'Murder Most Foul' Talk Set

The difficult lives of New York City residents during the Victorian era will be explored at a lecture Friday afternoon at the town senior center.

Dr. Harriet Davis-Kram, a Queens College history professor, will speak on the theme, A Peek at the Underside of Victorian History: Murder Most Foul. The one-hour lecture starts at 1:45 p.m. 

The talk is part of the Speakers in the Humanities series and is free and open to the public. It is funded by the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Speakers in the Humanities program has linked scholars with diverse audiences since its launch in 1983, bringing humanities scholarship to thousands of people at hundreds of cultural organizations around the state.

The lecture will include information on the contrasts in lifestyle during the era. "While much of the city was enjoying a fair amount of prosperity and building
fancy homes and shops, many thousands of residents had to live in filthy
tenements without clean water, decent lighting, or health care. Among the most
abused victims of this system were young women who were often left with a
choice between the streets and the poor house," The town Division of Women’s Services said.