How a photograph from Wagga changed British law

The Humanities Research Centre presents a free public seminar on the celebrated Tichborne legal affair (1867-1874).

The case centred on a butcher from Wagga Wagga, Australia, who claimed to be the long-lost baronet, heir to an English estate.  His trial in London to claim his inheritance became the longest legal proceeding in Britain during the nineteenth century, with his supporters spearheading the largest national mass democratic movement of its time. 

Professor Jennifer Tucker reveals a little-known aspect of the Tichborne affair: its significance as a landmark in the emergence of nineteenth-century visual culture and modern evidence law.

Professor Tucker is a professor of history and science in society at Wesleyan University in Connecticut (USA), where she also is affiliated to the gender studies program and the College of the Environment. At the HRC in spring 2015, she will work on a new book project, “Science Against Industry: Photographic Technologies and the Visual Politics of Pollution Reform," which explores historical and contemporary uses of visual exhibits in legal debates over air and river pollution.