Why reporting a murder in medieval England could destroy your life
Witnessing a crime was one thing for medieval townspeople, but reporting it was another matter entirely…
Medieval England was a dangerous place. Murder rates are estimated to have been between 20 to 50 times higher than today, meaning violent deaths were a regular occurrence. But in a world without permanent police forces or forensic evidence, the task of solving murders was often left to local communities – and that didn’t come without serious complications.
Speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, professor Manuel Eisner explains how medieval crime and justice could be as dangerous for bystanders as it was for the guilty…
The dangers of being a witness
“If you raise the hue and cry as you're supposed to do, you will be named as a witness,” Eisner says, explaining what the process was meant to look like. However, being a witness was, itself, incredibly dangerous. “You may actually end up being suspected of having committed the crime.”
Eisner notes that some people who discovered bodies “got into all kinds of trouble” and the inaccuracy of a jury’s verdict wasn’t helped by the fact that the process of naming a perpetrator was so short. In fact, it often took only a matter of days; not exactly a thorough investigation.
This created an impossible dilemma for medieval townspeople: do your duty in helping find the perpetrator and risk being accused yourself, or stay silent and hope no one connects you to the crime?
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Given the unpredictability of medieval justice, Eisner explains that many people likely chose to stay silent rather than risk becoming a suspect themselves.
Murder investigations in medieval England
Compounding the issue facing bystanders was the fact that, rather than focusing on forensic evidence like today, medieval courts were often more concerned with establishing blame in any way possible.
And that wasn’t all. In fact, juries often fixated more on the weapon used rather than on identifying the actual killer, with the objects themselves thought to carry their own guilt. “In medieval thinking,” Eisner explains, “the object that contributes to the death is in some ways guilty.”
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And even when a suspect was caught, conviction was far from certain. “Only a very small minority ended up being convicted for crimes that they had probably committed,” Eisner notes.
This made violent crime particularly difficult to police, and further encouraged people to look the other way rather than get involved in a potentially dangerous (and fruitless) legal process.
With no guaranteed protection for witnesses and a justice system that often turned against them, medieval people had to make tough choices. For many, the safest option was to stay silent.
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Authors
James Osborne is a digital content producer at HistoryExtra where he writes, researches, and edits articles, while also conducting the occasional interview