Lizzie Seal – författare

Capital punishment for murder was abolished in Britain in 1965. At this time, the way people in Britain perceived and understood the death penalty had changed – it was an issue that had become increasingly controversial, high-profile and fraught with emotion. In order to understand why this was, it is necessary to examine how ordinary people learned about and experienced capital punishment. Drawing on primary research, this book explores the cultural life of the death penalty in Britain in the twentieth century, including an exploration of the role of the popular press and a discussion of portrayals of the death penalty in plays, novels and films. Popular protest against capital punishment and public responses to and understandings of capital cases are also discussed, particularly in relation to conceptualisations of justice. Miscarriages of justice were significant to capital punishment’s increasingly fraught nature in the mid twentieth-century and the book analyses the unsettling power of two such high profile miscarriages of justice. The final chapters consider the continuing relevance of capital punishment in Britain after abolition, including its symbolism and how people negotiate memories of the death penalty.Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain is groundbreaking in its attention to the death penalty and the effect it had on everyday life and it is the only text on this era to place public and popular discourses about, and reactions to, capital punishment at the centre of the analysis. Interdisciplinary in focus and methodology, it will appeal to historians, criminologists, sociologists and socio-legal scholars.

Using the mid-twentieth-century microhistorical example of the so-called ‘Mummy in the Cupboard Murder’, Lizzie Seal examines the significance of the Gothic to understandings of crime.In a case that hinged on forensic evidence, Sarah Jane Harvey, the owner of a boarding house in Rhyl, North Wales, was tried for the murder of Frances Knight whose naturally mummified corpse was discovered in a locked cupboard of the house in 1960. The book applies Gothic criminology to an empirical historical example, considers the interchange between fact and fiction, traces developments in mid twentieth-century forensic pathology, and contributes to historical criminology by extending this approach’s conceptual base.The Mummy in the Cupboard Murder is ideal for students and scholars of cultural criminology, crime and media, twentieth-century British history, and crime history, as well as those with an interest in the Gothic.

Using the mid-twentieth-century microhistorical example of the so-called ‘Mummy in the Cupboard Murder’, Lizzie Seal examines the significance of the Gothic to understandings of crime.In a case that hinged on forensic evidence, Sarah Jane Harvey, the owner of a boarding house in Rhyl, North Wales, was tried for the murder of Frances Knight whose naturally mummified corpse was discovered in a locked cupboard of the house in 1960. The book applies Gothic criminology to an empirical historical example, considers the interchange between fact and fiction, traces developments in mid twentieth-century forensic pathology, and contributes to historical criminology by extending this approach’s conceptual base.The Mummy in the Cupboard Murder is ideal for students and scholars of cultural criminology, crime and media, twentieth-century British history, and crime history, as well as those with an interest in the Gothic.

Capital punishment for murder was abolished in Britain in 1965. At this time, the way people in Britain perceived and understood the death penalty had changed – it was an issue that had become increasingly controversial, high-profile and fraught with emotion. In order to understand why this was, it is necessary to examine how ordinary people learned about and experienced capital punishment. Drawing on primary research, this book explores the cultural life of the death penalty in Britain in the twentieth century, including an exploration of the role of the popular press and a discussion of portrayals of the death penalty in plays, novels and films. Popular protest against capital punishment and public responses to and understandings of capital cases are also discussed, particularly in relation to conceptualisations of justice. Miscarriages of justice were significant to capital punishment’s increasingly fraught nature in the mid twentieth-century and the book analyses the unsettling power of two such high profile miscarriages of justice. The final chapters consider the continuing relevance of capital punishment in Britain after abolition, including its symbolism and how people negotiate memories of the death penalty.Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain is groundbreaking in its attention to the death penalty and the effect it had on everyday life and it is the only text on this era to place public and popular discourses about, and reactions to, capital punishment at the centre of the analysis. Interdisciplinary in focus and methodology, it will appeal to historians, criminologists, sociologists and socio-legal scholars.

This distinctive and engaging book proposes an imaginative criminology, focusing on how spaces of transgression are lived, portrayed and imagined. These include spaces of control or confinement, including prison and borders, and spaces of resistance. Examples range from camps where asylum seekers and migrants are confined, to the exploration of deviant identities and the imagined spaces of surveillance and control in young adult fiction. Drawing on oral history, fictive portrayals, walking methodologies, and ethnographic and arts-based research, the book pays attention to issues of gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, mobility and nationality as they intersect with lived and imagined space.

This distinctive and engaging book proposes an imaginative criminology, focusing on how spaces of transgression are lived, portrayed and imagined. These include spaces of control or confinement, including prison and borders, and spaces of resistance. Examples range from camps where asylum seekers and migrants are confined, to the exploration of deviant identities and the imagined spaces of surveillance and control in young adult fiction. Drawing on oral history, fictive portrayals, walking methodologies, and ethnographic and arts-based research, the book pays attention to issues of gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, mobility and nationality as they intersect with lived and imagined space.

Violence by women is frequently sensationalised, abetting misogynistic tropes that characterise violent women as ‘evil’, ‘unnatural’ and masculine. Favouring more complex analyses of this behaviour, The Emerald International Handbook of Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Acts of Violence highlights and challenges normative accounts of women’s violence and offers new multidimensional conceptualisations of these acts, furthering understanding of this topic from a feminist perspective.Responding to a growing research interest, contributors present a comprehensive introduction to a wide range of international and interdisciplinary scholarship on different aspects of women’s violence. Drawing on both empirical and secondary data, chapters incorporate familiar themes of intimate violence, homicide, terrorism and combat as well as wider content such as women’s involvement in violent nationalist movements and their role in perpetrating obstetric harms.The only publication of its kind in terms of its scope, interdisciplinarity and feminist perspective, The Emerald International Handbook of Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Acts of Violence breaks fresh ground by unveiling how violence is understood and enabling new links and connections to be made across previously disparate areas.