Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England
Robert Shoemaker
By 1700 London was the largest city in the world, with over 500,000 inhabitants. Very weakly policed, its streets saw regular outbreaks of rioting by a mob easily stirred by economic grievances, politics or religion. If the mob vented its anger more often on property than people, eighteenth-century Londoners frequently came to blows over personal disputes in a society where men and women were quick to defend their honour. Slanging matches easily turned to fisticuffs and slights on honour were avenged in duels. In this world, where the detection and prosecution of crime was the part of the business of the citizen, punishment, whether by the pillory, whipping at a cart's tail or hanging at Tyburn, was public and endorsed by crowds. The London Mob draws a fascinating portrait of the public life of the modern world's first great city.
'All the way from Newgate to Tyburn is one continued fair, for whores and rogues of the meaner sort. Here the most abandoned rascals may light on women as shameless: here trollops all in rags may pick up sweethearts of the same politeness; where the crowd is the least, which among the itinerants is no where very thin, the rabble is the rudest; and here, jostling one another, and kicking dirt about, are the most innocent pastimes.'
Edward Digby to Lord Ilchester, 1750
