Abstract
Trial and punishment may seem far removed from the hedonism of travel and tourism, but they have been associated throughout history. The Romans, who ruled Europe for 1000 years, crucified political prisoners, criminals, and escaping slaves along the Via Appia—the main highway that led travellers in and out of Rome. The Crucifixion of Christ was staged by the Romans in Jerusalem, as a recreational spectacle on the feast of the Passover—a Jewish public holiday. And, Rome’s most famous ruin, the Colosseum, was once the leading tourist attraction for thousands of Romans, who came to watch the execution of Christians and other enemies of the state, who had been sentenced to death in gladiatorial contests with wild beasts.
We limit our analysis mainly to the United Kingdom, not simply because dark tourism is not to be found elsewhere, but rather due to the realisation that the accompanying language of connotation is culturally homogenised and temporarily predicated, thus allowing the similar cases that it describes to be compared. By contrast, examples from such Anglophone countries as the United States (e.g. Alcatraz tours) and Australia (Ned Kelly and Old Melbourne City Jail) set up a different system of signs and signifiers. As for the non-English speaking world, the full interpretive sense and capturing of such idiosyncratic meanings may well be “lost in translation” on account of associated linguistic variation. In this connection, we can think of such sites as Lima’s Museo de la Inquisiciόn or the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Shakespeare had, of course, done so in Twelfth Night in the famous “All the world’s a stage…” speech, but his account was quite different from Goffman’s. Shakespeare saw the theatre of human life consisting of seven finite stages which followed each other from birth to death. Goffman imagined the theatre of life as a much more complex, stage on which we all daily play several parts and roles which change according to our roles in different social contexts or as he called, our “definition of the situation”.
- 2.
This phrase was derogatively applied during the 1930s and 1940s, to staged trials in Russia and Germany where “enemies of the state” were put on trial and filmed. Western critics argued that the trials, though public, were a sham as guilt had previously been assumed and was always confirmed by the verdict, despite the appearance of due legal process.
- 3.
This was its popular title. Its actual title was Acts and Monuments, which it claimed, “set forth at large...the bloody times, horrible troubles, and great persecutions against the true martyrs of Christ, fought and wrought as well by heathen Emperors, as now lately practised by Romish prelates, especially in the realm of England and Scotland” (Acts and Monuments, 8th edition, 1641).
- 4.
See among several studies: J. Lennon 2010, Strange, C and M. Kempa (2003) Shades of Dark Tourism: Alcatraz and Robben Island. Annals of Tourism Research, 30 (2): 386–403; J.Z. Wilson (2008) Prison: Cultural Memory and Dark Tourism. Peter Lang, Oxford; Hodgkinson and Urquhart (2017) Prison tourism. Exploring the spectacle of punishment in the UK, In Glenn Hooper and John J.J. Lennon (eds), Dark Tourism. Practice and Interpretation: 40–54, Routledge, Abingdon.
- 5.
Film noir referred to a genre of film that appeared in France in the 1940s. The films were typically “pulp fiction” thrillers that derived an aesthetic distinction in the eyes of intellectuals from their sharp, laconic dialogue, and black and white photography that used lighting and camera angles to create a shadowed, claustrophobic atmosphere, lending them an introspective alterity, different from the typical fast-moving, all-action thrillers of Hollywood. Alfred Hitchcock was the great mascot of film noir directors.
References
Allcock, J. (2008). Rymer’s account for Lloyds Weekly Newspaper. www.John Allcock.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/execution-of-mannings.html. Accessed 17 Feb 2015.
Anon. (1720). Magna Britannia et Hibernia Antiqua et Nova, or a new survey of Great Britain (Vol. 8). Savoy: Liz Nutt.
Anon. (1742). Select trials at the sessions house in the Old Bailey (Vol. 4). Dublin: Smith, Faulkner and Wilson.
Anon. (1768). The Tyburn chronicle: Or villainy display’d in all its branches, containing an authentic account of the lives, adventures, Tryals, executions, and last dying speeches of the most notorious malefactors (Vol. 4). London: J. Cooke.
