London's Criminal Underworlds, c. 1720 - c. 1930 A Social and Cultural History

by Shore, Heather

• ISBN13: 9780230304048
• ISBN10: 0230304044
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-03-20
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book offers an original analysis of the concept of the criminal underworld, breaking new ground with a sustained exploration of the idea of the underworld from the early eighteenth century. The evolution of print culture, the development of policing and law enforcement strategies, the relationships between overlapping networks, and considerations of urban space and territory, inform a series of chapters drawing on concerns about crime in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The core of the book consists of three detailed case studies that present reconstructions of historical criminal lives. These are complimented by chapters that draw on a broad range of primary source materials to focus on themes such as robbery, pickpocketing, swindling, street crime, youth gangs and gangsters. This book explores the 'criminal underworld' as both a social and cultural concept, and considers the evolving narrative of the underworld alongside the lives of plebeian and working-class Londoners who encountered the criminal justice system as offenders, victims and witnesses.

Author Biography

Heather Shore is a Reader in History at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. She is the author of Artful Dodgers: Youth and Crime in Early Nineteenth Century London (1999) and has co-edited two books, with Pamela Cox, Becoming Delinquent: British and European Youth, 1650 – 1950 (2002) and with Tim Hitchcock, The Streets of London: From the Great Fire to the Great Exhibition (2002).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. 'Now we have the informing Dogs!': Crime Networks and Informing Cultures in the 1720s and 1730s
3. 'A Noted Virago': Moll Harvey and her 'Dangerous Crew', 1727 – 1738
4. 'The pickpockets and hustlers had yesterday what is called a Grand Day': Changing Street Theft, c. 1800 – 1850
5. 'There goes Bill Sheen, the murderer': Crime, Kinship and Community in East London, 1827 – 1852
6. 'A new species of swindling': Coiners, Fraudsters, Swindlers and the 'Long-Firm', c. 1760 – 1913
7. 'A London Plague that must be swept away': Hooligans and Street Fighting Gangs, c. 1882 – 1912
8. 'The Terror of the People': Organised Crime in Interwar London
9. Conclusion