This article discusses the development of techniques and practices of murder crime scene photography through four pairs of photographs taken in England between 1904 and 1958 and examines their “forensic aesthetic”: the visual combination of objective clues and of subjective aesthetic resonances. Crime scene photographs had legal status as evidence that had to be substantiated by a witness, and their purpose, as expressed in forensic textbooks and policing articles, was to provide a direct transfer of facts to the courtroom; yet their inferential visual nature made them allusive and evocative as well. Each of four pairs of photographs discussed reflects a significant period in the historical evolution of crime scene photography as well as an observable aesthetic influence: the earliest days of police photography and pictorialism; professionalization in the 1930s, documentary photography, and film noir; postwar photographic expansion to the suburban and middle class, advertising images of the family and home; and postwar elegiac landscape photography in the 1950s and compassion shown to infanticidal mothers. Crime scene photographs also demonstrate a remarkable shift in twentieth-century forensic technologies, and they reveal a collection of ordinary domestic and pastoral scenes at the moment when an act of violence made them extraordinary.

The language of politics is, by its very nature, both imprecise and artificial. Its meaning is shaped, not so much by linguistic conventions, but by the very political processes of which language constitutes the essential currency. One can, therefore, only understand the nuances of a given political vocabulary when one relocates it within those historical and political frameworks that it both animated and circumscribed. Once political language is viewed as central to the political process, one can begin to appreciate the extent to which even the basic vocabulary of politics must itself be plastic. One might indeed go further and suggest that the dynamism of a given political system is reflected in organic transformations in the political language it employs. These transformations are most apparent in the radically different meanings that are imputed to terms such as “legitimate” and “constitutional,” on the one hand, or “liberty” and “equality,” on the other. The process of political evolution can be traced as clearly in the development of political vocabulary as it can in the reform of political institutions. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that one of the principal impacts of the French Revolution in Britain lay in its stimulating a renewed struggle over the language of politics.4 Nowhere was that struggle more apparent than in the transformed language of patriotism that emerged from the debates of the 1790s.

The critical transition in social policy in nineteenth-century Britain, it is still generally believed, was the change from individualism to collectivism. Yet since Dicey came under fire in the late 1950s, there has been no accepted consensus about how and when this transition came about. Dicey himself, who was not strictly a historian but a theorist of jurisprudence, held a naive view of how things happen, how policy changes and is translated into law: a great thinker thinks, and converts disciples, who in turn contrive to turn the master's thoughts into the dominant wisdom or accepted common sense of the age, which then finds its way on to the Statute Book. In this way he arrived at his famous tripartite division of the nineteenth century into three periods of public opinion, government policy, and legislation: the first, up to 1825 or 1830, the period of Old Toryism, legislative quiescence, or Blackstonian optimism, dominated by Sir William Blackstone; the second, from about 1830 to 1865 or 1870, the period of Benthamism or Individualism, dominated by Jeremy Bentham and his disciples; and the last, from 1865 or 1870 to the time of his lectures on Law and Opinion published in 1905, the period of Collectivism, dominated, it seems, by no great thinker of powerful mind and principle, but merely by the pragmatic need to propitiate the emerging and increasingly powerful working-class voter. It is surprising that Dicey could not find a great thinker on whom to serve an affiliation order for fathering collectivism.

The question of the degree of state intervention in nineteenth-century Britain has interested generations of scholars since the beginning of the present century. Did mid-nineteenth century England constitute an “age of laissez-faire” which gave way to an “age of collectivism,” or did an “age of mercantalism” merge into one of state regulation during which process, even in the early and mid-Victorian period, the state exercised considerable control over the day-to-day lives of its citizens? These are two of the questions over which there has been extended debate.

The term laissez-faire has been employed in a variety of ways by different writers, by no means all of whom have troubled to define their understanding of the expression. Recently Professor Perkin has argued that during the nineteenth century two distinct meanings were attributed to it (and seven to the related, though antithetical, concept, collectivism!). For the purposes of this paper the term is taken to mean the philosophy, policy and, above all, the practice of minimal government interference in the economy.

The most influential case for an “age of laissez-faire” was presented by Dicey in Law and Public Opinion. In this Dicey identified three overlapping legislative phases: Quiescence (1800-1830), Individualism (1825-1870), and Collectivism (1865-1900). The first consisted of an absence of legislation, the second of “constant” parliamentary activity to abolish restraints on individual freedom and the third of state intervention “for the purpose of conferring benefit upon the mass of the people” at the expense of some loss of individual freedom.

