The disinclination of British judges in India to find any Englishman guilty of murdering any Indian was curiously mirrored in a recorded decline in murder charges in Victorian London. Martin Wiener proposed an ‘export’ model: the murder rate had dropped in Britain, he suggested, because ‘the most aggressive citizens were busily wreaking havoc overseas’. It helped, of course, that fatal kicking in London was handled as ‘wilful murder,’ whereas in India it would only be charged as ‘causing hurt’ or ‘committing a rash and negligent act’—provided the victim was an Indian.
