This overview of 19th-century lawbreaking starts promisingly enough as Archibald describes the social tides shaping criminal activity in Scotland, such as Irish immigration, slum living and the market created by teaching hospitals for human corpses.
Subsequently however it becomes an embellished list of random crimes, some truly banal, such as two accounts of jilted women whose guns failed to fire when they tried to shoot their lovers.
He also misfires whenever he reaches for the purple prose, such as the Edinburgh robber who “walked up the North Bridge with the great dark below sucking coldly at him”.
Still, some tales he has unearthed are remarkable enough, like the violent suppression of rioting soldiers in Hamilton and Perth.
Book review: Bloody Scotland: Crime in 19th Century Scotland by Malcolm Archibald
