An interesting read that I'm glad to have discovered. I'll definitely be seeking out more by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was a little disappointed in this book. I found it hard-work and repetitive in places. The writing style was not to my taste.

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting premise for a book.
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2020
This was an interesting story from long ago. Unfortunately, it was a bit too repetitious and redundant throughout that made the book seem a lot longer than it was. I received a copy from NetGalley and the publisher and this is my honest opinion

this was a really interesting case, i liked how the author built the story and you could tell that it was well-researched. i'm glad I was able to read this as i love true crime and hadn't heard of this case before.

I keep forgetting that, while I love true crime, books like these are hard to get though. Not a quick read, but if you have extra time, read this!

Early in the morning of June 14th 1904 Frank Thomas “Caesar” Young (50) is travelling in a horse drawn Hansom Cab to the harbour in New York. He is supposed to be meeting his wife there before boarding ship to travel to Europe for a stay of several months. In the cab with him is his lover Nan Patterson (21) a young actress; who he has telephoned earlier to come and accompany him. During the trip they will stop twice to buy Young – a heavy drinker – drinks and once so he can “buy a hat”. When they approach Broadway a shot is heard. The cabbie will find Young dying with his head on Nan’s lap. The gun is in Young’s pocket. With no witnesses the only person who knows the truth of the shooting is Nan herself. With no real evidence of the crime or her guilt, she will shortly after be arrested as a witness and transferred to the notorious Tombs Prison. Held there for nearly a year she will then be put through three trials for first degree murder, one will be stopped after illness of a juror, in the second there will be no decision so it will be declared a mistrial, as will the third. By the third a bizarre and unfounded hypothesis has been developed that the murder was a conspiracy with her uncle who bought the gun on Friday 3rd. After a legal battle Nan, her uncle and aunt will finally be released. It was admitted at the time that she should be tried as an example, for her irregular and immoral lifestyle, her notoriety will follow her for many years.
This is not just a story about an unfortunate death but a tale that has the potential to talk to so much more – the legal system, press coverage and practices, relationships between men and woman, predatory sexual behaviour, double standards, financial and other vulnerabilities of women. Seagrave has identified institutionalised and deep seated “misogyny” as one of the key themes she wants to explore. She has recognised this specific incident – and its fallout – through newspaper coverage and has used this as her key source of information on what allegedly happened. Although she clearly recognises that the press coverage is sensational in character, often contains inaccuracies or falsified information – something she recognises and rails against, - she has not sought out other sources.
Through the mishmash of articles, and their presentation by Seagrave, it is still possible to see a very informative tale that speaks to the attitudes and injustices of the time. Young an amateur sportsman from England had become a wealthy self made man through stables ownership, gambling and otherwise questionable practices. He undoubtedly had issues with alcohol and was a notorious womaniser, targeting much younger and poorer women. His wife, not fully researched, is involved in growing a property portfolio away from him. Nan, eloped and married at 16, came from a “good family” some of whom are involved in politics. With this failing marriage, no real skills and to earn a living she went on the stage in small roles. She came to the attention of and was then stalked by Young, being followed across country when she realised he was married. His wife and others made attempts to stop this relationship. Nan, as an actress, was considered the “responsible” party; Young older, richer and married was never regarded as morally or otherwise responsible, his behaviour taken for granted.
The legal system in the US was, as everybody knows was flawed and stacked against poorer people and especially women. Once Nan gets dragged into the system it was hard for her to disentangle herself. Seagrave does not involve herself in research on the possible underlying politics of the charges and trial – although even at the time there was criticism of politically appointed attorneys and others using the legal system to gain publicity and further their careers. But she identifies some of the evidential inadequacies of the case, the legal bias and malpractices, and how the legal process seemed to be led by reaction to the press coverage.
Overall this should make for a very interesting read. But it needs to be said that the presentation – starting with the introduction where the dates of the killing and the name of the victim are given inaccurately – is very poor. The ordering of the information, the repeats, the inconsistencies, the failure to identify sources properly and even the lack of systematic naming of the key characters makes the text unnecessarily garbled and as a result a seriously tiresome read. This is a great pity as Seagrave has identified a number of social issues that were important at the time and still resonate today. These might make some readers struggle through the text, but it will take commitment.

