Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths in & Around Scunthorpe

Book excerpt: A revealing criminal history of the old industrial town in North Lincolnshire, England, that has been home to centuries of dark secrets and twisted crimes. As the iron and steel industries grew in the Victorian period, several villages merged into the town of Scunthorpe, an area with more than its fair share of sordid and bloody secrets. Although mainly rural, the region has been notorious in the annals of crime, from the sixteenth-century rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace to the sensational murder cases of the twentieth century. Some of Scunthorpe’s killings were merely tragic domestic affairs, as industrial workers cracked with stress and alcohol. Other were more appalling, baffling, and the stuff of nightmares to this day. True crime historian Stephen Wade delves into Scunthorpe’s shadowy past: its bizarre murder-suicides, random slayings, cop-killers, pirates and bandits, cold-cases, night-stalkers and “The Black-Out Terror” of 1941. Centuries of dark scandal from the town’s deceptively tranquil fields to the violent mean streets.