Based on original Scottish Archive documents, this article contributes to a major gap in criminological research – Scottish women who were sentenced to death during the 20th century. Through the case study of Jeannie Donald, condemned to death in 1934 for the murder of her neighbour’s 8-year-old daughter, the article offers a critical analysis of a ‘limit’ case in relation to gender – that is, a case so subversive that it presents the ultimate challenge to idealized and traditional beliefs about maternity, motherhood and women’s nature as passive, submissive and gentle creatures. In doing so, it demonstrates that feminist analysis does not shy away from the cases of female perpetrators of crime so extreme that they cannot be recuperated into acceptable forms of femininity.
Aberdeen Bon-Accord and Northern Pictorial, 27 July 1934, ‘Was Helen Priestly “Murdered”?’
16.
Aberdeen Bon-Accord and Northern Pictorial, 27 July 1934, ‘The Passing Hour’ editorial.
17.
Aberdeen Bon-Accord and Northern Pictorial, 10 August 1934, ‘“Murder Most Foul”: Why Mrs Donald Has Escaped the Gallows’.
18.
Aberdeen Bon-Accord and Northern Pictorial, 17 August 1934, ‘Mrs Donald Goes to Glasgow’.
19.
Aberdeen Bon-Accord and Northern Pictorial, 17 August 1934, ‘The Passing Hour’ editorial.
20.
Aberdeen Bon-Accord and Northern Pictorial, 24 August 1934, ‘This Donald Business the Public Insist on Knowing’. Glasgow Herald, 20 September 1923.
21.
Sunday Mail, 19 February 1955, ‘Mrs Donald’s Story’.
22.
The Scotsman, 24 July 1934, ‘Guilty of Murder’.
23.
Weekly Scotsman, 28 July 1934, ‘Woman Found Guilty’.
24.
Weekly Scotsman, 11 August 1934, ‘Mrs Donald Learns of Reprieve in Cell’.
25.
AbramsL (2006) Introduction: Gendering the agenda. In: AbramsLGordonESimontonDYeoJ (eds) Gender in Scottish History Since 1700. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 1–16.
26.
AllenH (1987) Justice Unbalanced: Gender, Psychiatry and Judicial Decisions. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
27.
AtwellMW (2007) Wretched Sisters: Examining Gender and Capital Punishment. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
28.
BallingerA (2016) Gender, Truth and State Power: Capitalising on Punishment. London: Routledge.
29.
BallingerA (2012) A muted voice from the past: The “silent silencing” of Ruth Ellis. Social & Legal Studies21(4): 445–467.
30.
BallingerA (2008) Reconceptualising social control: A case-study in gender, punishment and murder. In: JohnstonH (ed) Punishment and Control in Historical Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 34–55.
31.
BallingerA (2005) Reasonable women who kill: Re-interpreting and re-defining responses to domestic violence in England and Wales 1900–1965. Outlines: Critical Social Studies7(2): 445–67.
32.
BallingerA (2000) Dead Woman Walking: Executed Women in England and Wales 1900–1955. Dartmouth: Ashgate.
33.
BallingerA (1996) The guilt of the innocent and the innocence of the guilty: The cases of Marie Fahmy and Ruth Ellis. In: MyersAWightS (eds) No Angels. London: Pandora, pp. 1–28.
34.
BirchH (1993) If looks could kill: Myra Hindley and the iconography of evil. In: BirchH (ed) Moving Targets. London: Virago, pp. 32–61.
35.
BlythH (1975) Madeleine Smith: A Famous Victorian Murder Trial. London: Duckworth.
36.
BreitenbachEBrownAMyersF (1998) Understanding women in Scotland. Feminist Review58(Spring): 44–65.
BrownYGFergusonR (2002) (eds) Introduction: Twisted sisters: Women, crime and deviance in Scotland since 1400. In: Twisted Sisters: Women, Crime and Deviance Since 1400. Glasgow: Tuckwell Press, pp. 1–9.
39.
Carrillo-RoweAMalhotraS (2013) Still the silence: Feminist reflections at the edges of sound. In: MalhotraSCarrillo-RoweA (eds) Silence, Feminism, Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–22.
40.
CollierR (1995a) Masculinity, Law and the Family. London: Routledge.
41.
