Victorian Era Judicial System

Victorian Era Legal systems and their follies- Close Reading of The Case of Eliza Fenning
The Case of Eliza Fenning contests the concreteness of the judicial system during the Victorian era, her guilt would be argued for years after her sentence of guilt and thus her death. This lead to the case that the judicial system needed to be improved, as well as doctors and forensic science. In the text, when John Marshall arrived he automatically constituted Eliza’s illness was due to her eating some of the tainted dumplings in order to avoid suspicion. Prosecution at the time was generally centered around the motive and the reaction and interaction with the accused. The witnesses all testified that Eliza was the only one in the kitchen when the food …show more content…
The people who were supposed to be the experts were improperly trained in most instances. The want to find the truth and to bring people to justice was not apparent this early on in the court. Many cases were decided in such a manner because of convenience, based on the social class of the defendant in comparison to the victim and there was crooked judges or magistrates. This case was one of those which spurred the need for improvement of the scientific aspect of the court system because people’s lives were depending on it. This is another flaw of the judicial system of the Victorian Era, people’s lives depended on the word of another person.

The first issue with the manner in which criminals were dealt with in the Victorian era was that the task of reporting and catching a criminal to be brought to justice was the responsibility of the victim. Although, maybe more prepared for a task as such than today’s common john doe, it is imagined that there was a wide margin of error due to the lack of professional aid (again the experts were not so …show more content…
This, in the Case of Eliza Fenning, would be the vast majority of the recorded court proceedings in which John Marshall, Charlotte Turner, Orlibar Turner, Rodger Gadsen, and many more gave their versions of the happenings. Very little was actually recorded as a statement by the defendant of the case, which seems problematic because that is a whole facet of the investigation that seems to be left out. Aliza had a defense attorney, Mr. Alley, that was paid a very small amount as well as for £5. This was opposed to the rather wealthy Turner family who had an array of legal advisor and higher knowledge of the courtroom disposition. In todays court if there is a conflict of interest the witness would be dismissed to maintain a certain fairness. Eliza case specifically was peppered with different circumstances in which there was a conflict of interest favoring the Turners. A friend of the Turners was the clerk of the magistrate and had been the one that made to arrest of Mrs. Fenning. Also Thomas King, the other apprentice that worked with Eliza denied to testify on behalf of her innocence for unknown reasons. If he would have testified then there would have been evidence that supported that Eliza would not have known where the arsenic was kept in the house. (The papers for which the apprentices would light the fire were located in the