British Criminal and Legal History Top Ten Booklist
Top Ten
1. Cox, David and Barry Godfrey. Policing the Factory: Theft, Private Policing and Law in Modern England (Bloomsbury, 2014). Much of British criminal history focuses on victims and offenders before various courts of law. Cox and Godfrey bring to light a variety of workplace thefts and discuss how the law operated within the private work force. They build upon rich sources that include newspaper comments, case studies, memoirs, and archival statistics. Cox and Godfrey also analyze what these localized legal encounters meant for citizens in a modern England.
2. D’Cruz, Shani and Louise Jackson. Women, Crime and Justice in England Since 1660 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
3. Emsley, Clive. Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900 (Pearson Longman, 2010)
4. Gray, Drew D. Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660-1914 (Bloomsbury Acadmic, 2016)
5. Kilday, Anne-Marie and David Nash. Histories of Crime: Britain 1600-2000 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
6. King, Peter. Crime, Justice, and Discretion in England, 1740-1820 (Oxford University Press, 2000) Since King is such a prolific historian in this field, we chose one of his works that contributes to social criminal history. By focusing on a somewhat narrow time period, King is able to give detailed descriptions of trail experiences from pretrial processes to sentencing and punishment. Although he is a social historian, King downplays the importance of women in the courtroom.
7. Lemmings, David, ed. Crime, Courtrooms and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1700-1850 (Routledge, 2012)
8. McGowen, Randall. The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd: Forgery and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century London (University of California Press, 2001)
9. Palk, Dierdre. Gender, Crime and Judicial Discretion, 1780-1830 (Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 2006) Palk has completed some of the more recent work on gender and the law. Her study highlights three main types of theft (shopliftin, pickpocketing, and uttering, or forgery). Palk does a good job of comparing the treatment and experience between male and female offenders. She largely focuses on defendants before the court, rather than their victims.
10. Ward, Richard. Print Culture, Crime and Justice in 18th-Century London (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) It's understood court records and accounts became more detailed Admin, Jgibson and EricLambrecht