Whilst well-researched and well written this novel felt it was written by someone who has done too much research and wants to use it all……

I like my true crime books, to be just that - the crime and a bit of historical background for context but not so much that you’re skipping through paragraphs about extraneous information.

I did like that the author took a position on the crime. ( )

Murder at No. 4 Euston Square by Sinclair McKay is an engrossing read as both true crime and a history of Victorian England (or at least a slice of life during that time).

I came to the book primarily for the true crime story. I was surprised to find that much of the book was the history of city life during the time, as well as a bit of a glimpse at the early days of what is now forensic science. While I enjoyed the crime story I think I was more intrigued learning about everything from boarding houses to prisons and mental institutions.

Though some may be turned off by not being strictly sensationalistic true crime from beginning to end I think many will appreciate the contextualizing that all of the history offers. It certainly should help to minimize the comments you often see on books from bygone eras where a reader wonders why the police didn't just perform some test or follow some procedure when, in fact, it wasn't yet available or known. Plus the history is just plain interesting.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

This reads like a murder mystery, but unlike a murder mystery this one isn't solved at the end. There's a body under coals, badly decomposed. The house belongs to a family who take in boarders and this appears to be a boarder who has left. It has all the elements of a good mystery. Eccentric people, immigrants trying to make good, a maid that may or may not be the lover of several of the characters and was accused herself but she turned it around on almost everyone else and added some gothic spice to the mix. Fueled by popular newspapers this was a mess of a case from the start and it's still not clear who dunnit.

Interesting read. ( )

In Victorian London the rich owned houses and the rest rented. For the aspirant lower middle class renting a large house and subletting it as a boarding house was one way to move up the ladder. Boarding houses ranged from the genteel to the salacious but Number 4 Euston Square was a smart address on the northern fringes of Bloomsbury and outwardly seemed respectable. The landlord was a Germanic foreigner who ran a successful furniture business in the studio at the back of the house whilst his wife oversaw the tenants and her many children. Everything seemed normal until the day that the partially decomposed body of a former tenant, Matilda Hacker, was discovered in the coal cellar. The scandal that ensued rocked Victorian society, shed a new light on the development of Scotland Yard and remains unsolved to this day.
Every year there are a few books produced about true-life historical crime, particularly from this era, and this is actually a really good one. The facts of the case are not in doubt but McKay doesn't focus on them, rather the attention is drawn to the aftermath. Firstly the background and trial of the accused housemaid and , following her acquittal, the effects of her ghost-written account of life in middle-class houses. The whole point is that although Hannah Dobbs was acquitted and she in turn accused her employer, in fact the truth has never emerged and the success of this story is more about the morals of the age and the way that the love of a good scandal never got in the way of a good tale. ( )

I received an ARC of this book to read through NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. The Lady In The Cellar by Sinclair McKay is a meticulously researched Victorian true crime story. In 1879 the corpse of Matilda Hacker was discovered in the coal cellar of a respectable boardinghouse on Easton Square. It was not until her corpse was found quite some time after her death was it even realized that Matilda Hacker was missing and that someone in the house had murdered her. Sinclair McKay painstakingly recreates the events surrounding her death and sheds new light on an old unsolved mystery. Publishing Date October 30, 2018 #NetGalley #TheLadyInTheCellar ( )