I received a free electronic ARC of this novel from Netgalley, Kerry Segrave, and BooksGoSocial.
Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this true crime story of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work.

Obviously a work of the heart, Death in a Hansom Cab is the retelling of the arrest and three trials of chorus girl and actress, Ann Elizabeth 'Nan' Patterson, for the murder of her married paramour, bookie and horse owner Frank Thomas 'Caesar' Young in 1904 New York City. Kerry Segrave presents us with all the known facts of this death, and the intricate dance steps performed by the prosecution during all three of the trials Nan went through before finally receiving her freedom from just short of a year in the Tombs, and the indignities and slander she was faced with in the press every day both before and after her release.

Both heavily researched and an interesting story, but Death in a Hansom Cab could have done with judicious editing. There were many redundancies and repetitions but it is a tale I am glad to have been exposed to.

I’m so upset with this author because I think in the rush to publish an intriguing story she just completely forgot to edit a single thing. Names are spelled differently, there are grammatical errors galore, it’s a holy mess. It totally detracts from what has the potential to be a great true crime novel. I’m really interested in reading about this travesty of justice.

Errata:
Having missed being at the track on the Monday and Tuesday, he last sighting was on the Sunday when he was spotted in a restaurant with Randolph" - His last sighting? The last sighting?
"While her performances in Floradora do no seem to have garnered any critical reviews" - do not
"Them he grew neglectful, despite her protests" - then he grew
"continued her statement by stated she first met" by stating / by relating?
"and no bullet hold in the coat pocket" hole? This is a quote, so it may be original, but there was no attempt by the author to clarify.
"left lung and lodged in the fourth vertebrae." - vertebrae is a plural. The word should have been vertebra.
"this account at least correctly the false reports" - corrected?
"Soon Mrs. Young head abut the affair." - heard about?
"Young "wrecker" his home" - wrecked?
"and give it out that she was one of the members of the Floradora chorus but had tired on the stage." - gave it, tired of?
"Patterson knew abut the Europe trip and possible separation" - about
"reported that Nan had no eaten" - not eaten
"Throughout the period of Nan's incarceration it was regularly noted, from time to time" - regularly or from time to time? It can't be both!
"and I am amazed that the man should pursue such a coarse." - course - again this is quoted speech with no confirmation of original
"before thee Smiths finally resurfaced" - the Smiths.
"Smith had said to her; "You will have to do it," ad she answered; "I won't." - and she answered
"where the water from a simple faucet dripped into a wooden paid." - pail?
"Another long article abut Patterson appeared" - again with about
"Over four month in Washington Patterson was said" - four months
"Nan responded to rumors that he husband Leon was going to divorce here by saying such speculation was untrue." - one sentence, two errors, both of which should read 'her'
"That a report surfaced from Cincinnati that Nan had been named as corespondent" - then a report, and correspondent is misspelled.

The impression I got from this author is that she has access to a bunch of newspaper archives from a period of time from around 1850 to around 1950 and she scours them for book ideas. She's written about drive-in theaters, vending machines, shoplifting, police women, and many other topics. It felt like at some point she came across this death in perusing the papers, and decided to write about it. The problem with this particular book was that there were so many errors (I list a score of them above) and so much repetition in it that despite my initial interest in the curious story and my bias in favor of reading it, it quickly became rather tedious to read at times.

Some of this repetition was due to poor editing. For example, I read:

"Whenever Miss Patterson disapproves of a talesman who is satisfactory to both counsel [each side], her lawyers promptly reject the man."
side], her lawyers promptly reject the man."
year-old retired merchant.

