Discover 366 gruesome tales from Birmingham's past. With appalling accidents, frightful crimes and extraordinary deaths, there's something to surprise even the most hardened reader. Featured here is the man who deliberately swallowed his wooden walking stick, a nineteenth-century horsemeat scandal, a drunken dispute that led to a man being stabbed in the eye with a table fork, and the lightning storm which hit a fog-signalling factory, setting off 43,000 explosions. True accounts of fires, catastrophes, murders, executions and a variety of nasty goings-on in the Birmingham of yesteryear await you within.

A Grim Almanac of Staffordshire is a day-by-day catalogue of 366 ghastly tales from around the county. Full of dreadful deeds, strange disappearances and a multitude of murders, this almanac explores the darker side of Staffordshire's past. Here are stories of tragedy, torment and the truly unfortunate with diverse tales of freak weather, bizarre deaths and terrible accidents, including the young girl cut to pieces by a machinery explosion, the tragic deaths of 155 men in the Minnie Pit disaster of 1918, and the theatre performance where the gun really did go off, mangling the actor's hand and causing a severed finger to fly across the stage. Uncover tales of fires, catastrophes, suicides, thefts and executions – it's all here. Generously illustrated, this chronicle is an entertaining and readable record of Staffordshire's grim past. Read on ... if you dare!

A Grim Almanac of the Black Country is a day-by-day catalogue of 366 ghastly tales from around the area. Full of dreadful deeds, strange disappearances and a multitude of mysteries, this almanac explores the darker side of the Black Country’s past. Here are stories of tragedy, torment and the truly unfortunate with diverse tales of mining disasters, freak weather, bizarre deaths and tragic accidents, including the gunpowder explosion at a factory in Tipton which claimed nineteen lives in 1922. Also featured is the corpse in West Bromwich that was twice wrongly identified in 1929, the collapse of a concert hall roof in Walsall in 1921, and the two labourers buried in molten glass near Stourbridge in 1893. All these, plus tales of fires, catastrophes, mysteries and executions, are here. Generously illustrated, this chronicle is an entertaining and readable record of the Black Country’s grim past. Read on ... if you dare!

A Grim Almanac of Manchester collects together 365 of the darkest tales from Manchester's history – terrifying true tales of riot, assault, murder and crime, of slums, disease, death and disaster. Compiled by Manchester historian and genealogist Michala Hume, this book is filled with amazing historical horrors ranging from the bizarre – such as the night a poisoned cake caused a sickness to sweep through Ancoats – to the horrific, like the tragic time twenty-three people were crushed to death attempting to escape a fire in the overcrowded Victoria Music Hall. Some of these incidents were resolved, but many remain mysteries to this day. Generously illustrated, this chronicle is an entertaining and absorbing record of Manchester's grim past. Read on ... if you dare!

For two centuries, the shadow of the workhouse hung over Britain. The recourse of only the most desperate, dark and terrible tales of malnutrition, misery, mistreatment and murder ran like wildfire through the poorer classes, who lived in terror of being forced inside the institution's towering walls. This book contains 365 incredible tales of fires, drownings, explosions and disasters, infamous scandals such as the Andover affair – where inmates were forced to eat the bones they were supposed to be crushing to ward off starvation – and sickening tales of abuse, assault, bodysnatching, poisonings, post mortems and murder. Accompanied by 70 rare and wonderful illustrations, this book will thrill, fascinate, sadden and unnerve in equal measure. DID YOU KNOW? In the early hours of 31 August 1888, the mutilated body of Mary Ann Nichols – the first generally accepted victim of Jack the Ripper – was discovered in Buck's Row, Whitechapel, just a little way from the Whitechapel workhouse infirmary. Nichols, aged forty-two at her death, had been a regular habituée of London's workhouses. On 30 May 1896, at the age of seven, future Hollywood star Charlie Chaplin entered the Newington workhouse in south London, together with his mother, Hannah, and his older half-brother Sydney. On 19 March 1834 a revolt took place amongst the juvenile female paupers of St Margaret's workhouse, Westminster. A young man named Speed, appointed as their superintendent, provoked their wrath by his alleged tyrannical behaviour. He was unmercifully thrashed by the girls who tore his clothes nearly off his back and beat him until his cries raised the alarm and the police were sent for to quell the disturbance.

A Grim Almanac of Shropshire is a day-by-day catalogue of 366 macabre moments from the county's past. Featured here are such diverse tales as mining disasters, suicides, miscarriages of justice, axe murders, executions and tragic accidents, including the Meadow Pit Mining Tragedy of 1810, when four men suffocated from sulphur fumes after the pit caught fire, and the mysterious disappearance of a Lancaster bomber - and its crew - over Shropshire more than sixty years ago. Generously illustrated, this chronicle is an entertaining and readable record of Shropshire's grim past. Read on... if you dare!