A Calendar of Murder

Immediately prior to publication, one of the authors of this book gave a public 'ecture entitled "Psychopathology and Homicide" to a medical audience. As a result ?f this, certain of the more informed, and therefore be it acknowledged, more sensitive doctors among his hearers came to the conclusion that both his own views and those to be expressed in the book would be that "many psychiatric patients committed ^urder, and that this might often have been prevented if more care had been taken ?y doctors, or by others responsible for them .. The authors of the book are a sociologist with a Ph.D. in Criminology (Mr Terence ^orris), who has served as a prison visitor, spent a voluntary six weeks in prison himself as an experiment, and is an executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, j*nd the lecturer in question (Mr. Blom-Cooper), who is a well-qualified lawyer who been both legal correspondent to The Guardian and The Observer and visiting ecturer at Bedford College. Both authors would be labelled as progressive, or alternatively as tender-minded, in their approach to the abolition of capital punishment ald of penal reform generally; the terms "progressive" and "tender-minded" being, '^always, alternative ways of alluding to a liberal and humane attitude, the choice ?eing dependent upon the user's preference. This book in fact fulfils precisely the expectations which such a knowledge of these aUthors might suggest, and does not endorse the apprehension of the audience of the ^-publication lecture. It is divided into three main sections: the first and longest a Series of concise, graphic and objective thumbnail sketches of every case involving ^ indictment for murder from the time of the passing of the Homicide Act in 1957 to December 31st, 1962. These sketches include relevant but obviously not exhaustive '^formation about each individual accused, and each individual victim. This is the ?ngest section of the book and occupies the first 270 pages. The second and third Actions consist respectively of nine essays on the material (pp. 271-337), and an aPpendix of some 40 pages outlining the Homicide Act, 1957, other statutory protons , correspondence about life sentences for murder, statistical and other tables, a bibliography and an index. The whole thing adds up to a vivid, trenchant and yet restrained and reasonable Presentation of the evidence which any reformer, or any defender of the present law its implementation, needs to know, …