The Apprentice of Split Crow Lane: The Story of the Carr’s Hill Murder
In April 1866, in the small village of Carr’s Hill, in the north-east of England, the murdered body of Sarah Melvin, a five-year-old girl, was found by passers-by in the evening. She had been strangled and raped. Jane Housham provides a fascinating study of the circumstances surrounding Sarah’s death. She narrates the efforts to uncover the perpetrator, and then a local youth Cuthbert Carr confesses and, after insisting on pleading guilty at his trial (and therefore forcing the judge to pass a capital sentence on him), he is found to be insane and is incarcerated at the newly opened Broadmoor asylum for the criminally insane. The rest of the story covers his bizarre life there, and the tale reveals much about Victorian society, morals and culture, in particular the 19th-century treatment of the insane, which, in the case of Carr and some other discussed, seems to be relatively enlightened and benign.
This is a very well researched, written and fascinating account of the killing of poor Sarah Melvin and moves into the more challenging issue of how to appropriately treat crimes committed by those suffering from psychiatric disorders.
