Crime and Law in England, 1750–1840

Peter King is Professor of History at the Open University, Milton Keynes. His previous publications include Crime, Justice and Discretion, Law and Social Relations in England 1740-1820 (2000).

Introduction; 1. Shaping and remaking justice from the margins: the courts, the law and patterns of lawbreaking 1750–1840; Part I. Juveniles: 2. The rise of juvenile delinquency in England 1780–1840: changing patterns of perception and prosecution; 3. The punishment of juvenile offenders in the English Courts 1780–1830: changing attitudes and policies; 4. The making of the reformatory: the development of informal reformatory sentences for juvenile offenders 1780–1830; Part II. Gender: 5. Female offenders, work and lifecycle change in late eighteenth-century London; 6. Gender, crime and justice in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century England; 7. Gender and recorded crime. The impact of female offenders in England and Wales 1750–1850; Part III. Non-Lethal Violence: 8. Punishing assault: the transformation of attitudes in the English courts; 9. Changing attitudes to violence in the Cornish courts 1730–1830; Part IV. The Attack on Customary Rights: 10. Customary right and women's earnings: the importance of gleaning to the rural labouring poor 1750–1850; 11. Legal change, customary right and social conflict in late eighteenth-century England: the origins of the great gleaning case of 1788; 12. Gleaners, farmers and the failure of legal sanctions in England 1750–1850.