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Tales from the Hanging Court
Tim Hitchcock & Robert Shoemaker

Hardback
RRP: £25.00
ISBN: 9780340913741
ISBN-10: 0340913746

Published: 29/12/2006
Extent: 288 pages
Illustrations: 18 b/w + 13 col photos

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Summary:
From everyday customs to violent transgression, Tales from the Hanging Court paints a fascinating and vivid picture of what it was like to live in London 250 years ago, from the dark alleys to the glittering thoroughfares.

Drawing on the Old Bailey archives from 1674 to 1834 the authors recreate the real-life and death dramas on which Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens based their novels. The authors uncover the traditions – and aberrations – that coloured daily life in a society where it was easier to witness an execution than to attend the theatre.

  • London history in the raw
  • Gripping and colourful excerpts from real-life trials
  • Describes the grit and humanity of life in eighteenth-century London

Table of Contents:
Prologue
Introduction
Stop Thief!
Crimes of Blood
The Trial
Crimes of Greed, Crimes of Lust
Retribution
Epilogue
Further Reading
Index

About the Author(s):
Robert Shoemaker and Tim Hitchcock are the Editors of the online proceedings of the Old Bailey archives.

Readership:
General interested readers

Reviews:

'I loved this book and found it utterly compelling.'
Kathryn Hughes, author of The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton

'Hitchcock and Shoemaker feel no need to jazz up this rich period detail to bring it to life, and maintain a scholarly distance from the material...in doing so, they leave room for an even more interesting account of a society's dawning realization, over the course of a revolutionary century, that crime and punishment needed to be taken out of the hands of the mob and set up in rational lines.'
Time Out

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