system meant that government jobs often went to the most faithful rather than the best qualified. Could this change?

It was at the Republican National Convention in June, when James Garfield addressed these questions, demanding that the nation honour its promises to all. His speech was eloquent and commanded the respect of hundreds of delegates who roared their approval. Having heard the speech, they wanted one additional thing from Garfield: they wanted him to be their presidential candidate.

Initially, Garfield tried to refuse the nomination, insisting he had no desire to be president, which was the very factor that made him a perfect candidate. Once he agreed, Garfield; who had risen out of poverty as Abraham Lincoln had, and performed heroics on the Union side in the Civil War, was unstoppable.

He became the country’s 20th president in November 1880. He promised progress and reform; however, this was not to be. Just four months after his inauguration, he was shot by Charles Guiteau.

Charles Guiteau

Guiteau had exhibited signs of mental instability long before he pulled the trigger. Despite this, records show that he was never treated or confined during this time; psychiatry was in its infancy.

Guiteau had a long history of failed ventures. He had failed as a lawyer, a journalist, and a preacher. When he joined a free-love commune, he even failed at this, the women refused to sleep with him. Yet, he always believed God had put him on the planet for a higher purpose.

He became obsessed with Garfield after he was nominated. Guiteau travelled to New York in the summer of 1880, determined that his destiny meant playing a crucial role in Garfield’s victory.

Guiteau harassed the staff at Garfield’s New York campaign office until he was allowed to give a single, rambling speech endorsing the candidate.

The Patronage Conflict

Garfield was vocally opposed to the system of handing lucrative posts to supporters of candidates; he believed people should earn their right in the cabinet. Guiteau, not surprisingly, believed in the patronage system fiercely. He expected to be handed a good job for supporting Garfield in the election. Ambassador to France was his first choice.

Garfield had more to worry about than one lone job hunter. He had embarked on an ambitious agenda including upgrading the US Navy, expanding trade with Latin America, and advocating for civil rights.

He appointed the once-enslaved social reformer Frederick Douglass as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, making him the first African American to hold a prominent federal office.

Deluded, Guiteau travelled to Washington and appeared at the White House every day to insist he be given a job. He only ever came face-to-face with Garfield once during that time, when he handed him a copy of his election speech and had subtly scrawled “Paris Consulship” on it.

His strange manner and erratic outbursts led to him being blocked from entering the White House. When he was told by Secretary of State James Blaine that he would never get a position in Garfield’s administration, he sought to take revenge.

The Assassination

Guiteau was broke, with no money or prospects, so he retreated to a shabby boarding house. It was whilst lying on the bed there that he said he had a moment of divine inspiration: Garfield was not a true Republican, unlike his vice president. He concluded there was only one thing to do—assassinate Garfield and leave Chester A. Arthur to take his place.

To plan the attack, he stalked Garfield for weeks. The President was not a difficult target as he preferred to walk everywhere, normally unprotected. It is hard to imagine why he thought this was safe, as John Wilkes Booth had killed Lincoln just sixteen years before.

Guiteau finally got his chance. As Garfield strolled into the Baltimore and Potomac railroad station in Washington on 2 July 1881, Guiteau shot him in the back. Garfield was on his way to Williams College, where he planned to introduce his sons to his alma mater. He was walking with Blaine at the time, the very man who had shattered Guiteau’s illusions of a job.

The fatal shots came from a .44 British Bulldog. Guiteau had purchased it because he thought it would look impressive in a museum.

Medical Treatment

Garfield may have survived this assassination attempt, if it had not been for the actions of one arrogant physician. Dr Doctor Bliss insisted that he was the only doctor to supervise the President’s treatment after he had been shot.

Bliss was very critical of the latest antiseptic methods for treating wounds. Instead, he chose to treat the gunshot with unsterilised instruments, even putting his bare finger into the hole at one point to feel for the bullet near Garfield’s spine.

After a time, Bliss did consent to use an early type of metal detector designed by Alexander Graham Bell. The bullet was thought to be near the President’s pancreas, but due to Bliss’s interference with the device, it could not be properly located or removed. However, it is doubtful he would have survived even had the bullet been removed, as infection had already taken hold.

Garfield’s last days were a time of great suffering as he battled constant pain, fever, and discomfort under Bliss’s care.

Death of the President

Garfield died of sepsis on 19th September 1881 in a cottage at Elberon, a village on the New Jersey shore. His wife lay nearby, herself recovering from a severe bout of malaria.

