This curated bibliography provides a selection of historical studies on criminal interrogation of suspects, mainly in Europe since the early modern period. In line with the cases studied in the project, most of the literature discussed here deals with France, the German-speaking world and the Low Countries. This is a living bibliography, which will continue to be update over the coming years as the project moves forward. Although completeness is not the aim – it is a selection of relevant literature – suggestions for additions are welcome.

General overviews

Long-term histories of criminal interrogations and confessions

There are few general overviews of the history of criminal interrogation. Niehaus 2003 gives a broad and long-term overview of interrogation, though is mainly focused on Germany. Hofman and Verhoeven 2022 sketch the history of criminal interrogation in the early modern period, mainly relying on examples from France, the German world and the Low Countries. Other studies have focussed on the history of confessions, which often (particularly in Reichertz and Schneider 2007) touches upon the history of interrogation.

Brooks, Peter. Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law & Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Dulong, Renaud, ed. L’aveu: histoire, sociologie, philosophie. Paris: PUF, 2001.

Hofman, Elwin, and Gerrit Verhoeven. “Confess and You’ll Feel Better! The Dialogics of Interrogations, 1650-1850.” Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies 26, no. 1 (2022): 5–23.

Niehaus, Michael. Das Verhör: Geschichte-Theorie-Fiktion. München: Wilhelm Fink, 2003.

Reichertz, Jo, and Manfred Schneider, eds. Sozialgeschichte des Geständnisses: zum Wandel der Geständniskultur. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007.

Overviews of the history of criminal procedure

For the formal history of criminal interrogations, general histories of criminal procedure often provide an entry into the topic. Specific histories of crime, criminal procedures and criminal justice, which are too large in number to sum up here, also often contain some remarks on criminal interrogations.

Farcy, Jean-Claude, Dominique Kalifa, and Jean-Noël Luc, eds. L’enquête judiciaire en Europe au XIXe siècle: acteurs, imaginaires, pratiques. Paris: Créaphis, 2007.

Laingui, André, and Arlette Lebigre. Histoire du droit pénal. 2: La procédure criminelle. Paris: Cujas, 1979.

Langbein, John H. Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance: England, Germany, France. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1974.

Monballyu, Jos. Six Centuries of Criminal Law: History of Criminal Law in the Southern Netherlands and Belgium (1400-2000). Leiden: Brill, 2014.

Schmidt, Eberhard. Einführung in die Geschichte der deutschen Strafrechtspflege. 3rd ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965.

Interrogations in specific regions

Most studies of criminal interrogations focus on specific regions and time periods. Below are some key studies that explicitly focus on criminal interrogation in several European regions and the USA. Not included here are studies that concern specific topics with the history of interrogation, such as torture, forensic psychology, the lie detector, witch trials or emotions (see below).

Belgium and the Netherlands

Hofman, Elwin. Trials of the Self: Murder, Mayhem and the Remaking of the Mind, 1750-1830. Studies in Early Modern European History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021.

Verhoeven, Gerrit. “How to Question a Suspect Thoroughly: Legal Proceedings, Judicial Inquiry, and Interrogation at the Antwerp Vierschaar (1730-1792).” Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies 26, no. 1 (2022): 25–48.

Britain and the British Empire

Bentley, David. English Criminal Justice in the Nineteenth Century. London: Hambledon, 1998.

Oldham, James. “Truth-Telling in the Eighteenth-Century English Courtroom.” Law and History Review 12 (1994): 95–121.

Schneider, Wendie Ellen. Engines of Truth: Producing Veracity in the Victorian Courtroom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.

Wood, John Carter. “‘The Third Degree’: Press Reporting, Crime Fiction and Police Powers in 1920s Britain.” Twentieth Century British History 21, no. 4 (2010): 464–85. https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwq032.

France & the Francophone world

Blot-Maccagnan, Stéphanie. “Le lieutenant criminel, l’accusé et le greffier: l’interrogatoire au XVIIIe siècle entre injonctions doctrinales et pratiques judiciaires.” In Du lieutenant criminel au juge d’instruction: évolutions historiques et défis contemporains, edited by Stéphanie Blot-Maccagnan and Gwenaëlle Callemein, 137–52. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018.

