Impeaching the Queen of England (1643/4)
Impeachment was much talked about in 1643, too... This post discusses the effort by the House of Commons to charge Queen Henrietta Maria with treason in the midst of Civil War and revolution.
View ArticleProsecuting Homicide on the Coroner’s Inquisition
By Cassie Watson; posted 26 December 2018. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century coroner’s juries regularly returned verdicts that appeared to determine questions of criminal liability, in a parallel yet...
View ArticleVery Serious Pecuniary Loss and Inconvenience: A Jury’s Plea
By Cassie Watson; posted 22 September 2019. The trial of the notorious Rugeley Poisoner, William Palmer, opened at London’s Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, on Wednesday 14 May 1856. When it...
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Coventry’s Act and Malicious Injury
By Cassie Watson; posted 29 September 2020. On Tuesday 20 December 1670 the House of Commons adjourned until the New Year, but MPs were unaware that one of their number had been singled out for...
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Highway Robbery at Highbury: The Murder of PC Daly in 1842
By Cassie Watson; posted 30 December 2020. English legal records include information about the service experiences of thousands of law officers of all ranks, from eighteenth-century excisemen and...
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“Mute by the visitation of God, and Guilty!” The trials of John Ferriday at...
By Cassie Watson; posted 27 September 2022. At the end of October 1825 John Ferriday, a deaf collier, was tried at the Salford quarter sessions for assaulting a woman with vitriol, but acquitted...
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Negligence and the Guilty Mind: A Victorian Case Study
By Cassie Watson; posted 19 September 2023. What does syphilis have in common with acid throwing? This isn’t a trick question or a macabre joke: the answer is the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act,...
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