The Shocking Secrets of The Suitcase Baby

From Hachette Australia - Tanya Bretherton on her book The Suitcase Baby:

SYDNEY, 1923: a suitcase washed up on a harbourside beach reveals its grisly contents - and from there, an extraordinary story unfolds.

During the process of researching The Suitcase Baby I began to realise that although the term ‘true crime’ may not have existed in the 1920s, public delight in criminality and the macabre has existed for a very long time. Stories which provide an overly detailed account of very gruesome criminal events filled the pages of 1920s newspapers, but also news reports going back into the nineteenth century as well. Newspaper editors have always devoted a huge amount of copy to the reporting of criminal events and the moral and legal implications arising from them. Murder and mayhem certainly sells newspapers today, but the same could also be said two hundred years ago. 

The research I undertook for The Suitcase Baby was fascinating because it became about so much more than just one woman’s story. Sarah took risks and she challenged social norms surrounding marriage and family but she paid a huge price for it, and so did her children. Unfortunately, many women at the time also found themselves in similarly terrible, and ultimately tragic predicaments.

read more @ Hachette Australia