| | |
|
StatuteofLabourers 7 - 23 Oct 2014 - Main.FrancisWhite
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="QuestionsBeingAnswered" |
|---|
Palmer goes into great detail on how the massive depopulation during the Black Death led to the passage the Statute of Labourers and how it was used to force the able bodied of the lower classes to work and set maximum wages and prices. (Chapter 3 pg. 14-27) According to Wikipedia the law was not repealed until 1863. | | |
-
- Bread Riots common until 1840s. [57] Also of note is the Great Cheese Riot of 1764, where "whole cheeses were rolled down the streets." [59] These riots peaked during the famine of 1795. [60]
- Usually these actions were actually fairly disciplined. At least some of the time, the mob would force the farmers/merchants to sell their harvest at what was regarded as a fairer price, and let the farmer keep the proceeds. Despite their popularity, the leaders of these actions were at least sometimes hanged if they were caught.[61]
- Between 1760 and 1810, sixty-three new capital offenses are created, primarily for property crimes. [62]
| |
<
< | (find some specific examples?) | >
> | These included: stealing shipwrecked goods (1753, actually), breaking into a building to steal or destroy linen (1764), food rioting, destroying a mill (1769), and forging bank notes. [63].
-
- Quite frequently though, death sentences were commuted to transportation. [64].
- "The critics of the law argued that the gibbets and corpses paradoxically weakened enforcement of the law: rather than terrifying criminals, the death penalty terrified prosecutors and juries, who feared committing judicial murder on the capital statutes. [65].
- Really, it looks like the legal system functioned as a reactionary, and not extraordinarily effective, tool, during a period of major social and economic change--both the poor law and the criminal law were routinely amended in unsuccessful attempts at controlling the poor.
| | |
-
- specific details of 1834 Poor Law Amendment? -- FrancisWhite
| | | [60] Thompson at 127.
[61] Thompson at 124-126.
[62] Thompson at 117. | |
>
> | [63] D. Hay et al., Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England (1975), 20-21.
[64] Hay at 22.
[65] Hay at 23. | | | -- AllysonMackavage - 25 Sep 2014
|
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |