Certain Other Countries. Homicide, Gender and National Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (review)

Most historic studies of 'Britain' are in fact about England, with only token nods to the considerable diversity within the Atlantic archipelago. In contrast, this ambitious study is real British history that devotes equal attention to all the component parts. Conley seeks to explore "responses to homicides and what those responses reveal about the comparative cultures of the four nations of the United Kingdom" (3). By looking at different representations of murder in courts and newspapers she shows not only how unusual Scotland was in a British context (Scots law was quite distinct from English in its underlying premises, workings and nomenclature), but also how the different cultures of Wales and Ireland related to the English law that had been imposed on them since at least the sixteenth century.

There is a prodigious amount of work here: 7,000 homicide reports and 6,000 court cases covering 1867-92. Aware of the importance of English and Scottish legal codes to how historians see murder, gender and national identity, Conley outlines their salient differences, but she does not explore the detailed workings of courts, including counsel's legal arguments, which were often extremely detailed and widely discursive. Specialists in the field will baulk at this and other aspects of the broad-brush approach. At the outset, Conley is disarmingly honest about her lack of engagement with the extensive literature on Victorian crime, society and politics, arguing that she wishes to reach a readership beyond academics (5-6). Indeed the brief bibliography favours general works and is highly eclectic in its choice of specialist articles and book chapters. An egregious omission is the work of Pauline M. Prior on homicide, insanity and gender in Ireland.¹

The British-Isles focus is to be commended because it illustrates important points about, for example, the highly centralized nature of English justice compared with societies in which a participatory tradition in policing and trial was either poorly developed or only weakly related to the instructions sent out from central government. Yet the nation may not be the most appropriate geographical framework. One in ten Scots had been born in Ireland by 1901 and Scottish courts manifested the prevalent racism against murderers who were Irish, seeing the crime both as more characteristic of the people and yet also more reprehensible. There is a short section on regions (128-30), but had Conley looked in detail at English towns which also had significant immigrant populations in Victorian times, like Bristol, Liverpool or Manchester, she might have found something similar. She mentions the language problem in Welsh courts, but not in Irish or Scottish ones where (Gaelic) monolingualism was arguably as much of a problem. Indeed, future work might explore regional legal cultures and local responses in more detail.

Conley's study has many interesting findings. The execution rate per head of population during the nineteenth century was nearly three times higher in England, Wales, and Ireland than in Scotland. This is explained by the inner logic of law rather than some vague national characteristic. Law is indeed a social fact which shapes how people think and behave, but many other cultural and social elements informed decision making. Scottish juries, we are told several times, were "more likely to stress individual responsibility and the need for atonement" (26), but was that primarily an issue in religion, history, philosophy or law? Were different attitudes to family members in the component parts of the United Kingdom determined by the pronounced variations in the way the poor law operated in Ireland compared with England and Wales (with Scotland different again)? For an emotive matter like neglect of children is a social as well as an individual and familial issue (184-93).

The elementary methodology too may frustrate some readers. Newspapers had different political stances and different biases in coverage: The...