Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Identity, Crime and Legal Responsibility in Eighteenth-Century England

  • Book
  • © 2004

Overview

Authors:
  1. Dana Y. Rabin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Crime, Culture, and the Self

    • Dana Y. Rabin
    Pages 1-21

  3. ‘Of the Persons Capable of Committing Crimes’: Pleas of Mental Distress in the Eighteenth-Century Courtroom

    • Dana Y. Rabin
    Pages 22-60

  4. Old Excuses, New Meanings: ‘Temporary Phrenzy,’ Necessity, Passion, and Compulsion

    • Dana Y. Rabin
    Pages 61-94

  5. Bodies of Evidence, States of Mind: Infanticide, Emotion, and Sensibility

    • Dana Y. Rabin
    Pages 95-110

  6. ‘An indulgence given to great crimes’? Sensibility, Compassion, and Law Reform

    • Dana Y. Rabin
    Pages 111-141

  7. The End of Excuse? James Hadfield and the Insanity Plea

    • Dana Y. Rabin
    Pages 142-163

  8. From Self to Subject

    • Dana Y. Rabin
    Pages 164-169

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 170-234
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

During the eighteenth century English defendants, victims, witnesses, judges, and jurors spoke a language of the mind. With their reputations or lives at stake, men and women presented their complex emotions and passions as grounds for acquittal or mitigation of punishment. Inside the courtroom the language of excuse reshaped crimes and punishments, signalling a shift in the age-old negotiation of mitigation. Outside the courtroom the language of the mind reflected society's preoccupation with questions of sensibility, responsibility, and the self.

Reviews

- '[Rabin] give[s] weight to abstractions like 'sensibility' as actual forces in the courtroom and in the reform movement.'

Paul Baines, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol.42, no.1, 2008

About the author

DANA RABIN is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in the history of early modern Britain with an emphasis on law, gender, emotion, and identity and is the author of "Searching for the Self in Eighteenth-Century English Criminal Trials, 1730-1800".

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Identity, Crime and Legal Responsibility in Eighteenth-Century England

  • Authors: Dana Y. Rabin

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505094

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History Collection, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2004

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-3444-4Published: 20 October 2004

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-51716-9Published: 01 January 2004

  • eBook ISBN: 978-0-230-50509-4Published: 20 October 2004

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 234

  • Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, Social History, Cultural History, Modern History

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation