'The third degree': press reporting, crime fiction and police powers in 1920s Britain

The late 1920s saw a dramatic upsurge in popular concern about the abuse of police powers in Britain, the end result of a longer-term trend. Various aspects of policing were seen as worrying, but the most important concerned illegitimate forms of questioning. The phrase 'the third degree'--imported from America--came to encapsulate this unease. Before the First World War, the terminology began to be used in British coverage of American crimes and their investigation, typically accompanied by disparaging commentary on American methods as well as the confident assertion of the superiority of British policing. The wartime growth in police powers and broader state regulation caused some to see an erosion in the 'liberty of the subject', and a series of scandals seemed to reveal serious problems with police procedure. The popularity of crime dramas featuring 'third-degree' interrogations also shaped public images of the police. Scandals in 1928 generated enough of an outcry to force the calling of the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure (1928-29). Even though few concrete procedural changes were undertaken, it appears to have successfully calmed worries about the police, which receded and did not reach a similar level until the late 1950s.     

Monster soup: the microscope and Victorian fantasy

Abstract

The Victorian predilection for the grotesque owed more than is commonly recognised to nature's microdimension. During the heyday of natural history in Britain (c. 1820–70), the microscope revealed myriads of shapes and creatures so utterly unfamiliar that writers on the subject resorted to flamboyant prose in order to render them intelligible. This had reverberations not least for the visual arts. The metaphors chosen by authors attempting to describe the microscopic world soon developed a visual presence, with supernatural features being projected even onto illustrations in supposedly scientific contexts. At the same time, such illustrations share certain motifs and/or stylistic characteristics with fairy paintings and illustrations by artists such as Daniel Maclise (1806–70), Richard Dadd (1817–86), Sir Joseph Noel Paton (1821–1901), and Arthur Hughes (1832–1915). In view of this, the fact that the golden age of British fairy painting coincided chronologically with the Victorian craze for microscopy seems to be the result of more than mere chance. If we acknowledge this, we must also ask whether, in the mid nineteenth century, points of contact between microscopy and the visual arts led to a liberation or else a limitation of fantasy.     

Form and deformity: the trouble with Victorian pockets

This essay explores the Victorian debate about the place of pockets in men's and women's clothing. By studying the representation of men as naturally pocketed creatures and the general denial of useful pockets to middle-class women, the essay demonstrates the tenacious cultural logic by which men's and women's pockets were imagined to correspond to sexual differences and to index access, or lack thereof, to public mobility and financial agency. Interconnected readings of visual art, essays, and novels show how the common sense about gendered pockets was utilized and promulgated in Victorian narratives. The question of who gets pockets is thus positioned as part of the history of gendered bodies in public space.     

Agenda-Setters and Policy Influentials: Results from the Victorian Agendas Project

The Victorian Agendas Project (1991-93) used a snowball sampling method to produce annual peer-nominated lists of agenda-setters and policy influentials in six policy fields: economic policy, health, welfare, transport, education and the environment. Three hundred and fifty-six interviews were conducted with 214 influentials over the three-year period. Respondents identified high-priority issues and policy options on their current and future agendas. This paper deals with the question of who the agenda setters/policy influentials were. Was there evidence of a dominant elite or elites (e.g. business and banking elites) whose influence ranged across policy fields, or was there a more pluralist pattern in which influentials tended to 'specialise' in particular fields? How substantial was the turnover among influentials when the Liberal-National coalition government replaced Labor in 1992?