Key Texts

Josephine McDonagh, Child Murder and British Culture, 1720-1900

Nicholas Rance, ‘Jonathan’s great knife: Dracula meets Jack the Ripper’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 2002

Martin Weiner, ‘Murder and the modern British historian’, Albion, 2004

 

See the National Archives website http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ for primary sources on crime.

The Old Bailey Online: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ gives information on murder trials

Check the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for biographies of notable murderers: http://www.oxforddnb.com/

 

Seminar Questions

•  Does the ‘Jack the Ripper’ affair reveal growing social, racial and gender anxieties in Victorian London
• Assess the myth of Jack the Ripper and its portrayal by the Victorian media.
• How were murderers treated by the courts? Were women murderers or child murderers treated differently than men murdering other men?

Suggested Films

Jack the Ripper (BBC drama); From Hell (2001)

 

Further Reading

V Bailey (ed.), Policing and punishment in 19^th century Britain

Jan Bonderson, ‘Monsters and moral panic in London’, History Today, 2001

K Chesney, The Victorian Underworld

Carolyn A Conley, ‘Wars among savages: homicide and ethnicity in the Victorian United Kingdom’, Journal of British Studies, 2005

Mary Beth Emmerichs, ‘Getting away with murder? Homicide and the coroners in 19^th century London’, Social Science History, 2001

C Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900

P Fisher, Illustrated Guide to Jack the Ripper

Mary S Hartman, ‘Murder for respectability: the case of Madeline Smith’, Victorian Studies, 1973

Judith Knelman, ‘Women murderers in Victorian Britain’, History Today, 1998

P Priestley, Victorian prison lives: English prison biography

W D Rubinstein, ‘The hunt for Jack the Ripper’, History Today, 2000

G Rudé, Crime and victim: crime and society in early 19^th century England

David Taylor, Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1750-1914

J J Tobias, Crime and police in England, 1700-1900

Judy Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper and the myth of male violence’, Feminist Studies, 1982

Martin Wiener, Deconstructing the criminal

Martin Weiner, ‘Judges v jurors: courtroom tensions in murder trials and the law of criminal responsibility in 19^th century England’, Law and History Review, 1999

Martin Weiner, ‘The sad story of George Hall: adultery, murder and the politics of mercy in mid-Victorian England’, Social History, 1999

Lucia Zedner, Women, Crime and Custody