Chauvaud, Frédéric. “La parole captive: l’interrogatoire judiciaire au XIXe siècle.” Histoire et archives 1 (1997): 33–60.

Fontana, Vincent. “L’art de la question. L’interrogatoire et le métier de juge instructeur dans la France napoléonienne (Genève, 1801-1814).” Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies 26, no. 1 (2022): 97–118.

Lorcy, Maryvonne. “Stratégie et tactique dans la procédure criminelle du XVIIIe siècle d’après les archives judiciaires bretonnes.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Université Rennes 1, 1987.

Nugues-Bourchat, Alexandre. “Le monologue judiciaire: l’accusé face au juge d’instruction.” In L’enquête judiciaire en Europe au XIXe siècle: acteurs, imaginaires, pratiques, edited by Jean-Claude Farcy, Dominique Kalifa, and Jean-Noël Luc, 161–70. Paris: Créaphis, 2007.

Plessix-Buisset, Christiane. Le criminel devant ses juges en Bretagne aux 16e et 17e siècles. Paris: Maloine, 1988.

Germany and the German-speaking world

Bruns, Silvin. “Zur Geschichte des Inquisitionsprozesses: der Beschuldigte im Verhör nach Abschaffung der Folter.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Universität Bonn, 1994.

Habermas, Rebekka. Thieves in Court: The Making of the German Legal System in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Niehaus, Michael. Mord, Geständnis, Widerruf: Verhören und Verhörtwerden um 1800. Bochum: Posth, 2006.

Ortmann, Alexandra. Machtvolle Verhandlungen: Zur Kulturgeschichte der deutschen Strafjustiz 1879–1924. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014.

Schröer, Norbert, and Michael Niehaus. “Geständnismotivierung als edukative Beziehungsarbeit.” Kriminologisches Journal 38, no. 3 (2006): 210–27.

Schumann, Antje. Verhör, Vernehmung, Befragung: Zu Geschichte und Dogmatik des Rechtsbegriffs der Vernehmung im Strafprozess und seiner Auflösung im 20. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.

Severin-Barboutie, Bettina. “Police Emotion Work in Interpersonal Homicides and Attempted Murders (1950s-1970s).” InterDisciplines: Journal of History and Sociology 6, no. 2 (2015). https://doi.org/10.4119/indi-1018.

USA

Gless, Alan G. “Self-Incrimination Privilege Development in the Nineteenth-Century Federal Courts: Questions of Procedure, Privilege, Production, Immunity and Compulsion.” The American Journal of Legal History 45, no. 4 (2001): 391–467. https://doi.org/10.2307/3185313.

Helmholz, R. H., Charles M. Gray, John H. Langbein, Eben Moglen, Henry E. Smith, and Albert W. Alschuler. The Privilege against Self-Incrimination: Its Origins and Development. Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1997.

Leo, Richard A. Police Interrogation and American Justice. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 2008.

Oliver, Wesley Macneil. “Magistrates’ Examinations, Police Interrogations, and Miranda-like Warnings in the Nineteenth Century.” Tulane Law Review 81, no. 3 (2007): 777–828.

Thomas, George Conner, and Richard A. Leo. Confessions of Guilt: From Torture to Miranda and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Specific topics

Several studies have tackled the history of criminal interrogation from specific angles. These bibliographic lists contain studies of specific topics that explicitly discuss criminal interrogations. Often, they contain relevant insights in the wider history of criminal interrogation.

Emotions and the body

Barclay, Katie. “Performing Emotion and Reading the Male Body in the Irish Court, c. 1800–1845.” Journal of Social History 51 (2017): 293–312. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shx017.

Barclay, Katie. Men on Trial: Performing Emotion, Embodiment and Identity in Ireland, 1800–45. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019.

Hofman, Elwin. “Corporeal Truth: Conscience, Fear and the Body in French Criminal Interrogations, 1750-1850.” Cultural and Social History 18, no. 1 (2021): 61–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2020.1752107.

