Worrying About Crime: Experience, Moral Panics and Public Opinion in London, 1660–1800*

Abstract

Abstract This article considers the nature and significance of public opinion about crime in the eighteenth century. Existing research suggests that a combination of increasing crime and the growth of printed literature about crime led to public anxieties which contributed to important changes in judicial and penal policy. The prominent role accorded to the media in these arguments has led some historians to adopt the concept of the moral panic to encapsulate this phenomenon. But this article argues that the impact of such panics on policy was limited, and we need to examine the issue of ‘panic’, and public opinion more generally, from the point of view of the participants, the public who were supposedly rendered anxious by the widespread negative reporting of crime in print. Based on extensive research into diaries and correspondence, the article presents new evidence about Londoners’ actual experiences of crime, what they read about it, and their responses to such reports, during periods of both the presence and absence of supposed moral panics. It suggests that actual experiences of crime were relatively rare, and that Londoners relied primarily on printed sources for their information about crime. Since those representations were actually very diverse, and were often read sceptically, public opinion was resistant to the efforts of ‘moral entrepreneurs’ to induce anxiety. Attitudes were shaped by a complex combination of printed representations, oral discussions, and personal experiences, all reflected through the prism of individual personalities. Consequently, neither individual experiences of crime, nor print culture, created sufficiently strong support for policy changes. Instead, Londoners focused on their ability to shape judicial outcomes through the exercise of discretion when dealing with individual criminals. There are reasons to believe that this individualised approach to crime changed in the nineteenth century, with the adoption of the idea of a ‘criminal class’