1st Edition
Class, Servitude, and the Criminal Justice System in Early Victorian London The Russell Murder
1. Introduction
2. 14 Norfolk Street, Park Lane: Upstairs and Down
3. Inspectors Call: The Investigation
4. The Case for the Prosecution Rests … with Francis Hobler
5. ‘Going to See a Man Hanged’
6. Who Speaks?: Voice, Image, Agency – and Truth
7. Explanations and Consequences
Biography
Allyson N. May is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She is the author of The Bar and the Old Bailey, 1750–1850 (2003) and The Fox-Hunting Controversy, 1781–2004: Class and Cruelty (2013) and co-editor, with David Lemmings, of Criminal Justice during the Long Eighteenth Century: Theatre, Representation and Emotion (2019).
"Allyson May builds on her study of the Old Bailey bar with a marvellous account of the trial of the Swiss valet hanged in 1840 for murdering his employer. The case fascinated early Victorian England. Drawing on an unusually rich prosecution source May shows why, citing class tension and political upheaval."
Douglas C. Hay, York University, Canada
"This first-rate study of the Russell murder illuminates the workings of English criminal justice, increasing unease with the death penalty, and the breakdown in the master-servant relationship in which the crime was rooted. It has import, too, for the history of class, gender, and masculinity."
Victor Bailey, University of Kansas, USA
