Criminal Conversations: Victorian Crimes, Social Panic, and Moral Outrage » (1)

"The essays in this book set out to explore the ways in which Victorians used newspapers to identify the causes of bad behavior and its impacts, and the ways in which they tried to "distance" criminals and those guilty of "bad" behavior from the ordinary members of society, including identification of them as different according to race of sexual orientation. It also explores how threats from within "normal" society were depicted and the panic that issues like "baby-farming" caused." Victorian alarm was about crimes and bad behavior which they saw as new or unique to their period - but which were not new then and which, in slightly different dress, are still causing panic today. What is striking about the essays in this collection are the ways in which they echo contemporary concerns about crime and bad behavior, including panics about "new" types of crime. This has implications for modern understandings of how society needs to understand crime, demonstrating that while there are changes over time, there are also important continuities.