Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast · Blue Ewe Media

410: The 1856 Dublin Railway Murder w/ Thomas Morris

·1 hr 13 min·4 clips

George Little’s office was found locked, his throat cut with a razor, and his head battered with a blunt object.

Eric Rivenes introduces Thomas Morris, a writer and historian who spent many years as a BBC producer and has also worked as a freelance journalist for outlets like The Times and The Lancet. The topic is the Dublin Railway Murder, which Morris covers in his 2021 book, The Dublin Railway Murder: The Sensational True Story of a Victorian Murder Mystery. Morris explains when he first came across the case and why it stayed with him. The conversation spends time on the practical problems facing police. They had to identify a suspect from very little. They also had to search the station and nearby properties without giving away too much. The worry was that the murderer might learn where police were looking and could hide, change what they were doing, or move stolen property or a murder weapon. The case becomes a study in how an investigation can depend on keeping information tight. Rivenes and Morris also talk about journalists. In the mid-1850s, it was normal for journalists to speak quite freely with police officers, and senior officers were often open about what they were doing and where they expected the inquiry to go next. That was common in London cases at the time and still familiar enough in Dublin to matter here. At the same time, the episode suggests that practice was starting to shift. Augustus Guy, the detective leading the investigation, chose what he called a closed investigation. He wanted to keep as little as possible in the open so the murderer would not learn too much. Morris explains that this may have helped stop evidence from being moved or hidden. He also says that Guy may have picked up similar habits from contemporaries at Scotland Yard. The episode also hints that a reporter at the Daily Freeman may have had some kind of inside connection within the force. Rather than chasing a big reveal, the episode stays close to chronology and method. Morris keeps circling back to who knew what, when they knew it, and how that shaped the inquiry. The result is a careful historical true-crime conversation that values process over shock. It leaves the listener with a clearer sense of how a murder investigation could change as police and the press learned to handle information more tightly.

As heard by us

A steady Victorian murder case that treats the facts as history, not spectacle.

Thomas Morris handles the Dublin railway murder as a case study rather than a sensation piece, and that restraint works. The review is at its best when it follows the practical police work: the station searches, the checks of nearby properties, the trouble of pinning down a…

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a Dublin railway murder, Victorian-era detective work, and the uneasy give-and-take between police and newspapers.

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