“A plebeian fighting for the poor and rewarded with poverty.”
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Life of a Little-Known Chartist
Sedition
“The distance is never great between contempt of the laws and open resistance to them.” – Justice Fitzgerald.
Mike Leigh’s “Peterloo” (2018)
Mike Leigh has produced a visually impressive movie, but the characters are a bit flat.
Yobs from Richmond Arrested for Stealing Football
Young lads have always enjoyed playing football, but sometimes their love for it can land them in trouble with the police. This is as true today as it was in the Victorian era, where in court records we find two residents from Richmond, London, William Ford, aged 19, and Henry Hold, aged 15, arrested for having broken into a shop and stealing a football.
The Meaning of ‘Mafia’
Shrouded in mystery, eerie in sound, mysterious in origin, menacing in the images it provoked, the word ‘mafia’ came into common usage in c. 1875.
Sir Robin William V. Harcourt Hood, M. P.
Whenever a politician proposes raising a new tax or cutting a public service, a newspaper columnist will often respond that the proposed changes are ‘Reverse Robin Hood’. Alternatively, those who look favourably upon governmental tax and finance reforms might attempt to portray the politician in question as embodying Robin Hood values.
Blind Justice in Eugene Sue’s “The Mysteries of Paris” (1842–3)
If you were a criminal, what would you choose – a life sentence in prison, the death sentence, or to be surgically blinded?
Outlaws vs. Vampires
On the same night that Mary Shelley conceived the idea for Frankenstein, her friend, Dr John Polidori, conjured another frightening creature – the vampire. Yet his malevolent vampire was no match for some Italian bandits, it seems.
A Hymn of Dissent: Inscriptions from the Dungeons of Richmond Castle
In WW1, Conscientious Objectors under sentence of death left their mark in their cells detailing their thoughts and prayers before in what they imagined were their final hours.
An English Republican’s View of Crime and its Causes
G. W. M. Reynolds, the “vicious republican” of the Victorian era, attributed the cause of all crime to the the existence of the royal family and the political establishment.
