David Nash

Anne-Marie Kilday

Katherine D. Watson

In offering a holistic analysis of the vast array of evidence and literature pertaining to the Whitechapel Murders committed in London’s East End in the Autumn of 1888, this volume offers a multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional consideration of the entirety of the most infamous of crimes and their legacy for the first time. Interest in the crimes of Jack the Ripper has barely dissipated over the numerous decades since their perpetration but has grown significantly in recent years. The Routledge Handbook of Jack the Ripper Studies provides a solid reference point for understanding and evaluating the significance of the murders across a range of different perspectives, both past and present, and through a myriad of different disciplinary frameworks and approaches. This vital resource is split into eight thematic sections, each containing a brief, orientating introduction: 1 Introduction and Victorian Context 2 The Murders and the Victims 3 The Evidence and the Investigation 4 The Suspects and Conspiracy Theories 5 Press Reaction and Public Outcry 6 Official Responses 7 The Legacy of the Ripper: Media and Culture 8 Ripperology and Ripper Scholarship: Past, Present and Future Providing both a rigorous, consolidated appreciation of the voluminous scholarship and setting a dynamic and expansive research agenda for the future, this handbook will be essential reading for students and scholars of history, criminology, social justice, cultural studies, and gender studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Jack the Ripper Studies

The first book of its kind, Forensic Medicine in Western Society: A History draws on the most recent developments in the historiography, to provide an overview of the history of forensic medicine in the West from the medieval period to the present day. Taking an international, comparative perspective on the changing nature of the relationship between medicine, law and society, it examines the growth of medico-legal ideas, institutions and practices in Britain, Europe (principally France, Italy and Germany) and the United States. Following a thematic structure within a broad chronological framework, the book focuses on practitioners, the development of notions of ‘expertise’ and the rise of the expert, the main areas of the criminal law to which forensic medicine contributed, medical attitudes towards the victims and perpetrators of crime, and the wider influences such attitudes had. It thus develops an understanding of how medicine has played an active part in shaping legal, political and social change. Including case studies which provide a narrative context to tie forensic medicine to the societies in which it was practiced, and a further reading section at the end of each chapter, Katherine D. Watson creates a vivid portrait of a topic of relevance to social historians and students of the history of medicine, law and crime.

A History

Forensic Medicine in Western Society

This book offers an important contribution to the comparative history of interpersonal violence since the early modern period, a subject of great contemporary and historical importance. Its overarching theme is Norbert Elias’s theory of the civilizing process, and the chapters in the book recognise, as he did, that changes in human behaviour are related to transformations of both social and personality structures. Drawing on a vast range of archival and written records from five countries, the contributors explore the usefulness of the theory—the subject of much debate over the past two decades—to explaining long-term patterns in violence, but also point to the need for further empirical and comparative studies, to reflect current thinking and developments within historical, criminological, and sociological methodologies. In approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives, Assaulting the Past: Violence and Civilization in Historical Context presents a comparative and qualitative assessment of violent behaviour and the experience of violence. Approaches used include the empirical and the theoretical, and the book is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on the history of crime, history of medicine, criminology and legal history. The volume seeks to offer new insights on violence, the individual and society, to further illuminate the links between state formation, social interdependency and self-discipline that are so integral to the theory of the civilizing process.

Violence and Civilization in Historical Context

Assaulting the Past

Here is a valuable, and fascinating, piece of social history. Watson sheds new light on a macabre yet frequently misunderstood subject.

Katherine D. Watson

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