Marisha Caswell

Ph.D. Candidate

E-mail: marisha.caswell@queensu.ca
Phone: 613-533-2150
Fax: 613-533-6298
Office: Watson Hall, Room 103

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Education

M.A., St. Mary's University
B.A. (Honours), Dalhousie University

About

My main area of focus is the social, cultural, legal and gender history of early modern England. My work has primarily used legal records, especially those relating to the criminal courts, as a way to illuminate larger aspects of society.

What started with an undergraduate course on crime and the courts in early modern England has transformed into my research today. My Master's Thesis examined the treatment of married women before the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, during the eighteenth century. Under the supervision of Dr. Jeff Collins, my dissertation expands on this research and examines the experiences of married women in the criminal courts of the Northern Circuit from 1640-1760. Using these experiences, I hope to come to a better understanding of how ordinary and elite people understood the new political ideas of the period and how they then applied them to everyday life.

Selected Conference Presentations

"Murdering Mothers, Murdering Wives: Marital Status and ‘Acceptable' Murder Victims in Eighteenth-Century London," at I.H.R. Women's History Seminar, London UK, October 2008

"Suitable Victims? Petty Treason, Infanticide and Marital Status in Eighteenth-Century London," at Women and Crime in the British Isles and North America since 1500, Colloque International organisé par le CARMA Lumière Lyon 2, Université de Lyon 2 et 3, September 2008
"Favourites of the Law? Crime, Coverture and Coercion in Eighteenth-Century London," at Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Minneapolis MN, June 2008