ABSTRACT
In 1771 a brutal and very public killing was committed in Spitalfields, East London, that offers us another window into the nature of homicide and its prosecution in the late eighteenth century. Here too politics and access to patronage were arguably important factors but unlike in the case of Matthew and Patrick Kennedy the circumstances pertaining here made mercy impossible. Instead this homicide and its prosecution reveal the full and unbridled power of the Hanoverian state to use the criminal justice system to make examples of those that dared to transgress or challenge the authority of the state.
