Rogues, rakes and robbers: historian uncovers the real crimes of Georgian Wales

A new book by Dr Angela Muir tells the stories of real crimes committed in Georgian Wales and the Welsh borders.

Rogues, Rakes and Robbers: A true crime history of Georgian Britain, published on Thursday 3 September, recovers the lives of ordinary people who left almost no other mark on the historical record. For most of them, their encounters with the criminal justice system are the only reason we know they existed at all.

Dr Muir examines not only the crimes themselves but the wider social and cultural context in which they took place them: the circumstances in which they were committed, how witnesses and victims made sense of them, and how communities and officials responded.

Dr Angela Muir is an Honorary Associate Professor of British Social and Cultural History at the University of Leicester, specialising in gender, crime and deviance in Wales and England during the long eighteenth century (roughly 1680 to 1830), and in what crime reveals about society, then and now.

Discussing the book, Dr Muir said: "These are people who left no records of their own. We know them only because they had the misfortune to be a victim, perpetrator or witness in a serious crime, and that chance encounter with the law left a paper trail. My aim wasn't to sensationalise, but to use those records as a gateway into everyday lives that would otherwise be lost."

Rogues, Rakes and Robbers: A true crime history of Georgian Britain is Dr Muir's first book for a general readership. It will be published on Thursday 3 September by University of Wales Press.