Everything old is new again

19th-century map of Richmond, Virginia

"The state capital was a mecca of sin, a town overrun with racetracks, gamblers, prostitutes, con men, embezzlers, horse thieves, and counterfeiters. So much beer was consumed nightly at the wild taverns that Richmond even had its own city brewery to produce an endless supply of it.

"In two decades, Richmond had become one of the most violent cities in the country, with an army of nighttime burglars, dozens of murders, soaring assault convictions, and, it seemed, thieves lurking around every corner."

The description is of Richmond 200 years ago. It sounds almost like it could be the first block of a 6 o'clock Richmond TV newscast today. The more things change ....

The passage is from a book by Bruce Chadwick titled "I Am Murdered: George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson, and the Killing that Shocked a New Nation." It's a non-fiction work about the death in Richmond in 1806 of the revered Virginian George Wythe -- lawyer, judge, law professor, classical scholar and signatory of the Declaration of Independence.

The book posits that Wythe's grand-nephew, George Wythe Sweeney, poisoned him, his servant and a young man Wythe had been mentoring in his Richmond home at 5th and Grace streets. Wythe lingered for days before he died, long enough to change his will and disinherit his grand-nephew. Sweeney was acquitted of murder, mainly because of a law that forbade the testimony of black witnesses, a law Wythe himself had written.

Unfortunately, it takes Chadwick 239 pages to tell a simple murder story. It reads like a history student's bloated doctoral dissertation. But it is fascinating to read the description of Richmond in 1806.