Nineteenth-century female poisoners
Subtitle: three English women who used arsenic to kill
By: Victoria M. Nagy
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; Springer
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9781137359292
Subjects: Women poisoners; Case studies; Murder; History; HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain; HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century; HISTORY / Social History; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Death & Dying; TRUE CRIME / Murder / General
Description: "Nineteenth-Century Female Poisoners investigates the Essex poisoning trials of 1846 to 1851 where three women were charged with using arsenic to kill children, their husbands and brothers. Using newspapers, archival sources (including petitions and witness depositions), and records from parliamentary debates, the focus is not on whether the women were guilty or innocent, but rather on what English society during this period made of their trials and what stereotypes and stock-stories were used to describe women who used arsenic to kill. All three women were initially presented as 'bad' women- but as the book illustrates there was no clear consensus on what exactly constituted bad womanhood"--
Notes: Includes bibliographic references (pages 200-213) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Introduction; Gender and Change in Mid-Nineteenth Century England 1. Crime in Nineteenth-Century England: Decline, Causes and Concerns 2. Broadening the Scope: Moving Beyond Simple Sources 3. Poisoning Crimes in the United Kingdom: 1839-18514. The Archetypical Poisoning Woman: Sarah Chesham's Cases 5. Death Clubs, Secret Poisonings and an Execution: The Case of Mary May 6. Fallen Woman or Bad Witnesses? The Case of Hannah Southgate Conclusion.