Events

Lecture: Stealing Goods and Standing Trial in a Georgian Courtroom

With Prof. Tim Hitchcock

Eighteenth-century criminal justice took theft very seriously. You could be hanged for a shilling, and transported for a handkerchief. Shoplifting, pickpocketing, or simple casual miss-acquisition could ruin your life. This lecture by Prof Tim Hitchcock (Professor Of Digital History, University of Sussex, Co-founder of the Old Bailey online and author of London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800) explores the eighteenth century world of goods, and the world of retribution, through the lives of just a few men and women – people who both suffered at the hands of the system, and whose resistance helped transform the law and the system of punishment. It reveals a world of desire and simple need, from below.

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