Crime and Justice in 18th and 19th century South London

Join Dr Kiran Mehta to explore the crimes people typically committed in London in 18th and early 19th centuries, and what happened next.

This talk will draw on the rich records held at The London Archives, including magistrates’ notebooks, prison registers, newspaper reports and prison officers’ journals, to shed light on everyday crime and its punishment in a south London borough between the 1770s and 1830s.

Discover how such crimes were handled? In what ways were the accused punished?

Hear about the men who put themselves forward to act as judges; the victims who brought their disputes before the court for resolution; and the women, children and men who were caught up on the wrong side of the criminal justice system.

About the Speaker:

Dr Kiran Mehta is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History at the University of Leicester. Her current project offers a new perspective on the negotiation of citizenship and subjecthood in nineteenth-century Britain and its Empire by exploring political incorporation through the lens of prison labour. Kiran previously worked as a lecturer in History at the Universities of Oxford and King's College London in the UK and held a research fellowship at the Max Planck Institute of Legal History and Legal Theory in Germany. To Detain or To Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750-1840 is her first book.