Mülberger, Annette. “Mind Reading through Body Language in Early Spanish Criminology and Juridical Psychology.” In Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, edited by Laurens Schlicht, Carla Seemann, and Christian Kassung, 191–222. Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6.

Sabean, David Warren. “Soziale Distanzierungen: Ritualisierte Gestik in deutscher bürokratischer Prosa der Frühen Neuzeit.” Historische Anthropologie 4, no. 2 (1996): 216–33. https://doi.org/10.7788/ha.1996.4.2.216.

Schneider, Manfred. “Die Beobachtung des Zeugen nach Artikel 71 der ‘Carolina’: der Aufbau eines Codes der Glaubwürdigkeit 1532–1850.” In Geschichten der Physiognomik: Text, Bild, Wissen, edited by Rüdiger Campe and Manfred Schneider, 153–82. Freiburg: Rombach, 1996.

Vanneau, Victoria. “L’interrogatoire: Ou comment la justice pénale faisait parler les corps au xixe siècle.” In Histoire par corps: Chair, posture, charisme, edited by Christophe Granger, 21–37. Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 2012. http://books.openedition.org/pup/33845.

Forensic psychology

Becker, Peter. Dem Täter auf der Spur: eine Geschichte der Kriminalistik. Darmstadt: Primus, 2005.

Hofman, Elwin. “A Useful Science: Criminal Interrogation and the Turn to Psychology in Germany around 1800.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 58, no. 3 (2022): 319–34. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.22193.

Leclerc, Olivier. “A Critical Method for the Evaluation of Evidence: François Gorphe’s (1889-1959) Contribution to a Science of Proof à la française.” Quaestio Facti. Revista Internacional Sobre Razonamiento Probatorio, no. 2 (2021): 29–52. https://doi.org/10.33115/udg_bib/qf.i2.22389.

Mülberger, Annette. “Teaching Psychology to Jurists: Initiatives and Reactions Prior to World War I.” History of Psychology 12, no. 2 (2009): 60–86. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015993.

Ruberg, Willemijn, and Nathanje Dijkstra. “De forensische wetenschap in Nederland (1800–1930): een terreinverkenning.” Studium: Tijdschrift voor Wetenschaps- en Universiteitsgeschiedenis 9, no. 3 (2016): 121–43. https://doi.org/10.18352/studium.10132.

Schlicht, Laurens. “Reading Children’s Minds: Female Criminal Police and the Psychology of Testimony, ca. 1920-1944, the Cases of Maria Zillig and Berta Rathsam.” In Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, edited by Laurens Schlicht, Carla Seemann, and Christian Kassung, 163–89. Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6.

Schmoeckel, Mathias, ed. Psychologie als Argument in der juristischen Literatur des Kaiserreichs. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009.

Sporer, Siegfried Ludwig, and Mauro Antonelli. “Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony in Germany in the 20th Century.” History of Psychology 25, no. 2 (2022): 143–69. https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000199.

Undeutsch, Udo. Die Entwicklung der gerichtspsychologischen Gutachtertätigkeit. Göttingen: Verlag für Psychologie, 1954.

Wolffram, Heather. Forensic Psychology in Germany: Witnessing Crime, 1880-1939. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Gender, race and social status

Adler, Jeffrey S. “‘The Greatest Thrill I Get Is When I Hear a Criminal Say, “Yes, I Did It”’: Race and the Third Degree in New Orleans, 1920–1945.” Law & History Review 34, no. 1 (2016): 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1017/S073824801500067X.

Gleixner, Ulrike. “Geschlechterdifferenzen und die Faktizität des Fiktionalen. Zur Dekonstruktion frühneuzeitlicher Verhörprotokolle.” WerkstattGeschichte, no. 11 (1995): 65–70.

Hofman, Elwin. “Strategic Inequality: Social Status in French Criminal Interrogations, 1750-1850.” Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies 26, no. 1 (2022): 77–96.

Inquisition

Ciappara, Frans. “The Roman Inquisition Revisited: The Maltese Tribunal in the Eighteenth Century.” Catholic Historical Review 103 (2017): 437–64.

Martin, John Jeffries. “Tortured Testimonies.” Acta Histriae 19, no. 3 (2011): 375–92.

