English Violence

Alan Macfarlane

• Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800 by J.M. Beattie
  Oxford, 663 pp, £48.00, April 1986, ISBN 0 19 820058 7

This is in many ways a fine study. In over six hundred pages of lucid and carefully presented material Professor Beattie has provided an exemplary analysis of the Surrey Assize and Quarter Sessions records between 1660 and 1800, as well as parallel records from the Sussex courts. It is done with subtlety and care. Concentrating on robbery, burglary, larceny, homicide, infanticide and rape, the author shows the patterns of prosecution and punishment. He is well aware of the great difficulty of using such prosecutions as a mirror of actual offences, but is able to show that such records can indeed be seen as reflecting the incidence of crime. By comparing the prosecution rates to food prices, by showing how rates correlated with periods of war and peace, by noting the similarities between Surrey and Sussex, he proves that prosecuting levels did not merely reflect anxiety and prosecuting zeal. His account of the role of the magistrates, the nature of the juries and trials, the changing nature of sentencing and pardons, the penalties and reprieves, will be of great use to all future historians of this period.