This book makes use of a privately held archive of Illustrated Police News to describe strange, macabre, and uncanny episodes from the Victorian era. Dog-Faced Men are exhibited on stage; the doctors congregate around the bed of the Sleeping Frenchman of Soho; Miss Vint demonstrates her Reincarnated Cats; and scantily dressed Female Somnambulists tumble from the roofs. The White Gorilla takes a swig from its tankard of beer, eagles come swooping from the sky to carry off little children, and the Rat-Killing Monkey of Manchester goes on a rampage, . Each one of these tales is a window into an era that encapsulated public probity and private hysteria in the strangest of ways.