Clearly this is poor editing, and the book would have been immeasurably better if it had a spell-checker and a grammar check run on it. Most of the errors I report above would have bene caught by such a precaution. It's really a lot to ask a reviewer to approve a book when it's in such a sloppy condition.

Another instance is where I read,

third point was that on the afternoon of June 3 Young took a pistol away point was that on the afternoon of June 3 Young took a pistol away caliber revolver; fifth point

There is duplicated text here, and the fourth point is missing completely!

Some of the text was just plan rambling:

Nan Patterson was called to the bar for once again, to be tried for murder in the first degree, for the third time.

It's tautologous to use 'once again' and 'for the third time' - only one of these is needed. Later I read:

Forty-two of the 60 peremptory challenges allowed to both sides were used (30 allowed each side) with the defense using 24 of its peremptory challenges while the prosecution used 18 of its challenges.

This is just repetitively rambling, as is this:

Another over-the-top exaggeration about Nan and her reaction in court supposed came on April 24 when the defendant was supposedly overcome

The basic story is that in early June 1904, a man by the name of Frank Thomas "Caesar" Young was riding in a hansom cab with his lover, an actor by the name of Anne Elizabeth "Nan" Patterson. Young was married and supposedly on his way to board the Germanic, a White Star Lines cruise ship heading for Europe. Germanic was a precursor of the Titanic which would be built starting just five years later.

The ship was supposed to depart at 9:30 am, so the author says, but another account I read indicated 9 pm. The author never addresses any question of whether it was a morning departure or an evening departure and goes with the morning. I take her word for it since it seems that such ships would tend to leave in the morning or mid-afternoon, not at night.

One thing that is certain is that Young was not with his wife on the dock. Instead, at 7:30, he called Nan who was staying with her sister and her brother-in-law at a hotel. He picked her up in the cab at Columbus Circle around 8:00. The plan, she understood, was to travel together to within a block or two of the ship, and then drop her off. Young's wife knew of the affair, and since she controlled the purse strings, she was ordering Young away from Patterson. How that thing with the purse strings happened goes unexplained, since Young was the one with the fortune, but his wife was insisting on this trip to try and break up her husband from his mistress.

The cab traveled alarmingly slowly apparently, because according to this narrative, Young insisted they stop on two different occasions to get a drink at a bar, and on a third occasion to buy a straw boater! This conflicts with an earlier account in the book, in which the author tells us the cabbie claims nothing untoward happened on the journey until the shooting. It's quite a ride from the Paul Hotel where she was staying, down to the pier from which the ship would depart. How he hoped to board in time is a mystery, but the author never addresses this. Perhaps he had no intention of boarding.

The incident occurred around nine, at a time when you would think the ship would have pulled up the boarding gangways and be making ready to depart, but there's no word about what Mrs Young was doing at this time. The author, in her focus on Patterson seems completely uncaring about what was happening with Mrs Young. The cabbie heard a muffled shot, and it was discovered that Young was dead, shot in a way that made it look like suicide was not an easy explanation, although suicide is how the case was treated initially, and which partially explains why forensic evidence was so poorly attended to.

Later, Patterson was arrested, and despite three trials over the next eleven months, the prosecution was unable to get a conviction, and Patterson was let go, but not acquitted. She was not tried again, and ended up remarrying the man she had left for Young, although that guy apparently took ill and died, and Patterson seemed to show no interest in his welfare. The author glosses over this in her laser focus on this supposedly wronged woman, who later married again, and then fell into obscurity and likely died a pauper's death.

The author is right in that Patterson was hounded and smeared by the newspapers none of which thought an actor could possibly be a person of decent or moral character. The author makes a big deal throughout the story of calling out various assertions about Patterson as lies, but without offering corroboration as to how these lies were exposed. For example, I would read, "or so the account would have its readers believe. It was a lie." There is no evidence or argument offered to explain why it was a lie; we're simply expected to take the author's word for it.

