 The 18th century was the first era in which narratives of crime were widely available and stories of murder both factual and fictional were as ubiquitous then as they remain today Murder is a crime that requires plot the story that lurks underneath and apart from the body's remains Homicide marks the end of a chain of circumstances and demands the imaginative Recreation of that chain who was murdered why by whom? Whether forensic or fictional stories of murder shape a dramatic Compulsive and paradoxical social narrative one that on the one hand upholds the notion that divine and civic order will out as it simultaneously Articulates the lurking fear that bloodlust will ultimately conquer all structures that attempt to contain it My book takes as its subject the figure of the murderous in 18th century England as 18th century writers knew full well the story of the murderous is one greatly worth the telling murderous is drag their bloody skirt spectacularly through the 18th century literary landscape then as now actual female homicide was rare But as one pundit aptly commented Tis certain that a female offender always excites our curiosity more than any male Disqualified in Western society from active military combat legally sanctioned homicide women are imagined despite plenty of evidence to the contrary as Intrinsically antithetical to acts of violence While murder is a grave offense for both men and women the woman who kills confounds more than the bounds of law For a man to kill may be seen as corrupt or evil, but the murderer is not considered inherently Unmasculine whereas a woman who kills is now as in the 18th century Virtually always considered more shocking more frightening as she abdicates her culturally assigned position as nurturer What a culture legally marks this criminal reveals much For example in the 18th century only single women could be accused of infanticide It was beyond representational imagining that a married woman or any man would have any reason to kill a baby When a woman killed her husband the crime was actually not homicide punishable by hanging but treason Punishable by being burned alive at the stake. I Am now going to talk briefly if I can stop shaking about one notorious case that of quote fiend in female flesh Sarah Malcolm Sunday February 4th 1733 two gentle women were found strangled in their apartments with their young maid and price whose throat was cut Sarah Malcolm char woman and two known criminals the Alexander brothers brothers were arrested Only Malcolm however was tried for the case While she confessed to the robbery which was itself a capital offense She insisted on her innocence of the murders for which she accused the brothers Malcolm was an Irish Catholic servant arrested for murdering her mistress while robbing her She represented the threat of the laboring class the Irish the Catholic and women in a society Sorry preoccupied with the perceived dangers of each She claimed that she agreed to what was the brothers plan to rob the women because she was desperately hungry The crown claimed Malcolm wanted the money because she was so Unpleasant to look upon that she hoped to use her money to purchase the affection of either one of the brothers The physical evidence levied against her was the blood found on her apron shift and bedsheets When she stepped into the courtroom, she was guilty twice First for being charged with any crime at all Second for confessing to the one but refusing to confess to the other Her proper response should have been I'm sorry. I'm guilty kill me Instead shocking both court and nation. She took the stand in her own defense an unthinkable act for any woman at the time Let alone a servant quote modesty might compel a woman to conceal her own secrets if Necessity did not oblige her to the contrary and it is necessity that obliges me to say that what has been taken for the Blood of that murdered person is nothing but the free gift of nature This is what is on my shift and it was the same on my apron This is plain for how is it possible? It could be the blood of the murdered person If it is supposed that I killed her with my clothes on then my apron might be bloody But how should the blood come upon my shift if I did it in my shift? How should my apron be bloody or the back of my shift and whether I was dressed or undressed? Why were not the neck and sleeves of my shift bloody as well as the lower? Malcolm made a compelling case But her words presented a narrative unspeakable in 18th century court by speaking at all She stepped outside proper gender and class lines that deemed her appropriate role that of silence By mentioning the free gift of nature She defiantly transgressed all limits of proper femininity the newspaper Sensationally covered her defense as fiendish impudent and bold. She was found guilty in ten minutes The court based their decision on the fact that any woman who could speak of such inappropriate things in public was Ipso facto guilty of any atrocity including murder Her skeleton remains in Cambridge today Such outlandish visions of female violence are epitomized in the 1767 case of Elizabeth Brown rig Executed in 1760s for the torture and murder of a female apprentice She was wealthy married and Protestant so her crimes could not be blamed on her sex class or Religion her body was preserved and stays in the British Museum Where it awaits the developments her peers would Convinced would someday prove this mother of 16 children was actually male The only possible explanation for her crimes Today true crime accounts continue to excite our curiosity and while their idioms shift the underlying stakes of their representations remain constant in 2002 Eileen Warnos and impoverished abused and mentally ill Prostitute was executed for the murder of seven John's Her brain has also been saved in the hopes that someday her crimes may also be understood as a scientific gendered anomaly Thank you