The London hanged : crime and civil society in the eighteenth century / Peter Linebaugh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Linebaugh, Peter.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capital punishment--England--London--History--18th century.

Capital punishment.

Social control--England--London--History--18th century.

Social control.

History.

England--London.

Physical Description:

xxix, 492 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Verso, 2003.

Summary:

Peter Linebaugh's groundbreaking history has become an inescapable part of any understanding of the rise of capitalism. In eighteenth-century London the spectacle of a hanging was not simply a form of punishing transgressors. Rather it evidently served the more sinister purpose -- for a privileged ruling class -- of forcing the poor population of London to accept the criminalization of customary rights and new forms of private property. Necessity drove the city's poor into inevitable conflict with the changing property laws such that all the working-class men and women of London had good reason to fear the example of Tyburn's triple tree.

In this new edition Peter Linebaugh reinforces his original arguments with responses to his critics based on an impressive array of historical sources. As the trend of capital punishment intensifies with the spread of global capitalism, The London Hanged also gains in contemporary relevance.

Contents:

Part 1 Pandaemonium and Finance Capitalism, 1690-1720

Chapter 1 'The Common Discourse of the Whole Nation': Jack Sheppard and the Art of Escape 7

Chapter 2 'Old Mr Gory' and the Thanatocracy 42

Chapter 3 Tyburnography: The Sociology of the Condemned 74

Part 2 The Pedagogy of the Gallows under Mercantilism, 1720-50

Chapter 4 The Picaresque Proletariat During the Robinocracy 119

Chapter 5 Socking, the Hogshead and Excise 153

Chapter 6 'Going Upon the Accompt': Highway Robbery under the Reigns of the Georges 184

Part 3 Industry and Idleness in the Period of Manufacture, 1750-76

Chapter 7 The Cat Likes Cream: The Waging Hand in Five Trades 225

Chapter 8 Silk Makes the Difference 256

Chapter 9 If You Plead for Your Life, Plead in Irish 288

Part 4 The Crisis of Thanatocracy in the Era of Revolution, 1776-1800

Chapter 10 The Delivery of Newgate, 6 June 1780 333

Chapter 11 Ships and Chips: Technological Repression and the Origin of the Wage 371

Chapter 12 Sugar and Police: The London Working Class in the 1790s 402.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Previous ed.: London: Penguin, 1991.

ISBN:

1859846386

OCLC:

50876197