Here are 100 books that Legal Medicine in History fans have personally recommended if you like
Legal Medicine in History.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.
This book overturns a long-held notion that the English were slow to adopt forensic practices in death investigations, by showing just what medieval people did when a body turned up dead in mysterious circumstances. The records created by coroners’ inquests reveal the rather impressive thoroughness of this key element of late medieval law enforcement, including the regular presence of medical professionals on inquest juries.
England has traditionally been understood as a latecomer to the use of forensic medicine in death investigation, lagging nearly two-hundred years behind other European authorities. Using the coroner's inquest as a lens, this book hopes to offer a fresh perspective on the process of death investigation in medieval England. The central premise of this book is that medical practitioners did participate in death investigation - although not in every inquest, or even most, and not necessarily in those investigations where we today would deem their advice most pertinent. The medieval relationship with death and disease, in particular, shaped coroners' and…
I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.
This fascinating study shows that victim-blaming has a long history and doctors have been part of the problem, playing a significant role in constructing and reinforcing rape myths in the years 1850-1914. The unique focus on age, medical beliefs about puberty, and public concerns about sexual offences and working-class sexuality explains why even children under the legal age of consent might not be seen as sexually innocent. Medicine provided a scientific rationale for deeply entrenched and remarkably stable popular beliefs about ‘real rape’ and ‘victimhood’, contributing to the serious burden that female victims faced in court.
Drawing on court records from London and the South West, Sexual Forensics in Victorian and Edwardian England explores medical roles in trials for sexual offences. Its focus on sexual maturity, a more flexible concept than the legal age of consent, enables histories of sexual crime to be seen in a new light.
I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.
Based on the authentic voices of doctors, prisoners and legal personnel who appeared at London’s central criminal court, the Old Bailey, the book charts the development of forensic psychiatry as a field of medical expertise. Terms like melancholia, mania and delusion were so adaptable that they could be used to account for apparently motiveless crimes, including murder. Judges, juries, doctors and lawyers focused on establishing what a prisoner knew they were doing and would likely have believed about the outcome of the act, revealing the medico-legal foundations of the modern insanity defense.
Shortly before she pushed her infant daughter headfirst into a bucket of water and fastened the lid, Annie Cherry warmed the pail because, as she later explained to a police officer, "It would have been cruel to put her in cold water." Afterwards, this mother sat down and poured herself a cup of tea. At Cherry's trial at the Old Bailey in 1877, Henry Charlton Bastian, physician to the National Hospital for the Paralyzed and Epileptic, focused his testimony on her preternatural calm following the drowning. Like many other late Victorian medical men, Bastian believed that the mother's act and…
I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.
This is an important resource for anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century forensic practice, because it explains the rise of forensic science as a discipline separate from forensic medicine. Forensic scientists, based in laboratories, analyse trace evidence found at crime scenes, while forensic pathologists focus on the dead body in the mortuary. An analysis of the 1953 serial murders committed by John Christie at his infamous London address, 10 Rillington Place, shows how murder investigations had by then become team efforts centred on the crime scene itself.
Crime scene investigation-or CSI-has captured the modern imagination. On television screens and in newspapers, we follow the exploits of forensic officers wearing protective suits and working behind police tape to identify and secure physical evidence for laboratory analysis. But where did this ensemble of investigative specialists and scientific techniques come from? In Murder and the Making of English CSI, Ian Burney and Neil Pemberton tell the engrossing history of how, in the first half of the twentieth century, novel routines, regulations, and techniques-from chain-of-custody procedures to the analysis of hair, blood, and fiber-fundamentally transformed the processing of murder scenes. Focusing…
I’ve always loved both the fantasy and romance genres. (CS Lewis may or may not be directly responsible.) Discovering paranormal romance was the best day of my life. Since then, many years ago, I’ve read thousands of PNR books, both popular and less well-known, and love sharing my favorites with anyone who will sit still for five seconds. I even worked on a degree in English Literature for a while before switching to a more “practical” major. Blah. Because of those years of analyzing why some books are truly loved, I know you’ll enjoy these titles as much as I do.
Jameson decided to make this series a slow-build harem. Each book shows just one of the lives of Alana as she does her best to fulfill an ancient prophecy that will determine the fate of the world.
I’m not sure what I love more: Jameson’s structure for the series, Alana’s sweet but sassy personality, or each of Alana’s guys as we get an in-depth look at each of their lives. (And why they’re all perfect for Alana.)
While the first four books can be read as standalone MF books, I don’t recommend it. Because the fifth book is when they’ll all come together in the same timeline and finally fulfill the prophecy. We hope.
I love absolutely everything about this series. Don’t skip it.
I write historical fiction, non-fiction, and biography. My historical fiction is set in the eighteenth century, which is often pictured as a time when people swanned about in fancy clothes, lived on country estates, travelled in gleaming carriages, and dined and danced their nights away in glittering assembly rooms. But most people didn’t live like that at all, although they are the ones who made the clothes, worked on the estates, drove the carriages, cooked the food, and cleaned the rooms. The books on my list focus on history from their point of view. In my own work – fiction and non-fiction – I’m also interested in telling the stories of so-called “ordinary” people.
I love George Eliot’s work, and this, her first novel, is my favourite. Adam Bede is a carpenter who’s in love with dairymaid Hetty Sorrell, but their lives are turned upside down when the squire seduces her. Eliot confronts issues of class, illegitimacy, gender power imbalance, and the double standard – it is not the squire who suffers the consequences of the affair. Dinah Morris, the cousin who stands by Hetty in her trouble, is a wonderful character. She’s a Methodist preacher at a time when church authorities insisted women shouldn’t minister – the Methodist Conference banned women preachers in 1803, and the Church of England didn’t ordain women until 1994 when 32 women were ordained at Bristol Cathedral – I was there! So Dinah represents a strong working woman who is making a truly radical stand against a powerful institution.
