Guest post by Charlotte Smith, 3 April 2024. THE LEWES ASSIZE OF 1923 AND A VERY MICRO, MICRO-HISTORY OF WOMEN IN ENGLAND IN THE 1920s What can the business of one Sussex assize court tell us about the experiences of women, and their treatment by the law, in early twentieth-century England? Here, we use the minutes of the Summer Assizes at Lewes in July 1923 to find out. IT’S ALL IN A CROWN MINUTE BOOK: LEWES, JULY 1923 Crown Minute Book for the South-Eastern Circuit, Winter 1922 – Summer 1924 (ASSI 31/55) As recently fictionalised in the film, Wicked Little Letters, in the 1920s, Littlehampto ..read more

By Cassie Watson; posted 25 March 2024. The recent chemical attack in London bears all the tragic hallmarks of its Victorian forerunners:[1] the crime was planned in advance; the victim and perpetrator were known to one another; the probable motive was the breakdown of their relationship; the victim has lost an eye; and the perpetrator was also seriously injured in the assault. However, this crime differs from classic cases of vitriol throwing in one significant manner: the perpetrator was eventually found dead, believed to have committed suicide.[2]  This is extremely unusual in comparis ..read more

Guest post by Andrew Prescott, 29 February 2024. What constitutes an insurrection? One of the many lawsuits in which the former President of the United States Donald Trump is currently embroiled concerns a ruling of the Supreme Court of Colorado that Trump should be excluded from the Republican primary ballot in Colorado because he is disqualified from holding the office of President under section three of the fourteenth amendment of the United States constitution. Section three stipulates that nobody shall be a member of Congress or hold office in the United States who, having taken an oath t ..read more

Guest post by Richard W. Ireland, 21 February 2024. The London Female Penitentiary was an institution opened in 1807 at 166, Pentonville Road, London for “those females who, having deviated from the path of virtue, are desirous of being restored by religious instruction, and the formation of moral and industrious habits, to a respectable station in society.”[1] The purpose of this piece is to bring the existence of this institution, and of a couple of documents from my own archive which relate to it, to the attention of a wider readership; but also more generally to consider the nuances of th ..read more

Posted by Sara M. Butler, 8 February 2024. Pilgrims leaving Canterbury. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales offers an idyllic vision of pilgrimage. A motley crew of characters – when else are we going to see a prioress, a reeve and a plowman spending quality time together? – exchanging fantastical stories at the Tabard Inn en route to Canterbury cathedral to pay their respects at the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, in the hopes of finding some inner peace and spiritual renewal. Going on pilgrimage was a normal experience in the late Middle Ages. And unlike today where employers often make s ..read more

Posted by Krista J. Kesselring, 12 January 2024. Agnes Waterhouse is often identified as the first person to have been executed as a witch in Elizabethan England. Many websites and popular histories say as much. Her name even appears in Judy Chicago’s famous feminist history installation, The Dinner Party. The accompanying material on the Brooklyn Museum’s website explains the reason for her inclusion: “Agnes Waterhouse was put on trial in Chelmsford, England, in 1566 for using witchcraft to cause illness; her eighteen-year-old daughter Joan was accused of the same crime. Joan testified agai ..read more

By Cassie Watson; posted 19 December 2023. The history of serial poisoning shows that it seemed to attract two types of killer, broadly speaking: those who found poisoning to be an effective means of achieving personal aims, often financial;[1] and those whose motives were more difficult to understand and, in many cases, remained uncertain.[2] A previous post examined early modern British poisoners who fall into the first, and largest, grouping. This post considers three examples of the latter, much smaller category. Although this group is now populated mostly by healthcare serial poisoners,[3 ..read more

Posted by Sara M. Butler, 29 November 2023. When Julian of Durham (Jollanus de Dureme)[1] died in 1262, sometime before his postmortem inquisition held 11 Dec. of that year, he likely had no idea what kind of mess he was leaving behind for his wife, Cecily, and his young heir, also named Julian, not yet five years of age.[2] While custody disputes today can sometimes turn ugly, they cannot match the crooked, almost mafioso-like, behavior that played out in medieval disputes, especially when the heir in question was the son of a tenant-in-chief, that is, an individual who held lands directly fr ..read more

Guest post by Richard W. Ireland, 13 November 2023. This piece is about delight. Legal history being, as its name suggests, a hybrid discipline, it sometimes has to defend itself, to justify its importance, even to assert its centrality. Some lawyers regard it as an indulgent diversion, an “easy” subject for students who need a rest from “hard” law, whilst some social historians see it as a pedantic and sometimes unnecessary distraction from the real issues of the exercise and response to power within society. Certainly I have heard both views expressed. The readership of this blog will, I’m a ..read more

Posted by Krista J. Kesselring, 31 October 2023. While navigating the uncertainties and untruths that swirled in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot, King James’s councillors encountered a plotter of a different sort: Ralph Whitehand, a conjuror, or perhaps just a counterfeiter and a crook. Twelve privy councillors and high court justices assembled in the Court of Star Chamber in Westminster Palace on 22 November 1605. There, they heard that Whitehand had made a girdle of human skin to wear while professing to command the spirits. The prosecutor showed spectators the books and painted scroll Whiteh ..read more