The Shrigley Abduction

A Tale of Anguish, Deceit and Violation of the Domestic Hearth

By: Abby Ashby, Audrey Jones

Narrated by: Joan Walker

This is the story of the notorious abduction in 1826 of Ellen Turner, a wealthy 15-year-old heiress, by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a 30-year-old British diplomat.

The Shrigley Abduction is a compelling narrative, a story of deception and the lure of 'high society', with a strong Byronic character at its heart. Wakefield was sentenced to three years in Newgate, an experience which profoundly affected him.

Upon his release he founded the New Zealand Company and became principally responsible for the colonisation of that country, where he is now a prominent figure.

Ellen, on the other hand, died in childbirth at the age of 19. Audrey Jones and Abby Ashby have researched all the extant records and have recreated the scandal and outrage surrounding this audacious and cruel act for the first time.

©2019 Abby Ashby and Audrey Jones (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

“[A] tale of anguish, deceit and violation of the domestic hearth.” (The Times)

Writing is good but execution is poor

I don't often review books I didn't like, but I really feel like this one needed it. I am seriously flummoxed by this book.

I'm giving it 2-stars because I did enjoy the first half of the book. The story is really interesting, and the writing has a lot to recommend it. Very lyrical and reads almost like a fiction book. Quite engaging. However, what I dislike about this far outweighs the good. I forced myself to get through this, which kills me because it started off so strong.

First of all, the title and blurb are deceiving. This isn't about the Shrigley Abduction. This isn't a true crime book. This is a biography about the criminal. It goes into great detail about his grandparents, his parents, and his life, extending far beyond the kidnapping. There are chapters about his family and childhood, leading up to the crime. Then we get chapters afterward about all the incredible things he did after his jail time. While some of that does serve to give context to the crime and some of the post-crime info is interesting, the fact is that we're sold a book about a crime, we kind of expect to get a book that is mostly about the crime.

With that, the book is exceptionally bloated. It didn't need to be that long at all. The reality is that there isn't a ton to the story; the crime and trial span a small amount of time. In order to fill all those pages, we get a long of meandering prose. There's tons of details, most of which are unimportant. Like it talks about how he emigrated to New Zealand, and we get to find out about the kind of bunk he stayed in and how his animals fared on the journey.

While some of that is interesting, it really felt like they were trying to stretch the story as far as it could go. And it is a little hard to follow at times because they dive down every rabbit hole they can. Names are thrown out right and left, and we're given snippets of their stories, despite not really mattering to the plot. There were times when we're knee-deep in some tangent, and I'm not sure what is happening because it's the friend of a friend, who stayed with Edward once, and he served as some assistant to some politician, whose wife's name was Lucinda.

But that could be forgiven because the writing of it all was very engaging and entertaining. The main issue I have with it is the heavy-handed portrayal of the characters. I get that with history there might need to be supposition and filling in the holes a bit, but honestly, I felt like the point of the book was to show what a great guy Edward was and the crime wasn't that bad.

I don't want to go into all the knit-picky details, but for a book that is about a woman who was kidnapped and manipulated, I'm just shocked at how blasé the female authors were. It felt as though they were justifying his actions because he did good things later on in life (despite never admitting he did anything wrong to Ellen). They make it sound like because he didn't hit her or physically abuse her that it wasn't that big a deal. At times, it even felt like they didn't view Ellen as a victim at all.

They were more condemning of her father, talking about him as though he only cared about his daughter because he wanted to marry her off to further his ambition, but that's precisely why Edward kidnapped her. And frankly, there was very little evidence to support that poor portrayal of her father (at least not that they provided).

I get that people are complex, and I do like the fact that they showed some of the great things Edward did later as he is a complex person. Most people aren't all good or all bad. However, it felt like the authors were enamored with the later Edward, and so they portray his younger years (which were awful) as not so bad. He was only a troubled young man, swept up in a hair-brained scheme.

I don't know. This was just disappointing and rather than an unbiased presentation of the facts, it felt like a very skewed interpretation of it.