Murder (Historiography)

Key Reading

• Clive Emsley, Crime and Society, chapter 2

Further Reading

• Jan Bonderson, ‘Monsters and moral panic in London’, History Today, 2001
• J. Carter Wood, '“Those who have had trouble can sympathise with you”: Press writing, reader responses and a murder trial in interwar Britain', Journal of Social History, 43 (2009), pp. 339–462.
• Carolyn A Conley, ‘Wars among savages: homicide and ethnicity in the Victorian United Kingdom’, Journal of British Studies, 2005
• Rosalind Crone, ‘From Sawney Beane to Sweeney Todd: Murder machines in the mid-nineteenth century metropolis’, Cultural & Social History, 7 (2010), pp. 59-85.
• Mary Beth Emmerichs, ‘Getting away with murder? Homicide and the coroners in 19th century London’, Social Science History, 2001
• Mary S Hartman, ‘Murder for respectability: the case of Madeline Smith’, Victorian Studies, 1973
• M. Jackson, New-Born Child Murder: Women, Illegitimacy and the Courts in Eighteenth-century England
• Judith Knelman, ‘Women murderers in Victorian Britain’, History Today, 1998
• David Lemmings and Claire Walker, Moral Panics and the Media in Early Modern England
• 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
• W D Rubinstein, ‘The hunt for Jack the Ripper’, History Today, 2000
• Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute
• Judy Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper and the myth of male violence’, Feminist Studies, 1982
• Martin Weiner, ‘Murder and the modern British historian’, Albion, 2004

• Martin Weiner, ‘Judges v jurors: courtroom tensions in murder trials and the law of criminal responsibility in 19th 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

Questions

• What caused moral panics and how were these treated by the press? Does this change over time?
• Does the ‘Jack the Ripper’ affair reveal growing social, racial and gender anxieties in Victorian London?
• Why does Walkowitz talk about the 'myth' of male violence?
• Assess the myth of Jack the Ripper and its portrayal by the Victorian media.
• How were murderers treated by the press?
• Were women murderers or child murderers treated differently than men murdering other men? Did the ethnic origin of muderer or victim change the way murder was treated by the courts and public?
• How prevalent was 'grave robbery' and why did it receive so much attention in the early nineteenth century?