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First published in 1949 (this edition in 1968), this book is a dictionary of the past, exploring the language of the criminal and near-criminal worlds. It includes entries from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, as well as from Britain and America and offers a fascinating and unique study of language. The book provides an invaluable insight into social history, with the British vocabulary dating back to the 16th century and the American to the late 18th century. Each entry comes complete with the approximate date of origin, the etymology for each word, and a note of the milieu in which the expression arose.
This book explores the changing image of the criminal in America during the 19th century, as portrayed in the journalism, fiction, and memoirs of the period. Starting from the position that crime, inherently a political subject, can only be understood in its social context, the author reviews newspapers such as 'The National Police Gazette' (1845) and 'The World' (1897) to show how journalists reported murders and portrayed such criminals as Langdon W. Moore and the assassin Guiteau. An examination of the antebellum press, the detective story, the serial thriller, and the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and George Lippard indicates how fictional crimes and criminals were portrayed. The views of police, detectives, and offenders are reviewed to determine how they viewed the crimes in which they were involved. The commentary on 19th century writings notes a gradual loss of critical perspective on crime after a brief period in the antebellum years. The critical period linked crime and politics and drew conclusions from the linkages. Later, as modern society stabilized, writings lost a concern about crime's political meanings and consequences. The book argues that crime and criminals must not be viewed uncritically as absolute phenomena, but rather as dynamic social and political phenomena 'framed' by the values and perspectives of a given society in a given period. (NCJRS, modified).
Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.