Introduction

Abstract

This book is a comparative quantitative analysis of the administration of justice in four English and three Welsh counties between 1760 and 1830. This chapter reviews the historiography of the Bloody Code, focusing initially on the debate between Marxist historians and others on the role of the capital code in Georgian society. It then moves on to discuss more recent work, most notably that of Peter King and Richard Ward, on what may be termed the ‘geography of the Bloody Code’; that is, the often-stark differences between how the capital code was administered between the centre and the periphery. The research questions of the monograph are then introduced, along with chapter outlines.