The Wicked Boy

Kate Summerscale recounts the disturbing 1895 case of thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes, who stabbed his mother to death in London's East End and kept the body hidden for days. The book examines Victorian anxieties about childhood violence, the moral panic over penny-dreadful fiction and the boy's surprising, redemptive later life following his release from Broadmoor.

ISBN 9781408851142 · Bloomsbury · 2016