The London monster : terror on the streets in 1790

The hunt for an eighteenth-century sexual psychopath that created one of the first media celebrities. Between 1788 and 1790 a bizarre serial attacker known as the London Monster assaulted more than 50 women.

During his two-year reign of terror the London Monster became a psychopathic celebrity, both celebrated and condemned in plays, newspapers and caricatures.

The farcical search for the Monster culminated in the arrest and trial of a young Welshman named Rhynwick Williams, who despite good alibis, was condemned. The story has remarkable parallels to our time: a police force unable to find their man, a tabloid press frenzy that sold newspapers and generated a climate of fear, a need to convict someone at all costs, even if the evidence was questionable...