ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the presence of food in popular eighteenth-century English criminal biographies, such as Alexander Smith’s A History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Noted Highwaymen (1714), Charles Johnson’s Lives and Exploits of the Most Noted Highwaymen (1734) and his Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals (1735), and The Newgate Calendar (published in several editions between 1775 and 1825). Basdeo shows how criminals who had at some point in their lives been involved in the preparation of food were assumed to be inherently wicked. Notorious highwaymen such as James Hind (1616–1652) and Dick Turpin (1705–1739), as well as many minor criminals, all had been apprenticed to the butchers’ trade in their youths. Their willingness to cut animal flesh contributed to their ‘bloody and barbarous disposition.’ Moreover, the chapter highlights the dichotomy that exists between the status of food in ‘official’ publications, such as The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, and criminal biographies. Official publications reveal that food was an all too scarce necessity for many of the offenders who found themselves in the dock accused of theft, and that lack of food induced many people to commit theft. But criminal biographies deliberately downplayed the fact that many offenders committed crime because they faced starvation. This was done to over-emphasize the offender’s criminality. Moreover, a need of food was often presented as a potential marker of criminality. Thus, while food and feasting play important roles in early outlaw texts such as A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode (c. 1495), being a symbol of fellowship and community, in the eighteenth century, food—obtaining it and preparing it—was seen as a symbol of inherent criminality.