The images are familiar and ineradicable: cities scorched by blasts of tremendous heat, with thousands of civilians vaporized, thousands of others burned and disfigured, landscapes rendered desolate and uninhabitable by radiation; submarines, automobiles, luxury liners, and airplanes powered by clumps of uranium the size of a human fist; homes heated and cooled by limitless supplies of cheap energy drawn from secure reactors; land-based particle beam weapons capable of destroying airborne missiles and thus of providing a protective shield for civilian populations; eccentric physicists with thick central European accents, unkempt hair, ill-fitting clothes, and a crazed gleam of unearthly mischief in their eyes; politicians, civil servants, joint chiefs blinkered by hatred and ambition, ignorant of even the first principles of science and technology, careless of civilians, reckless in brinksmanship, and arrogant in assessments of military capability.

Such images, indeed, are part of the consciousness of all citizens of the atomic age: we who have stared at the newsreels of Nagasaki and Chernobyl, sat riveted with John Hersey's unforgettable Hiroshima, laughed over the absurdities of Dr. Strangelove (1964), winced at the smiling publicity of atomic energy authorities or the local power company's plans for a new reactor, trembled at the apprarently inexorable proliferation of nuclear technologies into the Third and Fourth Worlds, or grown angry at the exaggerations—both budgetary and practical—of yet the latest “generation” of weapons systems. And yet the images of obliterated cities, atomic-powered ships, and particle beam weapons—images which have come to define so much of the anxiety as well as opportunity of the postwar world—all existed in the popular consciousness in Britain and America long before August 1945, before, indeed, December 1941 or even September 1939.

Almost every social problem that troubles the conscience of a community has a history. Poverty, hunger, homelessness, the consequences of crime and epidemic disease—all are familiar topics of contemporary discourse that also mattered in the medieval past. Then, as now, questions about social welfare provoked debate and thoughtful comment in courts, churches, and political councils. The parameters of discussion naturally shifted with the ebb and flow of economic circumstance, but seldom more so than in the fourteenth century, when famine, recurrent plague, and labor unrest disrupted English society. In the villages and little market towns of the countryside, where most of the population lived, the threat of economic insecurity raised ethical and legal dilemmas about begging, vagrancy, and alms for the poor. All posed hard questions for people living in small groups, for they understood, better than solitary folk, how the ideals and practices of social welfare were grounded in communal life. Its conventions and norms reflected the shared values of neighbors and kin, as well as the social boundaries and inequalities of medieval society. How, then, did people who lived by the labor of their hands view the poor and disabled? Were the aged, the unemployed, the infirm, and chronically ill a part of the community, or did disability and want set them apart?

These questions pose the problem of how social cohesion and a sense of belonging were maintained by people of diverse sorts and conditions in the medieval countryside. To ignore or hurriedly dismiss their interest in the subject of community life would be a mistake.

Since World War II much emphasis has been placed on the key role which education must play in East African affairs to promote the economic and cultural growth of the new African states. The problems of the intensification and the spread of education in East Africa deserve particular attention because they are different in nature from those of well-established countries and have been complicated by peculiarities in the history of the region.

Between 1900 and 1920 the groundwork for native education was laid by missionary schools. Though limited in their objectives, they achieved tangible results. In spreading the knowledge of reading and writing among a substantial number of natives, they facilitated native contact with western civilization. After 1919 British officials in East Africa, humanitarians, and leaders in missionary movements became concerned with the spread of native education and demanded a change in the existing system. At the same time there emerged new native political movements, the leaders of which took a determined stand on matters of native education. They criticized the existing facilities and demanded the right of the African to be educated. To analyze the complexity of the problems of East African native education, particularly in the period from 1920 to 1950, is the purpose of this paper. It is necessary, however, first to look at the broader picture of the situation in East Africa in the immediately preceding decades and then to examine the achievements and limitations of East African education in the period from 1900 to 1914.

