Deadly route to son’s salvation
was a boy of above- average intelligence with a taste for reading “penny dreadfuls”. These sensational adventure stories were regarded by many as the cause of increased depravity. However Robert’s home life was unsettled. His father, a steamship steward, was often away and his mother, highly emotional and volatile, was accused by Robert of threatening to kill Nathaniel for taking food.
Plaistow, where the family lived, was dominated by the docks, iron works and factories, a seething centre of noise and stench as Britain transformed itself into an industrial power. “It was a time of tumult and foreboding,” writes Summerscale, likely to affect a boy prone to nervous headaches and faints.
She neatly pieces together the boys’ lives and records inconsistencies of evidence given at the inquest of Emily Coombes and at Robert’s trial which resulted in Robert being sent to Broadmoor.
What is perhaps Summerscale’s most surprising discovery is the humane treatment of inmates at the turn of the 20th century. Robert was taught tailoring, learned to play the violin, piano and cornet and became a crack chess player, all skills which later stood him in good stead. After 18 years in the asylum he was released into the custody of the Salvation Army before emigrating to Australia.
Joining up at the beginning of the First World War he served with the Australian Imperial Force as a stretcher bearer and bandsman at Gallipoli and on the Somme. He was decorated for bravery, saving lives and remaining “steady in a harrowing and chaotic world”.
A one- paragraph, enigmatic prologue tells of an 11- year- old Australian boy reporting his violent beating to the police in 1930. Left hanging for most of the story, this loose end is tied up in the fi nal, most moving chapter of the book. It is then that Summerscale lets her feelings emerge, elsewhere kept in check.
Mostly her style is deadpan, conjuring up without embroidery but with maximum effect the sights, smells and atmosphere of late Victorian London, of Gallipoli and of the Somme. An extraordinary book which will stay with you. To order any of the books featured, post free ( UK only), please phone The Express Bookshop on You may also send a cheque made payable to or you can order online at www.expressbookshop.com