MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 03153cam a2200349 a 4500
001 4272663
005 20221102193044.0
008 000622t20012001pauab b 001 0beng
010 $a 00056789
020 $a0812235762 (cloth : alk. paper)
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm44516690
035 $a(NNC)4272663
035 $a4272663
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dOrLoB-B
043 $ae-uk-en
050 00 $aHV6248.W485$bB65 2001
082 00 $a364.15/55/092$aB$221
100 1 $aBondeson, Jan.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n97053146
245 14 $aThe London monster :$ba sanguinary tale /$cJan Bondeson.
260 $aPhiladelphia :$bUniversity of Pennsylvania Press,$c[2001], ©2001.
300 $axv, 237 pages :$billustrations, maps ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [207]-227) and index.
520 1 $a"A century before Jack the Ripper haunted the streets of London, another predator held sway. In the late eighteenth century, the City was gripped by fear, outrage, and Monster Mania. A psychopath who had lashed out violently at over fifty women during a two-year crime spree roamed the city." "In June 1790, an ungainly young Welshman named Rhynwick Williams, who worked in a factory for artificial flowers, was arrested as the London Monster. He appeared an unlikely Monster, with a reasonable alibi for one of the worst attacks. But after two long, ludicrous trials, where he was defended energetically by the eccentric Irish poet Theophilus Swift, Williams was convicted." "Was Rhynwick Williams guilty? Or was he unlucky enough to fall into the hands of authorities when they needed someone, anyone, to pay for the Monster's peculiar crimes? Was there even a Monster at all? Considerable doubt has been cast. In The London Monster, Jan Bondeson writes a lively, detailed account of one of London's most notorious sons and assesses evidence for the guilt or innocence of the convicted Williams. He presents a wealth of contemporary evidence from learned and popular sources, as well as research on mass hysterias and moral panics, to reinterpret Monster mania and compare it to historical and modern instances of similar phenomena. Indeed, in the magnitude of public frenzy it incited, the story of the London Monster bears similarities to the Ripper murders in 1888; in its stature as urban legend, it is of the bogeyman tradition of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. As Bondeson reveals, the London Monster occupies a unique space in London's criminal history and imaginations somewhere between fact and fiction."--BOOK JACKET.
600 10 $aWilliams, Renwick.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr93043089
650 0 $aCriminals$zEngland$zLondon$vBiography.
600 10 $aWilliams, Renwick$vTrials, litigation, etc.
650 0 $aWomen$xCrimes against$zEngland$zLondon$xHistory$y18th century.
651 0 $aLondon (England)$xHistory$y18th century.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85078209
856 42 $3Book review (H-Net)$uhttp://www.h-net.org/review/hrev-a0c0r3-aa
852 00 $boff,glx$hHV6248.W485$iB65 2001