GIVEN that it’s the deliberate taking of a human life – usually in the most gruesome and pitiless manner – murder is extremely popular.

Waterstones alone carries 40,812 crime fiction titles with 5,172 in its true crime section. The vast majority of these publications feature murder in one way or another.

Only last week, UK viewers could have lapped up an estimated 25 hours of crime, mainly murder-based, as well as yet another reconstruction of the murders of Jack the Ripper, arguably Britain’s favourite serial killer.

There’s nothing new about murder, of course. Barely had the second generation of humans got established as a shepherd and a crop farmer – well, according to the Bible, anyway - than Cain (the farmer) had butchered his brother, Abel.

But none of that explains our gargantuan appetite for reading, watching and discussing the breaking of the sixth commandment.

And there is drawn the line. Only the twisted would either want to witness or to participate in a murder or to gaze upon the horrific consequences Wouldn’t they?

According to Judith Flanders the victims of the Ratcliffe Highway murders – two families who were brutally battered to death in London’s East End – were left as they fell for the inquest jury to inspect.

No effort was made to prevent rubberneckers from traipsing through the death scene. The year was 1811, just 200 years ago.

At the other end of the scale(s) of justice, the public flocked to watch hangings until they were brought indoors in 1868.

The hanging of Martha Brown at Dorchester in 1856 was witnessed by Thomas Hardy and the horror of the scene lived with him until his death. “What a fine figure she showed against the sky as she hung in the misty rain, and how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half round and back", scribbled Hardy, who was inspired by her fate to write Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

Charles Dickens also witnessed executions and was able to produce his verdict on why humans watched this stuff. He noted the “fascination of the repulsive, something most of us have experienced".

That fascination, says Flanders, lead to the sale of execution ropes (some for as much as a guinea an inch) as well as plays, dreadful poems and squalid pamphlets, regurgitating all the details of murders and murderers, at their execution.

When Eleanor Pearcey murdered her lover’s wife and child, Madam Tussauds snapped up the infant’s pram (used to move the bodies) and even a toffee found in the dead child’s mouth. More than 70,000 flocked to the exhibition in three days.

The fascination with murder continued merrily into the 20th century with two of the most notorious cases happening right here in Bournemouth.

In 1935 bored, middle-class housewife Alma Rattenbury found herself in the dock, accused with her teenage lover and servant, George Stoner, of bludgeoning her husband to death.

The murder at the Villa Madeira in Manor Road caused a national scandal and although Rattenbury was acquitted, she committed suicide a few days later.

Eleven years later the nation was mesmerised by the tale of Neville Heath, the sexual sadist who had killed two women before checking into the Tollard Royal Hotel and then murdering Norfolk Royale guest Doreen Marshall.

Despite its gore (whipping, slashing and bodily mutilation) this story was the inspiration for the TV drama The Charmer, in which the Heath character, Ralph Gorse, was played by Nigel Havers.

As assistant manager at the central Bournemouth Waterstones, Lisa Furness is well-placed to observe our fascination with murder.

“We have seven bays devoted to crime, one bay in the basement devoted to true crime,” she says. “Women seem to prefer the fiction whereas more men buy true crime books.”

However, she’s noticed a slight decrease in true crime sales. “Maybe people are watching more on TV or reading the more graphic reports in newspapers.”

But as to why we’re so keen on murder she can’t really say. “Perhaps it’s just a safe way to look at the darker side of life.”

And with the annual UK murder rate hovering at around the 750 mark, it looks as if the dark side will be with us for decades to come.

• The Invention of Murder Judith Flanders HarperPress £20.