Beginning with an atmospheric account of Tyburn, we are set up for a
grisly excursion through London as a city of ne'er do wells, taking in
beheadings and brutality at the Tower, Elizabethan street crime,
cutpurses and con-men, through to the Gordon Riots and Highway robbery
of the 18th century and the rise of prisons, the police and the Victorian
era of incarceration. As well as the crimes, Arnold also looks at the
grotesque punishments meted out to those who transgressed the law
throughout London's history - from the hangings, drawings and
quarterings at Tyburn over 500 years to being boiled in oil at
Smithfield. This popular historian also investigates the influence of
London's criminal classes on the literature of the 19thand
20thcenturies, and ends up with our old favourites, the Krays and Soho
gangs of the 50s and 60s.
London's crimes have changed over
the centuries, both in method and execution. Underworld London traces
these developments, from the highway robberies of the eighteenth
century, made possible by the constant traffic of wealthy merchants in
and out of the city, to the beatings, slashings and poisonings of the
Victorian era.
Underworld London : Crime and Punishment in the Capital City - Catharine Arnold
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