Contemplating the evil within: Examining attitudes to criminality in Scotland, 1700-1840

The historical scholarship on British crime is such that we have a growing indication of the nature of criminal activity and the individuals who perpetrated it, especially in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. 2 More generally, however, much less is known about wider contemporary attitudes towards the men and women accused of deviant behaviour and the extent to which this opinion was able to influence court processes. Consequently, an examination of the suggested interplay between the courtroom’s official stance on criminality and the wider ‘public’ reaction to types of illegality will be the focus for this present study. This chapter will examine attitudes to criminality between 1700 and 1840 in Scotland. In doing so, it will not only address the lacunae of material relating to the public experience of crime, but it will also add to the burgeoning historiography on the Scottish history of illegality. 3