MÉTODO PUNTUAL CON EL PENETRÓMETRO

The imprecise wording of indictments often renders the relationship between suspect and deceased unclear. Co-habiting partners are troublesome to locate, as are lovers and step-family. In cases without depositional evidence, we often know only the name of the victim. Where relationships are clear, it is apparent that the majority of female- perpetrated murders occurred within the household, involving either family or close acquaintances.39 _{Fourteen victims were the suspect’s own children, seven were}

members of their close or extended family and four were their husbands (Table 2.4). In

38_{Connolly, ‘Unnatural death in four nations’, 205.}

39 _{The relationship between the victim and the suspect is only clearly distinguishable in 36 cases. Of}

only two cases was the victim a stranger, and in a further two the victims were local officials. This reflects patterns elsewhere.40 _{In early modern Cheshire, all 48 female}

homicide suspects murdered relatives or associates.41 _{In the Essex Assizes between}

1560 and 1709, women constituted 42 percent of those accused of killing a relative, in contrast to seven percent of those accused of a non-domestic killing.42 _{Similarly, in}

Enlightenment Scotland, 88 percent of murders charged against women were committed against relations or acquaintances.43

This has been seen to reflect ‘casual brutality’, as well as the narrower range of women’s social contacts, and their lower likelihood of meeting strangers in public places and engaging in disputes that may end in fatal violence.44 _{Men supposedly}

participated more fully within the wider community, whereas women were believed to

40 _{J. A. Sharpe, Crime in Seventeenth-Century England: A County Study (Cambridge: Cambridge}

University Press, 1983), 125-27; Morgan and Rushton, Rogues, Thieves and the Rule of Law, 112-13; Durston, Victims and Viragos, 67; Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order, 135; Frank McLynn, Crime

and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 117.

41 _{Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order, 135.} 42_{Sharpe, ‘Domestic homicide’, 36.}

43 _{Kilday, Women and Violent Crime, 51. This pattern also continues in Scotland into the late-Victorian}

period: Carolyn A. Conley, ‘Atonement and domestic homicide in late Victorian Scotland’, in Richard McMahon (ed.), Crime, Law and Popular Culture in Europe, 1500-1900 (Devon and Oregon: Willan Publishing, 2008), 233.

44_{Beattie, ‘The criminality of women’, 84; Stone, ‘Interpersonal violence’, 27.}

Table 2.4. Sex of murder victims and their relationship to female defendants

1730- 1830 % 1730-1763 % 1764-1797 % 1798-1830 % Gender of victim Male 39 59.1% 14 63.6% 12 46.2% 13 72.2% Female 27 40.9% 8 36.4% 14 53.8% 5 27.8% Unknown 2 - 0 - 1 - 1 - Total 68 100.0% 22 100.0% 27 100.0% 19 100.0% Relationship between victim and accused Own child _{14 34.1% 2 22.2% 7 43.8% 5 31.3%} Spouse _{4 9.8% 0 0.0% 1 6.3% 3 18.8%} Close family _{4 9.8% 2 22.2% 2 12.5% 0 0.0%} Extended family 3 7.3% 2 22.2% 1 6.3% 0 0.0% Employer _{2 4.9% 1 11.1% 1 6.3% 0 0.0%} Servant _{1 2.4% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 1 6.3%} Local official _{2 4.9% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 2 12.5%} Stranger _{2 4.9% 2 22.2% 0 0.0% 0 0.0%} Other _{9 22.0% 0 0.0% 4 25.0% 5 31.3%} Unknown 27 - 13 - 11 - 3 - Total 68 100.0% 22 100.0% 27 100.0% 19 100.0%

have a restricted social role, remaining ‘firmly in the home’.45 _{Although the lack of}

women’s freedom has been overstated, they did often marry into local families, and maintained close relations with their birth family and in-laws. The topography of Wales, coupled with the absence of rail communication, and the network of uneven footpaths and barely-passable roads, also made movement between counties troublesome.46 _Links

with English counties are clear, especially in the areas bordering England, but individuals mostly worked and remained locally, commonly travelling only to their nearest town or market to trade.