Anon. (1836). The complete modern British martyrology: Commencing with ‘the reformation’, A.D. 1535, 26th Henry VIII to A.D. 1684, 24th Charles II. London: T. Jones.
Anon. (1935). The co-partnership herald (Vol. 5, pp. 179–180).
Anon. (n.d. 1770s/1780s). The Newgate calendar; or malefactors bloody register (Vol. 5). London: J. Cooke.
Attwood, M., Rankin, I., & Welsh, I. (2010). Crimestopping: an Edinburgh crime collection.
Babington, A. (1968). The power to silence. A history of punishment in Britain. London: Robert Maxwell.
Bartlett, R. (2000). England under the Norman and Angevin kings 1075–1225. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Boorstin, D. (1987). The image: A guide to pseudo-events in America (25th anniversary ed.). New York: Atheneum.
Booth, C. (1903). Life and labour of the people in London. London: Macmillan.
British Broadcasting Corporation. (2015). Murder on the Victorian Railway. BBC2, 21 March 20.15–21.15.
Bruce-Gardyne, T., & Skinner, J. (2007). Rebus’s favourites. The Deuchar guide to Edinburgh pubs, with a forward by Ian Rankin. Orion Book Company.
Butler, I. (1973). Murderers’ London. London: Robert Hale.
Byrne, R. (1989). Prisons and punishment of London. London: Harrap.
Camm, D. B. (1910 [1936]). Forgotten shrines. An account of some old Catholic halls and families in England and of relics and memorials of the English martyrs. London: Macdonald and Evans.
Carr, G. (2016). Guilty landscapes and the selective construction of the past: Dedham vale and the murder of the red barn. In G. Hooper & J. Lennon (Eds.), Dark tourism: Principles and practice (pp. 83–95). Abingdon: Routledge.
Cawthorne, N. (2006). Public executions. From ancient Rome to the present day. London: Capella/Arcturus.
Challoner, R. (1741-1742). Memoirs of priests…That have suffered death in England 1577–1684. London: Thomas Richardson & Son.
Chapman, P. (1984). Madame Tussaud’s chamber of horrors. Two hundred years of crime. London: Constable.
Collison, R. (1972). The story of street literature. Forerunner of the popular press. London: J.M. Dent.
Collie, J. (2002). Hidden London. www.Britannia.com/hiddenlondon/stgilesfields.html. Accessed 17 Apr 2015.
Cross, F. L., & Livingstone, E. A. (2005). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian church (3rd ed., revised). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cuddon, J. A. (1982). A dictionary of literary terms. London: Penguin Books.
Dale, A. S., & Sloan Hendershott, B. (1988). Mystery reader’s walking guide: London. Lincolnwood: Passport Books.
Debord, G. (1967 [Trans. 2010]). The society of the spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red.
Dickens, A. G. (1989). The English reformation (2nd ed.). London: B.T. Batsford.
Disher, M. W. (1949). Blood and thunder. Mid-Victorian melodrama and its origins. London: Frederick Muller.
Duffy, E. (2009). Fires of faith. Catholic England under Mary Tudor. Newhaven/London: Yale University Press.
Eddleston, J. J. (1997). Murderous Birmingham. The executed of the twentieth century. Derby: Breedon Bocks.
Farrington, K. (1996). Dark justice: A history of punishment and torture. New York: Smithmark Publishers.
Fido, M. (1986). Murder guide to London. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Fishman, W. J. (1988). East end 1888. London: Duckworth.
Gattrel, V. (1994). The hanging tree: Execution and the English people 1770–1868. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gaute, J. H. H., & Odell, R. (1986). Murder whereabouts. London: Harrap.
Gibbs, R. (n.d. c.1880). Buckinghamshire. A record of local occurrences and general events chronologically arranged (Vol 3, A.D. 1801 to 1840). Aylesbury: Robert Gibbs.
Gibbs, R. (1880). Buckinghamshire. A record of local occurrences and general events chronologically arranged (Vol. 3, p. 46). Aylesbury: Robert Gibbs.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday.
