“When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals, he has the nerve and he has the knowledge,” Sherlock Holmes observed. At the time the words of the fictional detective appeared in The Strand Magazine, a real-life Canadian doctor was murdering women in London’s downtrodden Lambeth neighbourhood. Dr. Thomas Cream had been a suspect in two deaths in Canada, and killed four people in Chicago before arriving in London in 1891 and using pills laced with strychnine to kill prostitutes. The "Lambeth Poisoner" became one of the most prolific serial killers in history.

Dean Jobb reveals how bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and failed prosecutions allowed Cream to evade detection and kill again. Alongside an inside account of Scotland Yard’s desperate search for a brazen killer, Jobb explores how the morality and hypocrisy of the Victorian era enabled Cream to poison the vulnerable and desperate women who had turned to
him for help.