Men of Blood
Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England

An examination of the treatment of serious violence by men against women in nineteenth-century England.

Martin J. Wiener (Author)

9780521831987, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 January 2004

314 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.63 kg

'Martin Wiener's impressive work, Men of Blood, is to be welcomed not only because it fills a huge gap in the field by demonstrating how changes in ideas about manliness affected decision-making at the highest levels of Victorian justice, but also because of the scope and depth of its scholarship, which sheds considerable light on the relationship between civil servants, judges, juries and the wider public. Most significantly, he argues very convincingly that we need to think of Victorian criminal justice as a contested but shifting terrain, in which concerns about liberal citizenship ultimately created a very different approach to gender and justice than that which had been adopted in the eighteenth century. ... undoubtedly an extreemly important work, which will stimulate considerable debate and attention. It is highly relevant to all scholars and students of gender, crime and the Victorian social order; any review cannot do justice to the richness and complexity of information that is contained within its 300 pages.' Crime, History & Societies

An examination of the treatment of serious violence by men against women in nineteenth-century England. During Victoria's reign the criminal law came to punish such violence more systematically and heavily, while propagating a new, more pacific ideal of manliness. Yet this apparently progressive legal development called forth strong resistance, not only from violent men themselves but, from others who drew upon discourses of democracy, humanitarianism and patriarchy to establish sympathy with 'men of blood'. In exploring this development and the contest it generated, Professor Wiener analyzes the cultural logic underlying shifting practices in nineteenth-century courts and Whitehall, and locates competing cultural discourses in the everyday life of criminal justice. The tensions and dilemmas this book highlights are more than simply 'Victorian' ones; to an important degree they remain with us. Consequently this work speaks not only to historians and to students of gender but also to criminologists and legal theorists.

Preface
Introduction
1. Violence and law, gender and law
2. When men killed men
3. Sexual violence
4. Homicidal women and homicidal men: a growing contrast
5. Bad wives I: drunkenness and other provocations
6. Bad wives II: adultery and the unwritten law
7. Establishing intention: probing the mind of a wife killer.

Subject Areas: Crime & criminology [JKV], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1]