Crime and Poverty in Eighteenth-Century London
Crime and Poverty in Eighteenth-Century London
This research paper asks you to dig into sources that reveal the criminal culture of London in the late seventeenth into the eighteenth century. An online database of all the criminal trials in London from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries allows you to see for yourself the voices of the criminal poor and the legal consequences of their actions. Using the resources on the “Old Bailey” website, you must write a paper on the history of the interconnections between poverty and crime in 18th century London. The historian Peter Linebaugh undertook a massive study of the large numbers of people executed by hanging throughout the eighteenth century in London to understand the social, political, and economic factors that produced those criminals. John Gay wrote an ‘opera’ about London’s poor and their criminality. These works will become your ‘secondary source’, providing you with the context for the issues and practices related to the persecution of criminals in 17th and 18th century London. In this paper, you may: Develop an analysis of one type or group of crime. The Old Bailey includes listings of the range of crimes available to you. You could pick individual ones or consider groupings, such as women’s crimes, crimes that are directly associated with poverty (such as begging, not paying debts, being a vagabond, being ‘Egyptian’ aka Roma or Sinti) Look behind the records to uncover the subcultures of London criminals (and the poor in general). Possible topics could include looking at crowds and mobs, uncovering rowdy tavern/brothel life, raucous storytelling and insults, the everyday-ness of violence and fighting, youth culture, gender relations…) or Analyze the interactions between the criminal poor and the authorities. Here you could consider some of the policing, legal, or punishment practices and what they reflect, or how criminals behaved as they went through the system such as the practice of confessions and repenting for crimes, or how crimes reflect the lower class’s problematic relationship to authorities (all the way up to the king), or how laws or the justice system could be seen as contributing to or even creating some aspects of criminality in London, or consider some of the effective means of control or the successful displays of power as seen through the records. Basic Requirements for Paper: 7 page paper, complete with footnotes and bibliography (in Chicago Style format) using substantial historical supports from Linebaugh and contemporary commentary by Gay, but based primarily on your evidence and analysis from a minimum of fifteen cases from the Old Bailey. You may also use the background essays on the Old Bailey website, but the focus should be on the evidence from the primary sources themselves. Primary source: http://oldbaileyonline.org/ Secondary source: John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged
