Primary Sources

• Cases from the Old Bailey
• Alan Cirket (ed.), Samuel Whitbread's Notebooks, 1810-11, 1813-14

Key Reading

• Clive Emsley, Crime and Society, 1750-1900, chapter 8
  

Further Reading

• J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800
• J. M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, 1660-1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror
• Jennifer Davis, '"A Poor Man's System of Justice": The London Police Courts in the second half of the nineteenth century', Historical Journal, 27 (1984), pp. 309-35
• J. P. Eigen, ‘Intentionality and Insanity: What the Eighteenth-Century Juror Heard’, in William F. Bynum, Roy Porter and Michael Shepherd (eds), The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, Volume 2: Institutions and Society
• M. Feely and D. Little, 'The vanishing female: the decline of women in the criminal process, 1687-1912', Law and Society Review, 25 (1991), pp. 710-57
• Douglas Hay and Francis Snyder (eds), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750-1850
• Peter King, ‘Decision-Makers and Decision-Making in the English Criminal Law, 1750-1800’, Historical Journal, 27 (1984), pp. 25–58.
• Peter King, Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 1740-1820
• Dana Rabin, Identity, Crime and Legal Responsibility in Eighteenth-Century England
• Dana Rabin, ‘Drunkenness and Responsibility for Crime in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of British Studies, 44:3 (2005), pp. 457–77.
• N. Walker and Sarah McCabe, Crime and Insanity in England: The Historical Perspective

Questions

• Trace changes in the sentencing of crimes using the Old Bailey online.
• Were eighteenth-century courts a form of 'participatory theatre' (Peter King)?
• Were there class and gender differences in prosecutions and sentencing?
• How did sentencing differ in locations such as police courts, magistrates courts, assizes and quarter sessions?
• How do courts deal with those arguing limited responsibility for crimes (eg the insane, and crimes committed when drunk or in passion)?