The execution narrative was a popular genre in early modern England. This facsimile edition draws together a representative selection of texts to show the evolution of the genre from the late sixteenth century to the end of public execution in England nearly 300 years later.

The execution narrative was a popular genre in early modern England. This facsimile edition draws together a representative selection of texts to show the evolution of the genre from the late sixteenth century to the end of public execution in England nearly 300 years later.

The execution narrative was a popular genre in early modern England. This facsimile edition draws together a representative selection of texts to show the evolution of the genre from the late sixteenth century to the end of public execution in England nearly 300 years later.

The execution narrative was a popular genre in early modern England. This facsimile edition draws together a representative selection of texts to show the evolution of the genre from the late sixteenth century to the end of public execution in England nearly 300 years later.

Crime in England 1688-1815 covers the ‘long’ eighteenth century, a period which saw huge and far-reaching changes in criminal justice history. These changes included the introduction of transportation overseas as an alternative to the death penalty, the growth of the magistracy, the birth of professional policing, increasingly harsh sentencing of those who offended against property-owners and the rapid expansion of the popular press, which fuelled debate and interest in all matters criminal. Utilising both primary and secondary source material, this book discusses a number of topics such as punishment, detection of offenders, gender and the criminal justice system and crime in contemporaneous popular culture and literature. This book is designed for both the criminal justice history/criminology undergraduate and the general reader, with a lively and immediately approachable style. The use of carefully selected case studies is designed to show how the study of criminal justice history can be used to illuminate modern-day criminological debate and discourse. It includes a brief review of past and current literature on the topic of crime in eighteenth-century England and Wales, and also emphasises why knowledge of the history of crime and criminal justice is important to present-day criminologists. Together with its companion volumes, it will provide an invaluable aid to both students of criminal justice history and criminology.

This volume uses four case studies, all with strong London connections, to analyze homicide law and the pardoning process in eighteenth-century England. Each reveals evidence of how attempts were made to negotiate a path through the justice system to avoid conviction, and so avoid a sentence of hanging. This approach allows a deep examination of the workings of the justice system using social and cultural history methodologies. The cases explore wider areas of social and cultural history in the period, such as the role of policing agents, attitudes towards sexuality and prostitution, press reporting, and popular conceptions of "honorable" behavior. They also allow an engagement with what has been identified as the gradual erosion of individual agency within the law, and the concomitant rise of the state. Investigating the nature of the pardoning process shows how important it was to have "friends in high places," and also uncovers ways in which the legal system was susceptible to accusations of corruption. Readers will find an illuminating view of eighteenth-century London through a legal lens.

Royer examines the changing ritual of execution across five centuries and discovers a shift both in practice and in the message that was sent to the population at large. She argues that what began as a show of retribution and revenge became a ceremonial portrayal of redemption as the political, religious and cultural landscape of England evolved.