However, these factors alone do not fully explain women’s preponderance for murdering within their domestic circles; many of the arguments apply equally to men. Societal perceptions of female violence and honour, as have been used to explain the low number of women indicted for manslaughter in comparison to men, may offer an additional explanation. Male violence was part of an accepted code of behaviour, which condoned physical acts as a means to affirm gender and social identity.47 _Male-

perpetrated violence occurred most often in public places, often with strangers, because these were environments in which men were most likely to have their honour and reputations challenged.48 _{Confrontations typically began ‘with a perceived violation of}

obligations or codes of behaviour’, and violent acts were used ‘to reassert one’s position, to regain face’.49 _{This was less likely to occur within their household, or}

among members of their own family. As such, in order to restore their honour, men also needed to do so publically.50 _{Although murder may not have been the intention, many}

violent affirmations of masculinity simply went too far.

It was not appropriate for women to respond violently or publically to affirm their honour, and such actions would have further degraded their reputations. Their violence stemmed from the breakdown in relations between family and other close relations, and such sources of tension, some of which are discussed below, were most

45 _{Given, Society and Homicide, 141; Sharpe, ‘Domestic homicide’, 36.}

46 _{David W. Howell, The Rural Poor in Eighteenth-Century Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press,}

2000), 13.

47 _{Robert B. Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England}

(London: Hambledon and London, 2004), 168.

48 _{Randall Martin, Women, Murder, and Equity in Early Modern England (New York and London:}

Routledge, 2008), 4.

49 _{Howard, Law and Disorder, 70.}

50 _{The link between male honour and violence has also been made for early modern France and Germany:}

Julius R. Ruff, ‘Popular violence and its prosecution in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France’, in Richard McMahon (ed.), Crime, Law and Popular Culture in Europe, 1500-1900 (Devon and Oregon: Willan Publishing, 2008), 32-51; Eibach, ‘The containment of violence’, 52-73.

often felt within the household.51 _{This was not because women remained solely in the}

home, but because the household represented the space where women were most likely to engage in disputes, such as husband-beating or assertions of authority towards children and servants, that may end fatally. When disputes did occur, household objects that could be utilised as weapons were freely available.52 _{In contrast, women were less}

likely to find themselves in a situation with a stranger, or other individual, where they needed to physically prove themselves, and where such aggressive acts may result in fatality. To do so would invert prescribed gendered roles of behaviour.53 _Although

reputations were equally important to women, and some did respond violently when their honour was challenged, as will be shown in Chapter Four, female aggression was never acceptable in the same way as for men. As such, female-perpetrated acts of violence were much less common as a result of challenged honour, and therefore less likely to result in murder.

Welsh women murdered men more than women, even when the victim was an adult. Fifty-nine percent of women’s victims were male, but if the suspect’s own children are excluded from the figures, the number increases slightly to 64.8 percent (Table 2.4). Considering that only four of the victims were the suspect’s husband, the findings appear significant. Sharon Howard has alluded to this trend for seventeenth- century Denbighshire, but the small number of cases examined prevented her from drawing any firm conclusions.54 _{As this study considers Wales as a whole, the trend is}

far more pronounced, and is in contrast with what some historians have noted for elsewhere. In early modern Amsterdam, only one woman murdered an adult male between 1650 and 1810.55 _{This has led Peter Spierenburg to remark that ‘the culture of}

violence was a male culture’ and that ‘female violence was same-sex violence’.56 _He

suggested that women most often killed other women due to their more frequent interaction and greater equality of strength, and that when female aggression was directed towards men, it was considered ‘quite trivial’.57 _{This was not the case in Wales,}

where women were more likely to murder men than women. Their methods were also far from ‘trivial’, as shown below.

51 _{Morgan and Rushton, Rogues, Thieves and the Rule of Law, 112.}

52 _{Joanne McEwan, ‘Negotiating support: crime and women’s networks in London and Middlesex,}

c.1730-1820’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Western Australia, 2008), 243-44.

53 _{For more on the ideals of Victorian femininity, see Lucia Zedner, Women, Crime and Custody in}

Victorian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 11-18.

54 _{Howard, Law and Disorder, 81.}

55 _{Spierenburg, ‘How violent were women?, 25.} 56_{Spierenburg, ‘How violent were women?, 27.} 57 _{Given, Society and Homicide, 141.}