The following pages were written not by me, but by the staff of the Chatham News in the early1970s before I joined. They were published in a book called Crimes that Shocked the Medway Towns, which is now out of print. The copyright of that remained with its publishers, Parrett & Neves, and I am grateful to Graham Parrett for permission to republish here. 

By Gerald Hinks:

* Young killer in the Brook

* The last public hangings

* Murder of a cinema manager

* Murder on a Rochester barge

* The killing of Constable May

* A case for Sergeant Burr

* The Wainscott killer who wrote murder stories 

* The corpse of pretty Emily 

By Frank Dunkley:

* Murder of a Medway mayor

* The siege of Symons Avenue

* Death in the Darland glasshouse

* Murders in darkest Strood

By Diane Nicholls:

* Edna, victim of a Chatham sex fiend

* Murder in Chatham Dockyard hellhole

* Murder of a Borstal warder

* Murder on a Chatham warship

By Alison Byles:

* A genius and a killer

By Colin Moore:

* Eliza's ordeal in Chatham workhouse

By David Pratt

* Lynch mob in the cemetery

By David Nicholls:

* Murder on the parade ground

* Unsolved: the murder of a Wigmore widow

* Razor murder in a Brompton street

(Belatedly, credit should be given to the cub reporter who helped research these features for his elders and betters in the early 1970s: step forward Lance Morgan, now veteran sports editor of the News.) 

(No, he's not sports editor of veteran sports, he's just been a sports editor for yonks. Thirty years, I reckons)