Uncovering Secrets and Forgotten Lives: Exploring 19th and 2Oth Century Us Acid Crime through the Digital Archive

Vivien Miller, University of Nottingham

This paper questions how to navigate patterns of inclusion and exclusion in digital documentary and genealogical archives, and the ways in which the volume of data can or should determine the parameters of a research project and critical research questions. It considers whether the ethical, moral and methodological challenges of excavating histories of interpersonal violence and crime through digital sources should be different to investigations using traditional print sources or physical archives. It draws on my study of acid throwers and their victims in the United States c1830s-1960 which interweaves intersectionality, particularly analysis of race, ethnicity, gender, class and age, with legal and social history, criminology, urban studies, and the history of emotions to investigate who was committing acid crime, their motivations, targets and intended outcomes, how acid assaults were reported, investigated, and policed, and which types of legal punishments or community sanctions could result. I began this project during the UK Covid lockdowns between October 2020 and May 2021 when the international digital archive was expanding and opened up new possibilities for interdisciplinary research. This project would be impossible to contemplate without the ability to search 924.78 billion news pages via newspapers.com or unlimited access to personal data via ancestry.co.uk. The information gathered challenges numerous misconceptions surrounding acid crime and recovers the voices of working-class and marginalised people, but many details remain hidden, around disability and post-conviction lives for example. However, focus on vitriol throwing as one distinctive category of assault also raises essential methodological and theoretical questions about other types of assault in US jurisdictions, which are collectively understudied in comparison to homicide and sexual violence for example.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 161. Truth, Self-Construction and Data in the Legal Archives