ABSTRACT
In the past ten years scholarly work on the history of crime has focused on several related topics: the history of specific, even celebrated, criminal events and their cultural meaning, the changing perceptions of crime and criminals over time, the relationship between crime and the development of mass culture. In American studies much of this work has focused on the nineteenth century, particularly on murders or presumed murders, and on crimes set in metropolitan cities. These studies have used crime history not as an end in itself, but as a window into issues and themes in the history of society, culture, and politics.2
