Academic staff

To understand our criminal justice system, it is crucial to understand the long-running historical debate on the nature, incidence and causes of crime, as well as the way in which medicine has played an active part in shaping legal, political and social change. Dr Watson’s specialist teaching focuses on the origins of these foundations of modern legal practice, while her broader teaching considers the wider socio-political contexts within which these practices developed.

Modules taught

Undergraduate

• Forensic Medicine in Western Society (3rd year) [Advanced Study in the History of Crime]
• Debating Issues in Health, Past and Present (3rd year) [Advanced Study in the History of Medicine]
• Crime and Punishment through the Ages (2nd year)
• Jack the Ripper and the Victorian Underworld (2nd year)
• Bloody Histories: Crime and Violence in the West (1st year)

 

Postgraduate

• Behaving Badly: Crime, Deviance and Civilization

Supervision

Dr Watson has supervised MA dissertations on various aspects of the history of crime and forensic medicine. Her PhD supervisions include a completed thesis on establishing the identity of the unknown dead in England and Wales 1800-1934 (Fraser Joyce, 2013), and on medical themes in the early (18th-century) novel (Mary Gifford, 2019). Ongoing projects include homicide in nineteenth-century Lancashire (Louise Roy), nineteenth-century police detectives (Angela Buckley), and the development of forensic medicine as an academic discipline (Christopher Milroy). She welcomes applications from students interested in the history of forensic medicine and science, as well as the history of crime in Britain and the West since the seventeenth century.

History of crime in Britain; Western forensic medicine and science in the post-medieval period.

Katherine Watson's doctoral thesis investigated the role of scientific expertise in the late Victorian period. The theme of ‘expertise’ recurs in her current work, which focuses on topics where medicine, crime and the law intersect. Her main areas of research are:

• The history of crime in Britain since the early 18th century (especially a) criminal poisoning and related offences, b) homicide, and c) vitriol throwing), with a particular emphasis on medico-legal issues concerning these offences, the gender and social background of victims and perpetrators, the responses of the legal system, investigative practices, and regional variations (in particular, comparing England and Wales) in these trends.
• The history of medicine in post-1700 Britain, particularly the development of forensic medicine and the careers of its practitioners.
• The history of chemistry post-1750, especially in relation to toxicology and forensic techniques.

She is currently working on a book on the history of acid throwing, an unusual form of assault, from the early eighteenth century through the 1970s. This strand of her research will be expanded and developed in future work, which will include further detailed study of assault as a form of interpersonal violence. She has also returned to the history of poisoning crimes, focusing on its incidence in Scotland.

Her research interests have been reflected in appearances in television documentaries since 2005, most recently in Murder, Mystery and My Family (S5 Ep5, 2021). 

You can listen to a podcast - Moments In Medicine #9: Before CSI: The Origins of Forensic Medicine and Science. And she blogs with two colleagues in North America - you can read our posts on the history of law, crime and justice at Legal History Miscellany.

Research group membership

Dr Watson leads the History of Crime research group in the School of History, Philosophy and Culture.

Books

• Watson KD, Medicine and Justice: Medico-legal Practice in England and Wales, 1700-1914, Routledge (2020)
  ISBN: 9781472454126 eISBN: 9781003009801
  Abstract

  This monograph makes a major new contribution to the historiography of criminal justice in England and Wales, by focusing on the intersection of the history of law and crime with medical history. It does this through the lens provided by one group of historical actors, medical professionals who gave evidence in criminal proceedings. They are the means of illuminating the developing methods and personnel associated with investigating and prosecuting crime in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when two linchpins of modern society, centralised policing and the adversarial criminal trial, emerged and matured. The book is devoted to two central questions: what did medical practitioners contribute to the investigation of serious violent crime in the period 1700 to 1914, and what impact did this have on the process of criminal justice? Drawing on the details of 2,600 cases of infanticide, murder and rape which occurred in central England, Wales and London, the book offers a comparative long-term perspective on medico-legal practice — that is, what doctors actually did when they were faced with a body that had become the object of a criminal investigation. It argues that medico-legal work developed in tandem with and was shaped by the needs of two evolving processes: pre-trial investigative procedures dominated successively by coroners, magistrates and the police; and criminal trials in which lawyers moved from the periphery to the centre of courtroom proceedings. In bringing together for the first time four groups of specialists — doctors, coroners, lawyers and police officers — this study offers a new interpretation of the processes that shaped the modern criminal justice system.

