CRIME HAS ALWAYS BEEN POPULAR. In George Orwell’s essay Decline of the English Murder (1946) he pictures a chap on a Sunday afternoon. ‘The wife is already asleep in the armchair… You put your feet up on the sofa and open the News of the World. Roast beef and Yorkshire… have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the fire is well alight… In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?’
‘Naturally, about a murder. But what kind of murder?’ He answers the question – the murders ‘which have given the greatest amount of pleasure to the British public’ have ‘a fairly strong family resemblance’ running through them. He then lists notorious murderers from ‘our great period in murder, our Elizabethan period… Mrs. Maybrick, Dr. Crippen, Seddon, Joseph Smith, Armstrong’ (he excludes Jack the Ripper who ‘is in a class by himself’). They have a link. ‘The background of these crimes was essentially domestic; the victims… were either wife or husband of the murderer.’ In this golden age poison was often the ‘weapon’ of choice, and ‘sex was a powerful motive’, as was the desire for respectability. ‘Murder… was less disgraceful than being detected in adultery.’ Orwell then addresses the usual moan that ‘you never seem to get a good murder nowadays’. The murders of old were couth. ‘From a News of the World reader’s point of view,’ writes Orwell, the ‘perfect’ murder is set in a semi in the suburbs, the murderer is
‘a dentist or solicitor…’ It is the world of Miss Marple. Parochial, almost genteel. Herbert Armstrong, the only solicitor ever hanged for murder, said ‘scuse fingers’ while offering a poisoned scone to his victim.
Orwell’s essay is amusing nonsense. Murder, crime, has never been fluffy. Raffles, the gentleman crook, exists only in fiction. Crime wasn’t more fun for the victim in days of yore; murder is murder. Brutes like Baby Face Nelson (movie poster, over, 1957) had cute names, but weren’t. Ned Kelly, the Aussie bandit, had a cute name for his sawn-off rifle… ‘Betty’. Bonnie and Clyde (with 13 victims) were only glamourous in retrospect because their tommy guns and cars were photogenic. They used Fords to escape. Mr. Barrow wrote to Henry Ford – ‘What a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusivly when I could get away with one.’
But the age was more innocent. More gullible. Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower twice. To find one mug was lucky, to scam TWO almost genius. The fascination with crooks and crime goes back centuries, hangings were gala events. Dylan’s line from Desolation Row is true: ‘They’re selling postcards of the hanging…’ Ditties were penned, like this one about a nice Massachusetts spinster who walloped her parents (but was acquitted): ‘Lizzie Borden took an axe / And gave her mother forty whacks / When she saw what she had done / She gave her father forty-one.’ But serial killers like Jack the Ripper at least felt a bit sheepish. He skulked around Whitechapel in the fog, and disappeared. Unlike the Muswell Hill murderer 100 years later. Donald Nilson cut up his victims and flushed them down the toilet; then moaned to the landlord about blocked drains!
This enduring fascination with crime also reveals something deeper about human psychology. Across centuries, societies have not only punished murderers but also mythologised them. From broadsides sold at public executions in the 18th century to modern true crime documentaries and podcasts, audiences have consistently consumed stories of violence with a mixture of horror and curiosity. The appeal is not admiration for the act itself, but a compulsion to understand the breaking of social rules at their most extreme point. Crime stories allow us to explore danger from a safe distance, transforming real suffering into narrative entertainment.
The Victorian era in particular saw the rise of sensational journalism, which helped cement the public appetite for lurid detail. Newspapers such as the penny press and later illustrated weeklies brought courtroom drama and murder trials into middle-class homes. Figures like Dr Crippen became household names not only because of their crimes, but because they emerged at a time when mass media could circulate their stories instantly and repeatedly. The development of the telegraph and modern reporting techniques meant that crime was no longer localised—it became national entertainment.
In the 20th century, this relationship between crime and culture evolved again through cinema, radio, and television. Gangsters such as Al Capone and Bonnie and Clyde were reframed as almost mythic figures, shaped as much by Hollywood as by history. Even the language of crime shifted, with affectionate nicknames, stylised imagery, and dramatic reconstructions softening the brutality of events. What had once been public execution became private consumption: the spectator replaced the crowd, but the appetite remained unchanged.
Today, the same impulses continue through streaming platforms, documentaries, and podcasts devoted to true crime. The modern audience is no less fascinated than Orwell’s imagined Sunday reader, though the format has changed. Series dissect cold cases, serial killers, and miscarriages of justice in forensic detail, often blurring the line between education and entertainment. In this sense, Orwell’s observation still resonates, even if his idea of a “genteel” suburban murder now feels outdated.
Ultimately, crime retains its cultural grip because it sits at the edge of human understanding. It forces us to confront questions of morality, normality, and control. Why do ordinary lives sometimes collapse into violence? How does society respond when its rules are broken? These are questions that never lose relevance. Crime may not be “popular” in any moral sense—but as a story, a warning, and a spectacle, it remains one of the most enduring subjects in human culture.
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