The Strange Death of Eleanor Marx: A Re-Investigation

The verdict of suicide in the death of Eleanor Marx has gone unchallenged since it was rendered at her inquest in 1898. Deborah Lavin's attention was drawn to the subject arose from her interest in the lives of both Eleanor and her partner, Edward Aveling. She found anomalies in the evidence which could not be explained and it became increasingly apparent to her that none of Eleanor's biographers, nor any historians who have touched at all on the subject, had seen any need to make a fresh review of the evidence. Deborah determined to get at the truth. She was greatly aided in her inquiry by her close knowledge of medical jurisprudence, and particularly of the truly rudimentary state of forensic medicine, in the nineteenth century and the slipshod manner in which inquests were often conducted. Many an inquest in these times was little more than a false show of an inquiry designed to bring an appearance of closure in cases where it was practically impossible to arrive at the truth, particularly cases of poisoning, which were notoriously difficult to prove. The inadequate state of medical forensic in the nineteenth century has not been well understood by other writers. Deborah's examination of Eleanor's inquest found the proceeding, not untypically, to have been conducted in a peremptory, if not downright prejudicial, manner, by a deputy coroner who was more interested in reaching a neat and tidy verdict and avoiding scandal for a local worthy than in doing justice to the memory of the daughter of a European revolutionary. The inquest verdict was very clearly unsafe and almost certainly wrong. In the process of making her investigation, In the process of investgating Eleanor's death, Deborah was inevitably drawn into a close study of the lives of both Eleanor and her shadowy partner Edward Aveling, gaining fresh insights into the development of British Marxism, and notably the role of Engels in British Marxism, in the last years of the nineteeenth century. The current book is the product of this endeavour.