The Missing Monument Murders is a veiled story of power, wealth, dark deeds and intrigue. In 1806, Jane Austen’s relative, the Reverend Thomas Leigh, came into vast estates and the mood in the extended Leigh/Austen family was jubilant. But within a few years, bizarre events were the talk of the district: the removal and destruction of monuments in the village church, cheating, blackmail, and the eviction of tenants who dared speak of events. It would even be alleged that the family engaged in murder to protect their inheritance.
Judy Stove’s painstaking research pieces together for the first time in detail the full story, in which whistle blower Charles Griffin, a local solicitor, ended up in gaol. Whether scandal-mongering or clever and powerful suppression at a time when criminal investigations were all but non-existent, the truth remains a mystery. One that touched on Austen’s own world and in which connections not just to the great and the good but to some of her characters, plots and personal life unfold.
