Hawley Harvey Crippen, hanged in 1910 for the murder of his second wife, Cora née Turner, was, after a fashion, a medical man.

Isabelle Grey opened a recent Tablet film review with the chilling observation, “Mass killers … practise at home”. We feel the chill because we know it’s true. Much of the horror of 10 Rillington Place, of Fred and Rosemary West’s revolting ménage, of Dennis Nilsen’s lonely flat, even of Harold Shipman’s “home visits”, is the domesticity of the setting. But we would also have to agree with Hallie Rubenhold that our culture still tends to glamorise the murderer and elide his or her victims. Who but a bereaved relative or retired policeman can name even one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s prey? or Nilsen’s, for that matter? We only remember one of Charles Manson’s victims because Sharon Tate was a movie star.

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