Legal Heroes and Practising Villains in the Nineteenth Century Press

Abstract

This short piece will highlight the importance of the newspaper in the nineteenth century as a historical source for examining the public perception of the barrister. It will draw upon selected press extracts from nineteenth century newspapers to illustrate a sample of the differing representations of barristers in Victorian England. This piece will begin to analyse how these public portrayals of barristers created ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ of some of Victorian England’s most eminent and infamous legal minds and establish whether these ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ perpetuated historical cultural stereotypes of lawyers.