Crime and economies of makeshift : experiences of poverty in the Old Bailey, 1750-1799
The labouring poor of eighteenth-century London adopted many strategies to meet their material needs. These economies of makeshift included parish relief, begging, borrowing, kinship support, and sometimes crime. Property crime has long been linked to poverty, but little is known about the strength, or the extent, of the relationship and how people used theft as part of their makeshift economies and why they resorted to it. To better understand the relationship between crime and poverty, and how that relationship worked, this dissertation examines the experiences of defendants who were tried at the Old Bailey between January 1750 and December 1799. Investigating individual experiences enables this dissertation to analyse causal links between prosecutions and poverty through defendants' own words and explanations, as well as those explanations of other court actors who were involved in the trials. By combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies, using digital techniques, and building upon the research and insights of linguistic scholars and historians of both crime and the labouring poor, this study investigates the human narratives behind the crime statistics in London. Exploring the narratives found
Huggins, L. E.
Crime and economies of makeshift : experiences of poverty in the Old Bailey, 1750-1799. The labouring poor of eighteenth-century London adopted many strategies to meet their material needs. These economies of makeshift included parish relief, begging, borrowing, kinship support, and sometimes crime. Property crime has long been linked to poverty, but little is known about the strength, or the extent, of the relationship and how people used theft as part of their makeshift economies and why they resorted to it. To better understand the relationship between crime and poverty, and how that relationship worked, this dissertation examines the experiences of defendants who were tried at the Old Bailey between January 1750 and December 1799. Investigating individual experiences enables this dissertation to analyse causal links between prosecutions and poverty through defendants' own words and explanations, as well as those explanations of other court actors who were involved in the trials. By combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies, using digital techniques, and building upon the research and insights of linguistic scholars and historians of both crime and the labouring poor, this study investigates the human narratives behind the crime statistics in London. Exploring the narratives found
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