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ABSTRACT
Between c.1825–1856, a French-born artist, Joseph Bouet, made approximately sixty pencil sketches in the criminal courtroom at Durham, of legal actors including judges, lawyers, and defendants. Our research is the first detailed analysis of these images by legal scholars. It is presented in two parts, which can be read as separate and independent pieces, but each gain from being read in conjunction with the other.
In Part 1 of this series of two articles we discussed potential theoretical approaches to analysis of the images and their importance to socio-legal and legal historical scholarship (cross ref). In this Part 2, we explore Bouet’s courtroom sketches of legal actors as the rare and unusual starting point for a microhistorical analysis examining individual interaction(s) with the criminal justice process in the mid-nineteenth century. This article demonstrates that with detailed research these previously overlooked images can offer a unique window into aspects of nineteenth century legal history, with much to tell us about legal institutions, the people who worked within them and the ‘objects/subjects’ of the law. This study makes an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the interface between history, law and the visual.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Durham University Library and Collections for permission to reproduce images from the Bouet albums, and to the Durham University Palace Green Library archives for their assistance. Thank you also to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
A note on the Figures
The images we use in our analysis appear in both articles 1 and 2 as Figures 1 to 9. Images 3-9 form the basis of the case studies in this part.
Notes
1 For an introduction, see Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M Szijártó, What is Microhistory? (Routledge 2013) ; and Alex Tepperman ‘Status Quotidian: Microhistory and the Study of Crime’, in TJ Kehoe and JE Pfeifer (eds), History and Crime (Emerald 2021) 143.
2 For a recent survey of microhistorical theory, practice, and historiography, see Richard Bell, ‘Peepholes, Eels, and Pickett's Charge: Doing Microhistory Then and Now’ (2022) 12 (3) The Journal of the Civil War Era 362.
3 As an example, Robert Darnton, ‘Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint Severin’ in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Basic Books 1984) 75–104. Others have questioned whether that broader connection is indeed essential: see Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, ‘Far-Reaching Microhistory: The Use of Microhistorical Perspective in a Globalized World’ (2017) 21 (3) Rethinking History 312.
4 See for example, the contributions to Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash (eds) Law, Crime & Deviance Since 1700: Micro-Studies in the History of Crime (Bloomsbury 2017) and, David Nash and Anne-Marie Kilday (eds) Fair and Unfair Trials in the British Isles, 1800–1940 Microhistories of Justice and Injustice (Bloomsbury 2020).
5 Nash and Kilday, Law, Crime and Deviance (n 4) 3.
6 For example, some of the most famous microhistories including Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1980), and Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Harvard University Press 1983).
7 See J M Rigg and Hugh Mooney ‘Martin, Sir Samuel (1801–1883), judge’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press 2004).
8 Joseph Bouet, Sketch of Baron Martin (DUL Add MS 1300/227A).
9 Joseph Bouet, Sketch of Baron Martin (DUL Add MS 1300/236).
10 Separate images of Milbank and Martin in the album are dated 4 March 1853 (DUL Add MS 1300/237 and 1300/238); similarities suggest that the double portraits shared that date.
11 Joseph Bouet, Sketch of Baron Martin (DUL Add MS 1300/238).
12 Henry Wyndham Phillips Sir Samuel Martin (William Walker 1853) Mezzotint. Reproduced by kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery.
13 London Stereoscopic Company, Carte de Visite of The Hon Baron Martin (nd).
14 Leslie J Moran, ‘A previously unexplored encounter: the English judiciary, carte de visite and photography as a form of mass media’ (2018) 14 International Journal of Law in Context 539, 542. The ‘Effie Chitty’ album studied by Moran includes a carte of Baron Martin: ibid, 550.
15 On links between the man and the judge, see Antonio Buti, ‘The Man and The Judge: Judicial Biographies and Sir Ronald Wilson’ (2011) 32 (1) Adelaide Law Review 47.
16 ‘Obituary’ Edward Walford, The Law Times (London, 20 January 1883).
17 (n 7).
18 Edmund Burke, Annual Register for the Year 1883 (London 1884) 120.
19 William Ballantine, Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life (Richard Bentley 1890) 223.
20 Henry Hawkins, The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) (Edward Arnold 1904) 142.
21 (The Dictionary of Ulster Biography) <www.newulsterbiography.co.uk/index.php/home/printPerson/1136> accessed 15 August 2022.
