Preliminary Programme

In May 1924 two adolescents kidnapped and murdered another adolescent in what was labeled the “crime of the century.” The murderers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, and their victim, Bobby Franks, were all sons of Chicago’s wealthiest Jewish families. One focus of attention in the case – in the press and the courtroom – was that of the relationship between Leopold and Loeb. Their intimate relationship was scrutinized as the public and experts alike searched for clues to explain how it was that these two youths of privilege came to be murderers. The press’s framing of Leopold and Loeb’s relationship as one of mutual interdependence was an indirect attack on their manhood, given that perceptions of manhood and masculinity were intimately linked with the idea of independence. By invoking an image of adolescence as a stage that was closer to childhood than adulthood, the defense argued that Leopold and Loeb were just immature boys. The logic followed that, if they were not really men, then they should be spared the punishment – execution – meted out to murderers who were grown men.
A few years after the Leopold-Loeb crime shocked the nation, yet another adolescent kidnapped and murdered an adolescent. Unlike Leopold and Loeb, William Edward Hickman did not come from a family of wealth and privilege. Nor was Hickman’s victim from the ranks of the elite. Hickman was a well-liked, seemingly well-educated, young man whose brutal killing and mutilation of a young girl generated one of the largest manhunts California had mounted up to that time.
While the Leopold-Loeb case was very much about excess, the discussions of sexuality and masculinity in the Hickman case centered on lack. Hickman did not partake in the indulgences of Jazz Age youths – he rarely drank, did not smoke, and abstained from sexual relations. The ambivalence towards Hickman’s sexual expression (or lack thereof) can be detected in the discussions surrounding the possibility that his victim, Marion Parker, may have been sexually violated during her captivity. At age twelve, Marion was on the verge of adolescence and her status as a woman and sexual object an ambiguous one. Despite the medical examiner’s official statements that Marion had not been sexually violated, rumors to the contrary continued to circulate. The continued reference to the specter of the possibility of sexual violation served to add to the already heinous image of Hickman, thereby making the calls for his execution even more compelling.
Leopold and Loeb embodied the excesses of the Jazz Age and the crime they committed represented the worst fears of the era’s critics. In contrast, Hickman’s abstinence marked him as deviant. Whether on the margins due to excess or lack, Leopold, Loeb, and Hickman all fell outside the bounds of acceptable definitions of masculinity and this failure was taken to be further evidence of their criminality and their culpability. (Show less)

Readers of Newspapers beginning in the early 19th century could turn to columns called "police" for reports on court proceedings, usuall for minor offenses. These colums were more a form of literature than reporting, emphasizing humor, class, ethnic or racial stereotypes, and
humorous incidents. The paper will explore variousl modes of representing the people who appeared in lower courts, the favorite types of offenses, and whether the reporting changed over time in respect to images of petty criminals and their victims, and the nature of the
crimes treated. It will also explore whether attitudes toward the cases change over time or are different in London and New York. (Show less)

The relationship between the legal establishment and media has, of necessity and practicality historically operated as a highly incestuous one. The influence of this is still significant today, when, while journalists undertake the role initially pioneered by legal professionals, interdependence continues in the style and content of crime reporting. Yet for an alliance so inherently controversial and omnipotent in shaping popular understandings and approval of the legal world and its personnel, it is one that has been largely overlooked. The paradigm of crime, criminal justice and media, was and remains acute, and hence the focus of this paper is on the interrogation of data illuminating the production of reporting about criminal proceedings during the key period when professional journalists replaced moonlighting barristers as the main producers of press reports from the courts at all levels. It is only recently that it has been realised that such an intimate connection existed between these two worlds in the Victorian age. This paper explores the extent to which conventions of reporting crime and trials developed by the legal world itself continued to govern understandings of the legal system and the ability of the press to report it openly and to urge for its reform in key areas of criminal justice. The paper will include an exploration of the origins of the impetus to replace lawyers with journalists, questioning the nature of the media’s interest and priorities towards the end of the century in order to assess whether different popular expectations of crime reporting were at the heart of the shift, as well as the implications for representations of legal professional identities and the nature of relations between lawyers and newspaper proprietors, lawyers and editors, lawyers and journalists. (Show less)