He was the man who turned the Kent coastline into a crime scene. David Seabrook didn't just write about history; he exhaled it, usually while standing in a drizzle-soaked alleyway or nursing a pint in a pub that had seen better decades. When news broke that the author of the cult classic All the Devils Are Here had died, the vacuum he left was filled almost instantly by the same kind of shadows he spent his life chasing.
David Seabrook cause of death became a subject of intense, often dark speculation from the moment he was found.
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Honestly, it fits the brand. If you’ve read his work—especially Jack of Jumps—you know he had a "necrophiliac relish" for the unsaid and the buried. He was a man who lived in a flat in Canterbury, obsessed with the "seamy side" of things. So, when the man who wrote about unsolved murders and the "underbelly" of England is found dead in his own home, people don't just think "natural causes." They think of the devils he claimed were everywhere.
The Discovery at Canterbury
On January 18, 2009, David Seabrook was found dead in his apartment. He lived at the Westside Apartments, right across from the Canterbury West railway station. He was only 48 years old. That’s young. Way too young for a guy who still had so many stories to dig up from the mud of the Medway.
The police were the ones who found him. Now, that detail alone usually gets the conspiracy gears turning. Why were the police there? Was there a struggle? The official word eventually trickled out: it was a heart attack.
A heart attack at 48 is a tragedy, but in the world of high-stress, often isolated writers, it's a grim reality. Yet, the "official" version has never quite sat right with his most dedicated readers.
Murder or Mystery?
If you check the Wikipedia page for David Seabrook, you'll see a line that has fueled a thousand blog posts. It mentions "unconfirmed speculation" that Seabrook was murdered.
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Where did that come from?
Basically, it stems from the company he kept and the topics he touched. Seabrook wasn't a "sit in the library" researcher. He was a "knock on the doors of retired gangsters and former rent boys" researcher. At the time of his death, he was working on a project about David Jacobs.
Jacobs was a high-profile show business solicitor who died in a "mysterious suicide" back in the 60s. He represented people like the Krays and Judy Garland. Seabrook was digging into the idea that Jacobs might have been killed to keep him quiet. When you spend your days poking at the skeletons of the London underworld, people start to wonder if those skeletons might poke back.
But let's be real for a second. Speculation isn't evidence. While his friend and fellow writer Iain Sinclair has often spoken of Seabrook’s "paranoia" and "twitchiness," those are often traits of a man who thinks too much, not necessarily a man being followed by a hitman.
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The Toll of the "Underbelly"
Writing All the Devils Are Here wasn't just a job for Seabrook; it seemed to be an exorcism. He spent his time in the decaying resort towns of Kent—Margate, Deal, Rochester—places he described as "ripe for a low-budget remake of Brighton Rock."
He lived a solitary life. There were rumors of a fiancé who had died of cancer years earlier, leaving him even more unmoored. He was a man of the pubs. A man of the night.
- He smoked.
- He drank.
- He didn't exactly have a "wellness" routine.
- He stayed up late chasing the ghosts of T.S. Eliot and Richard Dadd.
This kind of lifestyle—intense isolation mixed with a diet of tobacco, booze, and historical trauma—is a recipe for cardiovascular stress. The David Seabrook cause of death is likely far less cinematic than a noir thriller, even if his life looked exactly like one.
Why We Still Talk About Him
People care about how he died because of how he lived. Seabrook was a "sui generis" writer. There’s no one else quite like him. He’d take a bus ride from Canterbury to the coast and somehow link a 19th-century patricide to a modern-day drug den.
His prose was "incandescent" but also "disturbing." He made you feel like you were walking through a dream where the floorboards were rotting. When someone like that vanishes, we want there to be a "reason" that matches the mood of their books. We want a twist ending.
But the real twist might just be the mundane cruelty of a heart failing in a lonely flat in January.
What You Should Do Next
If you're fascinated by the mystery of David Seabrook, don't just stop at his death. The best way to understand the man is to read what he left behind.
- Grab a copy of "All the Devils Are Here." It's the best entry point. It’s part travelogue, part true crime, and entirely haunting.
- Look for "Jack of Jumps." It’s his deep dive into the "Jack the Stripper" murders of the 1960s. It is grim, dense, and arguably one of the best books ever written about the London underworld.
- Explore "The Cardinal and the Corpse." This is a fictional documentary by Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair that features Seabrook. It gives you a chance to see the man in motion, capturing that "twitchy" energy his friends always talked about.
There is no ongoing investigation into his death. The case is, for all intents and purposes, closed. But as long as people keep reading his books, the "mystery" of David Seabrook will keep breathing. He’s become one of the very ghosts he used to write about—haunting the edges of English literature, forever hard to pin down.