Gender and Petty Violence in London, 1680-1720

Gender and Petty Violence in London, 1680-1720
Author: Jennine Hurl-Eamon
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814209874

Looking at a heretofore overlooked set of archival records of London in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Hurl-Eamon reassesses the impact of gender on petty crime and its prosecution during the period. This book offers a new approach to the growing body of work on the history of violence in past societies. By focusing upon low-cost prosecutions in minor courts, Hurl-Eamon uncovers thousands of assaults on the streets of early modern London. Previous histories stressing the masculine nature of past violence are questioned here: women perpetrated one-third of all assaults. In looking at more mundane altercations rather than the homicidal attacks studied in previous histories, the book investigates violence as a physical language, with some forms that were subject to gender constraints, but many of which were available to both men and women. Quantitative analyses of various circumstances surrounding the assaults--including initial causes, weapons used, and injuries sustained--outline the patterns of violence as a language. Hurl-Eamon also stresses the importance of focusing on the prosecutorial voice. In bringing the court's attention to petty attacks, thousands of early modern men and women should be seen as agents rather than victims. This view is especially interesting in the context of domestic violence, where hundreds of wives and servants prosecuted patriarchs for assault, and in the Mohock Scare of 1712, where London's populace rose up in opposition to aristocratic violence. The discussion is informed by a detailed knowledge of assault laws and the rules governing justices of the peace.

A History of Violence

A History of Violence
Author: Robert Muchembled
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0745647472

Presents a history of violence in Europe and discusses the theory that violence has actually been in decline since the thirteenth century.

Crime, Gender and Social Control in Early Modern Frankfurt am Main

Crime, Gender and Social Control in Early Modern Frankfurt am Main
Author: Jeannette Kamp
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2019-12-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004388443

This book charts the lives of (suspected) thieves, illegitimate mothers and vagrants in early modern Frankfurt. The book highlights the gender differences in recorded criminality and the way that they were shaped by the local context. Women played a prominent role in recorded crime in this period, and could even make up half of all defendants in specific European cities. At the same time, there were also large regional differences. Women’s crime patterns in Frankfurt were both similar and different to those of other cities. Informal control within the household played a significant role and influenced the prosecution patterns of authorities. This impacted men and women differently, and created clear distinctions within the system between settled locals and unsettled migrants.

Gender and Policing in Early Modern England

Gender and Policing in Early Modern England
Author: Jonah Miller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2023-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 100930514X

Traces the history of gendered policing back to its emergence from the early modern patriarchal household.

Female Transgression in Early Modern Britain

Female Transgression in Early Modern Britain
Author: Richard Hillman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317135881

Presenting a broad spectrum of reflections on the subject of female transgression in early modern Britain, this volume proposes a richly productive dialogue between literary and historical approaches to the topic. The essays presented here cover a range of ’transgressive’ women: daughters, witches, prostitutes, thieves; mothers/wives/murderers; violence in NW England; violence in Scotland; single mothers; women as (sexual) partners in crime. Contributions illustrate the dynamic relation between fiction and fact that informs literary and socio-historical analysis alike, exploring female transgression as a process, not of crossing fixed boundaries, but of negotiating the epistemological space between representation and documentation.

The Single Homemaker and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century

The Single Homemaker and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century
Author: David Hussey
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317015991

The Single Homemaker and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century represents a new synthesis of gender history and material culture studies. It seeks to analyse the lives and cultural expression of single men and women from 1650 to 1850 within the main focus of domestic activity, the home. Whilst there is much scholarly interest in singleness and a raft of literature on the construction and apprehension of the home, no other book has sought to bring these discrete studies together. Similarly, scholarly work has been limited in evaluating gendered consumption practices during the long eighteenth century because of an emphasis on the homes of families. Analysing the practices of single people emphasises the differences, but also amplifies the similarities, in their strategies of domestic life.

Bodies of Information

Bodies of Information
Author: Chris Mounsey
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000734706

Bodies of Information initiates the Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics series by encompassing interdisciplinary Bioethical discussions on a wide range of descriptions of bodies in relation to their contexts from varying perspectives: including literary analysis, sociology, criminology, anthropology, osteology and cultural studies, to read a variety of types of artefacts, from the Romano-British period to Hip Hop. Van Rensselaer Potter coined the phrase Global Bioethics to define human relationships with their contexts. This and subsequent volumes return to Potter’s founding vision from historical perspectives, and asks, how did we get here from then?

Violence, Politics, and Gender in Early Modern England

Violence, Politics, and Gender in Early Modern England
Author: J. Ward
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2008-11-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0230617018

This book engages in an interdisciplinary study of the establishment and entrenchment of gender roles in early modern England. Drawing upon the methods and sources of literary criticism and social history, this edited volume shows how politics at both the elite and plebeian levels of society involved violence that either resulted from or expressed hostility toward the early modern gender system. Contributors take fresh approaches to prominent works by Shakespeare, Middleton, and Behn as well as discuss lesser known texts and events such as the execution of female heretics in Reformation Norwich and the punishment of prostitutes in seventeenth-century London to draw new conclusions about gender in early modern England.

The Power of Petitioning in Early Modern Britain

The Power of Petitioning in Early Modern Britain
Author: Brodie Waddell
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2024-05-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800085508

The ‘humble petition’ was ubiquitous in early modern society and featured prominently in crucial moments such as the outbreak of the civil wars and in everyday local negotiations about taxation, welfare and litigation. People at all levels of society – from noblemen to paupers – used petitions to make their voices heard and these are valuable sources for mapping the structures of authority and agency that framed early modern society. The Power of Petitioning in Early Modern Britain offers a holistic study of this crucial topic in early modern British history. The contributors survey a vast range of sources, showing the myriad ways people petitioned the authorities from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. They cross the jurisdictional, sub-disciplinary and chronological boundaries that have otherwise constrained the current scholarly literature on petitioning and popular political engagement. Teasing out broad conclusions from innumerable smaller interventions in public life, they not only address the aims, attitudes and strategies of those involved, but also assesses the significance of the processes they used. This volume makes it possible to rethink the power of petitioning and to re-evaluate broad trends regarding political culture, institutional change and state formation.