Description

Popular concepts of what was, or should be, contained within the law were often at variance with its formal written content. Throughout the long nineteenth century, communities continued to hold mock courts, stage shaming processions and burn effigies of wrongdoers. The author investigates those justice rituals, the actors, the victims and the offences that occasioned them. He also considers the role such practices played in resistive communities trying to preserve their identity and assert their independence. Finally, whilst documenting the decline of popular justice traditions, he demonstrates that they were nevertheless important in bequeathing a powerful set of symbols and practices to the nascent labour movement.