'Our deeds carry their terrible consequences...consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.'
Pretty Hetty Sorrel is loved by the village carpenter Adam Bede, but her head is turned by the attentions of the fickle young squire, Arthur Donnithorne. His dalliance with the dairymaid has unforeseen consequences that affect the lives of many in their small rural community. First published in 1859, Adam Bede carried its readers back sixty years to the lush countryside of Eliot's native Warwickshire, and a time of impending change for England and the wider world. Eliot's powerful portrayal of the interaction of ordinary people brought…
I’ve been fascinated by true murder cases ever since I started reading about them when I was sixteen years old. They draw on all your senses and emotions: your curiosity about the psychology behind the killer’s actions and your horror and sympathy for the victims, their families, and the families of the killers because they suffer too. As a writer I am particularly drawn to apparent miscarriages of justice and I think there must be a secret detective hidden deep in my soul because I love to delve and investigate these. I wrote my first book after retiring from my long career in Social Services and Mental Health Services.
I investigated the murder of Irene Hart after I found an account of the crime in this anthology of murders. I was horrified to see that there had been an apparent miscarriage of justice with the wrong man being hanged. I researched the case and wrote my first book. Margaret’s book is very special to me as it started my career as a true crime writer. Although this is an anthology of crimes committed in the author’s home town they could have happened anywhere. The motives and reasons for murder are the same everywhere: greed, jealousy, sex, envy, or just a purely evil soul. Excellent book by an author who had a weekly true crime column in the local paper.
Rotherham Murders - True Crime BooksSet in a social backdrop of recovery from two world wars, Margaret Drinkall's Rotherham Murders concentrates on killings that took place in and around the town during the first fifty years of the twentieth century. Most of her cases have not been written about in recent years, but are now investigated and told by a modern crime historian. Read about the brutal death of a policeman, a sensational 'body in a trunk' murder which resulted in Scotland Yard detectives coming to Rotherham and the very first wireless appeal for helping catching the culprit. Other sad…
I am a lifelong lover of books. As a child, one of my most prized possessions was my library card. It gave me entrance to a world of untold wonders from the past, present, and future. My love of reading sparked my imagination and led me to my own fledgling writing efforts. I come from a family of storytellers, my mother being the chief example. She delighted us with stories from her childhood and her maturation in the rural South. She was an excellent mimic, which added realism and humor to every tale.
This book is part odyssey, part ghost story, and part passion play. Toni Morrison is one of the patron saints of American literature whom I was fortunate to discover at an early age. This is her masterpiece, an example of what is possible when a writer’s heart, mind, and spirit are aligned.
The fact that the unfathomable sacrifice around which Beloved is imagined is based upon an actual event speaks volumes about the innate horrors of slavery. In matters of race, America’s skeletons are buried in shallow graves.
'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heart-breaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times
Discover this beautiful gift edition of Toni Morrison's prize-winning contemporary classic Beloved
It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her…
I have lived on a small island in Japan for over 25 years. I moved into my aging and empty Japanese abode before akiya—empty houses—became a phenomenon, and I described my experiences in a regular column for The Japan Times from 1997 to 2020. I love Japan’s countryside and wish more tourists would visit places outside Japan’s major cities. The living is simple, the Japanese people are charming and Japan itself is one of the most unique places in the world. These books are written by people who have taken the leap and chosen the tranquil existence of the pastoral Japanese countryside.
Saga was a country doctor who, after work hours, interviewed his patients about their lives. While this book was published way back in 1974, the stories he uncovers helped me understand the foundations of Japanese country folk today.
From life on the Tone River, where fishing families lived on their vessels, to farming families, where infanticide was accepted due to lack of birth control methods, Dr. Saga’s interviews are ripe with detail and confessions of the good times and the bad of his compatriots in Showa era Japan, before and after WWII.
Interviews with a blacksmith, cotton dyer, undertaker, farmer, butcher, geisha, carpenter, hangman, midwife, and fisherman document life in a small Japanese town during the early part of this century
I’m an Australian zoologist, botanist, and best-selling prize-winning writer. An earlier book of mine, Feral Future, inspired the formation of the Invasive Species Council, an Australian conservation lobby group. My Where Song Began, was a best-seller that became the first nature book to win the Australian Book Industry Award for best General Non Fiction. It was republished in the US. I have co-edited Wildlife Australia magazine and written for many magazines and newspapers, including nature columns as well as features. As a teenager I discovered new lizard species, one of which was named after me.
This is not strictly an Australian bird book but is so rich in Australian content it might as well be.
American science writer Jennifer Ackerman takes us into the minds of birds and delivers surprises on every page. An explosion of recent research has shown birds to be far more sophisticated than was thought possible and Australian birds epitomise that. In her introduction Ackerman says that Australian birds crop up throughout her book for their extreme behaviours, intelligence, and ecological diversity.
She travelled Australia to see them and to interview experts, including me. Asking ‘Can a lyrebird lie?’ she offers evidence that they do. She tells of fairy-wrens and zebra finches communicating important information to their young while these are still inside their eggs.
We learn of brush turkey chicks, after hatching from the egg, spending more than two days digging to escape from the nest mound, then receiving no…
'A celebration of the dizzying variety of bird life and behaviour, one that will enthral birders and non-birders alike' The Observer
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that is dramatically shifting our understanding of birds.
'There is the mammal way and there is the bird way.' This is one scientist's pithy distinction between mammal brains and bird brains: two ways to make a highly intelligent mind. But lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviours they've previously dismissed…
