This four volume collection looks at the essential issues concerning crime and punishment in the long nineteenth-century. Through the presentation of primary source documents, it explores the development of a modern pattern of crime and a modern system of penal policy and practice, illustrating the shift from eighteenth century patterns of crime (including the clash between rural custom and law) and punishment (unsystematic, selective, public, and body-centred) to nineteenth century patterns of crime (urban, increasing, and a metaphor for social instability and moral decay, before a remarkable late-century crime decline) and punishment (reform-minded, soul-centred, penetrative, uniform and private in application). The first two volumes focus on crime itself and illustrate the role of the criminal courts, the rise and fall of crime, the causes of crime as understood by contemporary investigators, the police ways of ‘knowing the criminal,’ the role of ‘moral panics,’ and the definition of the ‘criminal classes’ and ‘habitual offenders’. The final two volumes explore means of punishment and look at the shift from public and bodily punishments to transportation, the rise of the penitentiary, the convict prison system, and the late-century decline in the prison population and loss of faith in the prison.

This study, first published in 1982, is concerned with the nature of crime in nineteenth-century Britain, and explores the response of the community and the police authorities. Each chapter is linked by common themes and questions, and the topics described in detail range from popular forms of rural crime and protest, through crime in industrial and urban communities, to a study of the vagrant. The author pays special attention to the relationship between illegal activities and protest, and emphasizes the context and complexity of official crime rates and of many forms of criminal behaviour. This title will be of interest to students of history and criminology.

This edited collection offers multi-disciplinary reflections and analysis on a variety of themes centred on nineteenth century executions in the UK, many specifically related to the fundamental change in capital punishment culture as the execution moved from the public arena to behind the prison wall. By examining a period of dramatic change in punishment practice, this collection of essays provides a fresh historical perspective on nineteenth century execution culture, with a focus on Scotland, Wales and the regions of England. From Public Spectacle to Hidden Ritual has two parts. Part 1 addresses the criminal body and the witnessing of executions in the nineteenth century, including studies of the execution crowd and executioners’ memoirs, as well as reflections on the experience of narratives around capital punishment in museums in the present day. Part 2 explores the treatment of the execution experience in the print media, from the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The collection draws together contributions from the fields of Heritage and Museum Studies, History, Law, Legal History and Literary Studies, to shed new light on execution culture in nineteenth century Britain. This volume will be of interest to students and academics in the fields of criminology, heritage and museum studies, history, law, legal history, medical humanities and socio-legal studies.

This book illuminates the origins and development of violence as a social issue by examining a critical period in the evolution of attitudes towards violence. It explores the meaning of violence through an accessible mixture of detailed empirical research and a broad survey of cutting-edge historical theory. The author discusses topics such as street fighting, policing, sports, community discipline and domestic violence and shows how the nineteenth century established enduring patterns in views of violence. Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers of modern British history, social and cultural history and criminology.

In the years between 1750 and 1868, English criminal justice underwent significant changes. The two most crucial developments were the gradual establishment of an organised, regular police, and the emergence of new secondary punishments, following the restriction in the scope of the death penalty. In place of an ill-paid parish constabulary, functioning largely through a system of rewards and common informers, professional police institutions were given the task of executing a speedy and systematic enforcement of the criminal law. In lieu of the severe and capriciously-administered capital laws, a penalty structure based on a proportionality between the gravity of crimes and the severity of punishments was erected as arguably a more effective deterrent of crime. This book, first published in 1981, examines the impact of these two important developments and casts new light on the way in which law enforcement evolved during the nineteenth century. This title will be of interest to students of history and criminology.

Exam board: Eduqas Level: GCSE Subject: History First teaching: September 2016 First exams: June 2018 Endorsed by Eduqas Help every student to achieve their best, with bespoke support for Eduqas GCSE History from the leading History publisher for secondary schools. Structured around the key questions in the 2016 specification, this book:

Consisting of 28 articles, this comprehensive reference work on the study of crime, examines: its causes, effects, trends, and institutions, current philosophies of punishment and ways of controlling crime.

Writing British Infanticide tracks the ways that the circulation of narratives of child-murder in eighteenth- and nineteenth century Britain shaped perceptions and punishments of the crime and, more elusively, hierarchies of class and gender. The essays brought together in this volume pose the question: How are we to understand the proliferation of writing about child-murder in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, the overlap of an expanding print culture with the widely evident narration of this particular crime? Further, what are we to make of the recurrent and remarkably consistent representation of child-murder as the special province of unmarried, desparate women? Focussing on specific instances of the transformative effect of the circulation of narratives of child-murder, 'Writing British Infanticide' takes as its purview not child-murder per se but the ways that writing about its credentialed and differentiated writers in different, but often overlapping, genres and moments in a key period in the expansion of print. Jennifer Thorn is an Assistant Professor of English at Duke University.

Writing the History of Crime investigates the development of historical writing on the subject of crime and its wider place in social and cultural history. It examines long-standing and emerging traditions in history writing, with separate chapters on legal and scientific approaches, as well as on urban, Marxist, gender and empire history. Each chapter then explores these historical approaches in relation to crime, paying particular attention to the relationship between theory and the interpretation of evidence. Rather than a timeline for the historical appearance of ideas about crime or a catalogue of the range of topics that comprise the subject matter, Writing the History of Crime reveals the ideas behind crime as a subject of historical investigation; it looks at how these ideas generate questions that may be asked about the past and the way in which these questions are answered. This is a crucial analysis for anyone interested in the history of crime, the historiography of social history or the art of history writing more broadly.