Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England

by Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, E.P. Thompson

In the popular imagination, informed as it is by Hogarth, Swift, Defoe and Fielding, the eighteenth-century underworld is a place of bawdy knockabout, rife with colourful eccentrics. But the artistic portrayals we have only hint at the dark reality. In this new edition of a classic collection of essays, renowned social historians from Britain and America examine the gangs of criminals who tore apart English society, while a criminal law of unexampled savagery struggled to maintain stability.

Douglas Hay deals with the legal system that maintained the propertied classes, and in another essay shows it in brutal action against poachers; John G. Rule and Cal Winslow tell of smugglers and wreckers, showing how these activities formed a natural part of the life of traditional communities. Together with Peter Linebaugh’s piece on the riots against the surgeons at Tyburn, and E. P. Thompson’s illuminating work on anonymous threatening letters, these essays form a powerful contribution to the study of social tensions at a transformative and vibrant stage in English history.

This new edition includes a new introduction by Winslow, Hay and Linebaugh, reflecting on the turning point in the social history of crime that the book represents.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sociology, British Literature, 18th Century, True Crime, Cultural

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Dr. Douglas C. Hay is a criminal justice historian. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus Douglas at Osgoode Hall Law School and York University’s Department of History, where he teaches the comparative history of criminal procedure, punishment, and crime, and the history of private law in the common law world.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Albion’s Fatal Tree – Always a Classic

Since its publication in 1975 The Albion’s Fatal Tree has been praised and condemned in equal measure, who cannot seem to get beyond that it was written and edited by Marxist Historians of the time. This is history from below, or could be described as social history or crime history, to try and pigeonhole this book does not do it justice.

Consisting of six essays by colleagues of the great historian EP Thompson, one of the essays that seems to have got people hot under the collar is that by Douglas Hay. Hay’s essay on ‘Property, Authority and the Criminal Law’ I found interesting and exciting read on events from the eighteenth century. This essay seems to have been attacked by various academics, many of them American, do not seem to understand the context in which it was written. The eighteenth century may have been a wonderful time if you were upper class, but if you were poor and working-class then things were hard. Hay’s essay reflects that, and that he has researched and written the subject and engages well with the reader.

All the essays in the book are engaging and look at criminal history from below. So, it is interesting to understand about The Tyburn Riot Against the Surgeons, rather than read the usual it was just the revolting peasants standing up against their betters. Peter Linebaugh really digs down and examines how surgeons acted especially in buying dead bodies for furthering their education.

But we also get essays on smuggling which for those on the coast was always an opportunity to make more money, or costal plunder. Again, it is interesting to read how the law affected those at the bottom and why they may have to commit these offences. I found the chapter on poaching revealing, as I often like to point out the landed gentry land was stolen from the people to start with, and don’t get me started on the enclosure of common land by the landed.

This is an excellent book and introduces and examines a range of subjects that affected the working-classes or not to put it to bluntly, the peasants, which most of us were. For all those interested in social history and history from below then Albion’s Fatal Tree is a must read.

[Martin Empson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This recently republished collection of essays is essential reading for anyone trying to understand how the British criminal justice system evolved, and how it was moulded into a system that protected wealth and private property, under the illusion of offering justice for all.

These essays, document the imposition of laws about wrecking, poaching and smuggling and other new crimes, and show how preparing for new capital relations impoverished the majority in the interest of the minority. But these laws and attempts to enforce them met with fierce resistance and solidarity. Capitalism was born in blood, violence and oppression. But, as this book also shows, the violence was challenged by the solidarity of entire communities who fought to make the world more just and equal.

Full review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/...

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth reading for the anecdotes of 18th Century English working class life alone. Of course, underlying the countless accounts of trials, shipwrecks, poachers, and bodies of hanged felons being touched for healing properties is an ambitious and coherent interpretation of how the era's criminal laws protected property and enforced class relations.

The introductory chapter/essay refers to forgeries as a growing problem for the period, and a crime by punishable by death. It would be interesting to see an essay on the topic as well-documented as the other crimes discussed here. Presumably the editors were focused on how Hanoverian laws affected the working classes.

[Canute Real · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays about English criminal
Law in the 18th century, Albion’s Fatal Tree recounts the way the English upper classes used the legal system to sustain itself. The aristocrats who ruled England harbored no illusions about this fact: the law existed to serve and perpetuate them. It protected their interests above all else. There is one passage from the first essay that has stuck with me:

“The cunning of a ruling class is a more substantial concept, however, for such a group of men is agreed on ultimate ends. However much they believed in justice (and they did); however sacred they held property (and they worshipped it); however merciful they were to the poor (and many were); the gentlemen of England knew that their duty was, above all, to rule. On that depended everything. They acted accordingly.”

The law has always been a tool. In Qin china, the law servers to enforce order on society and make the country rich and strong. To do so, it inflicted massive amounts of misery on the population through draconian punishments and laws.

The common law, despite pretenses to the contrary, was no different. it cloaked itself in a robe of mercy, but was a tool to ensure that society functioned in the way that the nobles wanted it to. The crimes the aristocrats knew threatened them the most (forgery, poaching, wrecking) were punished most harshly. The justice system was run by landlords who all knew each other and judged in a way to ensure no threat would emerge to their right to rule. The vast majority of the English population, illiterate and without sufficient funds to hire a lawyer, had to rely on the aristocrats in a patronage system reminiscent of Roman patricians.

“English libert was a well constructed sham. The commoners at the time knew it. Yet, What choice did they have? Those who dared to fight against it were hung after a parade through the streets. Their bodies were given to doctors to dissect, which many people believed prevented them from entering the kingdom of heaven. Yet the whole time, the nobles gloated about how Rational and merciful they were.

[Shake n' Vac]

Let us get the elephant in the room out of the way first: yes, this book leans very heavily to the left and it is often said that lefties love it, while righties do not. Well, I am a strong, traditional lefty of the Clem Attlee and Tony Benn type, and I see flaws with it because it IS so left (basically, no other view point is offered even as a passing acknowledgement) - written, as it was, in the days when the academic left were ousting the academic right in the humanities departments and were, thank God, opening up more and more the study of the ordinary (Thompson, one of the authors, coined the term 'history from below' if I remember). Anyway, take the advice of EH Carr and study the historian before you study what they write and will then appreciate the good information within the book and the counter-arguments against you should you disagree, without it winding you up.

There are six essays, all of which are engaging. Hay's opener on Property, Authority and Criminal Law is fascinating if a little too simplistic in its view against the 'propertied classes' in my opinion. The following one on the Tyburn Riots (Linebaugh) against surgeons was really interesting, and something I have touched lightly upon in things I have looked at. The Sussex smugglers (Winslow) and Cornish wreckers (Rule) I knew nothing of and found interesting. Hay's second, on Cannock Chase poaching, is wonderful in that I know the area, the families involved and collections he used - fortunately, my only dealings with the Earl of Uxbridge is the Uxbridge Arms in Chasetown. Thompson finishes off brilliantly with a look at something that especially plagued rural communities, including where I live, that of the anonymous letter (now much easier with Twitter, but that was before Thompson's time!).

Accept it is lefty and not balanced, but dont let that put you off if it is not your politics.

[Simon Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

LAW AND THE LOWER ORDERS

Since its 1975 publication "Albion's Fatal Tree" has been widely (though not universally) regarded as a classic of historical writing, in particular that branch of history that is known as "history from below". This 2011 edition from Verso corrects the lamentable situation where it has been out of print for a number of years. In addition to the unchanged text from its initial release, the three surviving members of the five original contributors (E.P. Thompson and John Rule having died in 1993 and 2011 respectively) Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh and Cal Winslow write individual introductions reflecting on their time working with E.P. Thompson at Warwick University in the early 1970's, as well as the reception the work had at the time from established historians of Eighteenth century England.

Of the six essays two are the work of Douglas Hay: "Property, Authority and the Criminal Law" looks at the primary role of Law has in protecting both property and buttressing the authority of England's rulers. In particular it examines the role of the death sentence and, over the course of the century, the increasing chance of clemency being granted (followed by transportation), and how this affected popular attitudes with regard to the legitimacy of the ruling classes. His "Poaching and the Game Laws on Cannock Chase" is a detailed study of poaching and the response of "qualified" owners in a particular locale during the eighteenth century. This is a classic of its kind, and one that E.P. Thompson would emulate and take further with regard to Windsor and its environs in his "Whigs and Hunters" published in the same year.

A trenchant as ever Peter Linebaugh contributes "The Tyborn Riot Against the Surgeons" which details the struggle over the friends and family of those who ended up swinging from the gallows at Tyborn, and the Surgeons who wanted their corpses for the advancement of the science of anatomy. Other related issues touched upon include the attitudes of the lower orders to hanging, the rituals they adopted on their appointed day, and the responses of those who turned out to watch.

"Sussex Smugglers" is Cal Winslow's excellent account of the conflict between the state and smugglers in eighteenth century Sussex. A conflict that at times approached the level of a guerilla war. This is followed by John Rules "Wrecking and Coastal Plunder" which looks at the customs of coastal communities with regard to their perceived rights to plunder wrecked ships, their conflicts with the authorities. He also examines some of the myths around the practice, such as the largely fictitious belief, which functioned to stigmatise a practice that many Britons regarded as acceptable, that ships were onto rocks for the purposes of plunder.

The collection closes with E.P. Thompson's "The Crime of Anonymity" which analyses the phenomenon of anonymous letter writing by eighteenth century plebs for purposes ranging from blackmail to enforcing norms of behaviour on those who had authority over them. The increasing incidence after Paine and the French Revolution of anonymous handbills and the chalking of walls with messages of a more general political nature is also touched on. Thompson cites from many of those letters which are one of the few examples from the eighteenth century of the lower-orders speaking for themselves that have survived for posterity.

"Albion's Fatal Tree" is quite simply a brilliant and exemplary work of Social History. The many quotes cited, from above as well as below, bring the period to life for the reader. This was a period of great change, as England was becoming an increasingly commercial society, poised to enter the Industrial Revolution. The lower orders, as in all periods of change, generally suffer the most and the underlying reality that flows through this work, is that much that was customary to them, and provided them with a part of their livelihoods (from access to commons, to poaching and smuggling) was either being lost to the inexorable process of enclosure, or being treated before the authorities in increasingly brutal ways as the massive rise in "crimes" regarded by a property owning parliament as Capital makes clear. The fact that they fought back, had some successes though in the longer term the odds were stacked against them, forms the core of this book. The examples they provide of solidarity, guile and no-nonsense activism is often inspirational and undoubtedly part of its appeal. Thoroughly recommended.

Other books by the authors of "Albion's Fatal Tree" worth reading would include E.P. Thompson's three major works: "The Making of the English Working Class", "Whigs and Hunters" and "Customs in Common". Peter Linebaughs "The London Hanged" is a dense, detailed but fascinating account of the life's, livings and "crimes" of those who were hanged from the late seventeenth century onwards. The late John Rule is always worth reading, his two books on the eighteenth century "Albion's People: English Society, 1714-1815" and "The Vital Century: England's Economy, 1714-1815" are fine general studies of the period and none the worse for being unashamedly academic in the best sense of that word. His "The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England, 1750-1850" is a brilliant and comprehensive account of the Labouring classes in the period that leads up to and establishes an Industrial England.

[Mark Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays not written from the Whig viewpoint of history but from the point of view of those cast as criminals/dissidents/outlaws/pirates/smugglers/thieves etc. Why was history previously written by the victors,and the ruling class they represent? Why shouldn't other voices be heard?

[Larold Aarence · Rating 1 out of 5]

The criminal law was a bourgeois product created to keep the proles in line. Suuuuuuuuure.

Douglas Hay says of prosecution that it "... was in the hands of the gentleman who went to law to evoke gratitude as well as fear in the maintenance of deference"("Property, Authority and the Criminal Law", p. 41). Of criminal trial, he says: "The nature of the criminal trial gave enormous discretion to men of property .. . [in addition to] the prosecutor" (ibid., p. 42). It was "a ruling-class conspiracy" to use the criminal law in order to extract deference from the lower orders. Hay detects this self-serving discretion throughout the main phase of the criminal process — prosecution, trial, sentencing and executive clemency. Hay does not seriously claim to have identified a conspiracy in the conventional sense of the term, that is, an agreement to promote unlawful or wicked ends. Rather, he says, the plot was one in which "the common assumptions of the conspirators lay so deep that they were never questioned, and rarely made explicit" (ibid., p. 52). This way of speaking directs attention away from the mechanism of class concert, which this essay hardly clarifies, and towards the supposed object, emphasized endlessly, of class domination and oppression (ibid., p. 48).

Indeed, any critique of Marxist thought may not take kindly to such a nebulous and, indeed, enigmatic notion of conspiracy. But that is not what I want to do; and a general critique of Marxist theory still less so. What I want to do is to enjoin the readers to not take Comrades Hay, Thompson, et al., at face value. The Marxian/Hegelian tenet of historical and ideological contingency may very well be applied to this book.

[Glyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quality piece of academic work. As it was originally published in the early 1970s some of the arguments are now slightly dated but that is only of concern to academics.

The series of essays deal with several aspects of the social history of crime in 18th Century England and if that subject is of any interest to you. then this is a worthy read. This is a serious word of warning though. This is a very academic book aimed at a reasonably academic audience. it is not light reading and some of the lengthy essays do appear to be labours of love from Professors of History on strong subjects such as the Game Laws and anonymous letters of protest and threat.

[Richard Spilman · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite history of the bizarre eighteenth century attitude toward crime in England. We all "know" that tens of thousands of people must have been executed during the eighteenth century, since nearly everything but sneezing was considered a capital crime. But the British combined such severities with a haphazard but equally generous system of pardons, which produced a populace both terrified and grateful to those who were terrifying them.

[QOH · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a reprint of some very important essays in the legal and social history of the 18th century. They range from wrecking law to anonymous letters to smuggling to surgeons' riots. If you dig the 18th century and the history of criminal law, it's fascinating stuff. If you don't, well, this will be awfully dry going. I enjoyed it (there are ten sticky tabs stuck to the pages and I highlighted throughout).

[Jane Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a reprint of a book first published in 1975. It's a collection of essays produced by a group of social historians at Warwick University, including E. P. Thompson. They examine what can be learned about the relationship between social classes through the sort of crime which brought rich and poor directly into conflict. Essential reading for any student of society.

[Seong Min · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was (probably still is) only a thin line between good and bad criminals. Proliferation of capital punishment in the eighteenth-century England made laws arbitrary, serving the interest of the propertied: an example of absurdity made practical.

[K. G. Whitehurst · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although over 40 years old, therefore, dated, the essays still stand up well to critical reading. For a couple of them, like Cal Winslow's on smuggling in Sussex, they are the only game in town. in terms of local history, they're pertinent materials for further study.

[William Shep · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good study, though a bit too Marxist for my taste, of crime in England.

[Wes Pue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly engaging. Smart. A pivotal contribution to legal history.