Trials of passion
Subtitle: crimes in the name of love and madness
By: Lisa Appignanesi
Publisher: Virago
Published: 2014
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 434
ISBN-13: 9781844088744; 9781405515771; 9780349004815
Copyright date: 2014
Subjects: Crimes of passion; Case studies
Description: "This book journeys into the heart of dark passions and the crimes they impel. When passion is in the picture, what is criminal, what sane, what mad or simply bad? Brighton, 1870: A well-respected spinster infuses chocolate creams with strychnine in order to murder her lover's wife. Paris, 1880: A popular performer stalks her betraying lover through the streets of the city for weeks and finally takes aim. New York, 1906: A millionaire shoots dead a prominent architect in full view of a theatre audience. Through court and asylum records, letters and newspaper accounts, this book brings to life a period when the psychiatric professions were consolidating their hold on our understanding of what is human. An increasingly popular press allowed the public unprecedented insight into accounts of transgressive sexuality, savage jealousy and forbidden desires. With great story-telling flair, Lisa Appignanesi teases out the vagaries of passion and the clashes between the law and the clinic as they stumble towards a (sometimes reviled) collaboration. Sexual etiquette and class roles, attitudes to love, madness and gender, notions of respectability and honour, insanity and lunacy, all are at play in that vital forum in which public opinion is shaped - the theatre of the courtroom."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 399-416) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: pt. ONE BRITAIN; title: The Unspoken; title: I. Christiana Edmunds and the Chocolate Cream Murders; title: 1. The Borgia of Brighton; title: 2. The Hearing; title: 3.A Wilful Killing?; title: 4. The Rumbles of History; title: 5. Sex and the Victorian Hysteric; title: 6. Fashions in Treatment; title: 7. Loving Doctors; title: 8. At the Old Bailey; title: 9. Insanity and the Law; title: 10.`Enceinte! She Says She Is, My Lord'; title: 11. Murder, Gender and Shifting Public Attitudes; title: 12. Saving (Mad) Christiana; title: 13. Broadmoor; title: pt. TWO FRANCE; title: Virtue on Trial; title: II. A Hysteria of the Heart: The Case of Marie Biere; title: 14. The Love Child; title: 15.`Going Mad'; title: 16. The Investigation; title: 17. Passion, Madness and Medics; title: 18. The Trial of Marie Biere; title: 19.`A Hyper-excitation of the Affective Faculties'; title: 20. The Verdict; title: 21. Afterlife; title: 22. Revolvers and Vitriol; title: III. Hysteria, Hypnosis and Criminal Responsibility; title: 23. Hypnotic Murders 1: The Chambige Affair; title: 24. Hypnotic Murders 2: L'Affaire Gouffe.; title: Contents note continued: IV. Naturalizing the Impulsive Feminine; title: 25. Henriette Caillaux Meets the Press; title: 26.A Woman's Honour; title: 27. Into the Sexual Century; title: pt. THREE THE UNITED STATES; title: The Paranoia of a Millionaire; title: V. Brain Storm Over Manhattan; title: 28.A Voluptuary's Retreat; title: 29. Murder in the Garden; title: 30. The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing; title: 31. The Pittsburgh Millionaire; title: 32. Pursuing Evelyn; title: 33. The Trial of the Century; title: 34. Mad Harry: American Psychiatry Meets the Law; title: 35. Experts on the Stand; title: 36. Star Witness for the Defence; title: 37. The Prosecution Counter-attacks; title: 38. Climax: `Murder as a Cure for Insanity'; title: 39. Sexual Politics; title: 40. Expert Fall-out; title: 41. The Second Trial of Harry K. Thaw; title: 42. Manic-depressive Insanity; title: 43. Fighting Lunacy; title: 44. The Great Escape; title: 45. Assessing the Experts.