Between 1847 and 1851, a series of criminal trials took place in Essex, England, involving a number of women accused of fatally poisoning their husbands and children and even complete strangers. This thesis analyzes the Essex cases and their representation in the Victorian press. It focuses quite intensively on the legal proceedings involved in the Essex cases but also examines issues such as the emergence of toxicology, the availability of arsenic and the campaign against burial societies, issues which informed both the Victorian press’s treatment of the Essex cases and public responses to the story. This thesis challenges and critiques the dominant narrative of the Essex poisonings by revealing the gap between what the press claimed and the evidence actually offered in court and draws from the voluminous media coverage these cases generated to explain how and why this particular episode occurred at this particular historical moment. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/4351 |
| Date | 13 December 2012 |
| Creators | Ainsley, Jill Louise |
| Contributors | McLaren, Angus |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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