
Author: Cassie Watson
I am a historian of forensic medicine and crime in Britain, focusing on the period between 1700 and the First World War. My research is interdisciplinary, drawing on law, medicine and social history of crime. I have recently completed a monograph on medico-legal practice in England and Wales 1700-1914, and am now working on book-length projects on vitriol throwing and poisoning in the UK.


An Episode of Rough Music in Scotland, March 1842

“Mute by the visitation of God, and Guilty!” The trials of John Ferriday at Salford, 1825

Where’s The Harm?

The Dark Side of Victorian Policing

Serial Homicide before ‘Serial Killers’: British Poisoners

Vitriol to Corrosive Fluid: ‘Acid’ Assault in the Twentieth Century

Early Acid Throwing in the British Isles: The Insolence of Weavers

Victorian Crime News: Evidence Which Cannot Err or Deceive?

Highway Robbery at Highbury: The Murder of PC Daly in 1842

Coventry’s Act and Malicious Injury

Online Archives Unlocked: What’s in it for Crime Historians?

Animal Victims of Crime

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Very Serious Pecuniary Loss and Inconvenience: A Jury’s Plea

The Long Arm of the Law Cut Short

Putting Faces to Names: Illustrated Crime Reports in the Late Victorian Press

Prosecuting Homicide on the Coroner’s Inquisition

Execution Delayed: Some Scottish Examples

Murder Confessions 1715–1900: A Preliminary Typology

In their own words? Criminal Depositions and the Voices of the Past

Thomas Scattergood: Forensic Toxicology in Victorian Yorkshire

Acid Attacks in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Mysterious Death: What Price the Medical Jurist?

Doom for Demembring: Assault in Scots Law

Oxford: Crime, Law and the University

Dead Drunk or Just Deviant? Homicide and Alcohol in Wales, 1730-1914
