The Invention of Murder

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The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders: 3. Red Barn Murder

3. Red Barn Murder

The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders

BBC Radio 4 Extra - The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders, 3. Red Barn Murder

How the 1828 Red Barn Murder became a sensation of the age.

How the infamous Red Barn murder of 1828 became one of the sensations of the Victorian age. Read by Robert Glenister.

Over the course of the 19th century, murder - in reality a rarity - became ubiquitous: transformed into novels, into broadsides and ballads, into theatre and melodrama.

Seeing therein the foundation of modern notions of crime, Judith Flanders explores this fascination with deadly violence by relating some of the century's most gripping and gruesome cases and the ways in which they were commercially exploited.

The decreasing age of the British population - in the 1820s half the country was under 25 - meant there was a lucrative market for lively entertainment. Children flocked to penny gaffs: unlicensed theatres which offered cheap entertainment, often dramatisations of notorious murders. 

One of the most infamous, the Red Barn Murder of 1828, was being performed as a melodrama even before the prime suspect was put on trial.

Written by Judith Flanders.

Read by Robert Glenister.

Abridged by David Jackson Young.

Producer: Kirsteen Cameron

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2011.

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Robert Glenister reads Judith Flanders' book on the Victorian obsession with violent crime

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