Open AccessThe image of a highwayman on the Newgate Calendar pages
Author(s) -
Irina M. Erlihkson
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
lokus: lûdi, obŝestvo, kulʹtury, smysly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2500-2988
DOI - 10.31862/2500-2988-2020-11-3-40-53
Subject(s) - prison , capital punishment , journalism , romance , romanticism , perception , profit (economics) , element (criminal law) , representation (politics) , sociology , punishment (psychology) , criminology , media studies , history , political science , psychology , law , literature , art , social psychology , art history , economics , politics , microeconomics , neuroscience
In the article the author investigates the problem of crime representation in English journalism of the 18th century, focusing on a unique historical source – the Newgate Calendar. The format and structure of the Newgate Calendar is a guide to Newgate Prison inmates, containing biographical information about the prisoners and a description of their crimes. The biographies of highwaymen are reconstructed, and the degree of social and psychological motives is determined.We believe that the image of a highway robber is an important structural element of criminal romanticism. An analysis of biographies shows that a significant proportion of crimes of this kind were simultaneously initiated by both greed for profit and purely ambitious considerations. The author comes to the conclusion that the desire to get into the upper echelons of the criminal world, due to the British perception of the image of a highwayman in a romantic way, regardless of belonging to a social stratum, led to the use of capital punishment.