Chapter 12: Making the Case for a Feminist Historical Criminology: Female Homicide Offending in Victoria 1860–1920

Cases involving mundane crimes rarely capture our imaginations. We, as a society, remember the sensational murder trials that received attention in the news media, particularly where there are discussions including lurid details of a case. Especially fascinating for many, notably the makers of various Netflix series and their viewers, are women who are convicted killers with nicknames such as the ‘Dark Angel’, ‘Black Widow’, ‘Hell's Belle’, ‘Lady Bluebeard’ or ‘the Angelmakers’.¹ However, female homicide is not nearly as infrequent, nor as titillating as what true crime dramas or podcasts present it as being, and other than those women who find or found themselves with either lengthy prison sentences or execution as their punishment, there is still a lot of social and criminological silence around women's violence.