No Wordwind, you are not reading the biography that you say you are reading, you are a proper epeolatrist and you are reading...

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

The first sentence of the book...

"In Victorian London, even in a place as louche and notoriously crime-ridden as Lambeth Marsh, the sound of gunshots was a rare event indeed."

Now please go tell AnnaStrophic -in french- that she is wrong.