22 Edward Manson, Builders of our law during the reign of Queen Victoria (Horace Cox 1904) 218.
23 Ballantine (n 19) 255.
24 Royal Commission, Report of the Capital Punishment Commission; together with the minutes of evidence and appendix (C 3590,1866) 46.
25 Manson (n 22) 218 (although the author caveated this anecdote).
26 Ballantine (n 19) 282.
27 Manson (n 22) 216.
28 ODNB (n 7)
29 ibid.
30 ‘Baron Martin’ The Times (London,10 January 1883) 6.
31 Burke (n 18) 120.
32 Robert Thomas Molloy, ‘Fletcher v. Rylands: A Re-examination of Juristic Origins’ (1942) 9 (2) The University of Chicago Law Review 266, 276, from Benjamin Coulson Robinson, Bench and Bar: Reminiscences of One of the Last of an Ancient Race (Hurst and Blackett Limited 1889) 109.
33 (n 7).
34 See Case Study 2 below.
35 See (Great British Racing) <www.greatbritishracing.com/guide-to-racing/jargon-buster/>accessed 22 February 2022.
36 Royal Commission (n 24) [245].
37 Fletcher v Rylands and Another (1865) 3 H&C 774; 159 ER 737.
38 Francis H Bohlen, ‘The Rule in Rylands v Fletcher Part I’ (1911) 59 (5) University of Pennsylvania Law Review and American Law Register 298.
39 ibid 318.
40 Molloy (n 32) 273.
41 ibid 276.
42 ‘The Murder of Mrs Wooler’ The Gateshead Observer (Gateshead, 15 December 1855) 3.
43 Joseph Bouet, Sketch of Joseph Wooler (DUL Add MS 1300/243).
44 ‘Durham Assizes’ Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury (Newcastle, 8 December 1855) 8.
45 ‘The Burdon Poisoning’ The Durham Chronicle (Durham, 3 August 1855) 7.
46 For example, in ‘The Mysterious Case of Poisoning near Darlington’ The Sun (London, 1 August 1855) 1. The British Banner referred to him as ‘described as an esquire’: ‘The Mysterious Slow Poisoning at Darlington’ (London, 2 August 1855) 4.
47 David A Cross, The Art of Joseph Bouet (1795–1856): a catalogue of two albums in Palace Green Library (Special Collections) Durham University with reference to other works located in Durham and elsewhere (Unpublished 2003) 177.
48 Jane Brecknell married Joseph Snaith Wooler on 25 January 1837. She died on 27 June 1855.
49 Bouet is not listed amongst the members of the Grand Jury at the Crown Court empanelled on 6 December 1855 (n 44) 8.
50 The account in The Durham Chronicle Third Extraordinary Edition (Durham, 10 December 1855) ran to four pages with a note that a full report of the closing address for the defence would appear in the Chronicle on 15 December. See also Charles Dickens Household Words (London, 28 November 1855) 267.
51 _ _ The Great Burdon slow poisoning case. Report of the investigation before the magistrates at Darlington; together with the evidence of JS Wooler (Robert Swales 1855; Simpkin, Marshall & Co 1855). It was reprinted from the Darlington and Stockton Times reports.
52 George Robinson Observations on some recent cases of poisoning: read before the Newcastle and Gateshead Pathological Society, March 13, 1856 (D Dunglinson 1856).
53 The prosecution cost the County of Durham £512, a significant sum: (1856) 33 Medical Times and Gazette 50.
54 See Case Study 1. Bouet sketched Martin several times, but not, it seems, at the trial of Wooler.
55 ‘Durham. The Slow Poisoning Case’ Derby Mercury (Derby, 19 December 1855) 2
56 Tony Ward, ‘A Mania for Suspicion: Poisoning, Science and the Law’ in Judith Rowbotham and Kim Stevenson (eds), Criminal Conversations: Victorian Crimes, Social Panic, and Moral Outrage (Ohio State University Press 2005) 140, 143.
57 _ _ ‘The Doctor in the Witness-Box’, (1856) 47 The Dublin University Magazine: a Literary and Political Journal 178.
58 Durham Chronicle (n 50) 3.
59 ‘The Darlington Slow Poisoning Case’ York Herald (York, 15 December 1855) 7; ‘Trials at the Assizes’ Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (London, 16 December 1855) 9; (1856) 97 The Annual Register, or, a View of the History and Politics of the Year 189.
