Nether World
Crime and the Police Courts in Victorian London
Drew D. GrayReveals the gritty, everyday lives of Victorian Londoners via the city’s police courts.
Nether World is a fascinating exploration of the everyday lives of Victorian Londoners through the city’s police courts, where people of all classes came to complain about those who had hurt, abused or stolen from them. To these courts were brought the capital’s drunks, pickpockets, wife-beaters and fraudsters, and they were judged by magistrates who wielded wide-ranging, summary powers. Drew D. Gray provides a rich, sometimes moving, often humorous glimpse into everyday life in Victorian London, told through the underexamined court records and the pages of a fast-developing newspaper industry. Nether World is a vivid picture of a vibrant, ever-changing metropolis and its people, and illuminates issues that still blight our modern city, such as poverty and homelessness, violence, substance abuse, prostitution and crime.
Reveals the gritty, everyday lives of Victorian Londoners via the city’s police courts.
Nether World is a fascinating exploration of the everyday lives of Victorian Londoners through the city’s police courts, where people of all classes came to complain about those who had hurt, abused or stolen from them. To these courts were brought the capital’s drunks, pickpockets, wife-beaters and fraudsters, and they were judged by magistrates who wielded wide-ranging, summary powers. Drew D. Gray provides a rich, sometimes moving, often humorous glimpse into everyday life in Victorian London, told through the underexamined court records and the pages of a fast-developing newspaper industry. Nether World is a vivid picture of a vibrant, ever-changing metropolis and its people, and illuminates issues that still blight our modern city, such as poverty and homelessness, violence, substance abuse, prostitution and crime.
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Gray tunnels deeper into one particularly rich seam, London’s police courts . . . the author throws light on the full caseload of police court dealings – the drunks, the thieves, the sex attackers, the thugs, the beggars, the penny capitalists, whose means of subsistence rubbed them against the forces of law and order daily, and more . . . he shows us the Victorian police court as a kaleidoscopic theatre of real life: he is an invaluable compere.
'Times Literary Supplement
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With Nether World, Drew D. Gray offers a lively and insightful picture of a quintessential Victorian institution, the London Police courts. Focusing on the courts’ ubiquitous portrayals in newspapers and their employment as rich fodder for journalists seeking to portray the dramatic and the melodramatic, Gray brings these courts and their colourful denizens into vivid focus. Readers interested in law, crime, sensation, popular journalism and the history of working-class trials and tribulations in Victorian London will all find much to engage with in this well-written and insightful work.
'Sascha Auerbach, Associate Professor of History, University of Nottingham, and author of Armed with Sword and Scales: Law, Culture, and Local Courtrooms in London, 1860–1913
Introduction and Themes
1 The Police, Drink and the Working Classes
2 Regulating the Capital’s Streets and Businesses
3 Thieves and Swindlers
4 Violence and Homicide
5 Juveniles in the Police Courts
6 Prostitution and the Police Courts
7 Poverty and Homelessness
8 Politics, Riot and Trade Unionism
Conclusion: The People’s Courts?
References
Suggested Reading
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
Drew D. Gray is Head of Culture (Humanities, Media, Performance) at the Faculty of Arts, Science & Technology, University of Northampton. His publications include London’s Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City (2010). He authors a blog, thepolicemagistrate.blog, and has made a number of appearances on TV, radio and podcasts.