Murder on the Home Front: A True Story of Morgues, Murderers, and Mysteries during the London Blitz

by Molly Lefebure

Overview

It is 1941. While the "war of chaos" rages in the skies above London, an unending fight against violence, murder and the criminal underworld continues on the streets below.

One ordinary day, in an ordinary courtroom, forensic pathologist Dr. Keith Simpson asks a keen young journalist to be his secretary. Although the "horrors of secretarial work" don't appeal to Molly Lefebure, she's intrigued to know exactly what goes on behind a mortuary door.

Capable and curious, "Miss Molly" quickly becomes indispensible to Dr. Simpson as he meticulously pursues the truth. Accompanying him from somber morgues to London's most gruesome crime scenes, Molly observes and assists as he uncovers the dark secrets that all murder victims keep.

With a sharp sense of humor and a rebellious spirit, Molly tells her own remarkable true story here with warmth and wit, painting a vivid portrait of wartime London.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455576074
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Molly Lefebure was secretary to acclaimed forensic pathologist Dr. Keith Simpson during the Second World War. Her memoir of her time at the Department of Forensic Medicine was originally published in 1955 as Evidence for the Crown. She went on to write children's books, a biography of Coleridge and several novels and became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature before her death in 2013.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Editor's Note ix

Foreword Keith Simpson xi

1 A Good Job for Corpses 1

2 My First Day in the Mortuaries 8

3 Life in the Mortuaries 11

4 My First Murder 16

5 Tale of Two Lovers 22

6 Murder on Waterloo Bridge 29

7 Portrait of a Merry Widow 34

8 Thoughts and Episodes of Spring 41

9 "In the Spring a Young Man's Fancy" 49

10 Case of a Lifetime 53

11 The Wigwam Murder 77

12 The Gentle Art of Hanging 88

13 Interiors 95

14 Portrait of a Fairy 103

15 Severe Testing of a Secretary 114

16 Underworld 119

17 Murder in a Fog 126

18 War Work 143

19 A Secret Weapon 162

20 Body in a Hole 174

21 Private Diary 189

22 Boys of the New Brigade 197

23 "Tis Love, Tis Love That Makes the World Go Round…" 221

24 Murder at "Charley Browns" 224

25 Coming through the Rye 236

26 The Black in the Smoke 255

27 I Find a Successor 265

Questions for Further Discussion 271

About the Author 273

Editorial Reviews

"[A] stunning memoir . . . . A former journalist, [Lefebure] evokes the physical and emotional terrain of crime scenes and the circumstances of death with adroit detachment, yet also authoritative depth . . . . She is such a wonderful, arch, thinking, intelligent guide to this strange underworld that you don't want Lefebure's wonderful tales to end. . . .[She] has bequeathed us a book which teaches so much about death-taking away much of the worst kind of fear and mystery around it, while reminding us that so much about it remains necessarily unknowable. It's a lesson imparted with the best kind of wry smile."—The Daily Beast

"Lefebure's narration provides a welcome alternative to wartime era tales; she's a young, single, professional woman, not a soldier or an evacuated Londoner. A sympathetic narrator and an engrossing read."—Historical Novel Society

"A secretary to a formidable London pathologist during World War II reissues her wry, grisly account of murder and corpses, first published in 1955. . . Lefebure's youthful bravery shines through, while the grim conditions showcase her terrific wit. Preserves like a frozen capsule the British grin-and-bear-it spirit and vocabulary of the WWII years."—Kirkus Reviews

"Gripping. . . like a pitch-dark version of Call the Midwife, dealing with the end of life rather than the beginning . . . Full of fascinating incidents, it is easy to see why this has been made into a drama by the creators of Downton Abbey. —Sunday Mirror (UK)

"A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at mid-century crime-fighting."—The Independent (UK)

From the Publisher

"A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at mid-century crime-fighting."

The Independent (UK)

"Gripping. . . like a pitch-dark version of Call the Midwife, dealing with the end of life rather than the beginning . . . Full of fascinating incidents, it is easy to see why this has been made into a drama by the creators of Downton Abbey.

Sunday Mirror (UK)

2014-03-02
A secretary to a formidable London pathologist during World War II reissues her wry, grisly account of murder and corpses, first published in 1955. Lefebure was a junior reporter at a London suburban weekly when Dr. Keith Simpson, the Home Office pathologist at Guy's Hospital, tapped her as having the right stuff to be his forensics secretary. An intrepid workaholic who was hardly bashful or squeamish, and thoroughly capable, Lefebure—whose name her colleagues could not pronounce, so she was known as Miss L—was highly intrigued by the forensics work of her swift-moving boss. The work took her across bomb-scarred London to a dozen post-mortems per day, as well as to the various courts and Scotland Yard. The author's job was to type up the reports as the pathologist dictated while laboring over his cadaver, no matter the time or place—e.g., during the bombings by the Germans. She coolly collected specimens of hair or teeth in little bags and labeled them so that the team could figure out the cause of death later in the lab. Her chapters break down in chronological order some of the notable or simply memorable cases she encountered from the spring of 1941, when she visited her first mortuary, where she was impressed by the cleanliness of the operation though put off by "the sound of a saw raspingly opening a skull," to the late autumn of 1945, after the war had wound down, when she was planning on marrying and needed to find her successor—job qualifications: "Typing. Good verbatim shorthand. Tact. Interested in crime. No objection to mortuaries and corpses. Reasonably fast runner." Despite the many ghastly descriptions of ruined cadavers, Lefebure's youthful bravery shines through, while the grim conditions showcase her terrific wit. Preserves like a frozen capsule the British grin-and-bear-it spirit and vocabulary of the WWII years.

Kirkus Reviews