ABSTRACT
At first glance, the records of the criminal courts in the eighteenth century look perfect material for quantification. There are many cases of all types brought before the courts, and the issues, evidence and resulting sentences are sufficiently well recorded to provide a numerical picture of the extent of crime and the punishments inflicted on the guilty. Yet the attractively neat character of the data which has encouraged statistical analysis has also aroused suspicions that, compared with the rich qualitative sources available in many continental countries, we are deceived by the simplicity of the results into believing that we have a true picture of crimes, the criminals and the processes of law enforcement. “Take heed of computation! How woefully and wretchedly we have been misled by it!” warned John Owen, a late-seventeenth-century Chancellor of the University of Oxford.1 Certainly some historians have attempted bold generalizations of the trends in crime across the centuries, arguing that any variations in detecting or recording would have little effect on the long-term direction of change. One striking interpretation, for example, is the analysis of homicide rates in England since the middle ages, which seem to show an uneven but persistent decline down to the early twentieth century. This pattern seems to confirm the impression from other sources of a society that became increasingly pacified with capitalist industrialization, as personal habits of self control became more prevalent. There are great difficulties with this kind of broad-brush approach, as detailed analysis of one county over several centuries has shown, but the general direction towards less violence seems clear. The assumption of a wholesale “civilising process” underlying changes in crime, however, is too sweeping.2 More careful use of figures of thefts, particularly petty thefts, as an index of poverty and dearth suggests that crime statistics may be a reflection of the real extent of criminal activity in times of declining economic fortune. The persuasive conclusion from a number
of studies is that economic necessity in bad times induced the poor to commit more thefts, as reflected in the court records, even allowing for the propensity of the controlling authorities to make extra efforts at suppression, and so bring more prosecutions, in times when disorder threatened. This type of association cannot be established for other crimes, such as rape, forgery or infanticide, where there were no obvious social conditions which might have led to more cases.3 As the previous chapter has shown, there were too many variable factors affecting the detection and prosecution of cases such as infanticide to justify confidence that the court cases reflect their actual occurrence. Consequently, it is acknowledged that the statistical use of early modern records is “fraught with dangers and difficulties”, partly because many of the factors that led to victims and witnesses reporting (or not reporting) crimes are unknown, and the consequences of enforcement policies adopted by local authorities can only be guessed at, given the general shortage of private notes and papers from justices and officials. Yet despite misgivings, and on condition that the findings are treated with proper caution, the statistical treatment of English sources remains essential.4
