Crime in the nineteenth-century Irish home

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article interrogates the Irish home as the scene of a crime. Using a sample of nineteenth-century textual records, namely coroners’ inquest documents, police and witness statements, judges’ reports of trials, and newspapers, it showcases how the home could become a focus of attention in court. Police (and sometimes the general public) infiltrated these domestic spaces in their search for clues; they often interfered with domestic materiality, or confiscated objects or fragments therefrom. In court, maps, plans and models illustrated the physical space and layout of the home for those who had not crossed the threshold. Witness testimonies accounting for the crime inadvertently reveal how the homes looked, some of their contents, and the nature of relationships between occupants and neighbours. These Irish homes were typically ordinary domestic spaces but as this article shows, the crime brought the intimate space to a more public arena. It also demonstrates how the home could both protect or expose a suspect.