Penge Murders
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Penge Murders
The Murder of Harriet Staunton took place in the London suburb of Penge in April 1877. Harriet Staunton (''née'' Richardson) died in a Penge lodging house on 13 April, five days after her one-year-old child, Thomas Staunton, died of malnutrition at Guy's Hospital. In September of the same year, Harriet's husband Louis Staunton was convicted of wilful murder at the Old Bailey together with his partner Alice Rhodes, his brother Patrick Staunton and Patrick's wife Elizabeth. All four were sentenced to death by hanging but the sentences were later commuted to terms of imprisonment after doubts were raised concerning the medical evidence and the impartiality of the presiding judge. Background Harriet Richardson's father was a clergyman from Essex who died when his daughter was twelve. She later received £5,000 from the will of a great-aunt. She was reportedly of limited mental capacity and appears to have had learning disabilities. Louis (or Lewis) Staunton (born c. 1851) was an a ...
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Penge
Penge () is a suburb of South East London, England, now in the London Borough of Bromley, west of Bromley, north east of Croydon and south east of Charing Cross. History Penge was once a small hamlet, which was recorded under the name Penceat in an Anglo-Saxon deed dating from 957. Most historians believe the name of the town is derived from the Celtic word ''Penceat'', which means 'edge of wood' and refers to the fact that the surrounding area was once covered in a dense forest. The original Celtic words of which the name was composed referred to 'pen' ('head'), as in the Welsh 'pen', and 'ceat' ('wood'), similar to the Welsh 'coed', as in the name of the town of Pencoed in Wales. The largest amosite mine in the world, in South Africa, was named Penge apparently because one of the British directors thought the two areas were similar in appearance. Pensgreene and the Crooked Billet Penge was an inconspicuous area with few residents before the arrival of the railways. A trav ...
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Pall Mall Gazette
''The Pall Mall Gazette'' was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood. In 1921, '' The Globe'' merged into ''The Pall Mall Gazette'', which itself was absorbed into ''The Evening Standard'' in 1923. Beginning late in 1868, at least through the 1880s, a selection or digest of its contents was published as the weekly ''Pall Mall Budget''. History ''The Pall Mall Gazette'' took the name of a fictional newspaper conceived by W. M. Thackeray. Pall Mall is a street in London where many gentlemen's clubs are located, hence Thackeray's description of this imaginary newspaper in his novel ''The History of Pendennis'' (1848–1850): We address ourselves to the higher circles of society: we care not to disown it—''The Pall Mall Gazette'' is written by gentlemen for gentlemen; its conductors speak to the classes in which they live and were born. The field-preacher has his journal, the radical free-thinker ...
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Child Abuse In England
A child ( : children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority. Children generally have fewer rights and responsibilities than adults. They are classed as unable to make serious decisions. ''Child'' may also describe a relationship with a parent (such as sons and daughters of any age) or, metaphorically, an authority figure, or signify group membership in a clan, tribe, or religion; it can also signify being strongly affected by a specific time, place, or circumstance, as in "a child of nature" or "a child of the Sixties." Biological, legal and social definitions In the biological sciences, a child is usually defined as a person between birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. Legally, the term ''child'' may refer to anyone below th ...
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Murder, Mystery And My Family
''Murder, Mystery and My Family'' is a BBC One series featuring Sasha Wass KC and Jeremy Dein KC., which examines historic criminal convictions sentenced to the death penalty in order to determine if any of them resulted in a miscarriage of justice. Their submissions – Dein for the "defence" and Wass for the "prosecution" – are then presented to Judge David Radford, who considers whether there are grounds to consider the convictions as being unsafe. Cases featured include those of Edward Devlin and Alfred Burns, John Dickman, Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, and Herbert John Bennett. In 2019, it won Best Daytime Programme of the Broadcast Awards. Episode guide Series 1 (2018) Series 2 (2019) Series 3 (2019) Series 4 (2020) Series 5 (2021) ''Murder, Mystery and My Family: Case Closed?'' In April 2019, five 45-minute episodes of the follow-up series ''Murder, Mystery and My Family: Case Closed?'' were broadcast on BBC One, revisiting cases previous ...
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BBC One
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, primetime drama and entertainment, and live BBC Sport events. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution. It was renamed BBC TV in 1960 and used this name until the launch of the second BBC channel, BBC2, in 1964. The main channel then became known as BBC1. The channel adopted the current spelling of BBC One in 1997. The channel's annual budget for 2012–2013 was £1.14 billion. It is funded by the television licence fee together with the BBC's other domestic television stations and shows uninterrupted programming without commercial advertising. The television channel had the highest reach share of any broadcaster in th ...
