Drunks, Whores, and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century

Criminal biographies enjoyed enormous popularity in the eighteenth century: today they offer us some fascinating perspectives on the period. Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices is the first book of its kind to reproduce a number of these biographies in one volume. Included are the biographies of street robbers, pickpockets, burglars, horse thieves and confidence tricksters. There are the lives of James Dalton, who was transported to North America, John Sheppard, something of a popular folk hero who twice escaped from the condemned cell at Newgate Prison, John Poulter, who led a gang which operated across the south of England, Charles Speckman, a petty thief who was also transported to North America, and Mary Young, who allegedly headed her own gang of London pickpockets.
Each biography is prefaced with background historical information, and thoroughly noted. Not only do these biographies make fascinating reading, they also raise the problem of how to read them as historical documents. The author argues that instead of trying to uncover simple themes and consistencies, the most revealing thing about these biographies is the tensions, never satisfactorily resolved, around which they were constructed.