Philip Rawlings - Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century

Tis in vain to hope for a Reprieve , The Sheriffs come down with his Warrant; An Account I behind me must leave Of my Birth , Education and Parents.

(Epistle on Jack Sheppard, Daily journal, 16 November, 1724)

There is not perhaps in the world a more agreeable study than that of Biography; nor any thing sought after and read with greater avidity, than the lives of unfortunate men, and those who suffer under the hands of the executioner more than any.

( The Life and Wonderful Transactions of Mr. Charles
Speckman, alias Browne, 1763)

We can understand much about a society from looking at the way in which it treats its criminals. It is not just the punishments which are revealing, but also the literature. In this book I have brought together a small selection of eighteenth-century accounts written about the lives of contemporary criminals. My primary aim is to bring to a wider reading public a flavour of a body of literature which, while it was extremely popular when published, has been all but forgotten for two hundred years. Although the biographies can stand by themselves, in the General Introduction some of the problems surrounding their use are discussed.

In the putting together of this book many people have given me assistance, willingly and unwillingly, knowingly and unknowingly. I will refrain both from praising their virtues and from heaping blame upon myself for the faults which the book has; after all, should not those with whom I discussed it and who failed either to point out these faults or to persuade me to change the book, bear some of the blame? However, I did work in various places around the country on this book and I would like to thank the staff of the many libraries and record offices I used including: the British Library, including the Newspaper Library at Colindale; the Guildhall Library; the Public Records Offices at Kew and Chancery Lane; County Records Offices in Surrey, Essex and Somerset; the Greater London Record Office; the John Rylands Library in Manchester; Brunel University Library. The University Library at Aberystwyth was particularly important in the formation of ideas, through the books there, but, just as importantly, through its provision of a place in which to hold discussions with colleagues: my apologies and thanks both to them and to the students who constantly asked us to be quiet. More specifically, I would like to thank Richard Ireland and Ian Bell; the loan of his computer by Peter Wallington was, viewed objectively, somewhat foolhardy, but I prefer to see it as the act of a farsighted individual who has the benefit of good insurance cover. I would also like to thank my father, who read the whole book several times, my mother and Debbie, three people whose boredom thresholds have been seriously tested.

This book opens with a General Introduction. Its purpose is to provide the novice with not only a discussion of the criminal biographies and their writers and readers, but also an examination of the ways in which scholars have used, or dismissed, these works. The remainder of the book is taken up with reprints of the biographies prefaced by brief introductions. These introductions outline some of the themes which appear in the biographies and provide background and bibliographical information. Each biography is also supplemented by notes intended to clarify the text.