People of Abandoned Character

Product Information

Tell me something, Mrs. Lancaster. Why be so taken by these murders? It is a subject I have heard other doctors express confusion about, that their wives are also fascinated by these crimes. It seems… perverse.’ Set in London in the late nineteenth century, People Of Abandoned Character is an excellent debut novel.

The ending was so odd and clunky. The last Ripper victim, Mary Kelly being a part of the previous killings; really? I didn’t know you could give a voice to those little tiny snippets of your brain that were less than perfect!? Other people thought like that? It blew my mind.” Susannah, our heroine narrator, escapes her horrid past and gets herself to London to train as a nurse. Being already 27 years old, she has little hope of finding a husband. All Susannah wants is a way out of poverty.It sounds as if it could become fairly predictable from this point, but that is far from the case, Susannah is breathtakingly naïve but also stupidly brave and the journey she takes herself on is full of twists and turns. She is an interesting protagonist who you feel is not always reliable, but she does have a good deal of gumption and a curiosity that gets her into trouble. They had only been married a few weeks and already Susannah had become confused by her husband’s behaviour. Thomas excuse for disappearing in the late evenings was of course he was working seeing private patients. Susannah couldn’t help but notice that when a murder occurred Thomas would be missing from the house, sometimes for days at a time. On one occasion Thomas arrived home late at night covered in blood and it was not his own. Well, as soon as the honeymoon was over, the honeymoon was over and Thomas becomes distant and absent and altogether strange. If she questions him or makes any comment he would snap at her. Susannah has to console herself with her comfortable lifestyle and the hostile company of the housekeeper, Mrs Wiggs. But when news of murdered prostitutes in the Whitechapel area is reported Susannah becomes very interested indeed. Thomas’s strange overnight absences do seem to coincide with these murders.

Susannah is not an entirely reliable narrator and she’s definitely the sort of character to be labelled “unlikable” with all the baggage that comes with that descriptor. I imagine she would have been a difficult character to write, particularly in the first person, and I applaud Clare Whitfield for how consistently she wrote Susannah. This is Whitfield’s debut novel and I think she will definitely be an author to watch out for in the future! Completely defied the minimalist expectations set by the tag line and the summary- this book is far more than it appears to be! Astoundingly thought provoking and engrossing throughout the entirety of the novel, I binged this in one sitting.Almost every morning on my way to work, you’ll find me listening to true-crime podcasts. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine that always has me guessing and craving more of these thrilling stories, and the Whitechapel murders are one of my all-time favourites.

It's at this time that the Whitechapel murders begin. The first victim is a prostitute named Mary Ann Nichols, who's found dead and mutilated in London's Whitechapel district.

Susannah, a woman with no family who works as a nurse, is newly married to Thomas Lancaster, a surgeon from a wealthy family. Their courtship is feisty and flirtatious and their honeymoon passionate, but upon returning to Thomas's London home, things soon change. Thomas becomes increasingly cruel and distant and his sexual demands more aggressive. He's paranoid, secretive and frequently absent - most often at night. It became apparent that the better classes honestly felt as if they were going to be overrun. That their way of life was at threat. I think that’s like today too. But there was no mystery to solve. The rising tide of anger came from years of grinding systemic poverty and fermenting rage at a rigged class system. Britain may have been at the peak of the Empire, but the wealth was hoarded in the hands of a few who believed everything they had was down to innate superior intellect and good breeding, and absolutely nothing to do with starting a hundred-yard sprint at the 99 th yard. Susannah chafes at the dull life in Reading, and in 1885 - after both her grandparents have died - Susannah moves to London to become a nurse. Thomas’s behaviour becomes increasingly volatile and violent. He stays out all night, returning home bloodied and full of secrets. The gentle caresses she enjoyed on her wedding night are now just a honeyed memory. People of Abandoned Character is a wonderfully twisty and atmospheric thriller that examines the utter fragility of a woman’s place in the world of Victorian London. It is devastating to learn how easily one could become impoverished, a ‘fallen woman’ as it were, and how difficult it would be to then forge your own freedom. Lost to the underbelly of Whitechapel, where even other women posed a threat - ready to blind or mutilate any woman they saw as competition – it is terrifying to contemplate just how futile one’s plight must be.