Murder : social and historical approaches to understanding murder and murderers

189 Pages·2006·3.965 MB·English

by  Pegg, Samantha, Walklate, Sandra, D'Cruze, Shani

CRIME AND SOCIETY SERIES
MURDER
SHANI D'CRUZE
SANDRA WALKLATE
SAMANTHA PEGG
WILLAN
PUBLISHING
Murder
Crime and Society Series
Series editor: Hazel Croall
Published titles
Sex Crime (second edition), by Terry Thomas
Burglary, by R.I. Mawby
Armed Robbery, by Roger Matthews
Car Crime, by Claire Corbett
Street Crime, by Simon Hallsworth
Hate Crime, by Nathan Hall
Murder, by Shani D'Cruze, Sandra Walklate and Samantha Pegg
Murder
Social and historical approaches to
understanding murder and murderers
Shani D’Cruze, Sandra Walklate and
Samantha Pegg
WILLAN
PUBLISHING
Published by
Willan Publishing
Culmcott House
Mill Street, Uffculme
Cullompton, Devon
EX15 3AT, UK
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
e-mail: [email protected]
website: www.willanpublishing.co.uk
Published simultaneously in the USA and Canada by
Willan Publishing
c/o ISBS, 920 NE 58th Ave, Suite 300,
Portland, Oregon 97213-3786, USA
Tel: [phone]
Fax:[phone]
e-mail: [email protected]
website: www.isbs.com
© Shani D'Cruze, Sandra Walklate and Samantha Pegg 2006
The rights of Shani D'Cruze, Sandra Walklate and Samantha Pegg to be identified as the
authors of this book have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence
permitting copying in the UK issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham
Court Road, London W1P 9HE.
First published 2006
Paperback
ISBN-10: 1-84392-169-3
ISBN-13: 978-184392-169-1
Hardback
ISBN-10: 1-84392-170-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-84392-170-7
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by CCS, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 1AR
Project managed by Deer Park Productions, Tavistock, Devon
Printed and bound by T.J. International Ltd, Trecerus Industrial Estate, Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
Preface and acknowledgements ix
1 Cataloguing murder 1
Introduction 1
Defining murder 3
A word on quantitative and qualitative research 6
Sources of information on murder 8
Nature and extent of murder in England and Wales:
a contemporary picture 14
Thinking about the victim 17
Conclusion: murders, murderers and social construction 21
2 Devils and demons: the social construction of murder
and murderers 22
Introduction 22
Rendering them pathological 23
Understanding evil: symbolism or reality? 24
Ways of thinking about evil 25
Competing for the subject murderer 29
Criminology criminological perspectives on murder
and Harold Shipman 32
Psychiatry and crime: inside the subconscious mind 33
Psychology and crime: the search for individual
differences 34
Sociology: outside the criminal mind 36
Feminism, serial killers and masculinity 37
Murder
Masculinity, femininity and the power of the law 39
Femininity, motherhood and murder 41
The 'reasonable man of law' and the subject of offender 43
Conclusion 44
3 Murderous women 46
Introduction 46
Women who kill: mad or bad? 47
Kate Webster 52
Ruth Ellis 58
Beverly Allitt 61
Conclusion 67
4 Murderous children 69
Introduction 69
Popular and criminological responses to the child
who kills 70
'Being a child': constructing childhood 73
The killing of James Bulger 76
Evicting the murderous child 79
The history of child killing: George Burgess 83
Moral understanding: doli incapax and remorse 88
The female child who kills 92
Causes and explanations? 97
The importance of public amnesia 100
Conclusion 102
5 Murderous men: intimate and domestic killings 103
Introduction 103
Intimate murder and domestic violence 104
Intimate homicide, history and criminal justice 106
The lady in the lake 110
A young mum 113
The White House Farm murders 117
Conclusion 124
6 Murderous men: killing friends and acquaintances 125
Introduction: murderous men and their friends:
instrumental or expressive violence? 125
A public profession of criminality: the Kray Twins 129
Lack of motive: Ley and Smith 136
'I seek company first': Dennis Nilsen 140
Conclusion 146
vi
Contents
7 Rendering them pathological 147
Introduction 147
Sexuality and control 148
Physicality and emotion 150
Gender, ethnicity, age and class 151
Understanding transgression 153
The symbolic power of evil 155
Conclusion: murder, pathology and the law 157
References 159
Index 171

Preface and acknowledgements
As Brian Willan, Director of Willan Publishing, will know, this book
has had a long gestation during the course of which it has changed
its shape and form. Its overall intention is to introduce the reader
to some of the complexities that surround the social and cultural
response to the crime of murder and the murderer. In exploring this
response we have deliberately opted to focus on what we have chosen
to call interpersonal murder. Of course, in a sense, both socially and
legally, all such crimes are interpersonal but our use of this term is
intended to confine our concerns to those acts of killing that involve
intimates or acquaintances rather than those acts of killing that might
result from road traffic accidents, political violence or the work of
business corporations. Our intent is not to convey that such acts
of killing are unimportant or not worthy of exploration. They are.
However, in a short text of this kind it would be very difficult to
do justice to the legal and social complexities that their inclusion
would entail. So, in this book, we have taken the act of interpersonal
murder and explored the social construction of the murderer over
time in an effort to understand how such constructions search for
ways of rendering the murderer pathological; Not Like Us. We hope
you enjoy the journey!
In putting this book together various people have helped each of
us in different ways. Shani and Sandra would like to acknowledge the
support of critical academic friends in the Socio-legal Studies Group
at Manchester Metropolitan University, namely Stephen Whittle,
Cath Little, Kate Cook and Helen Jones, to whom we exposed our
early ideas on rendering the murderer pathological. Shani would
ix