  Website 
• Watson KD, Forensic Medicine in Western Society: A History, Routledge (2010)
  ISBN: 9780415447720 eISBN: 9780203840290
  
• Watson KD, Crime Archive: Dr Crippen, The National Archives (2007)
  ISBN: 978-1905615155
  
• Watson KD, Ed., Assaulting the Past: Violence and Civilization in Historical Context, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2007)
  ISBN: 978-1-8471-8105-3
  
• Watson KD, Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and their Victims, Hambledon Continuum (2006)
  ISBN: 9781852855031
  

Journal articles

• Watson KD, 'Poisoning Crimes and Forensic Toxicology since the Eighteenth Century'
  Academic Forensic Pathology 10 (1) (2020) pp.35-46
  ISSN: 1925-3621
  Abstract

  The easy availability of deadly poisons in nineteenth-century Britain, western Europe and the United States led to widespread public anxiety about the prevalence of murder by poison, resulting in what might be termed a ‘poison panic’. The fear was fed by well-publicised reports of trials and executions which, though not especially numerous, seemed indicative of the dangerous incidence of a unique type of homicide, one that was particularly difficult to prevent or detect. As a result, poisoning crimes stimulated the development of the earliest medico-legal specialism, forensic toxicology, and consequently the careers of some of the best-known expert witnesses of the Victorian era, including Mathieu Orfila, Alfred Swaine Taylor, Thomas Stevenson and Theodore Wormley. This article traces the history of poisoning crimes and the related medico-scientific discipline of forensic toxicology, using textbooks, key trials and crime statistics to examine and evaluate their contribution to the historical development of forensic expertise and practice.
  

  Website 
• Knight A, Watson KD, 'Was Jack the Ripper a Slaughterman? Human-Animal Violence and the World’s Most Infamous Serial Killer'
  Animals 7 (4) (2017)
  ISSN: 2076-2615 eISSN: 2076-2615
  Abstract Hundreds of theories exist concerning the identity of “Jack the Ripper”. His propensity for anatomical dissection with a knife—and in particular the rapid location and removal of specific organs—led some to speculate that he must have been surgically trained. However, re-examination of a mortuary sketch of one of his victims has revealed several aspects of incisional technique highly inconsistent with professional surgical training. Related discrepancies are also apparent in the language used within the only letter from Jack considered to be probably authentic. The techniques he used to dispatch his victims and retrieve their organs were, however, highly consistent with techniques used within the slaughterhouses of the day. East London in the 1880s had a large number of small-scale slaughterhouses, within which conditions for both animals and workers were exceedingly harsh. Modern sociological research has highlighted the clear links between the infliction of violence on animals and that inflicted on humans, as well as increased risks of violent crimes in communities surrounding slaughterhouses. Conditions within modern slaughterhouses are more humane in some ways but more desensitising in others. The implications for modern animal slaughtering, and our social reliance on slaughterhouses, are explored.Website 
• Watson, KD, 'Women, violent crime and criminal justice in Georgian Wales'
  Continuity and Change 28 (2) (2013) pp.245-272
  ISSN: 0268-4160
  Website 
• Flanagan R, Watson K, 'A petition to Mr Peel: Gideon Mantell and the trial of Hannah Russell'
  Medicine, Science and the Law 49 (2009) pp.153-169
  ISSN: 0025-8024
  Abstract

  In the summer of 1826, Hannah Russell was tried for petty treason, viz. the murder of her husband, Benjamin Russell, by poisoning. Their lodger, Daniel Leney, was indicted as her accomplice. The exact circumstances surrounding the death were unclear but Hannah was known to have purchased white arsenic (arsenious oxide). A local surgeon, Thomas Evans, supported at the post-mortem examination by two further surgeons, not only reported severe corrosion of the gastrointestinal tract, but also the recovery of nearly an eighth of an ounce of arsenic from the victim's stomach. Both accused were convicted and sentenced to death. Leney was executed, but Hannah Russell was respited because the trial judge, Sir Robert Graham, had doubts as to a direction he had given to the jury. The surgeon and paleontologist Gideon Mantell took up her case, stressing that death from arsenic could not have taken place as quickly as was alleged and maintaining that the chemical evidence of arsenic poisoning was inconclusive. He gained the support of some eminent chemists and physicians. Subsequently, forensic toxicologists [Sir] Robert Christison and Alfred Swaine Taylor pointed out that Mantell's arguments as to the possible time to death in arsenic poisoning were quite wrong. Moreover, Evans gave details of the analyses he and his colleagues had undertaken to Christison, who pronounced the findings sound, as indeed did Mantell after Evans and his colleagues published details of their investigations in the Sussex Advertiser. Papers in The National Archives show that Hannah was pardoned for the offence for which she was indicted, leaving it open to prefer a lesser charge. That this was never done may have been due to Mantell's campaign, at least in part, but the pardon she did receive was due to the concern of the trial judge as to the implications of the evidence presented at trial.

