Domestic Murder in Nineteenth-Century England
Domestic Murder in Nineteenth-Century England

Author: Bridget Walsh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1317148444

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Why did certain domestic murders fire the Victorian imagination? In her analysis of literary and cultural representations of this phenomenon across genres, Bridget Walsh traces how the perception of the domestic murderer changed across the nineteenth century and suggests ways in which the public appetite for such crimes was representative of wider social concerns. She argues that the portrayal of domestic murder did not signal a consensus of opinion regarding the domestic space, but rather reflected significant discontent with the cultural and social codes of behaviour circulating in society, particularly around issues of gender and class. Examining novels, trial transcripts, medico-legal documents, broadsides, criminal and scientific writing, illustration and, notably, Victorian melodrama, Walsh focuses on the relationship between the domestic sphere, so central to Victorian values, and the desecration of that space by the act of murder. Her book encompasses the gendered representation of domestic murder for both men and women as it tackles crucial questions related to Victorian ideas of nationhood, national health, political and social inequality, newspaper coverage of murder, unstable and contested models of masculinity and the ambivalent portrayal of the female domestic murderer at the fin de siècle.

Domestic Murder in Nineteenth-Century England
Domestic Murder in Nineteenth-Century England

Author: Dr Bridget Walsh

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2014-06-28

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1472421035

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Examining novels, trial transcripts, medico-legal documents, broadsides, criminal and scientific writing, illustration and, notably, Victorian melodrama, Bridget Walsh focuses on the relationship between the domestic sphere, so central to Victorian values, and the desecration of that space by the act of murder. Her book tackles crucial questions related to Victorian ideas of nationhood, national health, inequality, newspaper coverage of murder, contested models of masculinity and the portrayal of the female domestic murderer at the fin de siècle.

Male Suicide and Masculinity in 19th-century Britain
Male Suicide and Masculinity in 19th-century Britain

Author: Lyndsay Galpin

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-04-07

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1350264911

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This book shows how interpretations of suicidal motives were guided by gendered expectations of behaviour, and that these expectations were constructed to create meaning and understanding for family, friends and witnesses. Providing an insight into how people of this era understood suicidal behaviour and motives, it challenges the assertion that suicide was seen as a distinctly feminine act, and that men who took their own lives were feminized as a result. Instead, it shows that masculinity was understood in a more nuanced way than gender binaries allow, and that a man's masculinity was measured against other men. Focusing on four common narrative types; the love-suicide, the unemployed suicide, the suicide of the fraudster or speculator, and the suicide of the dishonoured solider, it provides historical context to modern discussions about the crisis of masculinity and rising male suicide rates. It reveals that narratives around male suicides are not so different today as they were then, and that our modern model of masculinity can be traced back to the 19th century.

Criminal Conversations
Criminal Conversations

Author: Judith Rowbotham

Publisher: Ohio State University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0814209734

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"The essays in this book set out to explore the ways in which Victorians used newspapers to identify the causes of bad behavior and its impacts, and the ways in which they tried to "distance" criminals and those guilty of "bad" behavior from the ordinary members of society, including identification of them as different according to race of sexual orientation. It also explores how threats from within "normal" society were depicted and the panic that issues like "baby-farming" caused." "Victorian alarm was about crimes and bad behavior which they saw as new or unique to their period - but which were not new then and which, in slightly different dress, are still causing panic today. What is striking about the essays in this collection are the ways in which they echo contemporary concerns about crime and bad behavior, including panics about "new" types of crime. This has implications for modern understandings of how society needs to understand crime, demonstrating that while there are changes over time, there are also important continuities."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Class, Servitude, and the Criminal Justice System in Early Victorian London
Class, Servitude, and the Criminal Justice System in Early Victorian London

Author: Allyson N. May

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-09-18

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1040133673

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This volume draws on the recently discovered and extraordinarily rich scrapbook compiled by prosecuting solicitor Francis Hobler about the 1840 murder of Lord William Russell to consider public engagement with the issues raised from discovery of the murder itself through the ensuing legal processes. The murder of Russell by his valet François Benjamin Courvoisier was a cause célèbre in its own day by virtue of the fact that the victim was a member of one of England’s most prominent political families. For criminal justice historians, the significance of this case lies instead in its timing. In 1840, England had neither an official detective force to investigate the murder nor a public prosecutor to undertake the prosecution. Those accused of felony had only recently (1836) won the right to full legal representation, and the conduct of Courvoisier’s defence was controversial. Reaction to Courvoisier’s execution was also noteworthy, testifying to a new public unease with capital punishment. The subject of master and servant relations in early Victorian England is another key component of the book: previous studies have not considered the murderer’s motivation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of criminal justice and law, Victorian England, and microhistory.

