'The pendulum of the public mind': Insanity and activism in capital trials, 1880-1939

Through a focus on the criminal trial in the colony, and later, state of Victoria, this dissertation explores the operation of capital punishment as a system that allowed for popular readings of madness in relation to serious interpersonal crimes between 1880 and 1939. Insanity was increasingly used by ordinary people as a discursive tool by which to contest the death penalty, and in some cases, a means by which to protest the material circumstances that governed their lives.