The Broadstone Mystery: investigating a murder in Victorian Dublin
presented by Thomas Morris
One Friday afternoon in November 1856, the chief cashier of Dublin’s Broadstone railway terminus, George Little, was found dead in his office. He had been brutally murdered. The room was locked, there was no sign of a weapon, and hundreds of pounds in cash lay untouched on his desk. The crime seemed to defy explanation: what was the motive behind this savage attack, if not robbery? Who was the killer, and how had they disappeared from a busy station without a trace?
The death of George Little resulted in the most extensive and dramatic investigation in the history of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. In this talk, Thomas Morris explains how a remarkable cache of government documents in the National Archives of Ireland allowed him to piece together an unusually complete account of a Victorian murder inquiry – from the detectives’ interviews with witnesses to the private fears of government ministers.
Thomas Morris is a writer and historian. After a degree in music at the University of Oxford he joined the BBC, where he worked as a radio producer for almost twenty years, making speech programmes including Front Row, The Film Programme and In Our Time. His first book, a history of cardiac surgery entitled The Matter of the Heart, won a 2015 Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for a debut work of non-fiction. It was followed by The Mystery of The Exploding Teeth, which was named by Mental Floss as one of the best science books of 2018 and was a bestseller in Brazil. The Dublin Railway Murder, his account of a real-life Victorian murder mystery, was published in 2021 and last year was shortlisted for a Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for non-fiction.
8.00pm Thursday 5th October 2023
THE COMMUNITY CENTRE, MOUNT MERRION
Admission:
- Members No charge (see Season Membership)
- Non-Members: €5.00
- Students €2.00
While the Society will endeavour to deliver the published agenda, lectures and speakers may be changed due to circumstances outside its control