Karl Shaw

Retired circus impresario, George Sanger, is found dead of a violent blow to his head in his rural London home in 1911; two other household members also show signs of injury. Herbert Cooper, a recently disgraced household employee, is quickly identified as the culprit and a police dragnet is assembled to track him down. The manhunt ends within a couple of days when Cooper’s mangled body is found alongside railroad tracks with a suicide note in his pocket. George Sanger was clearly murdered by his disgruntled employee and Cooper took the coward’s way out. The case is finished…or is it? Using statements made by Sanger’s own grandson and a reexamination of the evidence and eyewitness testimonies, Karl Shaw draws a very different conclusion and argues that Herbert Cooper is actually not guilty of murder at all.

Karl Shaw’s credentials for writing a scholarly history are dubious, to say the least. His biography identifies him only as an author and a journalist; if he has any sort of rigorous education as a serious historian, he is keeping it to himself. Many of his previous titles such as The Mammoth Book of Tasteless and Outrageous Lists and 10 Ways to Recycle a Corpse: and 100 More Dreadfully Distasteful Lists could only be described as salacious, pseudo-historical schlock usually found in the discount bins of dollar stores. For this reason I would hesitate to recommend this book to anyone interested in doing any legitimate scholarly research. For scholars who would like to use this as a reference, I would definitely recommend independently verifying any of the information with more reliable resources before including it in your own research.

That having been said, this book is clearly intended for the entertainment of a general reading audience, and it suits that goal admirably. The Killing of Lord George is an extremely engaging and highly interesting read. A word of warning, however: there are instances of brutality to animals recounted in the book which are extremely disturbing.

Shaw alternates between writing about Sanger’s life pre-birth through retirement to writing about the investigation of Sanger’s violent death and the hunt for his supposed killer. Shaw chronicles Sanger’s early life in a traveling caravan with his family and their off-seasons as London street hawkers, to his rise to success as a world-renowned circus owner and promoter, to his increasingly erratic behavior after his retirement from show business. Sanger comes across as a highly manipulative and unscrupulous man whose ambitions and narcissism trump any sort of notions of morality or even family affections. His violent death doesn’t really come as any great surprise; the most surprising thing about it is that it didn’t happen sooner!

Shaw’s analysis of Sanger’s death and the police investigation surrounding it is methodical and persuasive. Shaw’s examination of the newspaper accounts, police evidence, and inquest testimonies seem to make it clear that the final verdict probably did not accurately reflect what actually transpired. His conclusions about official ineptitude and the conspiracy to stick a phony murder charge on Cooper by certain members of the Sanger household are highly plausible, if not completely definitive.

Overall, this book is a very entertaining page turner.

Unfortunately, it suffers from a couple of problems. The first is the slapdash, rambling ‘Epilogue’ that concludes the book with a sad little whimper. It consists of a lot of random comments about what happened to various people who appeared throughout the narrative. People dying, remarrying, retiring, disappearing from the annals of history, etc. None of it is relevant to the main story. It comes across as a hastily slapped together chapter that was just tacked on to provide a rather clumsy ending to the book.

Even worse are all of the typographical errors that occur—most of which have to do with dates. For instance, on page 162, we are informed that “Lord” George’s daughter Laurina Sanger Coleman dies on 14 October 1982 at the age of 29. 1982! Really? And there is a lot of that in this book…events that actually took place in the late 1800s described as taking place in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s just sloppy and lazy nonsense on the part of the author, editor (did the book even have one?), and the publisher. There is no legitimate excuse for it. All of the errors simply reflect the fact that the author just isn’t a qualified professional historian, and readers should absolutely take that into account when reading this book.

So, if this is purely a pleasure read—read it & enjoy it. It genuinely is an interesting book.

But, if you’re reading this in the course of academic pursuits, take the facts with a grain of salt & double-check everything independently.… (meer)