Dr Helen Rutherford

Associate Professor

School: Northumbria School of Law

I am a qualified solicitor. I graduated from Newcastle University in 1989 with an LL.B (hons) degree and then completed the Law Society Finals at the College of Law in York. I have an MA in history and a PhD in legal history from Newcastle University.

I trained as a solicitor with Hay and Kilner, in Newcastle, and on qualification worked in the litigation department handling both claimant and defendant personal injury and clinical negligence cases. After six years I moved to Crutes Law Firm (now DWF) where I conducted defendant personal injury and clinical negligence litigation on behalf of major insurance companies and the NHSLA (NHS Resolution).

I joined the University in 2012. I have a PGCE and I am a Qualified Teacher, a qualified coach, a Fellow of the Society for Education and Training, a Fellow of the HEA and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I am Programme Leader for the Law Foundation Year. I teach Civil Litigation, Legal History, and Inquests on the MLaw and LLB degrees. In previous years I managed civil firms in the Student Law Office and taught English Legal System, Tort, and Trials of Dissenters. I supervise final year archival/legal history projects.

In 2023/24 I led a new approach to legal history dissertations (a joint project with Dr Jennifer Aston from Humanities) in partnership with Tyne and Wear Archives and The National Archives. The resulting film can be seen here. I was long-listed for OUP Law Teacher of the Year.

I am a visiting scholar at Leeds Law School, Leeds Beckett University.

Campus Address

CCE 313

Email Helen

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My main research is in Legal History. My specific research passion is nineteenth century coroners and inquests. I research nineteenth century lives, trials, and punishment- with a focus on the North East of England. I am interested in legal biography, images of the law, the use of digital newspapers for research, and microhistorical inquiry.

My Phd is titled: The Coroner in an Emerging Industrial Society: John Theodore Hoyle and Newcastle upon Tyne 1857-1885.

I have completed a set of primary source books on the nineteenth century coroner for Routledge Primary Source Collections (to be published in late 2026) and researching the the use of plans and diagrams in criminal trials; the use, and misuse, of images in nineteenth century trial newspaper reporting, and early nineteenth century forensic investigation by the Newcastle police.
Coroners; lives, trials and the law in North East England; nineteenth century legal history; legal biography and images

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Courting Power: discussion and analysis of a courtroom-based art installation informed by a legal historical case study, Latchem, J., Rutherford, H. 2021, In: Law and Humanities
Execution Culture in Nineteenth Century Britain: From Public Spectacle to Hidden Ritual, Low, P., Rutherford, H., Sandford-Couch, C. 30 Nov 2020
“13 yards off the big gate and 37 yards up the West Walls”: Crime scene investigation in mid-nineteenth century Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Rutherford, H., Sandford-Couch, C. 23 Dec 2019, Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from 1850, Palgrave Macmillan
Joseph Bouet in the Durham Criminal Court (c.1825-1856): Picturing Nineteenth Century Courtroom Actors. Part 1: Lines of Enquiry, Rutherford, H., Sandford-Couch, C. 3 Jul 2023, In: Law and Humanities
The Coroner and the Medical Profession in Victorian Newcastle Upon Tyne ‘… Antagonism and Offence Towards the Medical Profession Such as has Rarely Been Exhibited.’, Rutherford, H. Jul 2023, In: Northern History
'All That They Had Heard, All That They Had Seen': Questions of Fairness and Justice in the Trial of George Vass, Rutherford, H., Sandford-Couch, C. 12 Nov 2020, Fair and Unfair Trials in the British Isles, 1800-1940: , London, Bloomsbury
English Legal System, Rutherford, H., Kotecha, B., Macfarlane, A. 16 May 2024
Joseph Bouet in the Durham Criminal Court (c.1825-1856): Picturing Nineteenth Century Courtroom Actors. Part 2: Three Case Studies, Rutherford, H., Sandford-Couch, C. Jul 2023, In: Law and Humanities
The Legal Legacy of Jack the Ripper, Griffiths, C., Rutherford, H. 17 Dec 2025, The Routledge Handbook of Jack the Ripper Studies, Abingdon, Routledge
The Geography of Justice: How ‘Local Peculiarities’ Shaped Legal Precedent in Regina v Bolam (1839), Rutherford, H., Sandford-Couch, C. 9 Apr 2026, In: Journal of Legal History

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invited talk: Newcastle Prison A History 1828-1925 (Lit and Phil Open Day Event) 2026
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: Sources in Legal History 2026
Invited talk: Newcastle Prison – a history 1828 – 1925 2026
Invited talk: Newcastle Prison and Women 2026
Other: Exhibition Women Behind Bars: Life in Newcastle Prison, 1828-1925 2026
Invited talk: Newcastle Prison. Stories 1828-1925 2026
Invited talk: Launch Event Women Behind Bars: Life in Newcastle Prison, 1828–1925 2026
Other: Cultured North East Cells, silence and suffragettes 2026
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Postwar years: Feminism and Law from 1945 to 1970. 2026
Invited talk: Books on Tyne: Newcastle Book Festival. Newcastle Prison: A History 1828 – 1925 2025

PGR Supervision

Gustavo Romano-Jackson The stories we tell ourselves - Leading the legal function in a global company Producing an autoethnography in a world of confidentiality and legal privilege Start Date: 06/05/2021

Further Information

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; a member of the Seldon Society, the Society of Legal Scholars, the Social History Society, the Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies, the British Association for Victorian Studies and Newcastle upon Tyne Law Society.

I was co-convenor of the Law and Humanities Research Interest Group.

This is now part of the Law and Society Research group.

I carried out research for the TwentyTwenty/BBC TV programme A House Through Time for both the Newcastle and the Leeds episodes.

I am an external examiner at St Mary's University and York St John University.

I co-convened the International Seminar Series (organised jointly with the Max Planck Institute for Legal History, Leeds Beckett University and York University- supported by the SLS) Through a Legal Lens- Law, History and Visual Culture. 26 May to 23 June 2022. Full details: Through a Legal Lens

I am a researcher for the Newcastle Gaol Project (led by Dr Shane McCorristine of Newcastle University). The project includes a website, a public exhibition and public lectures. A book, Newcastle Prison. A History 1828 - 1925 was published by Tyne Bridge Publishing on 4 August 2025 .

I am on the steering committee for the British Crime Historians Symposium (to be held in Oxford in September 2026) and a co-convenor of the History and Law Seminar series for the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Law and Humanities Hub (seminars to begin in Autumn 2026).

Qualifications