Jurors and the judgement of men: Intimate partner murder prosecutions in New South Wales in the early twentieth century

Feminist historical analysis has linked the tradition of exclusively male juries to the criminal justice system's tolerance toward male violence against women, with exceptions only for men of oppressed groups. However, outcomes in intimate partner murder trials in New South Wales in the early twentieth century challenge this reading of masculinist favouritism. Using descriptive statistics of 165 trial outcomes, combined with thirteen case studies from 1901 to 1955, this article shows that Anglo-Celtic jurors' notions of respectable and disreputable masculinity and racism informed their assessment of criminal culpability. Yet, the character of victim-offender relationships, the marital status of principals and the mode of homicide were no less influential. Although a trend toward greater lenience prevailed in the decade after World War I, the overall conviction rate of seventy-two per cent confirms that male jurors deemed most men tried for intimate partner murder in early twentieth-century NSW to be criminally responsible