In the late nineteenth century professionalism and consumerism collided in a vociferous debate over the commodification of health. In medical journals, before government panels and through independent publications, doctors condemned “quackery,” especially patent medicines—the Victorian appellation for over-the-counter drugs. They dismissed myriad pills, tonics and appliances as addictive, dangerous, or useless. This professional critique, doctors claimed, was an altruistic defence of patients. Their commercial opponents, patent medicine men (and frequently the press), countered that the professional critique was rooted in a pecuniary struggle to achieve monopoly. While ascribing different motivations to each other, both sides assumed that medical professionals were unanimous in their condemnation of so-called “secret remedies.” Peter Bartrip has shown, though, that professional opposition to patent medicines was far more complex and muddied by self-interest. The British Medical Journal, while criticizing patent medicines, carried ads for them, which made the BMA the focus of allegations of hypocrisy in the Journal of the American Medical Association and before the Select Committee on Patent Medicines (1912). At the organizational level, Bartrip has established that the financial interests of the British Medical Association undercut its opposition to patent medicines. This compromised position, I will argue, permeated the profession. If the British Medical Association could not resist the advertising revenue derived from patent medicines, it was equally true that many doctors could not resist recommending patent medicines to patients. Far from epitomizing professional altruism, the patent medicine question demonstrates the reluctance of doctors to abandon individual self-interest in the wake of consumerist challenges that would ultimately transform twentieth-century medical practice. In doing so, the patent medicine debate engages and complicates arguments about the role of collective social mobility in the history of the professions.

In nineteenth-century Britain, friendly societies (working-class mutual benefit clubs) and ruling elites contested definitions of respectability and independence in a struggle to delineate relations between societies and the state. This process was an important part of an ongoing set of negotiations by which working-class organizations influenced middle-class attitudes toward collective action. Pressure from friendly societies forced members of Parliament and bureaucrats to accept their claim to respectability and, with it, to independence from state control, changing the discourse of respectability in three stages. During the first quarter of the century, clergymen and landowners equated respectability with middle-class patronage and independence from the Poor Law. Around midcentury, the societies appropriated the discourse of respectability and, with qualified elite approval, used it to redefine independence as freedom from middle-class supervision. By the 1870s, however, friendly society leaders requested government assistance to limit the independence of rank-and-file members, whose autonomy they claimed was a threat to the societies' respectability.

Friendly societies wanted, as one member wrote, “to do what is ‘respectable.’” This meant redefining respectability in a collective, working-class context. While middle-class definitions rested on the premise that individualism and self-help were the twin foundations of respectability, friendly societies gained access to the social power of respectability by offering an alternative definition based on collective self-help and independence from external control. Friendly societies were democratically managed insurance clubs offering sickness and burial coverage and sociable activities in return for regular payments. They often met in public houses, which they identified as respectable, contradicting middle-class attitudes.

This article investigates the imperial origins of international humanitarianism in the British and international relief mission to Russia during the famine of 1921–1922. The famine triggered the first large-scale international humanitarian mission beyond the scope of the European and American empires. Imperial expertise and knowledge became central to the British as well as international humanitarian response to relieve hungry Russia. From international coordination to national campaigns, British politicians and voluntary aid workers relied on imperial tools and thought. The British involvement in the relief mission to Russia thus provides a fresh perspective on the development of internationalist and nationalist humanitarian projects in the interwar period and their relationship to imperial legacies. Through humanitarian aid, Britain assumed a new role on a global stage. By retooling imperial expertise, humanitarian ethics became part of a project of global governance. Furthermore, with the advice of former colonial experts, a “mixed economy” of voluntary and state aid underlay the collaboration between voluntary and international agencies throughout the famine and after. The history of famine relief provides a case study in the emergence of humanitarian governance in the twentieth century.

In this article we address the topic of intra-Puritan doctrinal debate and, by examining the mechanisms whereby the godly in the capital tried, if not to conclude then at least to control and ameliorate their in-house doctrinal disputes, to reconstruct some of the mechanisms—social, political, and ideological—whereby doctrinal “consensus” or “orthodoxy” was constructed, policed, and reproduced among the godly. Thus we hope to penetrate the shadowy world of what one might term the London Puritan underground. What emerges from this scrutiny is a world of interministerial dispute and rivalry, of lay activism, based on an urgent word and sermon-centered piety, that found its natural expression as much in the conventicle and the godly discussion group as in the public congregation and clerically delivered sermon or lecture. Here operated an overlapping series of networks of orally transmitted rumors and stories, of manuscript tracts and sermon notes, of conferences, conversations, and arbitrations both formal and informal. Here the reputations of the Puritan clergy were made and maintained, and the nature of orthodoxy debated and defined through mechanisms and exchanges that remain, for the most part, closed to us. This obscurity is not an accident. Only rarely did the interventions of authority or the anxiety or outraged amour propre of some wronged participant combine to leave traces, either in court records or the fulminations of the pamphlet press, of what appears to have been a very active underworld of dispute, discussion, and display.

