Anna Pravdica, PhD student in History, University of Warwick

This paper explores the connections between the archival construction of the often-sensationalized Proceedings of the eighteenth-century Old Bailey, and that of the modern true crime media landscape. Utilizing the historian of emotions Joy Wiltenburg’s term “sensationalism,” the paper considers how the construction of eighteenth-century and modern true crime archives are dependent on the sensationalist emotional draw produced by some true crime cases, particularly the more violent and outlandish ones. In turn, it explores how absences and silences in the archive, both historically and currently, are a result of the same sensationalist drive which deems some cases more emotionally evocative and compelling than others. It also briefly considers modern psychological perspectives on just why the true crime genre is so successful with popular audiences. Moreover, it problematizes the connection between the commercial motivation of true crime media, and its claim of being reliable reportage of the justice system. Historical court records, like modern true crime stories, offer a glimpse into some of the most dramatic or tragic moments of the lives of those involved, and Old Bailey records are a prime example of this commercially driven yet purportedly trustworthy early modern true crime as they were both authorized by the court and contemporaneously targeted at a popular audience. Here, the 1753 Elizabeth Canning case is utilized as a case study alongside modern true crime media, such as YouTube channels like Bailey Sarian’s Murder, Mystery, and Makeup and Buzzfeed Unsolved, to explore these ideas and reflect on the impact of sensationalist archive construction. These comparisons are ultimately used to suggest that sensationalist archive construction not only plays on and influences the emotions of popular audiences, but that it affects their perceptions of crime, as well as influencing the modern public’s understanding of historical true crime and the cultures and societies within which these sensational cases occurred.

Anna Pravdica is an AHRC funded PhD student in History at the University of Warwick, where she researches emotional sincerity, social authenticity, and performance in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. Previously, she graduated summa cum laude from Suffolk University, where she wrote a thesis in History and Literature on Eliza Haywood’s 1725 novella “Fantomina" and early eighteenth-century English ideas about emotion, social identity, and the theater. She has also written about feeling, family, and community in English witchcraft pamphlets and their theatrical adaptations at the University of Edinburgh, where she completed her MSc with Distinction. In addition to thinking about eighteenth-century “true crime,” she has recently been researching and writing about the eighteenth-century periodical the Spectator’s project of emotional education and refuge.