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Janet Denzel
The song itself has been studied by academics and amateur music fans alike with the lyrics in particular being debated as being a metaphor for the complicated life of the front man to just a made up drama to fit the unusual composition of the music.
So given that the song, at least on the face of it, sounds like a man admitting to murder and his consequential hand wringing over his crime and his fate we naturally turn to looking at crime and criminal law. So far not very festive, we will try our best later we promise!
Of course given the vastness of the subject we could do a whole series on the resources we have on criminal law. But given that this could take up a lot of space and time we will refer you instead to our Criminal Law & Justice Guide .
If you are looking for historical proceedings (whether looking for inspiration for your hit single or for more academic purposes) then you may be interested to know that there is a fully searchable digitized database of Old Bailey proceedings from 1674-1913. The search interface is quite useful with the ability to search by keyword, by name or offence/punishment.
Crime (especially murder) and notorious criminals seem to inspire many a successful songwriter (see the many songs about Jesse James, Dick Turpin and even Delilah by Tom Jones) and so if you were looking for material to write about this may be your database. However a search for Bohemian comes up with 8 cases, 3 to do with theft, then the rest to do with libel, forgery, deception, fraud and arson. A search for rhapsody comes back with no results and so even if the database was around when Freddie Mercury wrote the song it seems unlikely that he used it to inspire the title.
What is the connection between the Human Rights Act 1998, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and Tom Jones? NO, this is not to do with changes in the law since novelist Henry Fielding worked as a magistrate among the criminalized poor of eighteenth century London, nor is it to do with the rights and wrongs of throwing your underwear at your favourite singer. This is to do with a Number One Christmas hit, the Green Green Grass of Home, and the abolition of the death penalty.
And how does what happened in the 1960s connect with two acts of Parliament in 1998? After 1969, the death penalty still remained a sentencing option in convictions for high treason and piracy with violence, and was only finally removed on 30 September 1998 by s.36 of the Crime and Disorder Act. This was necessary because the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights into British domestic law, and Protocol 13 of the Convention bans the death penalty in all circumstances, including for crimes committed in times of war and imminent threat of war.
Perhaps this is a good time to remind you that research students at the Law Faculty may subscribe to the Social Science Research Network subject matter ejournals. Essentially this is an email notification of the most recently posted papers on SSRN on a particular subject. To subscribe please email me on Nicola....@bodleian.ox.ac.uk and I will add you to our list of subscribers. You will then receive an email directly from the SSRN with further instructions.
As I started to research this post, I began to think that the law connected to Elvis was such a big topic that it really deserved its own website, and then I found this: Preslaw, a collection of documents and cases covering several areas of law, gathered by US lawyer and fan (I assume!) Ian Feavearyear.
However, so far as we are aware, Ernie only carried groceries: the lyrics refer to milk of various types and a strawberry-flavoured yogurt. It also seems unlikely that he was operating in 1971 as electric milk floats have been in existence since the 1930s and would have been ubiquitous well before the 1970s. The Transport Museum, Wythall believes it has the finest collection of restored battery electric vehicles in the world and provides some examples you can look at here (click on the magnifying glasses for photographs). Keith Roberts was an employee of Morrison-Electricar and his book on the history of electric vehicles is available at the British Library here, or you can read an overview here.
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