Londoners have always liked maps, perhaps because they use them every day to find their way around this massive city. The most famous map is also a work of art – Harry Beck’s 1931 design for the underground – and almost every household has a battered old A-Z somewhere. But over the last year there has been …
Author archives: murdermap
World of Murder Maps
Who created the first ‘murder map’? What did it show, and where?
Unsolved Murders in London: 2010
These ten cases of homicide (murder and manslaughter) in London in 2010 remain unsolved. Can you help? Call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. Sukhwinder Singh, a 31-year-old builder, was stabbed in the heart after trying to stop robbers stealing a woman’s handbag. On 8 January 2010 he chased two muggers who attacked a 28 year-old …
How to Name a Serial Killer
Every report of the case of serial killer Stephen Griffiths referred to him as the ‘Crossbow Cannibal’. But where did this name come from? Griffiths gave this name when making his first court appearance before Magistrates in May 2010. He didn’t come up with it himself – because it had already featured in a headline in the Sun …
A Literary Graph of Murder
What does this graph tell us? It’s meant to show the frequency of the terms murder and homicide in English books from the time of ‘Jack the Ripper’ to the present day. The answer is probably ‘not much’ – apart from showing that murder is used much more often (in those books that have been …