Photographing Crime Scenes in Twentieth-Century London: Microhistories of Domestic Murder

Description

How can we read crime scenes through photography? Making use of micro-histories of domestic murder and crime scene photographs made available for the first time, Alexa Neale provides a highly original exploration of what crime scenes can tell us about the significance of expectations of domesticity, class, gender, race, privacy and relationships in twentieth-century Britain. With 10 case studies and 30 black and white images, Photographing Crime Scenes in 20th-Century London will take you inside the homes that were murder crime scenes to read their geographical and symbolic meanings in the light of the development of crime scene photography, forensic analysis and psychological testing. In doing so, it reveals how photographs of domestic objects and spaces were often used to recreate a narrative for the murder based on the defendant's perceived identity rather than to prove if they committed the crime at all. Bringing the history of crime, British social and cultural history and the history of forensic photography to the analysis of the crime scene, this study offers fascinating details on the changing public and private lives of Londoners in the 20th century.

Alexa Neale is Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in Historical Criminology at the University of Sussex, UK. She is currently researching crime narratives and the meaning of evidence in a project titled 'Black Books: The Institutional Memory of Hanging and Mercy at the Home Office'.

In her forensic analysis of hitherto unseen photographs of domestic interiors that were crime scenes, Alexa Neale reveals the part they played in imagined narratives of murder presented in courtrooms. Her microhistories of individual cases, each framed by a compelling imaginative vignette, go beyond the crimes in question and give new insights into social class, gendered and racial identities revealed in the spaces and material culture of 20th century Londoners' homes. * Deborah Sugg Ryan, Professor of Design History and Theory, University of Portsmouth, UK * An immersive, clear-eyed account of Neale's encounter with the criminal archive. Trial transcripts, criminal case files, media reportage, ephemera and, most importantly, photographs found in police prosecution records are read along - and against - the grain. Neale teaches us how deftly these materials were used to create powerful prosecution narratives, and also how to read them now: as evidence of home life, relationships, lives and secrets. Bringing imaginative methodological approaches to her fascinating sources, Neale's work is a microhistory made from the surviving remnants of criminal records. Her reading of forensic photographs is lucid, original and a major contribution to the field. * Katherine Biber, Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney, Australia * In this compelling and challenging study of crime scene photography, Alexa Neale shows how the camera shaped how crime and the law were perceived and represented in modern Britain. Photographing Crime Scenes in 20th-Century London is an astute analysis, bringing together cultural history, legal history and the social history of crime. Neale's book also uses the camera's lens to tell a series of fascinating stories about private and public life in twentieth-century London, from a louche mews in Knightsbridge to the dark alleys of Limehouse. * Stephen J Brooke, Professor of History, York University, Canada * A trailblazing title which opens up this visual world to the crime, cultural and media historian. Through a critical analysis of crime scene photography and narrative this book persuades criminal historians to look at the visualisation of crime in new and exciting ways. * David Nash, Professor of History, Oxford Brookes University, UK *