The book provides and excellent description of Victorian life and the Victorian mindset, but I was unable to shake the mind-boggling Victorian habit of actually TAKING some unidentified medicine that someone you don't know sent you in the mail. Schechter explores a world of pomp and priviledge, obsessed with the surface appearance of propriety, but secretly seething with sexual scandals and murderous grudges. This trial marked the beginning of the media circus that subsequent murder trials from Lizzie Borden to OJ Simpson would become, as the outwardly respectable defendent's sordid affairs and violent, cold-blooded nature was dug up by the police and media as much to shock and titillate the public as to achieve justice.

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Story of the son of a beloved Civil War officer who is tried for the murder of a rival by poison. Includes many facets of the Victorian age, including the limitations of medical knowledge; patent medicines and free samples of dubious substances offered by mail order; private mailbox rentals; the early days of handwriting analysis; and the general public's fascination with the well-to-do, and with violent crimes, as promoted by the yellow journalism of the day.

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