Underworld London: Crime and Punishment in the Capital City - Hardcover

Arnold, Catharine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857201166 ISBN 13: 9780857201164

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK, 2012

Synopsis

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 19th and 20th centuries, 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.

About this title

Review

'The goriest horror film seems tame beside this history of law-breaking and legal retribution in London. Catharine Arnold has already published four excellent social histories of sex, madness, debauchery and death in the capital and maintains her usual high standard here, never flinching from grisly facts. We learn of religious dissenters burned alive at Smithfield; heads of traitors on display in the streets and at London Bridge; huge crowds of boisterous onlookers attending public hangings of men and women at Tyburn and in later years at Newgate prison. Above all we see vividly how London became a cesspit of crime, with robbery, burglary, pick-pocketing and prostitution on a vast scale, right up to the 20th century' --Press Association

'...Claude Du Vall, the prince of highwaymen, the most romantic villain London ever knew. His admirers said of him: ''if male thou art, look to your purse if female, to thy heart''. Part of King Charles II s retinue while in exile, he came to England from France after the civil war, when the King was restored to the throne in 1660. At first he was the teenage footman to the Duke of Richmond, but soon discovered a genius for crime. He once robbed the wealthy farmers drinking at a pub on market day, by strapping horns and cowhide to a mastiff dog and lowering it down the chimney. The drinkers thought the devil had emerged from the fireplace, and in the ensuing chaos Du Vall made off with their moneybags. From stunts in provincial pubs, he soon graduated to the more romantic occupation of highwayman...That three-mile stretch of road, which today leads roughly from the Old Bailey to Marble Arch, along Fleet Street and Oxford Street, is the focus of a new book by historian Catharine Arnold' --Daily Mail

We fancy ourselves to be more civilised than the bloodthirsty oglers of bygone years, but the popularity of books such as Underworld London proves that interest in the grisly past in unquenchable. Catharine Arnold has assembled a history of British crimes to chill the blood but also titillate the reader: Taking Tyburn and the history of capital punishment as its axis, the book revisits the major sites of criminal London, from Newgate and the Old Bailey to the Victorian slums of Seven Dials and the West End haunts of the swell mob thieves --Mail on Sunday

Catharine Arnold is a popular historian whose work on the hinterland of London, namely, its mad, its dead and its sexually voracious, has garnered her a reputation for being entertaining. She has a light touch when dealing with dark topics. Her latest book exploits her self confessed appetite for sensational crime and gruesome punishment --Sunday Telegraph

About the Author

Catharine Arnold read English at Cambridge and holds a further degree in psychology. A journalist, academic and popular historian, her previous books include the novel Lost Time, winner of a Betty Trask award, and the acclaimed Necropolis: London and Its Dead, Bedlam and City ofSin, the first three volumes of her 'London' series. She lives in Nottingham.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0857201166
• ISBN 13: 9780857201164
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352