Jonathan Goodman 1932-2008
As first reported in the London Telegraph.co.uk, and most recently on Laura James’ wonderful blog CLEWS, Great Britain’s leading crime historian passed away on January 10th at the age of 76.
His Lizzie Borden connection is that he penned the compendium Bloody Versicles, a must-have for any Borden library.
In the 1970s Goodman edited the Celebrated Trials series, and in the 1980s produced a string of anthologies of classic true murder cases, including The Railway Murders (1984), The Seaside Murders (1985), The Christmas Murders (1986), The Country House Murders (1988) and The Vintage Car Murders (1988).
In other books he assembled collections of criminous footnotes: in Posts-Mortem (1971) Goodman chronicled the correspondence of murder, while in Bloody Versicles (also 1971) he explored the rhymes of crime, ranging from the sombre beauty of Housman’s The Culprit to the gory gaiety of an American lyric illustrating the Fall River axe murders of 1892, attributed to the parricide Lizzie Borden, You Can’t Chop Your Poppa Up In Massachusetts.
After working as managing editor for a firm of specialist technical publishers, Goodman became a full-time writer in 1982. In his true-crime work, he maintained what he called his 40-year rule, after which time, he believed, a crime loses its horror, becoming a puzzle with all its attendant pleasures.
Although fascinated by forensics, he admitted to a certain squeamishness and once turned down an invitation to a post-mortem (he was one of the few lay members of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences) because the doctor had toothache, and Goodman would first have had to accompany him to the dentist.
His tastes in murder were particular: he disliked mass murderers, pointing out that “it becomes a trade then, and from a murderer’s point of view, the murder should be the most important moment in his life – not diffused”.
Goodman’s walls at home were lined with many hundreds of crime books, including a complete set of Notable British Trials.
His shelves and scrapbooks bulged with the murder memorabilia of two centuries, including Victorian bottles of poison; letters from celebrated killers; a cheque signed by Haigh, the 1940s acid bath murderer (marked Return To Drawer); and another, from the 1920s, signed by Major Armstrong, the only solicitor to hang for murder. A jaunty postcard from the hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, began: “Just to let you know we are spending our holidays in Palma…”
