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The Moors Murders: The Media, Cultural Representations ofIan Brady,Myra Hindley, and the

by Ian Thomas Field

Institution: University of Manchester
Year: 2016
Keywords: Murder; Manchester; 1960s; post-war; Moral and cultural change; Ian Brady; Myra Hindley; Moors Murders; English landscape
Posted: 02/05/2017
Record ID: 2135499
Full text PDF: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/escholar/uk-ac-man-scw:300332


Abstract

On 6 May 1966 the ‘Trial of the Century’ came to an end. Chester Assizes court convictedIan Brady and Myra Hindley for the murders of 12-year-old John Kilbride, 10-year-oldLesley Ann Downey, and 17-year-old Edward Evans. The court found Brady guilty on allthree murder charges and sentenced him to three concurrent life sentences. Hindleyreceived two life sentences for the murders of Downey and Evans, and a further sevenyears for being an after-the-fact accomplice in Brady’s murder of Kilbride. Following thedescription already given to the police investigation and trial, the newspapers gave Bradyand Hindley the infamous label of the ‘Moors Murderers’ straight after the trial. TheMoors murders have become a part of British folklore since the 1960s, but the case itselfhas hitherto received surprisingly little attention from academic historians.Following Martin Wiener’s injunction for historians to pay closer attention to murderstories, this doctoral thesis presents a cultural history of the Moors murders case. My studyanalyses the courtroom arguments, media coverage and post-trial books about the case, tointerrogate broader themes of moral and cultural change in 1960s Britain. My thesisemphasises the multi-vocal nature of representations of both the case and the murderers inorder to challenge the linear and progressive historiographies of the 1960s, associated inparticular with Arthur Marwick.The thesis examines four major facets of the Moors murders story, dedicating a chapter toeach.The first chapter explores how the news media (primarily the press, but also broadcastmedia) negotiated the story. The first detailed empirical analysis of newspaper coverage ofthe case reveals the limitations of studies structured primarily around social class. Thethesis follows Stuart Hall and A.C.H Smith in arguing that analyses of the press should notbe reduced to a simple differentiation between popular, middle-brow and high-brow butshould instead consider the ‘personalities’ of each publication and the moral relationshipsconstructed with readers . Furthermore, the chapter engages with Adrian Bingham’s recentargument about the moral politics of the press, exploring his assertion that the popularpress balanced commercial profits alongside a commitment to maintain their reputation as‘family newspapers’. The chapter argues that content of the press coverage of the Moorsmurders case generated far greater concerns than the suspect practices of journalists.Chapters two and three focus in turn on the diverse representations of Ian Brady and MyraHindley. Commentators debated the origins of the evil behind the murders, with somehighlighting his illegitimacy, others his reading of ‘dangerous’ books, the writings of theMarquis de Sade especially. Hindley’s role was hotly contested: most commentatorsemphasised how she had changed under Brady’s influence, but disagreed over the extent ofher own involvement in the murders. The thesis reveals for the first time how images ofNazi Germany shadowed the case. The thesis thus contributes to historical… Advisors/Committee Members: MORT, FRANK FC, Jones, Max, Mort, Frank.

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