Notorious Murders, Black Lanterns, and Moveable Goods: Transformation of Edinburgh's Underworld in the Early Nineteeth Century

Authors

Deborah A. Symonds

Files

Description

The year 1828, when William Burke, William Hare, and their wives murdered nearly a score of Edinburgh’s poor and sold their bodies, is a time when entrepreneurial criminals in Edinburgh’s Old Town flourished. Young thieves ransacked a warehouse for tea, women pretending to be prostitutes lifted gentlemen’s watches, and fine linens disappeared from washerwomen’s houses. What Symonds reveals is a shadow economy where the most numerous of all criminals and thieves practice their trade not out of poverty and misery, but because it is their means of earning a living. Laborers and immigrants struggled to make a few pennies, and some chose to prey on others to do so.

[Notorious Murders, Black Lanterns, & Moveable Goods]…raises interesting questions about how crime is tolerated in poor communities and the collective reaction to deviance, community policing, and social justice. —Linda Mahood, Associate Professor, University of Guelph

ISBN

978-1-931968-27-0

Publication Date

Summer 6-1-2006

Publisher

University of Akron Press

City

Akron, Ohio

Keywords

Crime, British History, Sociology

Disciplines

Criminology and Criminal Justice | Place and Environment

Recommended Citation

Symonds, Deborah A., "Notorious Murders, Black Lanterns, and Moveable Goods: Transformation of Edinburgh's Underworld in the Early Nineteeth Century" (2006). University of Akron Press Publications. 100.
https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/uapress_publications/100