The Gaslight Murders: The Saga of Sidney Street and the Scarlet S

First edition, first impression.  246, [2]pp, with monochrome plate frontispiece and further monochrome plate illustrations interleafed in text.  Black cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on the spine.  8vo.  Cloth a little rounded at spine tips.  Upper text block edge dust dulled and some mild strip tanning on free endpapers else neat. clean, bright and tight.  Matte, illustrated dust jacket not price clipped, gently shelf worn, bumped along upper edge with some scuffing a spine head, some toning and marks (partial coffee ring?) on verso.

In December 1910 London was rocked by its firs faltering encounter with foreign gangsters. A group of Russian anarchists. surprised in burgling a jeweller’s shop in Houndsditch, shot and killed three policemen and wounded two others.  This was the prelude to the Battle of Sidney Street in which armed police and Scots Guards besieged a house in the East End where some of the gang where hiding – the mysterious Peter the Painter among them.  Days after the bungled burglary Leon Beron, a middle-aged Russian Jew, was found battered to death on Clapham Common.  On his cheeks were knife cuts in the rough shape of an S.  These two crimes pose questions never fully answered – was their a connection? What was Peter the Painter’s role? And who murdered Leon Beron.  In this new, full account of the two crimes, the author examines all the speculations and puts forward a compelling argument for a causal connection between the two crimes beyond commonality of time and place.