Murder - Rambling Readers

English language

Published April 14, 2021 by HarperCollins Publishers Limited.

ISBN:: 978-0-00-840735-3

No rating (1 review)

Totally gripping and brilliantly told, Murder: The Biography is a gruesome and utterly captivating portrait of the legal history of murder.

The stories and the people involved in the history of murder are stranger, darker and more compulsive than any crime fiction. There’s Richard Parker, the cannibalized cabin boy whose death at the hands of his hungry crewmates led the Victorian courts to decisively outlaw a defence of necessity to murder. Dr Percy Bateman, the incompetent GP whose violent disregard for his patient changed the law on manslaughter. Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England in the 1950s, played a crucial role in changes to the law around provocation in murder cases. And Archibald Kinloch, the deranged Scottish aristocrat whose fratricidal frenzy paved the way for the defence of diminished responsibility. These, and many more, are the people – victims, killers, lawyers and judges, who unwittingly shaped the history …

Totally gripping and brilliantly told, Murder: The Biography is a gruesome and utterly captivating portrait of the legal history of murder.

The stories and the people involved in the history of murder are stranger, darker and more compulsive than any crime fiction. There’s Richard Parker, the cannibalized cabin boy whose death at the hands of his hungry crewmates led the Victorian courts to decisively outlaw a defence of necessity to murder. Dr Percy Bateman, the incompetent GP whose violent disregard for his patient changed the law on manslaughter. Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England in the 1950s, played a crucial role in changes to the law around provocation in murder cases. And Archibald Kinloch, the deranged Scottish aristocrat whose fratricidal frenzy paved the way for the defence of diminished responsibility. These, and many more, are the people – victims, killers, lawyers and judges, who unwittingly shaped the history of that most grisly and storied of laws.

Join lawyer and writer Kate Morgan on a dark and macabre journey as she explores the strange stories and mysterious cases that have contributed to UK murder law. The big corporate killers; the vengeful spouses; the sloppy doctors; the abused partners; the shoddy employers; each story a crime and each crime a precedent that has contributed to the law’s dark, murky and, at times, shocking standing.

4 editions

MH Thaung reviewed Murder by Kate Morgan

An overview of how laws concerning killings have evolved

No rating

I found this an interesting account of how the legal status of “murder” (as a chargeable offence) in the UK has evolved over the centuries. The book isn’t a tour of “true crime” cases. Instead, it uses those cases as examples of how definitions and laws were challenged, ranging from the defence of insanity to the introduction of corporate manslaughter.

There was a focus on how certain trials may have had different outcomes if they had been held a few years later (or I suppose earlier in other cases). On the one hand, it’s uncomfortable to think that specific cases were disadvantaged by now outdated laws. On the other hand, at least we could say that the legal system does, to some extent, attempt to keep up with the times.