Great and Horrible News: Murder and Mayhem in Early Modern Britain

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Blessin Adams traded police work investigating today’s crime in the Norfolk Constabulary for academia, tracing the lives and deaths of people in early modern England.

She takes us beyond Nathaniel’s conviction to his time in Newgate, describing the appalling conditions in which prisoners were kept. The stories go into detail the law that was broken- at times by both the victim and the perpetrator- and raised the question of whether the actual law had, in part, helped cause the crime itself.And of course all of this is complicated by the final case explored, which highlights that sometimes suicide was viewed as not only acceptable, but noble. The crimes themselves are, as advertised, "great and horrible" but what I found most interesting was having the historical context fleshed out to explain the why's of each crime (laws regarding suicide, laws regarding female bodies, Church privilege, etc) and how investigations would have been conducted (and by who) during the time period in question. This story is used as a basis to discuss women’s vulnerability to their masters, the horrific misogynistic laws around bastardy and infanticide, and early forensic ways of differentiating between stillbirth and infanticide. Adams shows that while in general the public strongly disapproved of suicide, honourable suicide often met with a more sympathetic reaction. This was a great read, diving into the crimes or not-true crimes of early Britain, and some of the horrific laws that were enacted.

Many people were convicted on flimsy evidence, and who you were, or weren't could determine your guilt. Taking us through several crimes of the times, the author delves with compelling intricacy into the laws, the investigations, the punishments of early modern Britain.Baby farms, political crimes, religious mania – these and many more aspects of crime and justice are also covered in this fascinating book.

A couple of the stories involve suicide, and Adams shows the inhumanity of the laws surrounding this subject. I see the audiobook is narrated by Jonathan Keeble – I’ve listened to a few of his narrations and I really like him! Many historical laws and attitudes concerning death and murder may strike us as exceptionally cruel, and yet many still remind us that some things never change: we are still fascinated by narratives of murder and true crime, murder trials today continue to be grand public spectacles, female killers are frequently cast as aberrant objects of public hatred and sexual desire, and suicide remains a sin within many religious organisations and was a crime in England until the 1960s. She argues that this period, 1500-1700, saw the beginnings of a secular, scientific approach to investigation, with increasing reliance on physical evidence, influenced by the cultural changes that accompanied the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. And her style is very good – not nearly as dry as is sometimes the case with this kind of true crime/social history.

She takes us beyond Nathaniel's conviction to his time in Newgate, describing the appalling conditions in which prisoners were kept. Thank you to NetGalley, 4th Estate and William Collins for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review. In terms of our thirst for knowledge for all things grisly, it seems like we haven't changed much in 500 years. As she takes us through his eventual confession, guilt and remorse, and his execution by public hanging, Adams shows how the public, again very similar to today, soon lost interest in John, the victim, and became fixated on Nathaniel, the murderer, even feeling sympathy for him as his remorse was reported in the news sheets. There's some great social examination here: the changing nature of what was considered criminal (the miscarriage case is particularly horrifying); the intersection between society, law and the executive (a ward for orphaned children palmed off to reduce local obligations strikes home); the nature of suicide; the balance between religion, superstition and science in laws; how evidence is weighted; the voyeurism inherent in crime reporting.