On the day Garfield died, Guiteau wrote to the new President, Chester A. Arthur: “My inspiration is a godsend to you and I presume that you appreciate it.... Never think of Garfield’s removal as murder. It was an act of God, resulting from a political necessity for which he was responsible.”

At his trial, the jury took one hour to return a guilty verdict. They sentenced him to be hanged. He climbed the scaffold on 30th June 1882, still convinced he had done God’s work.

Garfield’s Legacy

Despite his short life, dying at only forty-nine, he made a huge difference to the lives of Americans. His death galvanised demands for civil service reform. The public recognised that had Guiteau not had delusions of a job he was owed, he may not have assassinated the President.

President Arthur, mourning his able and likeable predecessor, renounced the corrupt spoils system that had elevated him. Congress passed the Pendleton Act in 1883, creating a merit-based standard for federal government employment. It is a system that still yields results to date.

Historians still question what James A. Garfield could have achieved had he not been targeted by an assassin. Most believe that he would have been one of the most remarkable presidents in history with his mix of intellect and forward thinking. As it is, he has been relegated to an obscure footnote in history, shadowed even in his assassination.

Subscribe today: I spend hours digging through archives, old testimony, and forgotten files to bring these cases to life. Free posts are just the beginning, paid subscribers keep this work possible and get access to my full vault of articles.

If you’ve enjoyed this story and want to see more, please consider upgrading. It’s readers like you who keep Murder Mayhem UK alive.

Subscribe now

The SS Sultana is the deadliest shipwreck in US history, claiming more lives than the Titanic. Yet, it remains largely lost to history. This obscurity is primarily due to the timing of the disaster; it occurred on 27 April 1865, while the nation was still reeling from the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

The newspapers of the day were concentrated on the pursuit of his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Consequently, the death of over a thousand former prisoners of war sank into obscurity. No one was ever held responsible for the incompetence that caused these horrific deaths.

Read more

When the tragic accident happened with the Titan in 2023, I remember thinking to myself: what made these people get into what was nothing short of a bean tin to travel to the bottom of the ocean?

The truth is, we humans have been doing ill-thought-out ventures in the name of adventure for years. In 1937, people climbed into a tiny wooden carriage strapped to a ball of highly flammable gas to take to the skies. Like the Titan, their journey was not a successful one either. This is the story of the Hindenburg.

Early Zeppelins

Man has always had a dream of soaring like the birds and flying; this is what initially led to the invention of the hot air balloon by the Montgolfier brothers in 1782.

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin took this concept further, creating rigid airships with aluminium frames that contained multiple gas bags containing hydrogen. The first Zeppelin was launched in 1900. Despite a range of early problems and failures, Hugo Eckener turned the Zeppelin into a commercial passenger vehicle by 1920.

The Hindenburg itself was a well-travelled Zeppelin before its tragic end. Photos exist of it floating above Rio de Janeiro, with Sugarloaf Mountain in the background.

The Hindenburg

The weather was clear and fairly settled on the 3rd May 1937 at 8 pm when the Hindenburg took off from Frankfurt, Germany. The ninety-seven people on board were bound for New Jersey.

The world’s largest airship, at an impressive 245 metres, was a marvel of its time. To give you perspective, its length was only slightly shorter than the Titanic. It was much larger than traditional aircraft such as the Boeing 747.

She was known as the “Queen of the Skies” and was the pride of Nazi Germany. The cabin, which hung beneath the main part of the ship, was unparalleled in luxury; it featured private sleeping rooms, a communal dining room, a lounge, and even a reading room.

The trip was not a cheap one. Tickets were $700—the equivalent of $7,000 today. It was a wealthy person’s vessel.

Disaster

The passengers had enjoyed a three-day journey when they finally arrived at Lakehurst Naval Air Station on 6th May. The weather conditions they left were now very unfavourable. As it descended to the airfield, the strong winds and overcast skies made navigation difficult.

Thousands stood on the airfield watching the world’s largest airship land. For three hours, the Hindenburg circled the landing field while the crews tried to level the ship for landing; dumping water ballast did nothing to help.

Finally, the landing lines were dropped to the ground crew below. That was when the passengers heard a sudden loud bang. The Hindenburg instantly became a flaming inferno. In just thirty-four seconds, the airship was engulfed in flames and collapsed in on itself.

As the airship crashed to the ground, ground crew and bystanders rushed into the heat and danger to try to pull the injured to safety.

