The case of the murderous Dr. Cream : the hunt for a Victorian era serial killer / Dean Jobb.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Prologue: Ghosts -- I : "The first of criminals". "A great sin-stricken city" ; "Detective-fever" ; Ellen Donworth ; Matilda Clover ; "A human 'were-wolf' -- II : The Lambeth poisoner. Louisa Harvey ; Blackmail ; "A bad man with no refinement" ; Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell ; Bitter medicine ; "A strange customer" ; The suspect ; "You have got the wrong man" -- III : The trusted hand. Jarvis of the Yard ; "A young man of rare ability" ; "The animal spirits within" ; Flora Eliza Brooks ; Student No. 2016 ; A premature death ; The licentiate ; Catharine Hutchinson Gardner ; By some person unknown -- IV : Inquest. Missing links ; Resurrection -- V : Crimes and punishment. Mary Anne Matilda Faulkner ; "Pure Cream" ; Ellen Stack and Sarah Alice Montgomery ; A despicable scheme ; Daniel Stott ; "Crooked Cream" ; Inmate No. 4374 ; "As innocent as the child unborn" ; Chasing shadows -- VI : "Jack the poisoner." "A systematic and deliberate course of action" ; " A murder to diabolical" ; "Insane in no legal sense" ; Dead man's walk ; "I am Jack" -- Epilogue: "An Elizabethan tragedy of horrors."

"Framed around one salacious trial in 1891 London, a fascinating and vividly told true-crime narrative about the hunt for one of the first known serial killers, whose poisoning spree in the US, Canada, and England coincided with the birth of forensic science as well as the public's growing appetite for crime fiction such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels." --