Crime, Courtrooms and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1700-1850 ed. by David Lemmings (review)

This edited collection covers a time period from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century and thus falls outside the early modern period that might be of interest to most readers of Parergon. Nonetheless for readers and researchers with an interest in the history of criminal justice, this selection of essays has much to recommend it.

The unifying theme across the collection is the charting of the gradual emergence of lawyers in ordinary criminal trials across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While it is now axiomatic that a courtroom is a space dominated by lawyers, the authors that David Lemmings has brought together demonstrate that this has only been a gradually developing circumstance. Accordingly, the chapters interpret the gradual change in not only rules of evidence and the conduct of cases but also courtroom etiquette, moving from what were clearly the more disorderly courtrooms of the eighteenth century to more recognisably professional courtrooms that took shape in the nineteenth century.

Although the book's title proclaims that the British Isles in general are incorporated into the analysis, in reality the bulk of the book is about English courts, and the chapters on the very different Scottish legal system are in a minority. This collection follows in the wake of major studies into the field by J. M. Beattie, some of whose students appear in this collection.

Early chapters discuss the conduct of cases and the reporting of them in the eighteenth century. Esther Snell's chapter on the reporting of rape cases in Old Bailey Proceedings addresses the impact on the perceptions of both readers and participants in trials (including prosecutors and witnesses) during trials. In particular, she suggests that reading of the Proceedings' accounts of rape trials makes clear an enduring tension between demands for full disclosure of such matters and the medical impact of a rape, and a female defendant's experience during rape and the expectations of female modesty. Robert Shoemaker's chapter also assesses the Proceedings, evaluating the gradual development of the role in trials of adversarial barristers, and the way the Proceedings initially showed distrust of the advocates for the accused.

Snell's chapter also establishes an emphasis that develops across subsequent chapters on the performative dimensions of eighteenth-century trials. The performance could be witnessed 'live', by attending a trial, or read about later in Proceedings. Andrea Mackenzie's chapter on readership for the Select Trials considers the principles of selection that these records present over a period of several decades. She suggests that the highly selective nature of the trials closely reflects the partiality and discretionary nature of many judgements themselves.

Simon Devereaux's chapter continues this focus on the performative aspect of eighteenth-century trials and on the reception of adversarial barristers by the wider public, comparing the public performance of barristers with contemporary Georgian actors. Devereaux's chapter is a particularly salient contribution to this book as it brings together these twin threads of the burgeoning importance of barristers as representing the interests of a client and the public interest in trials and the way they were played out in the public sphere. Devereaux further suggests that the development of the legal profession and the acting profession was more or less cognate in the Georgian period, as both came to acquire a new respectability that both had lacked in the early modern period. However the principal contribution of this chapter is the analysis of the inherent theatricality of trials and accordingly the developing importance of an eloquent defence counsel. He includes interesting reflections on the continuing interest in the entertainment factor inherent in courtroom proceedings, from the trial of O. J. Simpson to the production of courtroom dramas such as Rumpole of the Bailey.

Later chapters focus on the reporting of trials and the factors that influenced the newspaper reports of early eighteenth...