ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Constructing ‘murder’ in early eighteenth-century London: The Searchers, the Bills, and the language of violent death

• In Event: Disciplinary Perspectives on the London Bills of Mortality, 1518–1858

English Abstract

From the end of the fifteenth century through to the nineteenth, the rulers of London’s parishes routinely employed women as Searchers to view the dead and report upon their cause of death. The Searchers performed a key role in constructing a social knowledge of violent death across the metropolis. Their ‘investigations’ were recorded, inscribed, printed and circulated in the immediate aftermath of death events. In this way, they articulated popular yet authorised definitions of murder and violence at a moment significantly in advance of any judicial hearing or judgement. The degree of intent associated with violent actions resulting in death was often argued out in court; however, the reports in London’s Bills of Mortality provide an alternative viewpoint constructed by family, friends and immediate witnesses, before any legal interpretations were applied. This paper will review the contribution of the Searchers to definitions of murder and other violent death. In addition, an alternative viewpoint can be taken, working back from judicial outcomes to critically review the popular attribution of ‘murder’ where it contrasts with non-murder verdicts. The serial character of the Bills also provides an opportunity to construct an alternative, popular, ‘murder rate’ across the period considered. From a wider perspective, this exercise contributes to a more nuanced understanding of early modern ‘cause of death’ terminology.

Author

• Craig Spence