I’ve come across many tragic and strange cases while working on a chapter about planted poison for my forensics book project. Here are some lowlights from the 1896 Madras Chemical Examiner’s Report: There are many …
Epidemics in South Asian legal history
Our COVID-19 era has me thinking about the bubonic plague’s 1896 arrival in Bombay. It stayed for over a decade. Here’s my description of the experience via two of my favorite legal memoirists: A. J. …
Digging at the British Library
I regularly receive e-mails from junior scholars trying to figure out what to work on for a major research project. For grad students and others lucky enough to spend time at the British Library, there’s …
Where South Asian & African legal history meet
Last month in Boston, I attended the African Legal History Symposium, a one-day event at the start of the American Society for Legal History‘s annual meeting. The symposium was organized by Erin Braatz (Suffolk University), …
Women in Law (part 2)
Last month, I posted this passage from A.J.C. Mistry’s law firm memoirs on the early history of women in the legal profession in British India. This month, I’m sharing a list of life writing titles …
Women in Law (part 1)
One of my favorite chroniclers of the history of the legal profession in India is A. J. C. Mistry. Mistry was an unusual author of legal memoirs. He was not a lawyer or judge recounting …
How one law journal survived partition
Today–August 15, 2019–marks the 72nd anniversary of the independence and partition of India and Pakistan. Thousands of survivors’ stories are preserved in the remarkable 1947 Archive and elsewhere. I want to share one more. This …
It was the ice cream
I’m working on early 20th-century forensic experts in India, and have come across two odd research publications. In both cases, the physician-expert experienced an extreme and terrible mass event–one that sickened or killed many people. …
Using fiction in historical scholarship
As I work on my history of forensics book project, I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate detective fiction written during my period of study (India, mid-19th century to the mid-20th). This has gotten …
Joint CRN lunch @ Washington LSA
Are you coming to the Law and Society Association’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. later this month? If so, please join us for the Joint Annual Collaborative Research Network (CRN) Lunch for CRN 15: British Colonial …