“Drop-tober” full month sale on most kindle titles is now live!

Grab yourself a bargain. We have made the sale a month long affair so no-one is trapped out of the sale by it falling outside of their pay day.

Most Paperback versions reduced by 30-70%.
Most Kindle versions reduced by 60-80%

To celebrate more than 6 years of self-published titles (and the patrons who bought them) we are having a month long sale of most of our older works. grab yourself a bargain, and spread the world to anyone who may have a thing for victorian history, curious crimes and curious times of the 19th century.

Do note that a couple of our more recent works, as well as the lockdown books, are still regular price. The rest of the titles have been reduced as far as Kindle Publishing will let us. We couldn’t give you them any lower if we tried (and we would!)

Stay safe out there,
Margaret & Chris

We are delighted to announce the publication of the 4th Lockdown Book of Rotherham’s Criminals. I think you’ll find that in this book we have found some of the best cases yet!

Read about the exploits of ‘Rotherham Bob’ who was a character well known to the people of the town. At election times he would dress up in his rainbow finery and prance through the town, begging for money which he spent drinking in the local pubs. (This will also be found in the Rotherham Advertiser this week!)

There is also a shocking account of a child murder at the Crinoline Bridge, which could have been one of the earliest instances of Victorian baby farming. You will also uncover the strange account of a visitor to the town from Birmingham, who was somehow poisoned, but when she died, no inquest or police investigation was held in Rotherham. Why? Only when her husband heard rumours that she had been poisoned and demanded an inquest in Birmingham, was the case fully explored…

As before all royalties from this and the other Lockdown Books will be donated to the Rotherham NHS. To find the book, just follow this link:

As always, thanks for reading, and stay safe out there!
Margaret & ChrisThe Lockdown Book of Rotherham’s Criminals (Book 4) eBook: Drinkall, Margaret: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Chris and I are please to let you know that sales from both the (Rotherham) Lockdown Books and the first of the Sheffield trilogy (Sheffield Dark Streets) have gone extremely well. So much so that on 9 Aug we were able to donate £45 royalties, added to that is today’s wonderful donation of £95.26p (rounded up to £100) making a grand total of £145 for the Rotherham NHS. The royalties for the Sheffield Dark Streets book has amounted to a massive £88.10 for the SHC (again rounded up to £100) on your behalf. This makes a fantastic total of £245 towards the people working on the front line during this present COVID-19 crisis.

THANK YOU

We couldn’t have done it without you!

We are please to present our next book: Sheffield’s Dark Streets. Again we will be donating any revenues from this book to Sheffield Hospitals Charity.

This book is intended to be the first of a ‘dark’ trilogy about crime and murder in 19th century Sheffield. As the people of the city walk through its streets today, they are unknowingly following the path trodden by a colourful menagerie of criminals buried in its past. Like James Hill who walked hand in hand with his nephew along Moor Street, where the boys mutilated body was later found. The Wicker today is full of shops and restaurants, can you imagine that on this famous landmark, a man decided that his only way out, was to murder his wife and then kill himself?

Does your daily commute take you along Leadmill Road, it was there that James Hall murdered his wife with an axe claiming that she had been unfaithful to him. Only facing death, did the truth finally emerge. Remember that in the 19th century Sheffield had the wealth brought on by the Industrial Revolution, at a time when there was great poverty and privation. Remember that next time you are walking home, alone in the dark that Sheffield’s streets saw its fair share of true crime and murder over the years, and try not to panic if one night you hear footsteps walking behind you…..

You can find this book on Amazon (both Kindle and Paper versions) via the link below:

All proceeds from this book and others in the trilogy will go to the Sheffield Hospitals Charity (SHC) which helps support all the major hospitals in the city, as a token of our appreciation for all the extremely hard work they are undertaking during this present COVID-19 crisis.

We are currently working on a ‘Dark’ trilogy of true 19th century Sheffield murders, which has been in progress for some time now. Rotherham, has and always will be, Margaret’s focus for publications, but the city of Sheffield, also has a colourful menagerie of criminals buried in it’s past. As with our recent Rotherham Lockdown books, we intend to forward any revenues from sales to the Sheffield Hospitals Charity (SHC), which helps support all the major hospitals in the city, and are working extremely hard during this present crisis. To get the message out, and hopefully get more proceeds to send to SHC, we’d like to reach out across facebook to any groups that deal with stories and pictures of Sheffield from the Victorian era, to see if they wish us to let their groups know when the books are due for release

If you know of any related facebook groups, that might be interested, especially if you are an owner or admin of such a group, please message us. It would help if you could reply to this post, rather than message us direct (as then others could see what’s been suggested, and avoid making the same suggestion multiple times). If allowed by the group’s owners, we’d like to reach out through those groups when the books are released. If allowed by the groups owners, we’d like to reach out through these groups when the books are released.

As always, any and all books we release, will be advertised through the Margaret Drinkall facebook group and website. Feel free to recommend your friends and family to join our group if they are interested in Victorian era crimes across Yorkshire.

