Spring 2005

History 407/507 Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England

Few areas of social history have attracted as much interest, in recent years, as the study of crime and punishment. No doubt this interest is explained in part by the richness of the records that survive. There are few other sources that provide us with such a detailed look at the lives of the poorest in society. But the study of justice has much more to reveal about past societies. It tells us, for instance, about the capacity of the state to impose order upon its various ranks. The government also employed the law to gain legitimacy in the eyes of its subjects. Of course these claims were not always successful. Legal records enable us to trace out the conflicts that marked social relations. They also permit us to examine in detail how different classes used the law to secure their own ends. It is these varied faces of justice – of conflict and negotiation, of repression and cooperation - that make the study of the law so interesting to historians.

In our class discussions and common readings we will examine the general themes and broad theoretical questions that have shaped recent scholarship on crime and punishment in early modern England. But the main focus of the term is to provide students with an experience of “doing” history. Each member of the seminar will select a paper topic from the list provided below or in consultation with the professor. S/he will write a 15-20 page paper based in part on an examination of original sources. The University of Oregon library contains a wide variety of such materials – Parliamentary debates, eighteenth-century periodicals, diaries, microfilm of provincial newspapers as well as a complete set of the Old Bailey Sessions Papers (reports of criminal trials in London). In addition, these criminal reports are now online at www.oldbaileyonline.org. The Law Library also possesses volumes that may be of use to you. Your paper must involve a significant amount of research in these sources. Because you only have ten weeks in which to produce a paper, I will be monitoring your progress carefully. You should plan on choosing a topic for your paper by Jan. 20, and you should hand in an outline of your essay by Jan. 27 (2 pages and a bibliography). During the week of February 24 I will meet with each of you individually to discuss a preliminary draft of your paper. We will devote the last class of the term to a discussion of the major issues raised during the term, and each student will be expected to come prepared to participate in the discussion with examples drawn from his or her own project. At all times students are expected to join in class discussions. More than one absence from seminar will result in the loss of a full letter grade.

Required Readings:

Douglas Hay & Nicholas Rogers, Eighteenth-Century English Society
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900

Several works dealing with crime and law in eighteenth-century England are on reserve in the library. Most important of these is John Beattie’s, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800.

Schedule of readings and discussions:

All papers are due by noon, June 8.

Possible paper topics:

the police in eighteenth-century England
patterns of crime in London or a provincial town
the operation of the Game laws
a study of a specific crime (arson, forgery, horse theft, etc.)
debates over prisons or the death penalty
the influence of gender on punishment
gender differences in the criminal statistics
analysis of goods stolen in a particular period
the treatment of sexual offenses in the eighteenth century
the character and incidence of violent offenses during the century
the identity of the accused
poverty and crime
the character of the transportation regime