The ensuing inferno, which took the lives of 13 passengers, 22 crew, and one person on the ground, was captured on cine film and memorably narrated by the newsreader, Herbert Morrison:

This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world! [...] There’s smoke, and there’s flames, now, and the frame is crashing to the ground [...] Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here!

The footage had a massive impact, and images of the tragedy were shown around the world.

Theories

The tragedy led to its fair share of conspiracy theories. Had the voyage been sabotaged due to the tense political climate and who was onboard? Hugo Eckener, the head of the company that manufactured the Zeppelins, was a vocal critic of Adolf Hitler. Despite pressure to name the ship after Hitler, Eckener named it after the German president, Paul von Hindenburg. While some suspected Hitler or anti-Nazi activists of planting a bomb, investigations ruled this out.

If not human intervention, the next theory was focused on more “divine intervention”—natural causes. Had static electricity or lightning struck the vessel, causing it to ignite?

The leading theory now seems to point to a hydrogen leak combined with a spark of static electricity, which caused the highly volatile gas to catch alight. It was a mixture of poor design and a random spark.

Whatever the cause, the disaster had a profound effect on the public perception of airships. Helium, although non-flammable and a good alternative, was controlled by the United States, which had banned its export. Without a safer alternative, and with the advancements in reliable aeroplanes, the airship became a relic confined to history.

We Never Learn

Although airships have not been seen in our skies for decades, there is a modern interest in reviving them. Companies such as Hybrid Air Vehicles are testing new designs, such as the Airlander 10.

These modern airships will have the advantage of access to the safer helium; a leak on board would just result in the passengers speaking funny. The new airship could provide a sustainable travel option with fewer carbon emissions and less noise than traditional aeroplanes. It is estimated that commercial flights could return as early as 2030.

So, all that is left to ask is: would you go on one?

Subscribe today: I spend hours digging through archives, old testimony, and forgotten files to bring these cases to life. Free posts are just the beginning, paid subscribers keep this work possible and get access to my full vault of articles.

If you’ve enjoyed this story and want to see more, please consider upgrading. It’s readers like you who keep Murder Mayhem UK alive.

Subscribe now

Robert Peel is well known for his forty-year political career. His time is associated with some of the most remarkable political moves that changed the very character of the government.

His achievements include remodelling the country’s currency, improving the executive in Ireland, and redesigning the criminal justice system in Britain. One of his greatest achievements, which is rarely mentioned, was the meetings he held weekly with Queen Victoria, who was initially less than friendly.

During his first term, he replaced Lord Melbourne, a Prime Minister with whom Queen Victoria had a very close relationship and on whom she relied for advice in her early years. It was a similar relationship to that which Churchill later had with Queen Elizabeth II. While Queen Victoria came to accept and even admire Peel, their early relationship was rocky to say the very least.

This great career would be cut tragically short when a freak accident took his life.

Read more

The weather was bright on the day The Great Exhibition opened. All the dignitaries gathered to catch a glimpse of Queen Victoria and Albert; this was the culmination of many late nights for Albert.

The breeze blew through the trees of Hyde Park. Soon the doors would open to one of the biggest examples of the British Empire’s power. All would be welcome regardless of status and wealth; what they would glimpse would be a look into the future of the world.

The Great Exhibition

There is no doubt that the exhibition was the most successful and memorable event of the 19th century. The influence it had on culture would not be seen in this country again.

Prince Albert had been running much of the monarchy’s administrative affairs whilst his wife, Victoria, had nine children. He frequently stood in for his wife during meetings and royal functions, but the exhibition was his project alone. Working with civil servant Henry Cole, they designed a festival which would celebrate modern design whilst promoting Britain as an industrial and imperial power.

Previously, the two organisers had been impressed with the scale of the 1849 Exposition in Paris. They knew they had to host a larger event with a broader international scope. What better way than to showcase not just the inventions of Britain, but those of other countries held in the empire?

If the Great Exhibition were going to showcase 100,000 products from all four corners of the world, then they would need an impressive building to house them. No one would have foreseen exactly how impressive that building would be.

Crystal Palace was a dream that became a reality.

Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace was a purpose-built glass and iron building which, in itself, was an engineering achievement. No other building had used glass as a primary building material on such a scale before.

The biggest challenge was how to design and construct a building large enough to house the exhibition. The added challenge was that they had just twelve months to build it.

A competition was run for people to design the building; the organisers received nearly 250 entries. None of them was good enough, and all were rejected.

In walked Joseph Paxton, the head gardener at Chatsworth Estate, with a proposal which turned many heads. Why not design a glass building similar to those he had designed for his employer, the Duke of Devonshire?

