Ugly as Sin: Women, looks and criminality in the Park Lane Murder

Upcoming talk

As part of Lambeth Heritage Month, historical crime novelist Naomi Clifford digs into 19th-century theories about criminality and physiognomy.

Tuesday 9 September 2025, 7pm
Carnegie Library
192 Herne Hill Road
London SE24 0DG

Booking: EventBrite

On 29 April 1872 a group consisting of a 29-year-old Belgian cook and two English and two French detectives left the train discreetly at Herne Hill station. Marguerite Diblanc, who had been arrested in Paris and extradited, was then taken by cab to police cells in central London. Within weeks she was tried for her life at the Old Bailey. The victim was her employer Madame Riel, a French widow with a shady past, whose actress daughter was the mistress of the Third Earl of Lucan.

The murder had all the elements of a huge scandal, so why did the press fixate instead on the alleged perpetrator’s physical appearance? 

Historical crime novelist Naomi Clifford digs into theories about criminality and physiognomy and asks whether they played a part in the Diblanc’s treatment in the popular press and in the criminal justice system. The murder is at the centre of her historical crime novel 13 Park Lane.