Dr Lynsey Black's article, 'The Pathologisation of Women Who Kill: Three Cases from Ireland', was published in the May issue of the Social History of Medicine.

Dr Lynsey Black
Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - 09:45

Dr Lynsey Black's article, 'The Pathologisation of Women Who Kill: Three Cases from Ireland', was published in the May issue of the Social History of Medicine. The article draws on Lynsey's research on women, murder and punishment in Ireland, looking in particular at the discourses of pathology women were subject to. The article examines the cases of three women convicted of murder in Ireland post-1922 and explores how each woman was constructed as pathologised. Using archival materials, the article demonstrates that diagnoses were contingent on notions of gender, morality, dangerousness, and class. For two of the women, their pathologisation led to them being certified as insane and admitted to the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum. However, pathologisation could be mediated by respectable femininity. The article also explores the pathways which facilitated judgements of pathology, including the acceptance of a framework of degeneracy, or hereditary insanity, and examines how women could be redeemed from the diagnoses of ‘insanity’.