W E Vaughan, MURDER TRIALS IN IRELAND, 1836-1914 Dublin: Four Courts Press in association with the Irish Legal History Society (www.fourcourtspress.ie), vol 19, 2009. x + 450 pp. ISBN 9781846821585. £50.Eleanor Gordon & Gwyneth Nair, MURDER AND MORALITY IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN. THE STORY OF MADELEINE SMITH Manchester: Manchester University Press (www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk), 2009. vii + 204 pp. ISBN 9780719080692. £16.99 (pb).
| Pages | 143-145 |
| Published date | 01 January 2012 |
| Author | Lindsay Farmer |
| Date | 01 January 2012 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2012.0099 |
The crime of murder has come to exercise a particular fascination over the legal and social imagination, even if contemporary legal discussion of the crime tends to be confined to a rather narrow set of questions about its scope and definition. Recent historical work, though, is demonstrating the ways in which study of the crime of murder can open up fascinating perspectives on a wide range of issues from the prosecution and punishment of crime, to changing social patterns of violence and civility, and even the connections between the origins of forensic science, the media and the rise of detective fiction. The centrality and seriousness of the crime of murder thus offers a unique vantage point from which to understand relations between the criminal justice system and the wider social context in which it operates. Generally speaking, because of the seriousness of the crime, there are available excellent records of the trials themselves, which may open a window on the operations of the criminal justice system and the development of criminal law and procedure in periods where the records of lesser crimes tried in minor courts have been lost. At the same time, the rich documentation around trial records, and in particular newspaper reports and other forms of journalistic and literary comment, mean that these trials offer a rich resource for historians interested in reconstructing a particular social milieu at a particular moment in history. The books under review offer excellent examples of two different ways in which historians can use murder trial records.
In the first book W E Vaughan has undertaken a comprehensive analysis of all murder trials in Ireland between 1836 and 1914, and uses this to present a detailed analysis of how serious crime was dealt with by the criminal justice system in this period. The book is organised according to the different stages of the criminal process, from apprehension of the suspect through to trial, verdict and execution. Each chapter then offers a detailed account of the process at each stage, noting changes to legal procedure over the period illustrated with examples from the cases studied. The chapter on verdicts, for example, provides a wealth of information on practices, such as the “carting” or confinement of juries which, in the early part of the period were used to force a jury to reach a verdict, and how such practices gradually fell into disuse. This is then followed by an account of the liquid evening enjoyed...
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