Abstract
Crime and execution broadsides have a long history and this chapter will chronicle their evolution over the centuries by exploring some of their major forms and themes. It will contain a detailed overview of both the historical development of broadsides and the unique ways this form of street literature both reflected and affected public understanding and conceptions of crime and punishment. It will also examine modern broadside scholarship and will reveal that there has been much academic debate regarding the meaning and function of this genre of cheap literature. For example, contrasting interpretations have depicted these broadsides as either a form of state propaganda or violent entertainment. In consequence, it will be argued that only partial explanations as to their social significance have been given to date, which will be remedied by this book through the application of criminological theory.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
‘The Last Dying Speech and Confession, Of James Middleton, aged 54, his son James, aged 22, and his daughter Mary, aged 19, who were executed at Nottingham on Monday last, March 16, 1829, for the Murder of Mr. and Mrs. Kinsley, at Newark, in January last’ [n. pl.: n. pr.], Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera: Crime, Murder and Executions [Shelfmark: Harding B 9/2 (83)].
References
Anderson, Patricia. 1991. The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790–1860. Oxford: Clarendon.
Black, Jeremy, and Donald MacRaild. 2000. Studying History. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chassaigne, Philippe. 1999. “Popular Representations of Crime: The Crime Broadside—A Subculture of Violence in Victorian Britain?” Crime, History & Societies 3 (2): 23–55.
Chibnall, Steve. 1980 “Chronicles of the Gallows: The Social History of Crime Reporting.” In The Sociology of Journalism and the Press, edited by Harry Christian, 179–217. Keele: University of Keele.
Crone, Rosalind. 2012. Violent Victorians: Popular Entertainment in Nineteenth-Century London. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Davis, Lennard J. 1983. Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel. New York: Columbia University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1991. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 4th ed. Translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin.
Fumerton, Patricia, Anita Guerrini, and Kris McAbee, eds. 2010. Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500–1800. Farnham: Ashgate.
Garland, David. 1990. Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Oxford: Clarendon.
Garland, David. 1999 “Durkheim’s Sociology of Punishment and Punishment Today.” In Durkheim and Foucault: Perspectives on Education and Punishment, edited by Mark S. Cladis, 19–37. Oxford: Durkheim Press.
Garland, David. 2006. “Concepts of Culture in the Sociology of Punishment.” Theoretical Criminology 10 (4): 419–447.
Gaskill, Malcolm. 2003. Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gatrell, V. A. C. 1994. The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770–1868. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kalikoff, Beth. 1986. Murder and Moral Decay in Victorian Popular Literature. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.
Lake, Peter, and Michael Questier. 1996. “Agency, Appropriation and Rhetoric Under the Gallows: Puritans, Romanists and the State in Early Modern England.” Past and Present 153 (November): 64–107.
Linebaugh, Peter. 1977. “The Ordinary of Newgate and His Account!” In Crime in England 1550–1800, edited by J. S. Cockburn, 246–269. London: Methuen.
Mayhew, Henry. 1861. London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopaedia of the Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Those That Cannot Work, and Those That Will Not Work. Vol. 1: The London Street-Folk. London: Griffin, Bohn, and Company.
Preston, Cathy L., and Michael J. Preston, eds. 1995. The Other Print Tradition: Essays on Chapbooks, Broadsides, and Related Ephemera. London: Garland.
Rawlings, Philip. 1992. Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge.
Rosenburg, Philippe. 2004. “Sanctifying the Robe: Punitive Violence and the English Press, 1650–1700.” In Penal Practice and Culture, 1500–1900, edited by Simon Devereaux and Paul Griffiths, 157–182. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sharpe, James A. 1985. “‘Last Dying Speeches’: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England.” Past and Present 107: 144–167.
Spufford, Margaret. 1981. Small Books and Pleasant Histories. Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, E. P. 1980. The Making of the English Working Class. 3rd ed. London: Penguin.
Vicinus, Martha. 1974. The Industrial Muse: A Study of Nineteenth Century British Working-Class Literature. London: Croom Helm.
Watt, Tessa. 1991. Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Worthington, Heather. 2005. The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth-Century Popular Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bates, K. (2020). Introduction: The Broadside Enigma and Its Historical Development. In: Crime, Broadsides and Social Change, 1800-1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59789-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59789-2_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59788-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59789-2
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)