This sort of bland assumption appears often. For example, at one point, I read this:

"Certainly no account ever appeared anywhere else about a constantly raucous and unruly crowd of spectators. Thus the above story was another fabrication and perhaps was published only to display the not so subtle misogyny of the newspaper."

There really is no ground whatsoever for making such an assumption! First of all, the author herself does report other instances where the crowd was unruly, but she makes no real distinction between reports of unruliness inside, versus outside the courtroom, thereby confusing things.

One glaring example of biased reporting is the disappearance of Patterson's sister and her husband for several months. The author makes much of how the police on the one had are supposedly tailing them, but on the other do not seem to be able to arrest them, but she makes no inquiry whatsoever into why the sister of a woman accused of murder would disappear, together with her husband right when Patterson is going to trial - nor why they are gone for so long.

To me, this is highly suspicious because it relates to the question of a man and a woman purchasing a revolver in New York City which was likely the one discharged in the cab. The author simply assumes, with little evidence, that it was Young's gun. She never once asks why, when Patterson is in dire trouble, her sister, with whom she'd been living, was nowhere to be found. Not only is that suspicious in and of itself, it's also suspicious as to why the author fails to ask hard and obvious questions about this bizarre behavior on their part.

It's this bias and the lack of any sort of gray-shading that spoils the value of the reporting here. The repetitions and the score or more of grammatical and spelling errors further detract from the story, taking attention from the woman who the author would like to gently place at the center of this story and focusing it instead on the problems with the book. In view of all of this, I cannot in good faith commend this as a worthy read.

This is obviously a labour of love for the author but it is rather repetitive in its writing. The outline of the book at the start gives away the whole of the storyline - I know it's a real-life case but storyline is the best word I can come up with. Reading about historical crime interests me however the way in which this book was written had me glazing over and I had to force myself to finish it.

Overall, this is a fair investigation into the misogyny inherent in the early 1900s and how it effects a young woman’s life.
However, the first section is very repetitive- clearly a lot of research was done, but a summary of the newspaper reports would have been more engaging, rather than outlining each newspaper report, when these all said similar things.
The book picks up as we get into the trials and the main thrust of the story.
The book would also have benefitted from a proof reader. There’s a number of typos throughout that should have been picked up before the book was published.

I thought the subject would be interesting but the writing style was just not that good. I agree with some of the other reviews about the story.

In 1904, horsing racing entreprenaur Caesar Young was shot during a hansom cab ride. The other only occupant was Nan Patterson, a chorus girl who had been involved with the married Young for a few years. After three trials, no criminal crimes were leveled against Patterson and no answer to what happened in that hansom cab.

On the surface, this true crime story captured my interest ..... but I quickly grew frustrated by the author's writing style of presenting newspaper reports without any intrepretation or context. We get the same details over and over again (and are often told the accounts are not accurate) but there is little in the way of background on Young or Patterson, or the nature of their relationship. There are bits of information scattered throughout but nothing developed out of the unclear facts of the case.

If the author's intent is to comment on how journalists portrayed Nan Patterson - as a homewrecker, as a sly seductress, as an unintelligent untalented actress - again, there is no intrepretation of the various accounts and no overlying theory of the crime or of Patterson's character.

This book was very frustrating to me, and I cannot recommend it. 2 stars.

There is definitely a story to work with in this books. I always in need of a historical true crime story and the title definitely intrigued me. The author solely focused on how Nan Patterson was treated unfairly due to her sex and occupation. As the reporters and courts could have focused on this case in more than one way the author could have also.

I'm glad that I read it as I did learn about this court case but I was a bit disappointed. With some editing and exploration of the case through multiple lenses I would definitely seek a revisit.

My interest was piqued by the title and concept, as I love true crime, especially cases I don’t know a ton about. But while the story surrounding the case was fascinating, what sort all the press surrounding the accused, I didn’t care much for the writing style, It feels very matter-of-fact and somewhat stilted, whereas I like when nonfiction history books can really give me a sense of the environment and what the people may have been like,