A crucially important historicity of the cultural narrative and framing of the death penalty in Britain from the nineteenth century to abolition. Lizzie Seals study is a fascinating enquiry into media reporting and popular reception of the circumstances surrounding murders and the imposition of executions. This book is a cogent reminder of the real potential of miscarriages of justice in capital cases, and will help to keep political attention on human rights rather than retribution through an archaic punishment.
Jon Yorke, Reader in Law and Director, Centre for American Legal Studies, Birmingham City University, UK
Lizzie Seals Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain offers a fresh look at the press and public imagination of the states ultimate penalty in a period when its reality was hidden behind prison walls. Combining extensive primary research with a broad engagement with secondary literature, Seal generates new perspectives on well-known cases and sheds light on the experiences of many of the now-forgotten British condemned. Her book is a pioneering and intellectually exciting contribution to the rapidly developing historiography of crime and criminal justice in twentieth-century Britain.
John Carter Wood, Leibniz Institute of European History, Germany
With multiple points of insight, Seal offers a meaning-centered analysis of the demise of capital punishment in Britain. By contrast with accounts of this as an elite-driven activity that defied entrenched public beliefs, Seal shows widespread unease and ambivalence in popular attitudes and circulating media representations. The upshot is a thickened understanding of a surprisingly complex field.
Philip Smith, Professor of Sociology, Yale University, USA
This important book is a valuable addition to the literature on capital punishment in twentieth-century Britain. By examining the cultural history of capital cases and endeavouring to ascertain opinions of the general public (albeit often refracted through a range of popular representations), Lizzie Seal has opened up exciting new perspectives on the popular politics of the death penalty.
Dr Anne Logan, University of Kent, UK
Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain
Capital punishment for murder was abolished in Britain in 1965. At this time, the way people in Britain perceived and understood the death penalty had changed it was an issue that had become increasingly controversial, high-profile and fraught with emotion. In order to understand why this was, it is necessary to examine how ordinary people learned about and experienced capital punishment.
Drawing on primary research, this book explores the cultural life of the death penalty in Britain in the twentieth century, including an exploration of the role of the popular press and a discussion of portrayals of the death penalty in plays, novels and films. Popular protest against capital punishment and public responses to and understandings of capital cases are also discussed, particularly in relation to conceptualisations of justice. Miscarriages of justice were significant to capital punishments increasingly fraught nature in the mid-twentieth century and the book analyses the unsettling power of two such high-profile miscarriages of justice. The final chapters consider the continuing relevance of capital punishment in Britain after abolition, including its symbolism and how people negotiate memories of the death penalty.
Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain is groundbreaking in its attention to the death penalty and the effect it had on everyday life. It is the only text on this era to place public and popular discourses about, and reactions to, capital punishment at the centre of the analysis. Interdisciplinary in focus and methodology, it will appeal to historians, criminologists, sociologists and socio-legal scholars.
Lizzie Seal is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include gender representations of women who kill, cultural criminology, historical criminology and capital punishment. Her previous publications include Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women Who Kill (Palgrave, 2010) and, with Maggie ONeill, Transgressive Imaginations: Crime, Deviance and Culture (Palgrave, 2012).
Routledge SOLON Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice Histories
Edited by Kim Stevenson, University of Plymouth
Judith Rowbotham, Nottingham Trent University and
David Nash, Oxford Brookes University
This series is a collaboration between Routledge and the SOLON consortium (promoting studies in law, crime and history), to present cutting-edge interdisciplinary research in crime and criminal justice history, through monographs and thematic collected editions which reflect on key issues and dilemmas in criminology and socio-legal studies by locating them within a historical dimension. The emphasis here is on inspiring use of historical and historio-graphical methodological approaches to the contextualising and understanding of current priorities and problems. This series aims to highlight the best, most innovative interdisciplinary work from both new and established scholars in the field, through focusing on the enduring historical resonances to current core criminological and socio-legal issues.
1. Shame, Blame and Culpability
Crime and violence in the modern state
Edited by Judith Rowbotham, Marianna Muravyeva and David Nash
2. Policing Twentieth Century Ireland
A history of An Garda Sochna
Vicky Conway
3. Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain
Audience, justice, memory
Lizzie Seal
Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain
Audience, justice, memory
Lizzie Seal
First published 2014
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2014 Lizzie Seal
The right of Lizzie Seal to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Seal, Lizzie, 1977-
Capital punishment in twentieth-century Britain : audience, justice, memory / Lizzie Seal.
pages cm
1. Capital punishment--Great Britain--History--20th century. I. Title.
HV8699.G8S43 2014
364.6609410904--dc23
2013037317
ISBN13: 978-0-415-62244-8 (hbk)