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Persephone Books
''Persephone Books'' is an independent publisher based in Bath, England. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone Books reprints works largely by women writers of the late 19th and 20th century, though a few books by men are included. The catalogue includes fiction (novels and short stories) and non-fiction (diaries, memoirs and cookery books). Most books have a grey dustjacket and endpaper using a contemporaneous design, with a matching bookmark. The company sells books mostly through its website, but also maintains a shop in Bath. History Persephone Books was founded as a mail-order publisher in the spring of 1999 by writer Nicola Beauman, after she received a small inheritance from her father. Beauman named the company Persephone after the Greek goddess connected with spring who is "both 'victim and mistress'". Beauman wanted to upend the devaluing of women writers in literary culture and to restore previously lost works to the canon. She was inspired by Virago Press ...
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A Handful Of Dust
''A Handful of Dust'' is a novel by the British writer Evelyn Waugh. First published in 1934, it is often grouped with the author's early, satirical comic novels for which he became famous in the pre–World War II years. Commentators have, however, drawn attention to its serious undertones, and have regarded it as a transitional work pointing towards Waugh's Catholic postwar fiction. The protagonist is Tony Last, a contented but shallow English country squire, who, having been betrayed by his wife and seen his illusions shattered one by one, joins an expedition to the Brazilian jungle, only to find himself trapped in a remote outpost as the prisoner of a maniac. Waugh incorporated several autobiographical elements into the plot, including his own recent desertion by his wife. In 1933–34 he travelled into the South American interior, and a number of incidents from the voyage are incorporated into the novel. Tony's singular fate in the jungle was first used by Waugh as the s ...
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Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decline and Fall'' (1928) and ''A Handful of Dust'' (1934), the novel ''Brideshead Revisited'' (1945), and the Second World War trilogy ''Sword of Honour'' (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century. Waugh was the son of a publisher, educated at Lancing College and then at Hertford College, Oxford. He worked briefly as a schoolmaster before he became a full-time writer. As a young man, he acquired many fashionable and aristocratic friends and developed a taste for country house society. He travelled extensively in the 1930s, often as a special newspaper correspondent; he reported from Ethiopian Empire, Abyssinia at the time of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935 Italian invasi ...
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Prix Femina
The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine '' La Vie heureuse'' (today known as '' Femina''). The prize is decided each year by an exclusively female jury. They reward French-language works written in prose or verse, by both women and men. The winner is announced on the first Wednesday of November each year. Prix Femina–Vie Heureuse After the Great War, in 1919 Librairie Hachette proposed to the allied countries to create a similar prize. Great Britain accepted, and the first meeting of its jury was held on 20 June 1920. The prize was called the Prix Femina–Vie Heureuse, and it was awarded to English writers, from 1920 to 1939. Among the winners were E. M. Forster in 1925 and Virginia Woolf in 1928. Similarly, in 1920 Lady Northcliffe, wife of Alfred Harmsworth, proposed to create a prize for French writers called the Northcliffe prize. Among the winners were Joseph Kessel in 1924, Julien Green in 1928, and Jean Giono in 1931. ...
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Elizabeth Jenkins (author)
Margaret Elizabeth Jenkins (31 October 1905 – 5 September 2010) was an English novelist and List of biographers, biographer of Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Lady Caroline Lamb, Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, Joseph Lister and Elizabeth I of England, Elizabeth I. Elizabeth Bowen said Jenkins was "among the most distinguished living English novelists." Early life Jenkins was born on 31 October 1905 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Her father, James Heald Jenkins, established the Caldicott School in 1904, which he named for her mother, Theodora Caldicott Ingram.Grimes, William"Elizabeth Jenkins, Woman of Letters, Dies at 104" ''The New York Times'', 8 September 2010. Retrieved 13 September 2010. She attended the Modern School and St Christopher School, Letchworth and the women-only Newnham College, Cambridge from 1921, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, where she studied English and history, though women were not eligible to receive a degree from the university unt ...
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Pardoned
A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction. Pardons can be granted in many countries when individuals are deemed to have demonstrated that they have "paid their debt to society", or are otherwise considered to be deserving of them. In some jurisdictions of some nations, accepting a pardon may ''implicitly'' constitute an admission of guilt; the offer is refused in some cases. Cases of wrongful conviction are in recent times more often dealt with by appeal rather than by pardon; however, a pardon is sometimes offered when innocence is undisputed in order to avoid the costs that are associated with a retrial. Clemency plays a critical role when capital punishment exists in a jurisdiction. Pardons are sometimes seen as a mechanism for combating corruption, allowing a parti ...
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Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national security, policing and immigration policies of the United Kingdom. As a Great Office of State, the home secretary is one of the most senior and influential ministers in the government. The incumbent is a statutory member of the British Cabinet and National Security Council. The position, which may be known as interior minister in other nations, was created in 1782, though its responsibilities have changed many times. Past office holders have included the prime ministers Lord North, Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Palmerston, Winston Churchill, James Callaghan and Theresa May. In 2007, Jacqui Smith became the first female home secretary. The incumbent home secretary is Suella Braverman. The office holder works alongside the ot ...
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