Between Leniency and Severity. Family Life and Criminal Behaviours at the Court of Assize of Venice, 1871-1898

This article focuses on family crimes in Venice and the surrounding territory in the late nineteenth century. It investigates how juries judged criminal behaviours committed in the intimate world of domestic life, with special attention to murder trials, infanticide cases, incestuous relationships and sexual offences. The Giudecca section of the Venetian State Archive preserves the judicial records of the proceedings held at the court of Assize of Venice from 1871 to 1898, bringing to light fragments of human stories, to date almost completely ignored by research. Jurors’ deliberations in this kind of situations move from leniency to severity depending on the circumstances of the case, leading sometimes to unexpected results.