It is now nearly a year since the first Rotherham LOCKDOWN book was published. It has been a tough year for many of us, who have suffered in the pandemic, suffered from loss, and suffered from isolation. However, from the very first, our NHS has striven to meet the demands of a sudden and deadly disease which brought the world to it’s knees.

It was in the spirit of thanking the NHS, that we started to release these LOCKDOWN books, with any profits going wholly to Rotherham NHS and the Sheffield Hospitals Charity.

We are happy to report that, at present, thanks to those of you who have bought these titles, that we have raised just over £400 for Rotherham and £620 for Sheffield, giving a grand total of £1020. If you have bought any of those books, thank you sincerely, for you have personally contributed to the well being of critically ill people of Rotherham and Sheffield during this dark time.

Thankfully we are now on our way out of the worst of Covid-19. We have no current plans for further LOCKDOWN books, but you can be sure there are still plenty of stories that Victorian Yorkshire’s past has to tell us. The reception of the Sheffield’s Evil Women book has been very good, and if you ever wanted to know more about Rotherham’s Scamps and Scallywags, you wont have to wait long.

Feel free to share this status, if you have contributed or want to raise awareness, as any sales from those books will be donated in the future too. A link to all the books on Amazon is right here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Margaret+Drinkall+Lockdown+Book

Margaret and Chris Drinkall

May 2021

Following the success of the Sheffield Dark Trilogy here is another book about crime in the city during the 19th century. This time it concentrates on the female side of Sheffield’s criminal underground. Here you will meet criminal women transported to the other side of the world for crimes as simple as stealing a few shillings, some boots or some brushes. One appalling women threw her daughter into the Rivelin Dam, not once but twice. There are tragic cases of those killing new born babies in order to hide the crime of unmarried conception. There is one woman who set her husband on fire, whether by accident or intentionally, I leave you to judge’

Some committed crimes against other women. Such as using the art of fortune telling to relieve one woman of her money. or another young girl who thought she was doomed, to kill herself. There was an ignorant midwife who killed two women with her incompetence. But perhaps the kind of woman most feared by the Sheffield authorities were the prostitutes. They were seen as duping innocent young men out of their well earned wages. Sheffield in the 19th century was seen as a hotbed of vice, and the woman who worked in such professions as the most depraved imaginable. All these cases are true and really happened in Sheffield.

The books are available to buy or download from Amazon

Margaret and Chris Drinkall

March 2021

Just in time for Christmas… The Dark Sheffield trilogy concludes with a menagerie of cases fuelled by desire and hate. For example there is a man who suffered a rejection, and in revenge plotted the death of the woman herself as well as her two sisters. Business rivalry takes a bitter twist, between two milkmen brothers, ending in something much more fatal than milk being delivered.

Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08R6NB4WN

Hate and desire are not limited to adults… There is the case of a young boy who killed another boy he saw as a rival. Another tragic case is that of the five week old baby never wanted by it’s father, and desire was truly devoid, in the case of a baby’s body found in a railway carriage.

Men are not the only instigators here, there is a case of a mother killing herself and her small daughter for which no reason was ever established. There is a wife playing a double game with her lover. Within these pages, you’ll find gruesome tales of areas you know or may have lived in, but a warning… these are not tales for the faint of heart!

All proceeds from this book and the others in the trilogy will go to the Sheffield Hospitals Charity (SHC), which helps support the 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.

Have a healthy and happy Christmas holiday,

Margaret and Chris

This is the fifth Lockdown Book of Rotherham Criminals. Who knows? Perhaps it is the last, with all these vaccinations emerging. As with all previous Rotherham Books, any royalties we raise will go to Rotherham NHS Trust.

Buy in paperback or kindle format here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08QFZYJC9

There is no end to the cases from Rotherham’s murky past. They include murderous attacks on officers from the emerging “Police force”, a body of men who were at first hated by local citizens. Following their arrest of a soldier from the Boer War, there was once a riot on Frederick Street.

Children were not exempt from criminality. There are a series of petty crimes from children as young as six. The accidental death of a 13 year old boy killed whilst playing marbles by a 15 year old boy at Parkgate. Also there is a shocking sex scandal which took place when a ‘madame’ tried to get her nieces involved as prostitutes.

And if you were of diminished mental abilities, you could also be treated as a criminal… we have details of suicides who were buried in unconsecrated grounds at midnight without a Christian burial, like a criminal. And spare a thought, for the girl with limited understanding; being rejected by her family, and her subsequent desperate attempts for someone to look after her illegitimate baby.

I continue to be fascinated (and hope you do too), by the incidents of murder and crime which took place in the 19th century Rotherham. So although this may just be the last ‘lockdown’ book in the series, it wouldn’t be the end of books on that subject. I look forward to introducing you to many more in the future.

Have a happy and healthy Christmas holidays, and a prosperous new year,
From Margaret and Chris.

“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