Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ballads of Blood: The Form and Function of Crime Narratives

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Crime, Broadsides and Social Change, 1800-1850

  • 256 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter will continue to justify the strength of a Durkheimian interpretation of nineteenth-century crime and execution broadsides by providing further evidence from modern criminological research into the form and function of crime narratives. Crime narratives have been widely recognised as a form of social and emotional ritual, which fulfil a psychosocial need and provide emotional security in the face of anxiety and disturbance, and this has continued from their origins in primitive myth and folklore to modern news and crime fiction. However, despite their changing form, what has remained central to these human interest stories is their ability to socially integrate by using their often intense emotional potency to contribute to a sense of morally bound communitas. Therefore, this chapter will demonstrate the distinctive way that crime narratives contained in nineteenth-century broadsides can provide an alternative way of presenting and understanding the social and moral impact of crime and punishment.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Altick, Richard D. 1998. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900, 2nd ed. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities, 2nd ed. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anonymous. 1864. “Sensational Literature.” The Reader 4 (98) (November 12): 597.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bettelheim, Bruno. 1991. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, 3rd ed. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breed, Warren. 1958. “Mass Communication and Socio-Cultural Integration.” Social Forces 37 (2) (December): 109–116.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, Peter. 1995. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess, 2nd ed. London: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchan, David. 1972. The Ballad and the Folk. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burn, W.L. 1964. The Age of Equipoise: A Study of the Mid-Victorian Generation. London: George Allen & Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cawelti, John G. 1976. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. London: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chesterton, G. K. 2000. “A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls.” In On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton, edited Alberto Manguel, 76–81. Calgary: Bayeux Arts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowan, Edward J. 2000. “Introduction: The Hunting of the Ballad.” In The Ballad in Scottish History, edited by Edward J. Cowan, 1–18. East Linton: Tuckwell Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Darnton, Robert. 1975. Writing News and Telling Stories. Daedalus 104 (2): 175–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dayan, Daniel, and Elihu Katz. 1992. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. London: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • DiCristina, Bruce. 2000. Compassion Can Be Cruel: Durkheim on Sympathy and Punishment. Justice Quarterly 17 (3): 485–517.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, Emile. 1970. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, Emile. 1973. On Morality and Society. London: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, Emile. 1984. The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by W. D. Halls. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, Emile. 1992a. Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, 2nd ed. Translated by Cornelia Brookfield. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, Emile. 1992b. “Two Laws of Penal Evolution.” In The Radical Sociology of Durkheim and Mauss, edited by Mike Gane, 21–49. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, Emile. 2001. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by Carol Cosman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elliott, Philip. 1980. “Press Performance as Political Ritual.” In The Sociology of Journalism and the Press, edited by Harry Christian, 141–177. Keele: University of Keele.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erikson, Kai T. 1966. Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance. London: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farrall, Stephen, Jonathan Jackson, and Emily Gray. 2009. Social Order and the Fear of Crime in Contemporary Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gatrell, V. A. C. 1980. “The Decline of Theft and Violence in Victorian and Edwardian England.” In Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe Since 1500, edited by V. A. C. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman, and Geoffrey Parker, 238–337. London: Europa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodlad, J.S.R. 1971. A Sociology of Popular Drama. London: Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, John. 1979. The Sociology of Literature. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1983. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ignatieff, Michael. 1983. “State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment.” In Social Control and the State: Historical and Comparative Essays, edited by Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, 75–105. Oxford: Martin Robertson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joyce, Patrick. 1991. Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Katz, Jack. 1987. What Makes Crime ‘News’? Media, Culture and Society 9: 47–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King, Anna, and Shadd Maruna. 2006. “The Function of Fiction for a Punitive Public.” In Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture, edited by Paul Mason, 16–30. Cullompton: Willan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klapp, Orrin E. 1954. “Heroes, Villains and Fools, as Agents of Social Control.” American Sociological Review 19 (1) (February): 56–62.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knight, Stephen. 1980. Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction. London: Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Leps, Marie-Christine. 1992. Apprehending the Criminal: The Production of Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Discourse. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lule, Jack. 2001. Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism. New York: Guildford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacGill Hughes, Helen. 1981. News and the Human Interest Story. London: Transaction.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1954. Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. New York: Doubleday & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mandel, Ernest. 1984. Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McWilliam, Rohan. 2007. The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Sensation. London: Hambledon Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moretti, Franco. 1988. Signs Taken For Wonders. Rev. ed. Translated by Susan Fischer, David Forgacs and David Miller. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Park, Robert E. 1923. “The Natural History of the Newspaper.” The American Journal of Sociology 29 (3) (November): 273–289.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pawling, Christopher. 1984. “Introduction: Popular Fiction: Ideology or Utopia?” In Popular Fiction and Social Change, edited by Christopher Pawling, 1–19. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peelo, Moira, and Keith Soothill. 2000. The Place of Public Narratives in Reproducing Social Order. Theoretical Criminology 4 (2): 131–148.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rawlings, Philip. 1992. Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawlings, Philip. 1998. “True Crime.” In The British Criminology Conferences: Selected Proceedings, Volume 1: Emerging Themes in Criminology, edited by John Vagg and Tim Newburn. Papers from the British Criminology Conference, Loughborough University, 18–21. July 1995. Available at: http://britsoccrim.org/volume1/010.pdf.

  • Rockwell, Joan. 1974. Fact in Fiction: The Use of Literature in the Systematic Study of Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schattenburg, Gus. 1981. Social Control Functions of Mass Media Depictions of Crime. Sociological Inquiry 51 (1): 71–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schilling, Chris. 2005. “Embodiment, Emotions, and the Foundations of Social Order: Durkheim’s Enduring Contribution.” In The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim, edited Jeffrey C. Alexander and Philip Smith, 211–238. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shepard, Leslie. 1962. The Broadside Ballad: A Study in Origins and Meaning. London: Herbert Jenkins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Philip. 2003. “Narrating the Guillotine: Punishment Technology as Myth and Symbol.” Theory, Culture & Society 20 (5) (October): 27–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sparks, Richard. 1992. Television and the Drama of Crime: Moral Tales and the Place of Crime in Public Life. Buckingham: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E.P. 1980. The Making of the English Working Class, 3rd ed. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Valier, Claire. 2002. Punishment, Border Crossings and the Powers of Horror. Theoretical Criminology 6 (3): 319–337.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Valier, Claire. 2004. Crime and Punishment in Contemporary Culture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vincent. David. 1989. Literacy and Popular Culture: England 1750–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wiltenburg, Joy. 2004. “True Crime: The Origins of Modern Sensationalism.” American Historical Review 109 (5) (December): 1377–1404.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK

    Kate Bates

Authors
  1. Kate Bates
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kate Bates .

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bates, K. (2020). Ballads of Blood: The Form and Function of Crime Narratives. In: Crime, Broadsides and Social Change, 1800-1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59789-2_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59789-2_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59788-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59789-2

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation