Meat, Murder, Malfeasance, Medicine and Martyrdom

This remarkable book reveals the sensational, historical and personal stories of the physical, cultural and psychological territory of London's Smithfield. Graham Holderness tells the stories of Wat Tyler, Aaron Kominski ['Jack the Ripper'], Heinrich Himmler and others as rooted in the ground of Smithfield. They revolve around the institutions it houses, and dwell on the overlapping activities that have characterised it for centuries. They range across historical fiction, 'Restoration comedy', Gothic romance, drama, 'alternative history', and contemporary realism. Most are closely tied to the real past by the use of historical sources and documented events: the execution of William Wallace, the killing of Wat Tyler, the burning of Anne Askew, the execution of Amelia Dyer. Others explore the imaginative possibilities of Smithfield, rather than its authenticated events and characters, reanimating fictional characters such as Sweeney Todd, or the hero of Hogarth's Four Stages of Cruelty; or inventing a modern Halal butcher who is radicalised and joins Isis