This essay brings together aspects of the history of science, food, and culture, and applies them to the study of Anglo-German relations and perceptions by examining how between 1850 and 1914 the German sausage was used as a metaphor for the German nation. The essay shows how the concerns that became attached to German sausages not only provide a way of understanding Britain's interaction with Germany but also reveal further dimensions to popular anti-German sentiment. Alarm about what went into German sausages formed part of a growing strand of popular opposition to Germany, which drew on increasing insecurity about Britain's position on the world stage and the perceived economic threat that Germany and German immigrants presented. Such sentiment was translated into how Germans were caricatured and onto material objects—in this case, the “deadly mysteries” that were feared to go into German sausages. Cultural and gastronomic stereotypes overlapped in a discourse that linked Germany and Germans to their national diet and aggressive nature, as well as associated German sausages with fears about diseased meat, adulteration, and the risks that eating them entailed. The result was that the German sausage was used as a staple for satirical comic representations of Germany, as representative of dishonesty in food production, and as a xenophobic slur. Around the German sausage, anti-German sentiment and questions of food safety merged and became mutually reinforcing.

Among the major political upheavals which have been called revolutions, the English Revolution of 1688 is generally recognized as extraordinary. Long accepted among moderate Englishmen as “glorious,” a revolution to end revolutions, in more radical quarters it has not been regarded as constituting a true revolution. Contemporary Russian opinion, for example, refuses to bestow upon it this accolade, regarding it as a mere coup d'état. Its conservatism, its legalism, its bloodlessness, the absence of zeal to be found among its protagonists: all contribute to this point of view. That these are characteristics of the Glorious Revolution cannot be denied. More precisely, they characterize the actions of the leaders of the Revolution — of the councillors and legislators and soldiers whose names are known. Of popular opinion and aspiration much less is known, and it is probable that little can be discovered in the surviving evidence. But they can be assessed, to some degree, by following the actions of the mob — or, more accurately, the mobs — as they erupted in London and other parts of the Kingdom.

Mob disturbances, like the plague, were more or less endemic in Stuart England. Roger North, in his Examen, asserts that “the Rabble first changed their Title, and were called the mob” in the gatherings of the Green Ribbon Club. Regardless of when the term was first used, seventeenth-century Englishmen were well acquainted with various manifestations of mob activity. England's growing urban population augmented the mob, and before Shaftesbury, Pym had demonstrated that he was aware of the existence of this popular force and of the uses to which it could be put.

This article sets the wide-ranging controversy over the doctrine of the Trinity that erupted in late seventeenth-century England firmly within the political context of the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689. Against a voluminous historiography that confines the trinitarian controversy within the apolitical narrative of an incipient English enlightenment, this article considers the controversy as part of the broader political crisis that befell church and state in the final years of the century. The trinitarian controversy must be understood not simply as a doctrinal dispute but as a disciplinary crisis: a far-reaching debate over not only the content of orthodoxy but also the constitutional apportionment of responsibilities for its enforcement. As such, the controversy featured interventions from an unprecedented array of public authorities—Crown, Parliament, university, episcopate, and convocation—all claiming the preeminent custody of orthodoxy in an institutional landscape profoundly unsettled by revolutionary upheaval. This institutional dimension, long ignored by historians and theologians, placed the trinitarian controversy at the heart of civil and ecclesiastical politics during the reign of William and Mary. Indeed, the trinitarian controversy may be considered the defining event in church politics in the postrevolutionary era, exercising a prevailing influence on the content of Anglican ecclesiastical partisanship for much of the early eighteenth century. While recognizing the importance of these disputes to the emergence of an English enlightenment, this article insists that the trinitarian controversy is equally indispensable for understanding the rage of political parties in postrevolutionary England.

One of the casualties of the economic malaise occasioned by the English Civil War was the business career of an obscure thirty-four-year-old junior freeman of the London Merchant Taylors' Company. Had circumstances been otherwise, Gerrard Winstanley would never have gone on to become the eventual leader and spokesman of the Diggers or to develop some of the most innovative and challenging socioeconomic theories of the seventeenth century. Winstanley's bankruptcy of 1643 did not, of course, create by itself one of the foremost radicals of the English Revolution. But scholars are agreed that the failure provoked a significant break in the continuity of Winstanley's life that forced him to change his livelihood and to transport himself from London to Cobham in Surrey, the location of his Digger radicalism. Furthermore, Winstanley never forgot the experience. Throughout his writings of the later 1640s, the bitter contempt and frustration engendered by his financial failings were obvious. They also colored his perceptions of England's current character and its errors. His portrayal of all commerce as dishonest and corrupt is one of the most striking features of his writings: