Gosfield Street Murder 1942

This horrific, if conventional, image portrays a murder in a bedroom in Gosfield Street, a road near Oxford Street in the centre of London. The victim is dramatically splayed out in the foreground, her legs apart and her dress above her knees to reveal her stockings and suspenders. Blood spills out from her cut throat on to the floor, while a mans sits on a chair beside the dead body, his eyes wide open and his hands and clothes bloodied from the attack. The upturned chair perhaps suggests a struggle between the couple before the event took place. Boswell heightens the tension of the scene by presenting only the stark details of the crime, the rest of the narrative being left to the viewer’s imagination. The combination of sexuality and violence, executed in a brutally realistic style, recalls the work of the German illustrator, George Grosz (1893-1959), who produced illustrations of modern assassinations, executions and murders to reveal his contempt for German society during the reign of William II, who was Emperor between 1888 and 1918.