Imagining the unimaginable: Parricide in early modern England and Wales, c.1600-c.1760

This article explores the ways in which parricide was comprehended in England and Wales, c.1600–1760, and shows that while some parallels exist with modern explanatory models of parricide offenders, they had very different meanings in the early modern context. While both lunacy and the cruelty of parents were understood as possible contexts for parricide, neither were common. The dominant explanation was the gratuitous violence of a selfish individual who lacked compassion and who saw the parent as an obstacle—to an inheritance, riches, marriage, and freedom—to be removed. The article explores these three categories and suggests ways in which this began to change in the mid-eighteenth century

Everyman or a monster? The rapist in early modern England, c.1600–1750

The focus of this article is on responses to men who raped in early modern England and Wales. Most historical writing on sexual violence and rape in the period has focused on the women and children who were subjected to such abuse rather than upon the perpetrators. The rapist, when he appears, is presented at some times as everyman and at others a monster. The article explores what may be at stake in such a dichotomous view and its unresolved tensions not only for historians but also for early modern people. Using primary sources including pre-trial depositions, printed sessions papers, and newspaper reports of rape and rape, the article explores some of the ways in which early modern people responded to the figure of the rapist, viewing rape either as an ordinary expression of male desire or an extraordinary exhibition of brutish force in ways that seem at once familiar and alien to modern commentator

Child-killing and emotion in early modern England and Wales

This chapter explores emotional responses to infanticide and concealed deaths of bastard children which were prosecuted under the 1624 Concealment Act in early modern England and Wales. The chapter not only revises our view of contemporary attitudes to women suspected of killing infants but also draws attention to the range of emotions experienced by those who discovered infant corpses. The chapter ends by considering the nature of any subjectivity we might have access to in primary sources concerning infanticide, and suggests that individuals occupied multiple subject positions. Emotional reactions to child-killing were complex and variable, and cannot be reduced to a narrative in which premodern harshness was replaced by modern empathy

Crime, gender and social order in early modern England

An extended study of gender and crime in early modern England. It considers the ways in which criminal behaviour and perceptions of criminality were informed by ideas about gender and order, and explores their practical consequences for the men and women who were brought before the criminal courts. Dr Walker's innovative approach demonstrates that, contrary to received opinion, the law was often structured so as to make the treatment of women and men before the courts incommensurable. For the first time, early modern criminality is explored in terms of masculinity as well as femininity. Illuminating the interactions between gender and other categories such as class and civil war have implications not merely for the historiography of crime but for the social history of early modern England as a whole. This study therefore goes beyond conventional studies, and challenges hitherto accepted views of social interaction in the period