Encountering the archive

Abstract

This chapter discusses methodological issues related to carrying out archival research for a project on race, racialisation and the death penalty in twentieth-century England and Wales. This is the first study on capital punishment in England and Wales to focus on ‘race’, despite the significant over-representation of black and other minority ethnic (BME) individuals in terms of the application of execution. We explore how archival case files, which contain documents such as depositions and trial transcripts, are indispensable sources for reconstructing criminal justice processes of the past. We illustrate this through discussion of one of the cases from our project, Lee Kun, who was hanged in 1916 for the murder of Elsie Goddard.