The pages of sin

摘要

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Lord William Russell was a harmless old gent. What a horror, then, when he was found in his bed on the morning of May 6th 1840, "his throat cut so deeply that the windpipe was sliced right through and the head almost severed." Russell was the youngest son of the Marquess of Tavistock, and although some of his family could not have been grander-his nephew Lord John Russell was the principal architect of the Great Reform Act ol 1832, and was to be the last ever Whig prime minister-he himself lived modestly b> aristocratic standards. When not abroad he could be found in a terraced townhouse on Norfolk Street, with only a maid, a cook and a valet to tend to him. He had no enemies he had no great debts. Yet, as Claire Har-man writes in her compact and engrossing account of his death and its aftermath, or that spring night "mayhem and murder' came to a quiet Mayfair street.