Group blog
The three of us work on various facets of the histories of law, crime, and justice, primarily in a British context. We might consider ourselves first and foremost social historians, historians of women and gender, or historians of medicine, but typically return time and again to using sources produced by legal processes or to the history of people's interactions with those legal processes. In addition to fancying an excuse to work together, we wanted a place to put interesting tales from the archives that never quite made it into regular publications, summaries of publications that do appear, reports on research in progress, and the occasional random musing that might be of interest to an audience beyond academia.
Categories used most frequently by the blogger:
homicide crime archives Star Chamber murder punishment women and the law Law marriage pardon assault execution coroners animals medieval England police trials coverture Scotland divorce
Who Gets to Keep the Child? A Thirteenth-Century Wardship Dispute Turns Ugly
29 November 2023
Posted by Sara M. Butler, 29 November 2023. When Julian of Durham (Jollanus de Dureme)[1] died in 1262, sometime before his postmortem inquisition held 11 Dec. of that year, he likely...
13 November 2023
Guest post by Richard W. Ireland, 13 November 2023. This piece is about delight. Legal history being, as its name suggests, a hybrid discipline, it sometimes has to defend itself,...
Conjuring and Counterfeits in the Court of Star Chamber (1605)
31 October 2023
Posted by Krista J. Kesselring, 31 October 2023. While navigating the uncertainties and untruths that swirled in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot, King James’s councillors encountered...
Legal Records Jamboree: 4. Law Reports, Legislation, and Other Legal Records
18 October 2023
Guest post by Daniel Gosling and Charlotte Smith, 18 October 2023. In June 2023, The National Archives (UK), generously supported by The Journal of Legal History/Taylor & Francis...