Murder, Magic, Madness: The Victorian Trials of Dove and the Wizard

Owen Davies examines the 1856 poisoning case of William Dove, a young tenant farmer who was tried and executed for murdering his wife, Harriet. The book follows Dove’s association with Henry Harrison, the so-called Leeds Wizard, whose prediction of a wealthier and more attractive second marriage became entangled with the crime. Dove’s reported belief in magic and the Devil raised questions that reached beyond the evidence of poisoning.

The trials prompted Victorian arguments about whether Dove was mad or morally responsible, while Harrison’s activities exposed a wider culture of fortune-tellers, popular physicians and occult practitioners. Davies places the case within the social and mental world of mid-19th-century England, where beliefs dismissed as superstition continued to influence private decisions and public debate.