Stay safe, and thank you in advance,
Margaret and Chris Drinkall
2 August 2020

The reception of the ‘lockdown’ books have gone so well that we are pleased to publish the third one in the sequence. We have also been asked to look into the possibility of publishing some Sheffield books on 19^th century criminals. However this wont be the last ‘lockdown’ book as there are still more are in the pipeline.

In this book, you will meet the same sort of characters that you might meet on the streets of Rotherham today, except that these, went just a little bit too far. There was an employer who incited a young girl she employed to commit a robbery, four youthful burglars who taught young boys how to rob houses in Rotherham and Masbrough, a dedicated housewife who, unknowingly poisoned her family with arsenic from a barrel she had bought on the cheap.

There was a clergyman who swindled his flock, accompanied by a mysterious figure who was called ‘Johnny dear’ and wore women’s stockings. The book also includes sad cases of child neglect in Rotherham, a vengeful shooting at Bradgate as well as a tragic murder and suicide at Conisbrough. Help us show our appreciation to the local NHS workers for the sterling work they are doing during this ‘lockdown’. All royalties from this book will go to the Rotherham NHS Trust, so spread the word. Thank you.

You can find the book live in both Kindle and physical copies here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lockdown-Book-Rotherhams-Criminals-ebook/dp/B08CSV7PC2/

Margaret Drinkall

Chris Drinkall

July 2020

To raise funds for the Rotherham NHS Trust, we present the 2nd Lockdown Book of Rotherham Criminals. Assist us to show our appreciation to the local NHS workers for the sterling work they are doing during this ‘lockdown’. All royalties from this book will go to the Rotherham NHS Trust, so spread the word. The link to the book is here.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08B4YHVCD
(Note that a hard copy version of this will be available very soon, if you’re a lover of paper-and-ink)

This new book contains such cases as a family of robbers of Rawmarsh, who became a plague on the people of the area. A jewel thief who called himself King Dick who had a charmed life. He took part in a jewel heist, was identified by men who knew him, but still the police could not pin the crime on him and he escaped – yet again.

There are also within these pages a smooth-talking clog dancer, two young children aged 11 and 7 brought before the magistrates, and a man who claimed he was acting like Jack the Ripper. Walk with them through the streets of Victorian Rotherham as they planned and carried out their dastardly deeds.

Enjoy, stay safe and look after each other.

Margaret & Chris

The book contains the antics of the notorious Lady Barton, brothel keeper extraordinaire, read about the many swindles of Mr and Mrs Fritz and meet the murderous lodger, Thomas Doherty. Within these pages you will find some of the most notorious characters that ever walked the streets of the town…

We are proud to present the Lockdown Book of Rotherham’s Criminals written at a time when people of Rotherham are in isolation due to the COVID-19 epidemic. These books contain a compilation of some of the most notorious crimes commited in Rotherham in the nineteenth century. If you’ve yet to pick up one of my books, this is a great introduction to the crimes of Rotherham’s past. A few have been in past publications, many are brand new, but all are true and they all happened here in our town.

ALL proceeds from the sale of this and FUTURE Lockdown books, will be donated to Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust. I am lucky to have stayed safe so far during this time, but I am sure should I fall Ill that they will provide the best possible care.

Please feel free to share this message amongst your friends, so we can raise as much as possible! Click here to go to the amazon web page.

However, if you would rather donate directly to the trust, you can do so through their just giving link by clicking here

Stay Safe and Enjoy,

As we are all unable to go outside, apart from essential tasks at the moment, I thought about what I could do to help and, after a suggestion from my son Chris, have decided to write a ‘Lockdown Book’. This will be reproducing again some of the many true crimes I have already written about in books and newspaper articles. The book will be mainly aimed at new readers who have not read any of my books before, but as it also contains new cases I am hoping that it will appeal to the ‘constant reader’ also. All royalties for this book (and hopefully other ‘Lockdown Criminals’ books to follow) will be donated to the NHS for the sterling work they are doing during this worldwide crisis.

Are you self isolating at home through this present national emergency?
Do you come from Rotherham?
Are you interested in true murder cases that really happened on the town’s dark streets?

If you answered yes to all the above then you will love my new book called ‘Rotherham’s Dark Streets’. The book, in your imagination at least, takes you along the same roads and streets of Rotherham accompanied by someone plotting revenge or murder? Walk along Sheffield Road where John Thomas Kay planned to kill his paramour, or follow Samuel Barker as he made his way over Coronation Bridge and along Psalters Lane, not knowing that he was going to his death.

This book covers murders and attempted murders which really happened in Rotherham between the years 1900 – 1959 from which four men from Rotherham were executed on the scaffold and other sentenced to life sentences for crimes committed on Rotherham’s dark streets. The book costs £3.99 (Kindle version) or £8.99 (Paperback version) and is ready to either download or buy from Amazon if you follow this link.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=rotherham+dark+street

Enjoy!