The Invention of Murder
The Invention of Murder

Author: Judith Flanders

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2013-07-23

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 1250024889

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"Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review In this fascinating exploration of murder in nineteenth century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama-even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other-the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder-from the brutal to the pathetic-Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.

Victorian Murderesses
Victorian Murderesses

Author: Naz Bulamur

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-02-08

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1443888672

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Victorian Murderesses investigates the politics of female violence in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), Mary Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), and Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire (1897). The controversial figure of the murderess in these four novels challenges the assumption that women are essentially nurturing and passive and that violence and aggression are exclusively male traits. By focusing on the representations of murder committed by women, this book demonstrates how legal and even medical discourses endorsed Victorian domestic ideology, as female criminals were often locked up in asylums and publicly executed without substantial evidence. While paying close attention to the social, economic, judicial, and political dynamics of Victorian England, this interdisciplinary study also tackles the question of female agency, as the novels simultaneously portray women as perpetrators of murder and excuse their socially unacceptable traits of anger and violence by invoking heredity and madness. Although the four novels tend to undercut female power and attribute violence to adulterous women, they are revolutionary enough to deploy female characters who rebel against male sovereignty and their domestic roles by stabbing their rapists and even killing their newborns. Victorian studies on gender and violence focus primarily on female victims of sexual harassment, and real and fictional male killers like Dracula and Jack the Ripper. Victorian Murderesses contributes to the field by investigating how literary representations of female violence counter the idealisation of women as angelic housewives.

Inside the Victorian Home
Inside the Victorian Home

Author: Judith Flanders

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 9780393052091

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A rich selection from diaries, letters, advice books, magazines, and paintings creates a rooms-by-room portrait of Victorian life--from childbirth in the master bedroom to separate gender domains in the drawing room and parlor.

Madeleine Smith on Trial
Madeleine Smith on Trial

Author: Brian Jenkins

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2019-07-05

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1476678405

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 In 1855, Glasgow socialite Madeleine Smith began a flirtation with Pierre L'Angelier, a handsome clerk--for her a mere diversion. But L'Angelier sought social mobility. Their class disparity gave her control of the intrigue but when the relationship turned sexual, the power imbalance shifted. The Scots recognized irregular unions in certain cases. L'Angelier considered Smith his wife, a part she at first discreetly played. When he refused to step aside and allow her a more socially acceptable marriage, his removal became necessary. Smith's sensational murder trial captivated both Britain and America. Despite compelling evidence of guilt, various factors led to her acquittal--her class and gender, the peculiarities of Scottish law--and many believed the case went to trial only because the Crown feared blatant confirmation that justice was not blind.

Modern Murders
Modern Murders

Author: Lee Michael-Berger

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-03

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 1000874745

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Modern Murders is the first comprehensive study of murder representations during the turn of the century, drawing on previously neglected archival material to explore the intellectual, cultural, and artistic contexts of the period. Most studies view the abundance of murder representations throughout the nineteenth century as an indicator of a supposedly typical Victorian appetite for sensation and melodrama. Modern Murders, however, demonstrates the turn of the century's backlash against melodramatic and sensational representations of murder and reads them as an important component in the struggles for better aesthetic standards in art and entertainment, and as a dominant feature in the debates on mass culture. Through a plethora of visual and written texts, representations of fictional and actual "real life" murders, and "high" and "popular" forms of writing, the volume considers the importance of murder in the elite claim to cultural authority versus its perception of plebian taste, in the context of the democratization of culture. This book will be of value to scholars and graduate students in a variety of research areas, as well as general readers interested in the role of murder as a central trope in modern art and culture.