14. Murder Scenes Were Tourist Attractions
It’s perhaps unsurprising in an era before the internet, television, or even radio that entertainment was hard to find and often a bit strange. Even reading would have been difficult past daylight hours in Regency England, as quality candles were still extremely expensive. Death was a powerful cultural force in the Regency period, with many rituals popping up around death including mourning brooches. This fascination, combined with the relative lack of entertainment in the period, led to a particularly grim pastime: murder tourism.
When news of the murder broke in a city, murder tourists would rush to the location hoping to see gritty evidence. Sometimes, a public auction would take place with tourists attempting to buy items from the murder scene. There was no forensic science in the Regency era, so murder tourists would be allowed to trample all over the murder scene, obscuring or destroying any evidence present. Murder scenes became so popular, especially if the victim were someone well known, that enterprising business people began selling tourist attractions at famous scenes. The souvenirs were often items like bits of sack from the bag used to transport the body of the victim or some other similarly morbid piece from the crime scene.