“Thuggee in London!”: Metropolitan Sensationalism and the Invention of the Thug
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- Catalogue identifier
- kali-0080
- Alternate titles and import identifiers
- KALI-0080; doi:10.1017/S1060150325000014
- Author or attribution
- Jonathan Perris
- Record type
- Article
- Language
- English
- Date / edition
- 2025
- Source / repository
- Victorian Literature and Culture
- Access
- Open access
- Subjects
- Kali Library Research Catalogue; Academic Research and Peer-Reviewed Articles
Description and curator notes
Traces nineteenth-century British representations of thuggee through London’s literary culture, sensational crime reporting, and medical accounts of sensibility. The article examines how the image of a unified murderous cult was constructed and circulated, including colonial claims that Kali worship explained its activities. It draws attention to the weakness or contradiction of some testimony and to the influence of existing metropolitan narratives. This is valuable corrective context for a library that also contains colonial descriptions of Kali. It should be catalogued as a study of representation and imperial knowledge, not treated as a neutral ethnographic account of Kali devotees.
KALI-0080 — Kali Library Research Catalogue.
Access and reliability assessments below are supplied by the curator's 4–5 November 2026 research release, not a new independent verification.
Author / attribution: Jonathan Perris
Publication: Victorian Literature and Culture · 2025
53(2), pp. 207–232; publisher displays online publication 6 October 2025.
Format / language: Journal article · English
Identifier: doi:10.1017/S1060150325000014
Kali relevance: Substantial analysis of colonial representations linking Kali to thuggee and the evidential problems in that association.
Context: Colonial India and Victorian Britain; religious stereotyping; literary history.
Subjects: Academic Research and Peer-Reviewed Articles
Evidence / reliability: Peer-reviewed scholarly journal
Access / rights: Complete text checked 2026-11-04. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as stated on the Cambridge publisher page.
Source and alternate access links:
Read complete text: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/thuggee-in-london-metropolitan-sensationalism-and-the-invention-of-the-thug/7D1D0F24A8799CD7A37406F6E90A30BC
Source access
Read or locate the original source at Victorian Literature and Culture
Rights and reading conditions
Complete text checked 2026-11-04. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as stated on the Cambridge publisher page. This library links to the source and does not reproduce its full text.
Citation
Jonathan Perris. “Thuggee in London!”: Metropolitan Sensationalism and the Invention of the Thug. Victorian Literature and Culture · 2025.
This page supplies catalogue metadata and links. It does not reproduce the underlying source text. Historical, religious, healing and interpretive claims belong to the cited sources, not to an independent verification by this catalogue.