  Website 
• Kilday A, Watson K, 'Infanticide, religion and community in the British isles, 1720-1920: introduction'
  Family and Community History 11 (2) (2008) pp.84-99
  ISSN: 1463-1180
  Abstract

  This special issue focuses on the crime of infanticide in three of the four constituent nations of the British Isles: England, Scotland and Ireland. The papers collectively point to the fact that although families and communities could be a source of support for women in crisis, they were also the route by which many instances of infanticide were revealed. In addition, the evidence here suggests that the signifi cance of religious cohesiveness to family and community relations may, in some contexts, have encouraged infanticide to occur, due to a pressure to maintain respectability in religiously observant communities. The fact that the crime occurred regardless of the moral climate in each nation suggests that women faced with the reality of bearing a bastard weighed it against the possible consequences of committing infanticide and decided to take the risk. Thus the role of religious belief in the actions of married and unmarried infanticidal women emerges as a unifying contextual theme that is likely to stimulate further research.

  Website 
• Watson K, 'Religion, community and the infanticidal mother: evidence from 1840s rural Wiltshire'
  Family and Community History 11 (2) (2008) pp.116-133
  ISSN: 1463-1180
  Abstract The existing literature on the history of infanticide has typically considered the crime as a reaction to a specific set of difficult individual circumstances, but has not attempted to place the infanticidal mother within a longer personal timeframe. Nor has the role of her religious belief been much examined. This article investigates three key elements in the case of Rebecca Smith (1807-1849), the last woman executed in England for the murder of her own infant: her bad marriage; her poverty; and her Baptist religion. These factors provide context for her socio-economic and psychological development, and thus for her status as England's best documented serial infant killer. The article suggests that, as a married woman, Smith's choices were infl uenced by conditions both wider and deeper than the more immediate issues which have tended to be associated with infanticide by unmarried women.Website 
• Watson K, Usselman M, Leaist D, 'Dalton's disputed nitric oxide experiments and the origins of his atomic theory'
  ChemPhysChem 9 (1) (2008) pp.106-110
  ISSN: 1439-4235
  Abstract In 1808 John Dalton published his first general account of chemical atomic theory, a cornerstone of modern chemistry. The theory originated in his earlier studies of the properties of atmospheric gases. In 1803 Dalton discovered that oxygen combined with either one or two volumes of nitric oxide in closed vessels over water and this pioneering observation of integral multiple proportions provided important experimental evidence for his incipient atomic ideas. Previous attempts to reproduce Dalton" s experiments have been unsuccessful and some commentators have concluded the results were fraudulent. We report a successful reconstruction of Dalton" s experiments and provide an analysis exonerating him of any scientific misconduct. But we conclude that Dalton, already thinking atomistically, adjusted experimental conditions to obtain the integral combining proportions.Website 
• Watson KD, 'Medical and chemical expertise in English trials for criminal poisoning, 1750–1914'
  Medical History (2006)
  ISSN: 0025-7273
  Website 
• Kilday AM, Watson K, 'Child Murder in Georgian England'
  History Today 55 (2005) pp.40-46
  ISSN: 0018-2753
  

Book chapters

• Watson KD, 'Legislating to Ensure "Impartial" Justice: Palmer’s Act of 1856' in Kilday AM, Nash D (ed.), Fair and Unfair Trials in the British Isles, 1800-1940, Bloomsbury (2020)
  ISBN: 9781350050945 eISBN: 9781350050976
  Website 
• Sellers LM, Watson KD, 'The construction of forensic knowledge in Victorian Yorkshire: Dr Thomas Scattergood and his casebooks, 1856-1897' in Adam A (ed.), Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from 1850, Palgrave (2020)
  ISBN: 9783030288365 eISBN: 9783030288372
  Abstract

  Forensic medicine became a recognised discipline in the nineteenth century, growing alongside the medical and legal professions. Very few medical men taught or studied forensic medicine at the start of the nineteenth century but by the end it was an integral part of medical education, and forensic science had begun to emerge as a separate discipline. This chapter focuses on the forensic expertise and practice of Leeds–based doctor, toxicologist, and lecturer Thomas Scattergood (1826–1900). Alongside his teaching career, he researched forensic techniques and acted as a consultant and medico-legal witness in criminal cases across the north of England.
  

