Homicide

- A Crime that is difficult to conceal

- Wider public condemnation - higher reporting rate

- Prosecution costs less of a factor

- Records exist for cross-checking

English homicide rate are given as 6 per 100,000 in 1660, declining to 4 per 100,000 by the beginning of the C18 and down to less than 1 per 100,000 by the start of the C19

- Despite the harsh penalties of the Murder Act 1752 in terms of execution and dissection of the corpses, the conviction rate for murder declined over the C18

- Problems of proof:
Extent of malice
Extent of responsibility

- What about?
Accidental death
Self-defence
Excusable moderate correction
Justifiable death
Provocation

Culpable homicide = capital offence
Murder
Manslaughter

Excusable homicide = pardonable Offence
Accidental
Self-defence

Justifiable homicide = deserved acquittal

Men's Homicide
- Generally outside the immediate household
- Characterised by stealth betrayal
- Two - thirds of those executed for murder
- More likely to receive pardon
- Manslaughter is conceived as a particularly masculine crime

Women's Homicide
- Largely from within existing domestic circles
- Characterised retaliation
- More likely to have a case dismissed
- More likely to have a case dismissed
-Benefit of the clergy did not apply to women

- A wife killing her own husband was given special legal status from 1351/52

- As an act akin to overturning God's ordained order for society, it was treated in the same way as high treason. Therefore, the definition covered any wilful homicide of a superior by an inferior within the structure of the household or church

- Men's petty treason = drawn at the cart's tail, gallows and hanged

- A women's petty treason = burned alive

- Men who killed their wives were hanged (petty tyranny)

Infanticide = murder of children up to nine years olf

Neonaticide = Murder of Newborn child within 24 hours of birth

Filicide

Women had a limited range of options in the event of an unwanted pregnancy
- Adoption
- Termination/abortion
- Abandoned or 'dropped'
- Murder or allowed to die

Various sources, but historians agree that the practice was far more widespread than records show:
- Staffordshire - average 1 indictment per year, 1743-1802
- Old Bailey - 61 cases between 1730 and 1744

1. Single women to register their condition if pregnant

2. Name the father

3. The general assumption of guilt on the concealment of a dead baby

Legal background:
- 1507 Bamburg
- 1658 Wurtemburg
- Denmark, Dutch Republic, France, Lithuania, Russia, Scotland, Sweden

England:
- 1575/76 - Elizabethan Poor Law
- 1609 - unwed mothers could be 'set to work'
- 1624 - an offence to conceal the death of a ******* child

- Arise in numbers prosecuted?

- Essex Assizes 1625-1648:
73% conviction rates versus a 33% rate

- Surrey Assizes 1660-1800
Of 62 cases, 47 were against unmarried mothers

- Garthine Walker's cautioned?

- Cheshire 1580-1709, 1 execution every 4 years
Essex: Average 1 prosecution per year

Presumption of guilt

- Mainly committed by unmarried women

- Usually the baby's mother

- Usually straight after the birth

- Sex of the child has no bearing

- Accused tended to be from poorer backgrounds

- Especially servants or maids... so, there was 'respectable' women, not whores

Child was Stillborn

Accidental death during the birth

Proof of preparation

Proof that others had been toted

Temporary insanity/diminished responsibility

Changing views of gender responsibility                                           New ideas about mind & self

- Re-defining the limits of sanity in the 18thC