Helen Rutherford

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.

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.

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).

Coroners; lives, trials and the law in North East England; nineteenth century legal history; legal biography and images