60 ‘Winter Assizes’ The Times (London, 12 December 1855) 8.
61 ‘The Darlington Slow Poisoning Case’ Barnsley Independent (Barnsley, 15 December 1855) 4.
62 _ _ ‘The Burdon Slow Poisoning Case’, (1855) 3 (154) Association Medical Journal 1114.
63 _ _ ‘Extraordinary Case’, (1855) 134; ‘Association Medical Journal’ 717.
64 M Anne Crowther, ‘Forensic medicine and medical ethics in nineteenth-century Britain’ in Dorothy Porter, RB Baker and Roy Porter (eds), The Codification of Medical Morality: Historical and Philosophical Studies of the Formalization of Western Medical Morality in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Volume Two: Anglo-American Medical Ethics and Medical Jurisprudence in the Nineteenth Century (Springer Netherlands 1993) 173, 179.
65 (1856) 1 (8) Edinburgh Medical Journal 759.
66 Robert Christison, ‘The Wooler Poisoning Case’ (1856) 1 (7) Edinburgh Medical Journal 625, 628.
67 Christison (n 66) 718.
68 The letter (dated 12 January 1856) is part of the Alfred Swaine Taylor Collection on forensic medicine and toxicology, (The Science Museum Group MS/2203/C/4).
69 In Alfred Swaine Taylor, The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence (J Churchill & sons, 1865). Chapters 8–30 address poisoning. On Taylor, see (the Royal College of Surgeons) <www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/alfred-swaine-taylor/> accessed 22 November 2022.
70 Inquest juries weigh the evidence to find a cause of death, not to establish guilt or innocence.
71 The Durham Chronicle (n 50) 2.
72 Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury (n 44) 8.
73 The Durham Chronicle (n 50) 2.
74 ibid (n 50) 4.
75 ‘Durham Assizes’ Supplement to the Newcastle Chronicle (Newcastle, 14 December 1855) 9. See Case Study 1 above.
76 ‘Great Burdon Slow Poisoning Case’ Supplement to the Teesdale Mercury (Barnard Castle, 12 December 1855) 9.
77 York Herald (York, 15 December 1855) 7; Barnsley Independent (Barnsley, 15 December 1855) 4; The Examiner (London, 15 December 1855) 795.
78 Christison (n 66) 711.
79 Charles Dickens, The Household Narrative of Current Events [1855] 28 December 267.
80 (n 77) 7.
81 Robinson (n 52) 12. George Robinson MD had been apprenticed to Sir John Fife, the Newcastle surgeon whose expertise was sought in the Wooler case: see (Royal College of Physicians) </history.rcplondon.ac.uk/inspiring-physicians/george-robinson> accessed 15 August 2022.
82 (n 113) 5.
83 The ‘unsolved’ case continues to attract speculation. In The Secret Poisoner: A Century of Murder (Yale University Press 2016) Linda Stratmann suspected the poisoner was the Woolers’ servant, Ann Taylor, who continued as Joseph Wooler’s housekeeper after the trial. The 1871 Census records both as resident in Haughton le Skerne.
84 Joseph Snaith Wooler (3 May 1810 - 25 September 1871). His gravestone features the name of his wife; see (Flickr) <www.flickr.com/photos/54196835@N04/49263367702≥ accessed 19 April 2022.
85 As reported in ‘The Darlington Slow Poisoning’ The Globe (London, 21 December 1855) 4.
86 ‘The Burdon Slow Poisoning Case’ Durham Chronicle (Durham, 29 May 1857) 8.
87 Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopaedia of the Condition and Earning of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work (G Newbold 1851).
88 Victor Bailey, ‘The Fabrication of Deviance: “Dangerous Classes” and “Criminal Classes” in Victorian England’ in John Rule and Robert Malcolmson (eds), Protest and Survival: Essays for E. P. Thompson (The New Press 1993) 221; 232; 239.
89 Guy N Woolnough, ‘A Victorian fraudster and bigamist: Gentleman or criminal?’ (2019) 19 (4) Criminology and Criminal Justice 439, 443.
90 Royal Commission (n 24) xxi.
91 Cross, too, notes that Bouet’s sketches of senior clergy and judges were ‘carefully finished’, with servants and felons usually ‘very summarily drawn’: Cross, (n 47) 7.
92 On changing nineteenth-century constructions of criminality, see Martin J Wiener, Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law and Policy in England, 1830–1914 (Cambridge University Press 1990) 32.
