Nether World: Crime and the Police Courts in Victorian London

Nether Worlds offers the reader a fascinating glimpse into the everyday lives of Victorian Londoners via the contested spaces of the capital’s Police Courts. These courts were where Londoners of all classes came to complain about those that had hurt or abused, or had stolen from them. This was where where pretty (and not serious) criminals were judged by magistrates who wielded wide-ranging summary power. Here where the capital’s drunks, pickpockets, wife-beaters, and fraudsters, their victims and the police who came to their aid. The courts provide a rich, sometimes moving, often humorous, glimpse into everyday life in Victorian London, told though the pages of a fast developing newspaper industry. Therefore Nether Worlds provides a picture of a vibrant and ever changing capital and its people, and considers issues which still blight our modern city, such as poverty and homelessness, violence, substance abuse, prostitution, and crime.