CollierR (1995b) A father’s “normal” love? Masculinities, criminology and the family. In: DobashRDobashR (eds) Gender and Crime. Cardiff: Cardiff University Press, pp. 202–226.
42.
DobashRPMcLaughlinP (1991) The punishment of women in nineteenth century Scotland: Prisons and inebriate reformatories. In: BreitenbachEGordonE (eds) Spheres of Struggle: The Public and Private Lives of Women in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 65–94.
43.
DowningL (2013) The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality and the Modern Killer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
44.
EdwardsS (2010) Anger and fear as justifiable preludes for loss of self-control. Journal of Criminal Law74(3): 223–241.
45.
Fitz-GibbonKWalklateS (2016) Introduction. In: Fitz-GibbonKWalklateS (eds) Homicide, Gender and Responsibility. London: Routledge, pp. 1–11.
46.
Fitz-GibbonKPickeringS (2012) Homicide law reform in Victoria, Australia. British Journal of Criminology52: 159–180.
47.
FitzroyL (2001) Violent women: Questions of feminist theory, practice and policy. Critical Social Policy21(1): 7–34.
48.
FrenchS (1996) Partners in crime: Defending the female of the species. In: MyersAWightS (eds) No Angels. London: Pandora, pp. 29–43.
49.
HartmanM (1977) Victorian Murderesses: A True Story of thirteen Respectable French & English Women Accused of Unspeakable Crimes. London: Robson Books.
50.
HuntP (1950) The Madeleine Smith Affair. London: Carroll and Nicholson.
51.
JacksonM (2002) (ed) Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment 1550–2000. Aldershot: Ashgate.
52.
KildayA (2013) A History of Infanticide in Britain, c.1600 to the Present. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
53.
KildayA (2007) Women and Violent Crime in Enlightenment Scotland. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, The Royal Historical Society.
54.
KnoxWW (2006) Lives of Scottish Women: Women and Scottish Society, 1800–1980. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
55.
LaceyN (2008) Women, Crime and Character. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
56.
LenemanL (2000) “A natural foundation in equity”: Marriage and divorce in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Scotland. Scottish Economic & Social History20(2): 199–215.
57.
MaguireM (2000) Researching “street criminals”: A neglected art. In: KingRDWincupE (eds) Doing Research on Crime and Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 121–152.
58.
MastersB (1996) She Must Have Known: The Trial of Rosemary West. London: Doubleday.
59.
MorrisseyB (2003) When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity. London: Routledge.
60.
MurphyTWhittyN (2006) The question of evil and feminist legal scholarship. Feminist Legal Studies14: 1–26.
61.
NaffineN (1990) Law & the Sexes. London: Allen & Unwin
62.
NewburnTStankoE (1994) Just Doing Boys Business. London: Routledge.
63.
NorrieA (2010) The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 – partial defences to murder (1) Loss of control. Criminal Law Review4: 275–289.
64.
NorrieA (2001) Crime, Reason and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
65.
O’DonovanK (1991) Defences for battered women who kill. Journal of Law and Society18(2): 219–240.
66.
O’DonovanK (1993) Law’s knowledge: The judge, the expert, the battered woman, and her syndrome. Journal of Law and Society2(4): 427–437.
67.
Police Journal (1940) 3rd quarter.
68.
RadfordJRussellDEH (1992) (eds) Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Buckingham: Open University Press.
69.
RoseJ (1993) Why War?Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
70.
SealL (2011) Ruth Ellis and public contestation of the death penalty. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice50(5): 492–504.
71.
SealL (2008) ‘Public Reactions to the Case of Mary Wilson, The Last Woman to be Sentenced to Death in England and Wales Panel’ Paper from Papers from the British Criminology Conference, pp. 65–84. The British Society of Criminology. Available at: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/41536/
SmartC (1989) Feminism and the Power of Law. London: Routledge
74.
WalklateSFitz-GibbonK (2016) Concluding thoughts on homicide, gender and responsibility. In: Fitz-GibbonKWalklateS (eds) Homicide, Gender and Responsibility. London: Routledge, pp. 171–180.
75.
WilczynskiA (1991) Images of women who kill their infants: The “mad and the bad”. Women and Criminal Justice2: 1–88.
76.
WilsonJ (1953) (ed) The Trial of Jeannie Donald. Glasgow: Notable British Trials Series William Hodge and Company Ltd.
