HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE LARGE N essays

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE LARGE N essays England in the eighteenth century saw a significant increase in criminal activity specifically in the growing towns where urbanisation was taking place. England prospered and her cities and ports flourished as worldwide trade and manufacturing expanded. The population soared as harvests improved and people migrated into the cities and towns searching for better lives. Cities became the centre for politics and culture. People were forced to live in close proximity to each other in a rather confined space. All this had huge implications for crime. In the generation after the Glorious Revolution few contemporaries doubted that crime and disorder were not only increasing but rampant. In particular they saw towns and cities as sinks of vice, stores of disrespect, and dens of thieving. For the most part they were just as certain that dramatic and at times drastic initiatives were necessary to stem this tide. This took the form of numerous laws and acts. The growing population stretched resources and work became a shortage. The peace disbanded many soldiers who returned home, facing unemployment. Food prices rose but wages fell. Poverty and hardship pushed many towards crime in order to survive; they were victims of economical and societal change, living on the very margins of society. As towns became the centres for trade, commerce, manufacture and home to the upper classes new opportunities for crime especially theft presented themselves. The upper classes felt progressively more threatened by the criminal behaviour of the lower classes. They were a menace to the political and social authority of the ruling class and it was feared that they would cause anarchy. Contemporaries felt that crime was very largely the work of an alienated fringe population living in idleness, immorality, and depravity, in fact a criminal, and a dangerous, class that congregated particularly in London and the enlarging citie...