Modern criminal courts are characteristically the domain of lawyers, with trials conducted in an environment of formality and solemnity, where facts are found and legal rules are impartially applied to administer justice. Recent historical scholarship has shown that in England lawyers only began to appear in ordinary criminal trials during the eighteenth century, however, and earlier trials often took place in an atmosphere of noise and disorder, where the behaviour of the crowd - significant body language, meaningful looks, and audible comment - could influence decisively the decisions of jurors and judges. This collection of essays considers this transition from early scenes of popular participation to the much more orderly and professional legal proceedings typical of the nineteenth century, and links this with another important shift, the mushroom growth of popular news and comment about trials and punishments which occurred from the later seventeenth century. It hypothesizes that the popular participation which had been a feature of courtroom proceedings before the mid-eighteenth century was not stifled by lawyerization, but rather partly relocated to the public sphere of the press, partly because of some changes connected with the work of the lawyers. Ranging from the early 1700s to the mid-nineteenth century, and taking account of criminal justice proceedings in Scotland, as well as England, the essays consider whether pamphlets, newspapers, ballads and crime fiction provided material for critical perceptions of criminal justice proceedings, or alternatively helped to convey the official majesty intended to legitimize the law. In so doing the volume opens up fascinating vistas upon the cultural history of Britains legal system over the long eighteenth century'.
Focusing on the 'long eighteenth century' this collection of essays charts the transition of British legal proceedings from early scenes of noise and disorder, to a much more rigid and solemn atmosphere by the start of the nineteenth century. Through an investigation into the extent to which legal proceedings may be understood as theatre and counte
Chapter 1 Introduction: Criminal Courts, Lawyers and the Public Sphere,
David Lemmings;
Chapter 2 Trials in Print: Narratives of Rape Trials in the
Proceedings of the Old Bailey, Esther Snell;
Chapter 3 Useful and
entertaining to the generality of Readers: Selecting the Select Trials,
17181764, Andrea McKenzie;
Chapter 4 Representing the Adversary Criminal
Trial: Lawyers in the Old Bailey Proceedings, 17701800, Robert Shoemaker;
Chapter 5 Arts of Public Performance: Barristers and Actors in Georgian
England, Simon Devereaux;
Chapter 6 Negotiating Justice in the New Public
Sphere: Crime, the Courts and the Press in Early Eighteenth-century Britain,
David Lemmings;
Chapter 7 Contemplating the Evil Within: Examining Attitudes
to Criminality in Scotland, 17001840, Anne-Marie Kilday;
Chapter 8 Fiction
or Faction? Literary Representations of the Early Nineteenth-century
Criminal Courtroom, Allyson N. May;
Chapter 9 Publishing Courtroom Drama for
the Masses, 18201855, Rosalind Crone;
David Lemmings was born in London and educated at the Universities of Sussex, London and Oxford before coming to Australia as a Research Fellow of the University of Adelaide in 1987. He then moved to the University of Newcastle in 1990 where he became Head of the Department of History in 1998 and Associate Professor in History in 2000. In 2008, Professor Lemmings moved to the University of Adelaide where he is Professor of History and leader of the Change Program in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.
More info about Taylor & Francis e-books