Sullivan, Karen. The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Lie detection, hypnosis and truth serum in interrogations

Alder, Ken. The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession. New York: The Free Press, 2007.

Bergers, Lara. “Only in America? A History of Lie Detection in the Netherlands in Comparative Perspective, ca. 1910-1980.” Master’s thesis, Utrecht University, 2018.

Bunn, Geoffrey C. The Truth Machine: A Social History of the Lie Detector. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.

Winter, Alison. “The Making of ‘Truth Serum,’ 1920-1940.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 79, no. 3 (2005): 500–533. https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2005.0136.

Winter, Alison. “The Rise and Fall of Forensic Hypnosis.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Special Issue: Forensic Cultures, 44, no. 1 (2013): 26–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2012.09.011.

Recording interrogations

Becker, Peter. “‘Recht schreiben’ – Disziplin, Sprachbeherrschung und Vernunft. Zur Kunst des Protokollierens im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert.” In Das Protokoll: Kulturelle Funktionen einer Textsorte, edited by Michael Niehaus and Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, 49–76. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005.

Cohen, Paul. “Torture and Translation in the Multilingual Courtrooms of Early Modern France.” Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 899–939.

Houte, Arnaud. “La fabrique du procès-verbal dans la France du xixe siècle: contribution à l’histoire de l’écrit administratif.” L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques. Revue électronique du CRH, no. 05 (September 17, 2009). https://doi.org/10.4000/acrh.1488.

Niehaus, Michael. “Protokollstile: Literarische Verwendungsweisen einer Textsorte.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 79, no. 4 (2005): 692–707. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374611.

Niehaus, Michael. “Wort für Wort. Zu Geschichte und Logik des Verhörprotokolls.” In Das Protokoll: Kulturelle Funktionen einer Textsorte, edited by Michael Niehaus and Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, 27–47. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005.

Roussel, Diane. “Écrire le conflit: pratiques sociales et pouvoirs de l’écrit dans les sources judiciaires à Saint-Germain-des-Prés (XVIe -XVIIe siècles).” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 172 (2014): 395–419.

Sabean, David. “Peasant Voices and Bureaucratic Texts: Narrative Structure in Early Modern German Protocols.” In Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, edited by Peter Becker and William Clark, 67–93. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan press, 2001.

Spaces and objects

Chaintrier, Pauline. “La dynamique de l’instruction criminelle au XIXe siècle: matérialité du crime et lieux d’enquêtes.” In Du lieutenant criminel au juge d’instruction: évolutions historiques et défis contemporains, edited by Stéphanie Blot-Maccagnan and Gwenaëlle Callemein, 163–72. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018.

Chauvaud, Frédéric. La chair des prétoires: histoire sensible de la cour d’assises. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

Hofman, Elwin. “Spatial Interrogations: Space and Power in French Criminal Justice, 1750-1850.” Law&history 7, no. 2 (2020): 155–81.

Wenzel, Éric. “La sellette… sur la sellette, ou les vicissitudes d’un séculaire instrument de la justice criminelle au siècle des Lumières.” In Gens de robe et gibier de potence en France du moyen âge à nos jours. Actes du colloque d’Aix-en-Provence (14-16 octobre 2004), 247–59. Marseille: Images en Manoeuvres, 2007.

Torture

Altenhain, Karsten, and Nicola Willenberg, eds. Die Geschichte der Folter seit ihrer Abschaffung. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011.

Beam, Sara. “Rites of Torture in Reformation Geneva.” Past & Present 214, no. suppl 7 (2012): 197–219.

Campagna, Norbert, Luigi Delia, and Benoît Garnot, eds. La torture, de quels droits? Une pratique de pouvoir, XVIe-XXIe siècle. Paris: Imago, 2014.

Durand, Bernard, ed. La torture judiciaire: approches historiques et judiciaires. Lille: Centre d’histoire judiciaire, 2002.

Harrington, Joel R. “Tortured Truths: The Self-Expositions of a Juvenile Career Criminal in Early Modern Nuremberg.” German History 23, no. 2 (2005): 143–71.

Langbein, John H. Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Régime. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

Peters, Edward. Torture. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.

