Delivered at I19 Conference 2025, 2nd – 3rd May 2025, Virtual Conference.

The outcomes of modern criminal cases are often influenced by the defendant’s social status or belonging to societally marginalised groups. Records of Victorian court cases also reveal this bias, most notoriously in the murder conviction of Elizabeth Fenning, a servant executed for her employer’s crimes. Whilst unlikely to have been directly inspired by the notorious cases of Fenning and Hinchcliff, several Neo-Victorian novels involve a servant being put on trial.

In some cases, such as Alias Grace and The Confessions of Frannie Langton, the entire narrative revolves around the search for the truth behind their role in the crimes. In others, like AMC’s adaptation of The Terror by Dan Simmons, the antagonist has definitively committed the murder, but is still given the chance to speak. It is this opportunity to speak which is remarkable given the status of the accused within Victorian society. These working-class characters working menial jobs are additionally marginalised by their sexuality or gender, mixed racial heritage or Irish roots, forming the true ‘other’ shown to have formed an easy scapegoat in real 19th Century trials.

By allowing their ostracised characters to speak, the Neo-Victorian author can strip away the doggerel verses and religious overtones used to moralise the crimes in the broadsheets and have them voice their motivations directly to the reader. In stripping such considerations from their narratives, they can examine both the reasons the servants may have committed their crimes – or the reasons why wider society may have accused them of committing them.