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public. New York: Anchor Books.
Goodwin, C. (2002). Inspector Morse country: An illustrated guide to the world of Oxford’s famous detective. London: Headline Books Company.
Griffiths, A. (1898). Mysteries of crime and the police. London: Virtue.
Haigh, C. (1993). English reformations. Religion, politics and society under the Tudors. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hamilton, D. A. (1904). The chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses, regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica’s in Louvain (now at St Augustine’s priory, Newton Abbot, Devon) 1548–1625. Edinburgh/London: Sands and Co.
Hamilton, D. A. (1906). The chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses, regular of the Lateran, at St. Monca’s in Louvain (now at St Augustine’s priory, Newton Abbot, Devon) 1625–1644. Edinburgh/London: Sands and Co.
Hamilton, J. R. (1968). My life with Sherlock Holmes. Conversations in baker St. by John H. Watson, M.D. London: John Murray.
Hammond, J. L., & Hammond, B. (1933 [1952]). Crime, poverty, philanthropy. In A. S. Turbeville (Ed.). Johnson’s England. An account of the life and manners of his age (pp. 300–335). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hayhurst, A. (2009). Greater Manchester murders. New York: The History Press.
Henderson, W. (1937). Victorian street ballads. London: Country Life.
Hirschkop, D., & Shepherd, D. (2001). Bakhtin and cultural theory. Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press.
Hodgkinson, S., & Urquhart, D. (2017). Prison tourism. Exploring the spectacle of punishment in the UK. In G. Hooper & J. J. Lennon (Eds.), Dark tourism. Practice and interpretation (pp. 40–54). Abingdon: Routledge.
Honeycombe, G. (1970). The murders of the Black Museum 1870–1970. London: Hutchinson.
Hooper, E. (1935). History of Newgate and the Old Bailey and a survey of the fleet and other old London gaols. London: Underwood Press.
Ichenhauser, J. (n.d. c1880). Illustrated catalogue of the original collection of instruments of torture from the Royal Castle of Nuremberg…lent for exhibition by the Right Honourable Earl of Shrewsbury and Talbot. London. Art expert exhibited in New Bond Street. Correspondence to be addressed to S. Lee Bafferty F.R.G.S.
Knapp, A., & Baldwin, W. (1824). The Newgate calendar: Interesting memoirs of the most notorious characters who have been convicted of outrages on the laws of England (Vol. 4). London: J. Robins.
Knight, A. (2002). Close and deadly: Chilling murders in the heat of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Black and White Publishing.
Langford, P. (1989). A polite and commercial people: England 1727–1783. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Le Vay, B. (2007). Eccentric London. Chalfont St. Peter: Bradt Travel Guides.
Lee, L. (1959). Cider with Rosie. London: Hogarth Press.
Lennon, J. J. (2010). Dark tourism and sites of crime. In D. Botterill & T. Jones (Eds.), Tourism and crime (pp. 167–179). Oxford: Goodfellow.
Leonard, K. W. (2004) The Oxford of Inspector Morse. Location Guides, no place of publication.
Leonard, B. (2008). The Oxford of Inspector Morse and Lewis. Stroud: The History Press.
Linebaugh, P. (2002). The London hanged. Crime and civil society in the eighteenth century. London/New York: Verso.
Long, R. (1990). Murder in Old Berkshire. Buckingham: Barracuda Books.
Longman, D. K. (2006). Criminal Wirral. Stroud: Sutton.
Marks, A. (n.d. c1910). Tyburn tree. Its history and annals. London: Brown, Langham and Co.
Newton, D. (1950). Catholic London. London: Robert Hale.
O’Hagan, P. (2016, September 6). In jail with Oscar Wilde. The Guardian Newspaper, G2: 16–17.
Poole, A. L. (1987). Domesday book to Magna Carta 1087–1216 (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Posner, M. (1973). Midland murders. Wolverhampton: STAR Publishers.
