Thou Savage Woman

'Popular history at its best' Spectator

'Boisterous… replete with stabbings, bashing and thumping' Daily Mail

'A cocktail of brutal, tragic, and fascinating true crime from the era of the Tudors and Stuarts. This dark history at its best, narrated with empathy and precision' Gareth Russell

LADY KILLERS AND FEMME FATALES – STORIES OF MURDER MOST FOUL – HAVE GRIPPED PUBLIC IMAGINATION FOR CENTURIES

Early Modern Britain was awash with pamphlets, ballads, woodcuts broadcasting bloodthirsty tales of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, cunning female poisoning lacing the supper with deadly substances; of child killers and spiteful witches, stories of women wholly and unnaturally wicked. These were printed or sung, tacked the walls of alehouses, sold in the streets for pennies and read voraciously to thrill all. But why? When the vast majority of murders then (and now) are committed by men.

In this bold, page-turning new history, former police officer and historian Blessin Adams tells stories of women whose violent crimes shattered the narrow confines of their gender – and whose notoriety revealed a society that was at once repulsed by and attracted to murderous female rebellion. Based on detailed research in court archives, each chapter explores murders that thrilled and terrified the British public; the crimes that caused the most concern and provoked the most debate. Women in this period killed rarely, and when they did it was usually within the context of extreme provocation or domestic violence. Adams has the ability of the best crime novelists in recreating the setting in which each case occurred as well as the motivations of each perpetrator.

Thou Savage Woman reminds us that women in the past had voices, that they sought to control their bodies and their environments and that they also had the capacity for committing acts of unspeakable violence.

Early Praise for Thou Savage Woman:

'A fascinating read. Adams navigates the evidence with the calm clarity of a detective and an eye for titillating detail… This is popular history at its best, where the past is brought vividly, albeit gruesomely, to life, and we come a step closer to making sense of that most elusive of things: the strange contours of our ancestors’ minds'

Spectator

'Riveting.. Blessin Adams’s boisterous account of female killers in ‘early modern Britain’ (roughly the era of Shakespeare) is replete with stabbings, bashing and thumping… Men could get away with things – even murder! – as ‘male violence was considered to be normal and, in certain circumstances, even honourable’. Women weren’t allowed to say boo to a goose. Which is why their crimes, once discovered, were ‘more outrageous, frightening and disturbing’

Daily Mail

'Fascinating… As Adams explores in clear-eyed, often vivid prose, the cases of these women accused of murder – from servants to witches to wealthy wives – were used as titillating warnings to women and men about the importance of maintaining social order…riveting'

Daily Telegraph

'This killer read is a true crime compendium of female murderers in early modern Britain. It makes for a fascinating insight into our obsession with female killers then, and now'

Janice Hallett

'A cocktail of brutal, tragic, and fascinating true crime from the era of the Tudors and Stuarts. This dark history at its best, narrated with empathy and precision'

Gareth Russell

Blessin Adams traded police work investigating today's crime in the Norfolk Constabulary for academia, tracing the lives and deaths of people in early modern England. Blessin received her doctorate following research in early modern English law and literature at the University of East Anglia. As a fan of true crime she is fascinated by historical stories of murder and justice. She lives in Norfolk with her husband and two dogs, and is a beekeeper in her spare time.

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