93 DUL Add MS 1300/144. Cross (n 47).
94 The left-hand profile may indicate Bouet’s position in the courtroom when sketching or a personal artistic preference; see also Case Study 1. Of the images identified, Bouet depicted felons in left-hand profile and judges mostly in left-hand profile but a number in right-hand profile; an interesting point deserving further study.
95 Bouet often left the hands of his subjects unfinished (as in DUL Add MS 17/17) or obscured (DUL Add MS 17/58 and DUL Add MS 17/59).
96 The Capital Punishment UK website lists 36 executions in 1833, none in North-East England <www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/1828.html> accessed 15 August 2022.
97 ‘John Eales’ Newcastle Courant (Newcastle, 9 March 1833) 2; ‘Durham Spring Assizes’ Durham County Advertiser (Durham, 8 March 1833) 5.
98 ‘Desperate and Fatal Affray’ Durham County Advertiser (Durham, 17 August 1832) 6.
99 ‘Durham Assizes’ Newcastle Courant (Newcastle, 9 March 1833) 2.
100 Bouet sketched Alderson, but not at this trial: Joseph Bouet, Sketch of Baron Alderson (Add MS 1300/42).
101 (n 99) 2.
102 Durham County Advertiser (n 97) 5.
103 ‘Lent Assizes’ London Courier and Evening Gazette (London, 4 March 1833) 4.
104 ibid.
105 Durham County Advertiser (n 98).
106 Home Office Registers of Criminal Petitions, (HO19 Piece number 5) 76.
107 See Tim Barmby, ‘Bingtale and Fathomtale – Lead Miners' Earnings in 19th Century Allendale’, (unpublished paper, 2016):
108 Christopher John Hunt, Lead Miners of the Northern Pennines in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Davis Books 1984).
109 Christopher John Hunt, The Economic and Social Conditions of Lead Miners in the Northern Pennines in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (MLitt thesis, Durham University 1968) 373.
110 ‘Assize Intelligence’ Morning Post (London, 5 March 1833) 4.
111 Sworn List of the Justitia Convict Hulk Quarter ending the 31st Day of March 1833, 102.
112 The spelling varies in the records, including Lord Lynedoch; Lord Lyndoch; Lord Lyndock.
113 John Price, one of 330 convicts transported on the Lord Lynedoch [Lord Lyndoch], 30 May 1833. Convict Transportation Registers (TNA 63 123).
114 (Convict Records) < convictrecords.com.au/convicts/price/john/6375≥ accessed 19 April 2022.
115 (National Museum Australia) <www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/convict-transportation-peaks accessed 15 August 2022.
116 (Hyde Park Barracks) <https://hydeparkbarracks.sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/> accessed 29 August 2022.
117 New South Wales General muster list L-Q for 1837 304–05.
See also (State Library New South Wales) <guides.sl.nsw.gov.au/life-in-the-colony/work_assignments≥ accessed 19 April 2022.
118 ‘Ticket of Leave’ Australasian Chronicle (Sydney, 25 January 1842) 4.
119 See Carol Liston, Campbelltown: The Bicentennial History (Allen & Unwin 1988).
120 ‘Campbelltown’ The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, February 8 2004).
121 James Tucker, Adventures of An Outlaw. The Memoirs of Ralph Rashleigh a Penal Exile in Australia. 1825–1844 (New York 1929) 144.
122 Liston (n 119) 50.
123 See (State Library New South Wales) <www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/australian-agricultural-and-rural-life/australian-agricultural-company≥ accessed 19 April 2022; (Living Histories) <livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/nodes/view/68157> accessed 19 April 2022.
124 Variously, Eccliston, or Egglestone, or Egliston. (Convict Records) <convictrecords.com.au/convicts/eccliston/isaac/120492≥accessed 19 April 2022.
125 (Free settler or felon) <www.freesettlerorfelon.com/convict_ship_isabella_1832.htm; accessed 19 April 2022. His six accomplices, also transported, were assigned to the AA Company at Newcastle, New South Wales. On these ‘Seven Lads of Jarrow’ see Ellen Wilkinson, The Town that was Murdered (Victor Gollancz 1939) 30.
126 Butts of Ticket of Leave Passports, 1835–1869 (NRS 12204).
127 ‘Tickets of leave’ New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, 20 June 1851) 971.
128 ‘Absent from their districts’ New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, 27 June 1851) 1012.