New Foundations: Pseudo-pacification and special liberty as potential cornerstones of a multi-level theory of homicide and serial murder

Over the past 30 years the industrialized West has witnessed a move towards space, heterogeneity and subjectivity in the criminological study of violence and homicide. Although large-scale quantitative studies of the temporal and spatial distribution of homicide continue to provide a broad empirical context, aetiological explanations tend to be based on analyses of the heterogeneous psychological interactions and experiences of individual subjects at the micro-level. However, mid-range studies of the temporal and spatial distribution of perpetrators and victims of homicide between unrelated adults have provided a useful link between the micro- and macro-levels. Focusing primarily on British homicide and serial murder, this article attempts to strengthen this link by combining contemporary micro-analyses of the subjective motives of perpetrators with mid-range analyses of space, which can therefore be seen as part of the structural tradition of theorizing about homicide and serial murder. Placing these analyses in a broad underlying context constituted by major historical shifts in political economy and the cultural forms of ‘pseudo-pacification’ and ‘special liberty’ will lay the initial cornerstones for an integrated multi-level theory. © The Author(s) 2014

“The fact she has anorexia fits in perfectly”: Beverley Allitt, self-starvation and media narratives of criminal femininity

This article examines the press construction in the early 1990s of Beverley Allitt, the nurse known as one of the Britain’s most prolific women serial killers, focusing on Allitt’s diagnosis of anorexia at the time of her trial and how it shaped understandings of her mental state, her character, and her perceived culpability. It is the relationship between Allitt, gender, and everyday constructions of anorexia that is of interest here, particularly in terms of how her image contributed to media discourses on self-starvation and femininity. The analysis suggests that Allitt’s anorexia was primarily understood in terms of manipulation, inauthenticity, and performance—discourses which consolidated perniciously gendered conceptions of self-starvation, as well as the problematic clinical practices through which anorexia was “treated.” As these treatment practices continue to have a legacy today, it is crucial to examine how they have been normalized and legitimized through popular media discourse

Fatherhood and family shame: masculinity, welfare and the workhouse in late nineteenth century England

In this chapter, stories of shame, anger and resistance are used to explore the tensions surrounding domestic authority and masculinity in families which struggled for survival in the face of poverty. The interdependent relationships of support and care in such families challenged two touchstones of adult masculinity: the role of provider for dependents and the position of head of household. Multiple sources of income and support for poor families could undermine a husband and father's position while the vital work of a wife in managing scarce resources further blurred questions of domestic authority. The wider context of working-class demands for employment rights and the suffrage demonstrated a desire to resolve these tensions as the labour movement focussed on measures which would enable men to successfully assert these two roles. The dominant model of family life of clear, hierarchical distinctions between the place of men, women and children for both respectable working-class families and middle-class philanthropists thus sat uncomfortably with the day-to-day exigencies of life for the poor. It is in the encounters between those in need and the many sources of welfare to which they resorted that these domestic and political tensions became visible. The Poor Laws were directly aimed at disciplining the poor through the pauperisation of men who were forced to turn to its provision to keep their families alive, explicitly removing rights to family life and citizenship, challenging men's domestic authority and social standing. Thus it is not surprising that the Poor Law was widely hated by the working classes, and formed the focus of day-to-day acts of resistance and wider political action which became more intense by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the long-term results was to be the shaping of benefits around the model of friendly societies which supported dominant ideals of family authority rather than challenging and undermining men's positions as husbands and fathers

Murder in miniature: reconstructing the crime scene in the English courtroom

Exploring the little-known medium of the English crime scene miniature, this chapter removes the roof of the ‘bungalow of death’ and invites us to peer inside. Tiny scale models of murder scenes, like that of the Crumbles bungalow where Patrick Mahon killed Emily Kaye in 1924, appeared in nineteenth- and twentieth-century courtrooms more frequently than the historical record suggests. The result is that these little likenesses have been overlooked in the literature on crime and forensics in the past, underestimating the significance of spatialized understandings of evidence and visual representations of crime scenes in court. This chapter explores the larger methodological implications of murder miniatures for sources about crime and trials in the past, illustrating the effects of investigating crime scenes at scale