The Regulation of Violence in the Metropolis; the Prosecution of Assault in the Summary Courts, c.1780–1820

Review of periodical literature published in 2007

“…Cases of domestic violence in Hanoverian London are routinely absent from sources such as the Old Bailey sessions papers, and Smith discusses the use of alternative sources drawn from the records of the court of King's Bench, police and magistrates' reports, and archives of charitable institutions for the children of the poor. Gray, too, observes that almost all research on the treatment of crime by the courts has been based on records of the higher courts: evidence of case resolution in the summary court records has never been fully exploited. Reports of coroners' inquests are essential sources for the study of the history of violent death, argues Fisher, but levels of murder, suicide, and accidents may be significantly under recorded in such sources because of a variety of pressures and restrictions under which coroners operated in the 1840s and 1850s.…”

Forty Years of Crime in London (Journal)

“…Thus he concludes that that the summary courts 'played an important role in the regulation of violence and community relations', and that plebeian Londoners, both male and female, were 'experienced in using the legal system to seek resolutions in their interpersonal disputes', which he suggests continued in the nineteenth-century police courts. 28 Similarly, in her analysis of recognizances to attend the Middlesex quarter sessions, Norma Landau argues that this procedure was used by 'private plaintiffs, many of them quite humble people' (again, both women and men) to seek resolution of what were often greyessentially civil disputes. They were able to do this, she argues, because the sessions' clerical staff developed 'an effective clerical machine ensuring the routine, mechanical conduct of the ordinary processes of the court', which meant that defendants were forced to appear in court.…”