(Source: Routledge)
Routledge is publishing a book at
the intersection of the history of law and crime with medical history in
England and Wales between 1700-1914.
ABOUT THE BOOK
This monograph makes a major new
contribution to the historiography of criminal justice in England and Wales by
focusing on the intersection of the history of law and crime with medical
history. It does this through the lens provided by one group of historical
actors, medical professionals who gave evidence in criminal proceedings. They
are the means of illuminating the developing methods and personnel associated
with investigating and prosecuting crime in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, when two linchpins of modern society, centralised policing and the
adversarial criminal trial, emerged and matured. The book is devoted to two
central questions: what did medical practitioners contribute to the investigation
of serious violent crime in the period 1700 to 1914, and what impact did this
have on the process of criminal justice? Drawing on the details of 2,600 cases
of infanticide, murder and rape which occurred in central England, Wales and
London, the book offers a comparative long-term perspective on medico-legal
practice — that is, what doctors actually did when they were faced with a body
that had become the object of a criminal investigation. It argues that
medico-legal work developed in tandem with and was shaped by the needs of two
evolving processes: pre-trial investigative procedures dominated successively
by coroners, magistrates and the police; and criminal trials in which lawyers
moved from the periphery to the centre of courtroom proceedings. In bringing
together for the first time four groups of specialists — doctors, coroners,
lawyers and police officers — this study offers a new interpretation of the
processes that shaped the modern criminal justice system.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katherine D. Watson is a Reader
in History at Oxford Brookes University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical
Society. Her research interests focus on areas where medicine, crime and the
law intersect, including the history of infanticide and crimes against
children, forensic medicine and science, and an unusual form of assault known
as vitriol throwing. She is the author of Poisoned Lives: English
Poisoners and their Victims (2004) and Forensic Medicine in
Western Society: A History (2011).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction: The Medico-Legal
Landscape; 2. Medical Education and Forensic Medicine; 3. Locating Patterns of
Medico-Legal Provision; 4. Infant Murder in Medico-Legal Practice; 5. Crime
(Scene) Investigation: Expertise in Action; 6. Conclusion: Medicine and Justice
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