Great and Horrible News: Murder and Mayhem in Early Modern Britain

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Elizabeth was one of the lucky ones – her mother and sister hid her so she was saved from life on the streets. I imagine that a career transition from police officer to history academic is fairly rare, but in this case it made for a very interesting perspective. I’m interested in that period too from a historical perspective, but so often history only deals with the monarchs and the aristocrats so it’s always great to get a bit of insight into the social history, and this book really does that very well, I felt. It’s informative and interesting, and it’s also a little appalling to see perspectives from the 1600s coming back into fashion today.

She has also written a chapter titled 'Notebooks, Play and Legal Education at Middle Temple' in Mapping the Early Modern Inns of Court: Law, Literature and Identity, edited by Jackie Watson and Emma Rhatigan, due to be published by Palgrave. In terms of our thirst for knowledge for all things grisly, it seems like we haven't changed much in 500 years.And she shows that, while we may no longer gather to watch gruesome public executions, the public fascination with crime and punishment hasn’t altered much in the intervening centuries.

This history unfolds the true stories of murder, criminal investigation, early forensic techniques, high court trials and so much more.It's harder to do true crime from so long ago and stay connected to the people involved, but this sometimes felt like a simple retelling of a trial as opposed to the dissection of true crime in the early modern period. Adams uses each of the nine cases to highlight one or more aspects of the justice system and of the society of day. At times, I felt if certain chapters were combined or moved places it would provide better context for information to come later, and would make the book more succinct. This story is used as a basis to discuss women’s vulnerability to their masters, the horrific misogynistic laws around bastardy and infanticide, and early forensic ways of differentiating between stillbirth and infanticide.

Given that the stories cover 200 years, there’s plenty of scope for her to show us some of the changes that were happening, especially with regards to the change from religious to secular approaches to crime. She shows how the street names in the surrounding area originated from the various markets held there – Milk Street, Bread Street, etc. explores the strange history of death and murder in early modern England, yet the stories within may appear shockingly familiar.I’m sorry, I didn’t take a note of the specific years in my notes, but all of them are between 1500 and 1700. I’d already added the book to my list based on your earlier comments and now I’m really looking forward to reading it. The sad thing is that I suspect it still goes on even in our “civilised” countries, but these days it’s probably immigrant women who get the worst of it. Adams explores the period 1500-1700 as the true beginning to a true crime obsession in Britain - where the public still took a vested interest in grisly crimes and their inhumane repercussions, but with the interesting nuance of society’s shift to empirical evidence ushered in from the Enlightenment period.

I thought she did a really excellent job of using the crimes as a way to discuss various aspects of the society at that time.There's some great social examination here: the changing nature of what was considered criminal (the miscarriage case is particularly horrifying); the intersection between society, law and the executive (a ward for orphaned children palmed off to reduce local obligations strikes home); the nature of suicide; the balance between religion, superstition and science in laws; how evidence is weighted; the voyeurism inherent in crime reporting.