Preliminary Programme

The history of family violence and the history of gender-based violence has been rapidly emerging area of historical research, yet gaps remain in our knowledge of what were the characteristics of spousal homicides. Some studies have suggested that while nonlethal violence appeared to have declined in most marriages from the early modern on, it seems that homicides in intimate partner relationships started to increase. Some scholars portray this assumed shift occurring during the nineteenth century in industrializing areas and suggest that the qualitative change in intimate-partner violence was due to changes in balance of power and due to changes in attitudes towards marriages.
The focus of this paper is to analyze characteristics of spousal homicides and motivational factors of lethal intimate partner violence in Finland at the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century. The main source consists of homicide cases from the Courts of Appeal in Finland. I explore the ways in which motives and characteristics of the homicides were represented in the court records, and I study if these homicides were spontaneous acts of violence or premeditated killings. During the analyzed period, Finnish society was changing towards modernity, and these legal and cultural changes influenced women’s status and rights (for example, universal suffrage was received in 1906). The temporal dimension in my study falls on period when divorce practices slightly broadened, changes in population, the emerging urbanization, and secularization of society influenced the perceptions concerning marriage. Even though homicides represent the worst culmination of conjugal conflict, I ought to explore, what the source material reveals of marital difficulties and general gender dynamics as a whole. (Please note: This is part of my larger doctoral thesis project, titled Spousal homicide in Finland, c. 1870 - 1930.) (Show less)

In the last decades of Romanian historiography, we found papers, studies and editions of documents that offered varied information about everyday living characteristic of the families in the rural area of Transylvania, in the second half of the 19th century. Up to 1867, this province was part of the Habsburg Empire and, between 1867 and 1918, of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. The richest information comes from the archives belonging to the Greek-Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiastical institutions. These archive funds were well preserved. Unfortunately, this is not true about the archives of civil institutions, especially of the juridical ones, less well preserved and more difficult for researchers to get access to.
One exception is that of the District of Nasaud, an administrative unit made of 44 villages (most of them part of the present day Bistrita-Nasaud County) that functioned in the north-eastern part of Transylvania between 1861 and 1876. Its administrative headquarters were in Nasaud settlement. Fortunately, the archive of the supreme juridical body of the district, the General Court of the District, was relatively well preserved and it is hosted nowadays by the National Archives building in Bistrita city.
For this case study, out of the many judged cases by the above-mentioned juridical body, we selected the crime trials where women had been the accused. Our aim was, on the one hand, to find answers related to the functioning of the juridical system in Transylvania, namely how the penal code was enforced and observed. On the other hand, we wanted to highlight fascinating human typologies, impossible to reconstruct based on other sources. How did the crime trial unfold? Why did women commit murder? Who were those involved during the crime investigation? What was the attitude of the community, of the laic and religious authorities concerning those deeds? These are just a few of the questions that this study answers to.
Because many of the archive trials are in advanced degradation or fragmentary, we selected two trials as case studies. Their unfolding is complex, lasting for several years and ending with death penalty for the guilty women. The folder of each trial includes several essential pieces: the accusation, investigation and hearing protocols, medical documents, and documents from other institutions, and the verdict.
Analysing these archive materials, which had been fallen into abeyance for a long time, we have the chance to enter an unknown segment of the private life. This uncovers especially fascinating women, hidden well behind the prudery curtain characteristic to the history of the rural world in Transylvania. The other characters, having in common the fact that they appeared before the judges, similarly to a puzzle, contributed to drawing the mentality specific of the peasants in this province in general, and to those in the District of Nasaud, especially, with their multiple and complex daily problems. (Show less)

This paper discusses the impact of migration and mobility on female crime and female crime rates in early modern Dutch cities from a comparative perspective. The share of women prosecuted by the Dutch criminal courts in the 17th and 18th centuries was large. The proportion of migrants among prosecuted women fluctuated, but was considerable. Although migrants have been designated as particularly vulnerable and female crime has been related to poverty, we still know very little about the relation between mobility, patterns of migration, foreignness and early modern urban crime. The cities in Holland were characterised as having high levels of migration. Citizenship and residency were defined locally. Cities distinguished between burghers, residents and strangers, and granted people social and economic privileges according to this categorisation. The inclusiveness of citizenship and residency varied from place to place, yet the position of those born outside the city was less secure than that of the locally born in terms of access to poor relief institutions, the labour market or informal support networks. Arguably, their vulnerability made female migrants include illegal activities among their survival strategies and drove them to criminality. However, this paper argues that different levels must be distinguished when assessing the impact of migration and mobility on prosecution figures. Large numbers of migrants among the defendants being dealt with in criminal cases may also be the result of the modus operandi of criminals, the prosecution practices of the urban criminal courts and the uses of justice. (Show less)

About 1050 women ended up in a State Labour Institution (SLI) in the Netherlands between 1886 and 1934. They were convicted for begging, vagrancy or drinking in public and locked up for a long period, varying from three months up to three years. They were in general not only extremely poor, but also quite old (the average age was 48 year) and often single. Several (about one in three/ four) were convicted for additional offences, mostly for theft, public drunkenness, indecent behaviour or violation of police ordinances, but sometimes also for violence or infanticide. Disease was prevalent and mortality high. Many had physical or psychological handicaps. This is quite surprising because placement in a SLI was an additional punishment and could only be imposed on people who were able to work.
We assumed that for quite a few inmates, needy, ill, alone and ‘deviant’ as they were (at least in the eyes of their more fortunate contemporaries), the SLI served as a kind of (temporary) source of shelter and care. As such it might have formed part of the ‘economy of makeshift’ the poor used to make ends meet.

Legal records not only provide insight into the functioning of criminal law, judicial proceedings and penal institutions, but also into the survival strategies (and agency) of poor people and especially in the interaction between them.
I want to investigate whether I can find indications that some of the detainees indeed were eager to be sent to a SLI, and how they tried to achieve this, by examining the legal records of four courts, namely The Hague, Amsterdam, Heerenveen (a small town in the north) and Den Bosch (in the southern part) of the Netherlands.
In some courts the chances of being convicted to confinement in the SLI seemed to be higher. Do we find proof that women were begging “strategically” in the surrounding areas of courts with this reputation? Can we see a connection with the seasons? How did the different courts proceed to establish that the suspect indeed was eligible for this additional punishment (guilty of begging or roaming and able to work)? To what extent did the parties involved in providing the evidence in court (police, witnesses, the women involved themselves, etc.), refer to prevailing discourses to make their point? How many suspects eagerly confessed that they were guilty (or withheld illnesses and handicaps)? Do we see differences between women who were old, ill and alone and those who were healthy, young and with family? (Show less)