Posts on the History of Law, Crime, and Justice
Posted by Sara M. Butler, 6 August 2026. Historians of marriage have done much to redeem the “institution” for medieval England in the past thirty years. Where once it was assumed that all marriages were loveless business arrangements, dominated by financial considerations, and imposed on daughters against their will, now, especially thanks to historians like [ ]
With curbs on trial juries now proposed in the UK, this post looks back to the part played by their now defunct counterpart, the grand jury.
By Cassie Watson; posted 19 June 2026. Serial offenders are assumed to have at least two to four victims;[1] to kill for pleasure or gain; and to follow a pattern in victim selection. If, as Eric Hickey states, the most important tool for researchers — and by implication investigators — is the ability to link [ ]
Posted by Sara M. Butler, 8 May 2026. Medieval England had no word that was equivalent to the modern term rape. Instead, lawmakers and the judiciary used the term raptus, which is often translated as “rape” but actually means “seizure.” In a blogpost from August of 2024, I wrote about the difficulties with raptus, how [ ]
Who owns what lies within the ground beneath our feet? This post explores the answers offered in a 1568 case that has both analogues and legacies today.
By Cassie Watson; posted 27 March 2026. What did a cheese thief in Victorian Lancashire have in common with a pitman in County Durham, a bigamist in the Rhondda Valley, or an eighteenth-century Welsh labourer? They were all repeat offenders who earned themselves a memorable nickname: Dick the Devil. I came across the last-mentioned of [ ]
In this guest post, Kay Crosby uses the early history of women's jury service to explore the criteria by which the state recognized some women (but not others) as citizens.
Posted by Sara M. Butler, 5 February 2026. The church tried its best to vilify social mobility in late medieval England, encouraging good Christians to embrace their place in society (no matter how low!) as ordained by God, and not strive for more. Nonetheless, England’s nascent middle class fantasized of something better. They hoped that [ ]
Tracing the phenomenon of Protestant ‘fish days’, this post explores why some people in early modern England believed that changing their diet could promote a public good--and how they brought the law to bear.
By Cassie Watson; posted 26 December 2025. In the wake of the Thames Torso Murders (1887–89), the Jack the Ripper killings of autumn 1888, and several subsequent unsolved murders that were thought possibly to be the work of the Ripper,[1] the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, James Monro, tried to convince the Home Office to pay more [ ]