‘A Crime of Almost Unspeakable Cruelty and Wickedness’: Gender, Agency and Murder in Scotland – The Case of Jeannie Donald

Abstract

Based on original Scottish Archive documents, this article contributes to a major gap in criminological research – Scottish women who were sentenced to death during the 20th century. Through the case study of Jeannie Donald, condemned to death in 1934 for the murder of her neighbour’s 8-year-old daughter, the article offers a critical analysis of a ‘limit’ case in relation to gender – that is, a case so subversive that it presents the ultimate challenge to idealized and traditional beliefs about maternity, motherhood and women’s nature as passive, submissive and gentle creatures. In doing so, it demonstrates that feminist analysis does not shy away from the cases of female perpetrators of crime so extreme that they cannot be recuperated into acceptable forms of femininity.