Saturday, August 24, 2019

Review: Misjudged Murderesses by Stephen Jakobi

Abridged Synopsis: Fuelled by a rumour-driven press and cases of notorious killers, death by poisoning was a great anxiety of Victorian Britain. In Misjudged Murderesses, Stephen Jakobi takes a forensic approach to examine the lives and trials of these eight women who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. Highlighting common factors in poisoning cases that led to these miscarriages of justice, Stephen Jakobi shines a light on the hypocrisy of a legal system that in practice was wholly unfit for purpose.



The author has focused on eight women from 1840s to the 1880s, who were accused and convicted of murder by poison and ultimately received the death penalty. In examining these cases, Jakobi (lawyer and advocate against capital punishment) seeks to outline a case for wrongful conviction for each. By using court testimonies and newspaper articles Jakobi attempts to show that there was some potential bias towards guilt throughout the court process, which at this period of time, was exclusively male dominated.

What should have read as a case study of each of the trials, testimonies of witnesses and forensic evidence, came across as a mish-mash of ideas that chopped and changed with each case study. Having just finished Geoffrey Pimm's "Violent Abuse Of Women", I was looking forward to this - and I really did want to like it.  However, I progressed (slowly) page by page, chapter by chapter, I was just not sure that what I was reading was relevant or not, solely background information, or just page-fillers; I found it annoying that each of the cases was not set out / presented in the same manner, thus ensuring continuity. As a result, my interest waivered and I put the book aside more times than I picked it up. I did persevere and finish it.

What I personally would have preferred and what I feel, as a reader, would have been more engaging, is a study of miscarriages of justice where poison featured, and using the examples of not only the women presented herein but also others to highlight these misnomers and inconsistencies in the court proceedings, whilst providing an analysis of guilt or innocence.

Having said that, I did enjoy reading the cases; and in fact I really enjoyed Chapter 12 - the conclusions; I just felt that whilst the premise was intriguing - it was just the execution that was lacking and detracted from what should have made for a highly readable history and study of the court system as it was applied in these examples. I just felt the book could have been set out and formatted a little better, and the cases as presented used to support the author's stance.

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