Daniel J. Codd > Quotes

“The fact that almost everyone was armed, and murders through loss of control occurred as an inevitable by-product of this, seems to have been something beyond the comprehension of the times.”
― Daniel J. Codd, Crimes & Criminals of 17th Century Britain

“The pistol was still an unfamiliar weapon for a criminal to wield in the very early seventeenth century. This we can glean from an entry among the Middlesex Sessions Rolls dated 22 May 1602, when the case against a man named Kimber (‘late of London, gentleman’) was heard. He was accused of assaulting William Peverell with ‘a certain instrument called a pistol.”
― Daniel J. Codd, Crimes & Criminals of 17th Century Britain

“Coroners had the power to pronounce someone guilty at an inquest, even before a trial had occurred, whilst paid informers and thief-takers, often with a criminal background themselves, frequently emerged offering their services to catch other criminals.”
― Daniel J. Codd, Crimes & Criminals of 17th Century Britain

“oxalic acid”
― Daniel J. Codd, Crimes & Criminals of 17th Century Britain

“Those who were not executed faced the living Hell of one of England’s disgusting prisons. Of these, perhaps it is Newgate that remains the most infamous; this monstrous fortification loomed on the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey, adjacent to the then much smaller criminal court appertaining to the City of London and the wider county of Middlesex. Although Newgate was pulled down in 1904, its reputation as a maelstrom of disease, violence and anarchy has enshrined it in London folklore. In the seventeenth century, libellers, forgers, nonconforming clergymen and gentleman traitors were housed with murderers, pirates, highwaymen and fire-raisers. All levels and types of criminal were imprisoned there and certain snippets of data recorded by the diarist Narcissus Luttrell in the early 1690s provide valuable insights into the Hell-hole it presented to the world by the century’s end.”
― Daniel J. Codd, Crimes & Criminals of 17th Century Britain