  Scattergood’s personal casebooks will be used as the starting point to explore the kinds of forensic techniques available in the second half of the nineteenth century. These volumes contain Scattergood’s compiled notes on a wide range of potential forensic clues, including blood splatters, the effects of fire, water, lightning and earth on the body, knife or blade injuries, strangulation, chemical decomposition of bodies and a variety of poisonings. Case studies from his notebooks illustrate the scientific developments made in forensic medicine in this period. The casebooks also provide insights into the range of individuals involved in the business of medico-legal practice. Beyond his Yorkshire College–based laboratory Scattergood engaged with coroners, policemen, lawyers, judges, postmen, farmers and other doctors, among others, and he therefore lies at the heart of our work to unravel the networks involved in Northern forensic investigations.

  Website 
• Watson KD, Wexler P, Still KR, 'History of Toxicology' in Wexler P (ed.), Information Resources in Toxicology, Academic Press (2020)
  
• Havard C, Watson KD, 'Historical Overview' in Vossler A, Havard C, Pike G, Barker M-G, Raabe B (ed.), Mad or Bad? A Critical Approach to Counselling and Forensic Psychology, Sage (2017)
  ISBN: 9781473963528 eISBN: 9781473968387
  
• Watson KD, 'Love, Vengeance and Vitriol: An Edwardian True-Crime Drama' in Kilday A-M, Nash D (ed.), Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700: Micro-Studies in the History of Crime, Bloomsbury (2016)
  ISBN: 9781472585271 eISBN: 9781472585295 (epub)
  Website 
• Watson, KD, 'Mental disorder, crime and the development of healthcare systems' in Weindling, PJ (ed.), Healthcare in Private and Public from the Early Modern Period to 2000, Routledge (2015)
  ISBN: 9780415727037
  
• Watson KD, 'Concluding Remarks' in Turner WJ, Butler SM (ed.), Medicine and the Law in the Middle Ages, Brill (2014)
  ISBN: 9789004269064 eISBN: 9789004269118
  Website 
• Watson KD, Wexler P, 'History of toxicology' in Wexler P (ed.), Information Resources in Toxicology, 4th edn, Academic Press (2009)
  ISBN: 9780123735935 eISBN: 9780080920030
  Abstract This latest version of Information Resources in Toxicology (IRT) continues a tradition established in 1982 with the publication of the first edition in presenting an extensive itemization, review, and commentary on the information infrastructure of the field. This book is a unique wide-ranging, international, annotated bibliography and compendium of major resources in toxicology and allied fields such as environmental and occupational health, chemical safety, and risk assessment. Thoroughly updated, the current edition analyzes technological changes and is rife with online tools and links to Web sites. IRT-IV is highly structured, providing easy access to its information. Among the "hot topics" covered are Disaster Preparedness and Management, Nanotechnology, Omics, the Precautionary Principle, Risk Assessment, and Biological, Chemical and Radioactive Terrorism and Warfare are among the designated. . International in scope, with contributions from over 30 countries . Numerous key references and relevant Web links . Concise narratives about toxicologic sub-disciplines . Valuable appendices such as the IUPAC Glossary of Terms in Toxicology . Authored by experts in their respective sub-disciplines within toxicology
• Watson K, 'Is a Burn a Wound? Vitriol-Throwing in Medico-Legal Context, 1800'1900' in Lawyers' Medicine The Legislature, the Courts and Medical Practice, 1760-2000, Hart Publishing (2009)
  ISBN: 9781841138497
  Abstract This book investigates how the requirements, limitations and intellectual structure of the British legal process have shaped medicine and medical practice. The story of this inter-relationship is greatly under-researched, which is particularly concerning given that the legal system remains a significant and pervasive influence on medicine and its practice to this day. The question which unifies the series of historical studies presented here is whether legal consideration of medical practice and concepts has played a part in the construction of medical concepts and affected developments in medical practice - in other words how the external, legal gaze has shaped the way medicine itself conceptualises some of its practices and classifications. The majority of the chapters consider this question in the context of the development and application of legislation, but the influence of court processes is also considered. Other themes which emerge from the book include the nature and exclusivity of medical expertise, the impact of public opinion on the development of medical legislation, and the difficulty the legal system has faced in dealing with new medical developments. The chapters are arranged chronologically, with an introduction drawing out themes that emerge from the chapters as a whole.
• Rousseau G, Watson KD, '‘You have made me tear the veil from those most secret feelings’: John Addington Symonds amidst the children; Response by KD Watson' in Rousseau G (ed.), Children and Sexuality: From the Greeks to the Great War, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
  ISBN: 978-0-230-52526-9 eISBN: 978-0-230-59052-6
  Website 
• Watson KD, 'Serial homicide and 'civilization'' in Watson KD (ed.), Assaulting the Past: Violence and Civilization in Historical Context, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2007)
  ISBN: 978-1-8471-8105-3
  
