Last Tuesday I was kindly offered the opportunity to go and see historian and author Hallie Rubenhold talk about her work at the gorgeous St Martin-in-the-Fields in London.
Truly a great setting to listen to one of my favourite authors talk about The Five, The Covent Garden Ladies, The Scandalous Lady W and her most recent, Story of a Murder.
This was all part of a series of talks called The Conversation 2026 where different very interesting people are invited to talk about their life and work and you can be in the audience, either in person or via live stream from your sofa.
I took my mum, who hadn’t read any of Hallie’s books before but was very interested in how she reframes the cases she writes about so that the women, who are often the victim, are the main character, not the killer, who is usually a man.
In the case of Story of a Murder, the victim is Belle Elmore, a music hall performer, by her husband Dr Crippen, who buried her in the cellar of their London home and then took off with his mistress, Ethel.
Hallie brings their world to life in her book, creating a wonderful sense of time and place, exploring why the police were so reluctant to believe anything was wrong, despite how often Belle’s friends in The Music Hall Ladies’ Guild insisted it was. The Belle they knew wouldn’t just vanish to America without a word, as her husband claimed, she would have written. It is really shocking how long it took to get Scotland Yard to investigate, and it ended in a transatlantic race to catch Crippen and Ethel who were trying to escape to Canada.
It was really interesting hearing Hallie talk about how she goes about researching and learning about the cases, and how she reconstructs the events from often quite small comments in trial transcripts and newspaper reports. She never loses sight of the fact that these were real people and only quotes dialogue that is in the record.
Honestly I could have listened to her for hours, she was so fascinating, her work intriguing and important in re-centering women in history and not letting them end up sidelined in their own lives. Her most famous book, The Five, upset a lot of Ripperologists, because of the focus on his victims, and not who the killer might have been.
Both The Scandalous Lady W and The Covent Garden Ladies have been adapted for TV (the Ladies as Harlots) and you can see why, the books are clever and full of fascinating details.
If you’re interested in seeing any of the other conversations, visit the link above to check out the upcoming dates and book your tickets.
ramblingmads 