384 Ch. 10 • Eighteenth-Century Economic And Social Change
A public hanging at Tyburn in London.
them between 1760 and 1810. About mid-century, two young men were
arrested for poaching. Their wives went to the landlord’s estate to beg his
merciful intercession. The lord, moved to tears, said that their husbands
would be returned to them. True to his word, he sent the two corpses to the
wives. But English juries, in particular, hesitated to convict those accused;
only about two hundred criminals were executed each year. Executions
drew huge throngs at London’s Tyburn. Corporal punishment, such as
branding or being exhibited in stocks to public contempt, was far more
common. Children were worked and punished as adults, though not all as
harshly as the seven-year-old girl who was hanged in Norwich for stealing a
petticoat. England was relatively under-policed, particularly when com
pared to France (Paris had four times more policemen than London, which
was twice its size).
Authorities everywhere tended to lump the poor into one of two broad
categories—“deserving” and “undeserving,” that is, whether they were con
sidered worthy of pity and charity. Among the latter were “false beggars”
who simulated horrifying wounds or injuries with the skill of a makeup
artist and, clutching at the clothes of the wealthy passing by, received a few
cents as his benefactors scurried away as rapidly as possible. These cate
gories reflected the belief that many, if not most, of the poor were destitute
because they were lazy and that stiff punishment would be enough to end
begging.
In small bourgs, villages, and the countryside, people feared bands of
thieves, whose threat of arson could intimidate, as a fire would destroy a
harvest or a farm in a matter of minutes. Brigandage was rampant in south
ern Italy and in Sicily. In the grain-rich Beauce region south of Paris, some