He suggested a gigantic pre-fabricated building made of iron and glass; he nicknamed it “Crystal Palace”. It was a name and design that stuck.

In just nine months, the building was constructed using 2,000 workers. It was built using a modular system, allowing the cast iron parts to be fabricated in Birmingham, the same city that also produced the 293,000 panes of glass, the largest ever produced. These were then shipped to London on the newly built railway. Even by modern standards, it was an impressive undertaking.

The size of the building should not be underestimated. It was tall enough to house two full-grown elm trees that could not be moved, and it contained a pipe organ alongside an eight-metre glass fountain.

Opening Day

On 1st May 1851, Queen Victoria opened the exhibition. She wrote in her journals about how immensely proud she was of her husband’s achievement. The exhibition would run from May to October and would see six million people visit from all classes—representing one-third of the population. The sheer scale of the success silenced many of Albert’s critics, especially those in parliament who thought it was a ludicrous idea.

“Shilling days” were introduced a few weeks into the opening of the exhibition. These reduced entry prices from Monday to Thursday, meaning most could afford to go. It also had its share of famous visitors; Charles Dickens was a frequent visitor and Charlotte Brontë commented: “It is vast, strange, new and impossible to describe.”

The newly constructed railway was not only responsible for transporting the goods but also meant people could travel from all over the country to visit London. Factory workers, agricultural labourers, and East Enders mixed with foreign dignitaries and visitors from around the world.

Once inside, they were treated to a variety of sights.

Inside Crystal Palace

The exhibits were broadly grouped into four areas: raw materials, machinery, manufactures, and fine arts.

A stroll along one of the wings could take you past a medley of fabrics, furniture, locomotives, and musical instruments. The exhibition was designed to contrast Britain’s technological and industrial superiority with that of the rest of the empire.

One of the greatest highlights of the exhibition included the fountain at the centre, which stood eight metres high and was made from four tons of pink glass.

The imperial displays presented a view of “exotic” and “underdeveloped” economies, implying a racial hierarchy to further justify imperialism. For example, the Caribbean section showcased raw agricultural produce like sugarcane to represent Britain’s exploitation of its expanding empire’s resources.

The Indian section introduced visitors for the first time to the richness and quality of Indian textiles, but was particularly remembered for the howdah which was displayed on a stuffed elephant.

The Koh-i-Noor diamond, the largest known diamond at the time, which had been acquired by the British after the victory in the Second Anglo-Sikh War was also on display. While Queen Victoria was its recipient, its presence in the exhibition served as a symbol of Britain’s colonial past.

The vast number of visitors helped spread awareness and support for the country’s imperial ambitions amongst the public. It is worth considering that three years previous to the exhibition, the French Revolution of 1848 had seen King Louis Philippe I overthrown. He had actually fled to England and been granted asylum by Queen Victoria, so it is hard to imagine this was not on her mind when the exhibition was suggested.

The Financial Success of the Exhibition

The exhibition was officially closed by Prince Albert on 15th October 1851. It was a huge commercial and economic success, making a profit of £186,000—the equivalent of roughly £20 million in today’s money.

The profits were used to fund the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, and the Natural History Museum. They also established an educational trust to provide grants and scholarships for industrial research.

Shortly after the exhibition, Crystal Palace was removed from Hyde Park and reassembled in Sydenham Hill, then a part of the Kent countryside. This was no cheap task: the relocation cost over £1 million. Here it housed concerts, festivals, exhibitions, and permanent displays of botany and art history.

However, despite its earlier success, Crystal Palace was plagued with financial problems and was declared bankrupt in 1911. In 1936, it was destroyed in a fire.

The exhibition itself set the precedent for the many international exhibitions which followed during the next 100 years. It inspired a long succession of international fairs in other cities, including Paris, Dublin, New York, and Vienna.

In a strange twist, one of the later exhibitions, known as the World’s Fairs, was hosted in Chicago at the same time H.H. Holmes was building his “murder castle” in the same area. H.H. Holmes would later be accused of being Jack the Ripper, something I do not believe, but there is a part of me that wonders whether these two serial killers once wandered the halls of the Great Exhibition at the same time.

Subscribe today: I spend hours digging through archives, old testimony, and forgotten files to bring these cases to life. Free posts are just the beginning, paid subscribers keep this work possible and get access to my full vault of articles.

If you’ve enjoyed this story and want to see more, please consider upgrading. It’s readers like you who keep Murder Mayhem UK alive.

