Neglected Murderesses  

Peripatetic Path of the Murderesses’ Art

The murderesses first appeared in Murderess Ink (1980), a follow-up to Murder Ink (Workman Press, 1979) by Dilys Winn. In the same year, they were repackaged with a selection of whimsical cat drawings by Gorey Cat Catalog, also from Workman, in a small 1980 trade paperback titled Dancing Cats and Neglected Murderesses.  Gorey was so disappointed with the look of the paperback, however, that later in 1980 he published a limited edition of 300 signed/numbered and 26 signed/lettered books featuring his elegantly-designed front and back cover, and limitation page, but retaining the poorly printed Workman interior pages. [i]

Also in 1980, Gorey gave the murderesses a fresh printing and larger format through his Fantod Press as a set of Dogear Wryde postcards. The sets were limited to 250 copies, each of which was signed, numbered, and packaged in an illustrated envelope. 

Never brought to justice for their crimes, these scoundrels carried on in Betrayed Confidence, an album of seven different dogear Wryde postcard series from 1992. They reappear in Amphigorey Again in 2006, so well reproduced that Gorey’s glorious penwork is, at last, realized for the general public. Ten years later, they emerge for the first time with posthumously added color in a boxed set of note cards — five each of four designs — from Pomegranate. My favorite of the original twelve designs portrays Natasha Batti-Loupstein who pulverized a paste necklace and sprinkled it over a tray of canapes, at Villa Libellule, Nice, 1923. Her iniquity was as elegant and eerie as Natasha herself and the modern art under which she posed.

The evil twelve may come to the small screen if news from Variety becomes fact. Television producer Norman Reedus is developing a live-action, AMC broadcast series of Gorey’s Neglected Murderesses. No release date is set as of this writing.

Murder on Mind

Was Gorey preoccupied by murder and death?  Some of his favorite reading were Agatha Christie mystery novels, which by definition are all about murder. Even a cursory reading of Gorey’s output justifies the question itself,  Death takes no holiday in The Deranged Cousins .  None of the titular cousinsRosemary Marsh, Mary Rosemarsh, and Marsh Maryrose, by name – survive the novel. In a quarrel while beach-combing one September afternoon, Mary struck Rose with a brown china door knob she had already found and killed her.       

And of course, there are twenty- six deaths in Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies (1963)!  While most of them are caused by animals, accident, or the child’s poor judgement, two are heinous murders: 

                                    H is for Hector done in by a thug

                                    K is for Kate who was struck with an axe

Even more ghastly than the Tinies, The Loathsome Couple (1977) details some dreadful real murders. As the flyleaf of the book’s first edition states (in Gorey’s hand), “This book may well prove to be the author’s most unpleasant ever.” Based on the killing spree by Ian Brady and Myra Handley committed between 1963-1965, Gorey sticks closely to the facts covered by the British press under “The Moors Murders” banner. In his curiously canny way, he tells of the couple’s grievous beginnings, their torture-murders of several children, and their ultimate incarceration. Gorey spares no effort in his illustrations for the book, either. They are heavily crosshatched in a way that reinforces the gloom of the tale.

Thus, when we come to these unsung murderesses, they’re nowhere as vicious as the Moors Murders couple, or others he may have encountered through his voracious reading.,  Found amongst his well-read library was the tale of  Gesche Gottfried, an early 19th century, German serial killer who poisoned fifteen people, including her parents, her twin brother, her children, and her husbands.  Also the story of Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova, an 18th-century Russian noblewoman, who hired young women, then brutally beat and tortured them so badly that more than one hundred of them died at her hands. None of the twelve eponymous murderesses Gorey conjured as achieved the fame as Lizzie Borden, another subject of Gorey’s drawings and a tale he knew well.  They were, sadly, completely neglected until Gorey thought to showcase them for our delight.

Lighten Up

But Gorey the man was no more obsessed with death than one who follows the daily news, likes detective books, or scary movie, regardless of his chosen subject matter. Death is an exciting, dramatic event in every life that makes a good story. The fatalities that  abound in his writings, are only elements on which he applies the many, many other tools on his bench to work with. Gorey masterfully employes rhythm, rhyme, and wordplay. He uses misdirection, hints at buried ideas, and makes us gasp in surprise at his non sequiturs. His art is enriched with action, mood, and place. He is adept at character. We recognize the characters in his books, and appreciate the roles they play.

The one pervasive component in most of his ingenious art is humor— sly and dry. It doesn’t make fun of death; it eases the fear of it. And one of his often-used modes of humor is parody of literary forms,as typified by both The Gashlycrumb Tinies and Neglected Murderesses.

An image of a death’s-headed creature tending a troop of little children on the front cover of The Gashlycrumb Tinies doesn’t tell the reader that it is an abecedarium. The first page, however, makes it evident  that this is no kid’s ABC book. Instead of the usually bland “A is for apple, C is for cat,” we get“A is for Amy who fell down the stairs”followed by twenty-five more children’s fatalities, that are as uncommon as are the names of the doomed: Basil is assaulted by bears; Desmond thrown out of a sleigh, Ernest choked on a peach; Fanny sucked dry by a leech, Winnie embedded in ice, Xerxes devoured by mice and —perhaps the most poignant because the cause touches us all now and then —Neville who died of ennui.     

Gorey’s calamitous content contrasts so powerfully with his catchy two-line rhyming and solemn, etching-like illustrations, that it’s hard to hold back a chuckle of recognition at the audacity of this twist on the classic children’s genre.

Similar to The Gashlycrumb Tinies, Neglected Murderesses’s morbid subject matter is tamed by quirky names for people and places, like:

Nurse Rosebeetle tilted her employer out of a Bath chair 

                                    and over a cliff at Sludgemouth in 1898.

and

                                    Miss Q.P. Urkheimer brained her fiancé after failing to pickup

                                    an easy spare at Glover’s Lanes, Poxville, Kansas 1936.

or

                                    Mrs. Daisy Sallow eviscerated her daughter-in-law with a No. 7 hook,

                                     afterward crocheting, over the course of three evenings, her shroud in

                                    a snowflake pattern (1922).

An aura of levity is realized through Gorey’s straight-faced invention of these crimes which are, in turn, reported in an unsentimental, “just the facts, Jack” style — a parody of spare notes made on a local police precinct blotter. The dates of the murders add a jolly garnish of authenticity to complete the satire.           

Lest the reader gets too comfortable with his humor and forgets that we;re dealing with murder here, Gorey delivers his most chilling case of five- or six- year-old little Angelina Treasure who

                                    So disposed of her infant brother that he was not

                                    found until many years later (Nether Postlude, 1889)    

 

Angelina Transome.
So disposed of her infant
brother that he was not
found until many years later (Nether Postlude, 1889)

 

By Malcolm Whyte