• Watson KD, 'Introduction' in Watson KD (ed.), Assaulting the Past: Violence and Civilization in Historical Context, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2007)
  ISBN: 978-1-8471-8105-3
  
• Watson KD, 'Criminal poisoning in England and the origins of the Marsh Test for arsenic' in Bertomeu-Sánchez JR, Nieto-Galan A (ed.), Chemistry, Medicine and Crime: Mateu J.B. Orfila (1787-1853) and his Times, Science History Publications USA (2006)
  ISBN: 0-88135-275-6
  

Membership of professional bodies

• British Society of Criminology
• Economic History Society
• Social History Society
• Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
• Society for the Social History of Medicine
• SOLON: Promoting Interdisciplinary Studies in Crime and Bad Behaviour
• SSHA Criminal Justice / Legal History Network

Conferences

Conferences

Public lecture

• 'Violent Crime in Victorian and Edwardian Camden', Camden History Society, 19 September 2013
• 'Before CSI: Crime, Medicine and Science in History', Royal Society of Medicine, 3 February 2016

Selected conference papers

• 'Medicine and justice: medico-legal practice in 18th and 19th century England and Wales', British Society of Criminology Conference (September 2007).
• ‘Losing face: vitriol throwing, shame and stigma in Britain, 1820-1900', European Social Science History Conference, Lisbon (February 2008).
• 'Women, violence and the criminal law in Wales, 1730-1900', Women and Crime in Britain and North America Conference, Lyon (September 2008).
• 'Dead drunk or just disorderly? Homicide and alcohol in Wales, 1730-1914', Crime, Violence and the Modern State II: Blame, Culpability and Shame, St Petersburg (May 2009).
• '"In my opinion it was a child at full time": Infanticide in English and Welsh medico-legal practice, 1730-1914', Body and Mind in the History of Medicine and Health, European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, Utrecht (September 2011).
• '"Put to the brink of eternity": Wounding in British law and society, from mayhem to offences against the person', Crime, Violence and the Modern State III: Law, Order and Individual Rights - Theory, Intent and Practice, Lyon (September 2011).
• 'Prosecuting homicide on the coroner's inquisition during the long eighteenth century', 21st British Legal History Conference, Glasgow (July 2013)
• 'The impact of medical evidence on criminal process in England and Wales, 1730-1914', 22nd British Legal History Conference, Reading (July 2015)
• 'Investigating homicide in England: the medical contribution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries', European Social Science History Conference, Valencia (April 2016)
• 'Place, space and Anglo-Welsh forensic practice (1800-1914)', Society for the Social History of Medicine Conference, Canterbury (July 2016)
• '"By lying in wait, feloniously and unlawfully did make an assault": Coventry’s Act and malicious injury in the long eighteenth century', 23rd British Legal History Conference, London (July 2017) 
• 'Thomas Scattergood: Forensic investigation and professional networks in Victorian Yorkshire', British Crime Historians Symposium 6, Edge Hill (August 2018) - with Dr Laura Sellers

Conferences organised

• Organiser of an international conference on the history of violence: ‘“Assaulting the Past”: Placing Violence in Historical Context’ at St Anne’s College, Oxford, 7-9 July 2005. 
• Organiser of a half-day meeting on ‘The History of Forensic Chemistry’, The Royal Institution, London, 26 October 2005.
• Organiser of a session on ‘Child Murder in North-Atlantic Europe, 1700-1900’ for the European Social Science History Conference, Amsterdam, 22-25 March 2006.
• Organiser of a session on 'Women and Violence in the British Isles' for an international conference on Women and Crime in Britain and North America since 1500, Lyon, 12-13 September 2008.
• Organiser of a workshop on 'Legal Medicine and Expertise in History', Oxford Brookes University, 4 December 2009. 
• Co-organiser (with Dr Erica Charters, University of Oxford) of the 2014 Society for the Social History of Medicine Conference, held in Oxford 10-12 July 2014.

Other experience

Editorships

Editorial Board Member, Law, Crime and History (e-journal) [http://www.pbs.plymouth.ac.uk/solon/journal.htm]

Further information

Dr Watson will be giving a keynote lecture at the student conference "Iustoria 2022 - Law, Health and Medicine", to be held at the University of Belgrade (Faculty of Law), 25-27 March 2022. 

Further information

Find me on Twitter @DrKDWatson

I blog at Legal History Miscellany