Radzinowicz, L. (1948–1956). History of the English Criminal Law (Vol 1), passim.
Ramsey, W. G. (1997). The east end then and now. London: Battle of Britain Prints International Ltd.
Rankin, I. (2005). Rebus’s Scotland. Edinburgh: Orion Books.
Robinson, P. (2013). Tales from four towns – death, destruction and notable news from the nineteenth century. Wolverhampton/Walsall/Wednesbury: West Bromwich/Lulu.Com.
Rose, M. (1951). The east end of London. London: Cresset Press.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Sailor, D. (1994). The county hanging town: Trials, executions and imprisonment at Lancaster. Lancaster: Challenge.
Santucci, A. (2010). Antonio Gramsci. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Scott, S. (1953). Blood in their ink. The march of the modern mystery novel. London: Stanley Paul.
Seal, L. (2015). Capital punishment in twentieth century Britain: Audience, justice, memory. UK: Taylor and Francis.
Seaton, A. V. (2012). Wanting to live with common people? The literary evolution of slumming. In F. Frenzel, K. Ko, & M. Steinbrink (Eds.), Slum tourism. Poverty, power and ethics (pp. 21–48). Abingdon: Routledge.
Sheridan, P. (1981). Penny theatres of Victorian London. London: Dennis Dobson.
Simms, R. (1894). Bibliotheca Staffordiensis, or a bibliographical account of books and other printed matter relating to…The county of Stafford… Giving biographical notices of authors and printers. Lichfield: A.C. Lomax.
Spaul, M., & Wilbert, C. (2017). Guilty landscapes and the selective reconstruction of the past: Dedham Vale and the murder in the Red Barn. In G. Hooper & J. J. Lennon (Eds.), Dark tourism. Practice and interpretation (pp. 83–95). London: Routledge.
Speaight, G. (1946). Juvenile drama. The history of the toy theatre. London: Macdonald and Co. Green’s Juvenile Drama, “Jack Shepherd” as Home Entertainment.
Steel, K. (1955). Detective story. In J. T. Shipley (Ed.), Dictionary of world literary terms (pp. 94–95). London: George Allen and Unwin.
Strange, C., & Kempa, M. (2003). Shades of dark tourism: Alcatraz and Robber Island. Annals of Tourism Research, 30(2), 386–403.
Talbot, R., & Whiteman, R. (1990). Cadfael country: Shropshire and the welsh border. London: Macdonald.
Thornbury, W. (1878). Old and New London (Vol. 3, pp. 197–218). London: Cassell, Petter and Galpin.
Thompson, E. P. (1991). Customs in common. London: Merlin Press.
Tibbals, G. (1993). The murder guide to Great Britain. London: Boxtree.
Tobias, J. J. (1967 [1972]). Crime and industrial society in the nineteenth century. London: Pelican.
Underhill, A. (1950). The law. In Anon (Ed.), Shakespeare’s England. An account of the life and manners of his age (Vol. 1, pp. 381–412). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Whibley, C. (1916 [1950]). Rogues and Vagabonds. In Anon (Ed.), Shakespeare’s England. An account of the life and manners of his age (Vol 11, pp. 484–510).Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Whiteman, R., & Talbot, R. (1991). Cadfael country: Shropshire and the Welsh borders. London: Macdonald.
Wikipedia. (2015). www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barn_Murder. Accessed 21 Apr 2016.
Wilson, J. Z. (2008). Prison, cultural memory and dark tourism. Oxford: Peter Lang.
Worsley, L. (2016). A very British murder. A three part series first shown in 2013 and repeated in 2016. BBC 4.
Worsley, L. (2016, February 21). Detection most ingenious. Episode 2 of A Very British Murder, BBC4, 9pm–10pm.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Seaton, T., Dann, G.M.S. (2018). Crime, Punishment, and Dark Tourism: The Carnivalesque Spectacles of the English Judicial System. In: R. Stone, P., Hartmann, R., Seaton, T., Sharpley, R., White, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47566-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47566-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-47565-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-47566-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)