Schmoeckel, Mathias. Humanität und Staatsraison: die Abschaffung der Folter in Europa und die Entwicklung des gemeinen Strafprozess- und Beweisrechts seit dem hohen Mittelalter. Köln: Böhlau, 2000.

Silverman, Lisa. Tortured Subjects: Pain, Truth and the Body in Early Modern France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Weitin, Thomas. “The Visibility of Torture in Nineteenth-Century Case Study Collections.” In Violence and Visibility in Modern History, edited by Jürgen Martschukat and Silvan Niedermeier, 45–56. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378699_3.

Wenzel, Éric. La torture judiciaire dans la France de l’Ancien Régime. Lumières sur la Question. Dijon: Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 2011.

Witch trials

Kounine, Laura. Imagining the Witch: Emotions, Gender, and Selfhood in Early Modern Germany. Emotions in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Krause, Virginia. Witchcraft, Demonology, and Confession in Early Modern France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Robisheaux, Thomas. “‘The Queen of Evidence’: The Witchcraft Confession in the Age of Confessionalism.” In Confessionalization in Europe, 1555-1700: Essays in Honor and Memory of Bodo Nischan, edited by John M. Headley, Hans J. Hillerbrand, and Anthony J. Papalas, 175–205. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.

Toivo, Raisa Maria, and Liv Helene Willumsen. “A Narratological Approach to Witchcraft Trial Records: Creating Experience.” Scandinavian Journal of History 47, no. 1 (2022): 39–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2021.2014953.

Source critiques and methodology

Interrogation records are, especially for the late medieval and early modern period, popular sources for social history. They provide historians with some means to access common people who could not or did not write. Yet they are also difficult sources to interpret. Several historians have therefore written methodological reflections and sources critiques. Included here are some classic studies in the field (Farge 1989, Ginzburg 1989, Davis 1987), as well as more recent interventions.

Arnold, John H. “The Historian as Inquisitor: The Ethics of Interrogating Subaltern Voices.” Rethinking History 2, no. 3 (1998): 379–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529809408974.

Carlier, Julie. “‘De wil tot weten’ en de ‘list van de leugen’. Methodologische suggesties voor de historische kritiek van gerechtelijke bronnen met het oog op de studie van seksualiteitsbeleving from below.” Belgisch tijdschrift voor nieuwste geschiedenis 38, no. 3–4 (2008): 297–322.

Davis, Nathalie Zemon. Fiction in the Archives. Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.

Dolan, Frances E. True Relations: Reading, Literature, and Evidence in Seventeenth-Century England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

Farge, Arlette. Le goût de l’archive. Paris: Seuil, 1989.

Ginzburg, Carlo. “The Inquisitor as Anthropologist.” In Clues, Myths and the Historical Method, 156–64. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

McSheffrey, Shannon. “Detective Fiction in the Archives: Court Records and the Uses of Law in Late Medieval England.” History Workshop Journal 65, no. 1 (2008): 65–78. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbm068.

Scheutz, Martin. “Scheiternde Mütter oder reulose Kindsmörderinnen? Gerichtsakten in der Frühen Neuzeit als Quelle.” In Diebe, Sodomiten und Wilderer? Waldviertler Gerichtsakten aus dem 18. Jahrhundert als Beitrag zur Sozialgeschichte, edited by Martin Scheutz and Thomas Winkelbauer, 13–58. St. Pölten: Verein für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich, 2005.

Sherwood, Jessie. “The Inquisitor as Archivist, or Surprise, Fear, and Ruthless Efficiency in the Archives.” The American Archivist 75, no. 1 (2012): 56–80. https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.75.1.a2712l7ur075j10h.

Srebnick, Amy Gilman. “Does the Representation Fit the Crime? Some Thoughts on Writing Crime History as Cultural Text.” In Crime and Culture: An Historical Perspective, edited by Amy Gilman Srebnick and René Levy, 3–19. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.

Voltmer, Rita. “The Witch in the Courtroom: Torture and the Representations of Emotion.” In Emotions in the History of Witchcraft, edited by Laura Kounine and Michael Ostling, 97–116. Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52903-9_6.