GENDER, CRIME AND JUDICAL DISCRETION, 1780-1830

"This study of the English judicial system as it operated in London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries provides an unusually detailed view of its complex workings. Dr. Palk examines the careers of men and women implicated in the capital crimes of shoplifting, pickpocketing and issuing forged banknotes, following them through their trials and on to death, transportation, imprisonment and even sometimes to freedom. Such detailed study leads to original conclusions about the differences in the treatment of men and women involved in crime and caught up in the judicial system." "This book will be of great value to all those interested in the history of crime and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century social, economic and administrative history, as well as to historians of gender."--BOOK JACKET.