Crime, Class, and Society in Eighteenth-Century England

The eighteenth century is often thought of as the century that modernized Europe. The development and sophistication of global markets sent goods and ideas swirling around the world at unprecedented speeds. In Britain, the intellectual and philosophical writings of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes eroded and chipped away at the anachronistic elements of British society that had fallen into obsoletion. The tenants of Enlightenment values allowed for a revolutionary sophistication of English Common Law. For the first time in British history, legal developments began safeguarding the lives and property of lower-class British citizens. The last half century of historiographical thought has critically reevaluated previously held truisms of the British Enlightenment. These academic minds have pointed to the eighteenth century's rise in executable property crimes as evidence of eighteenth-century Britain's desire to protect only the upper echelons of English society. Does the number of executable property crimes detract from the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment? How were the British poor granted protection under the law during the Eighteenth century? Using primary source manuscripts and new findings in eighteenth-century crime statistics, I intend to show how the English poor became the biggest beneficiaries of England's legal developments. I hope to provide a fresh and thoughtful analysis of this vital historical question by supplementing recent discoveries in eighteenth-century crime data with visceral first-hand accounts.