Subscribe now

The famous Library of Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the most important repositories of knowledge in the ancient world. Built in the fourth century B.C., it flourished for some six centuries, serving as the cultural and intellectual centre of the ancient Hellenistic world.

It was rumoured to contain half a million papyrus scrolls, the largest collection of manuscripts in the ancient world, including works by Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Herodotus, and many others.

Some of the most brilliant minds of the period worked, studied, and taught at the library, which formed part of the research institute known as the Alexandrian Museum, or Mouseion (the “shrine of the Muses”).

Read more

Some great thinkers considered Atlantis a fictional island Plato had made up to teach philosophy, whilst others consider that he based it on a real place lost to history. There are even mentions of i…

Read more

A bitter winter chill gripped London on the day Victorian skaters flocked to the ice. The lake sat in the heart of Regent’s Park, a fashionable destination where the gentry gathered for an afternoon of exercise. However, disaster struck on 15th January 1867. The ice suddenly gave way, plunging hundreds of people into twelve feet of lethal, icy water.

Heavy traditional dress and a lack of immediate rescue equipment hindered the victims, turning the incident into one of the most haunting weather-related tragedies in London’s history. Remarkably, this was not the first warning sign. Just the day before, twenty-one people had fallen through the ice similarly. Despite the narrow escape of the previous day, the frozen surface remained crowded.

Read more

At the moment, where I live, we have an unprecedented number of meningitis cases. It is all anyone talks about. The anxiety hangs heavy in the air, making it easy to imagine what it must have been li…

Read more

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, later the Marquise de Pompadour, was far more than a mere footnote in the romantic history of King Louis XV. Born into a family marred by financial scandal and raised under a fortune-teller’s prophecy that she would one day “win the heart of a King,” her ascent was a masterclass in calculated ambition and rigorous preparation.

Educated by the finest tutors in the arts, philosophy, and performance, she entered the French court not just as a beauty, but as a woman of intellect and charm. Her entry into Versailles in 1745 sparked a 20-year reign of influence that redefined the role of a royal mistress. While her physical relationship with Louis XV was relatively brief, her position as his most trusted advisor endured until she died in 1764.

While she is often remembered for her patronage of the arts and her legendary salons, it was her transition from the King’s lover to his “Prime Minister” in all but name that remains her most significant legacy.

The Political Genius of Madame de Pompadour

By 1750, the physical relationship between Pompadour and Louis XV had ended due to her failing health. In any other era, this would have signalled her exile from Versailles; instead, Pompadour pulled off a feat of political survival unparalleled in French history. She made herself indispensable as a statesman and advisor to the King.

Read more

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson was better known in history as the Marquise de Pompadour. She remains one of the most polarising and fascinating figures ever to grace the halls of Versailles. While the pal…

Read more

Nikolaus (Miklós) Grüner survived Nazi death camps; he credits his friend Lázár Wiesel with helping him through this survival. We can only imagine the feelings he had when, in 1986, he was invited by a Swedish newspaper to meet with this old friend.

However, the reunion he had anticipated went far differently than he could ever have imagined. The man facing him, claiming to be his friend, was not the same person he had spent all those horrendous years with. Miklós claimed he had never seen the man before.

He asked the man to show him his tattoo, but he refused, and the short meeting ended. The man Miklós was facing was the Nobel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel. Miklós claimed Elie had stolen the identity of his friend in order to write a bestselling book.

Read more

Philippe Sands’ The Ratlines profoundly influenced my research. His narrative centres on Otto von Wächter, a high-ranking SS Governor who fled to South America to escape prosecution.

Before reading th…

Read more

WT Stead was not the only famous person who perished on the Titanic. When the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic slipped beneath the Atlantic, it took more than just a ship to the bottom; it claimed some of the most powerful minds and fortunes of the 20th century.

However, there were not as many as one might expect; this was largely due to the significantly higher survival rate of first-class passengers compared to those in third class. Most of the well-known individuals on board held first-class tickets.

Of the 324 first-class passengers, 201 survived. In stark contrast, just 181 out of 708 third-class passengers made it to safety. This disparity highlights the era’s rigid class divide, a reality made even more tragic by the fact that several lifeboats were lowered while only half-full.

Here are eleven first-class passengers who were among the 123 from their deck who perished on that fateful night of 15th April 1912.

Read more

W.T. Stead was the first person to understand that the media could be used as a weapon, a concept that now dominates all aspects of our lives. He frequently used the platform he had built to attack p…

Read more