A Research Note
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
The primary reasons for understanding homicide in the past are the same as for the present, and in fact most present studies use some comparisons over time. Because homicide varies across time and over political territories, we know that it is not an invariant human phenomenon. For social historians, homicide is also important because in both coroners and newspaper accounts we catch fascinating snatches of everyday life. Through its incidence and the records generated around the events we are able to explore otherwise hard-to-see aspects of our past.