A01=Julia Laite
Author_Julia Laite
award winning books 2022
best history writing
Category=DNXC
Category=JBFW
Category=NHTB
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
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eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Guardian book of the week
Hallie Rubenhold
Jack the Ripper
the five
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
true crime stories
Product details
- ISBN 9781788164429
- Weight: 520g
- Dimensions: 134 x 218mm
- Publication Date: 01 Apr 2021
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
'A gripping, unputdownable masterpiece' Hallie Rubenhold, author of the Baillie Gifford prize-winning The Five
'Ingenious history writing' Mail on Sunday
'Extraordinary' Guardian
'A masterwork' Australian Book Review
'Imaginative and compelling, impassioned and powerful, and deeply, deeply moving' Matt Houlbrook, author of Prince of Tricksters
Lydia Harvey was meant to disappear. She was young and working class; she'd walked the streets, worked in brothels, and had no money of her own. In 1910, politicians, pimps, policemen and moral reformers saw her as just one of many 'girls who disappeared'. But when she took the stand to give testimony at the trial of her traffickers, she ensured she'd never be forgotten.
Historian Julia Laite traces Lydia's extraordinary life from her home in New Zealand to the streets of Buenos Aires and safe houses of London. She also reveals the lives of international traffickers Antonio Carvelli and his mysterious wife Marie, the policemen who tracked them down, the journalists who stoked the scandal, and Eilidh MacDougall, who made it her life's mission to help women who'd been abused and disbelieved.
Together, they tell an immersive story of crime, travel and sexual exploitation, of lives long overlooked and forgotten by history, and of a world transforming into the 20th century.
Julia Laite is a senior lecturer in modern history at Birkbeck, University of London. As an expert in the history of prostitution, she has written for the Guardian, Open Democracy and History & Policy , and appeared on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour and Making History, as well as the television programme Find My Past.
