Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, C.1660-1725The law was one of the most potent sources of authority and stability in early modern England. Historians, however, have argued over whether the discretion and flexibility embodied in the judicial system was used as a method of social control, and by focusing their attention on felonies and on the action of the protagonists in judicial decisions they have tended to ignore rich sources of information concerning attitudes towards and experiences of the law. Misdemeanour prosecutions affected many more people (and a broader social variety of participants) than felony prosecutions, and in their choice of methods of prosecution both victims and Justices of the Peace exercised considerably greater flexibility in responding to petty crimes than they did with felonies. This book examines the day-to-day operation of the criminal justice system in Middlesex from the point of view of plaintiffs and defendants, and offers an assessment of the social significance of the law in pre-industrial England. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 3 |
OPTIONS FOR PROSECUTION | 19 |
PATTERNS OF PROSECUTIONS | 42 |
INFORMAL MEDIATION BY JUSTICES OF THE PEACE | 81 |
INDICTMENT AT QUARTER SESSIONS | 127 |
HOUSES OF CORRECTION | 166 |
PLAINTIFFS DEFENDANTS | 201 |
Other editions - View all
Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural ... Robert B. Shoemaker No preview available - 2008 |
Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural ... Robert B. Shoemaker No preview available - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
active justices appear in court assault bawdy houses Beattie behavior City of London Clerkenwell committed to houses Common Peace complaints constables conventicles correction calendars Covent Garden crime criminal defendants accused discharged disputes early eighteenth century east end England evidence felonies female frequently gaming houses grand jury guilty house of correction idle and disorderly informal mediation informal settlements John judicial King's Bench large number lewd manners campaign metropolis Middlesex and Westminster Middlesex justices Middlesex sessions misdemeanors nightwalkers Notebook offences prosecuted peace persons Peter King petty sessions plaintiffs poor prisoners procedure prosecuted by indictment prosecuted by recognizance prosecution rates prosecutors prostitution punishment quarter sessions recognizances and indictments recognizances issued reformation of manners regulatory offences rural sample seventeenth seventeenth-century social societies status suggests summary convictions Table theft trading justices urban Middlesex vagrancy vice victimless offences warrants west end Westminster house Westminster sessions William women zances
Popular passages
Page 337 - Hall to the Societies for Reformation of Manners in the Cities of London and Westminster, on Monday, June 28, 1714.