Criminal Law and Colonial Subject: New South Wales, 1810-1830.
Byrne, Paula Jane. Criminal Law and Colonial Subject: New South Wales, 1810-1830. Cambridge, [UK]: Cambridge University Press, [1993]. xiv, 301 pp. Publisher's charcoal cloth fine, in lightly worn dust jacket. Internally clean. A near fine copy. $35. * A historical analysis of how English criminal law was applied and understood in colonial Australia during a period of transition. It examines the years 1810-1830, a critical era when New South Wales evolved from a penal colony primarily for convicts into a more complex society composed of free settlers, emancipists (former convicts), and Aboriginal people. Rather than focusing on formal legal codes, Byrne uses court records-including over 5,900 cases from criminal courts and magistrate benches-to reconstruct how ordinary people interacted with the law. Byrne explores what "the ordinary population" understood by concepts like guilt, suspicion, evidence, and "offense". The work traces the legal boundaries of property, sexuality, and violence. It places a significant emphasis on gender relations, arguing that administrators and the general population held different, often restrictive, views on women's "proper behavior". The thesis argues that the legal system in practice was not just a top-down imposition but was shaped by the intermeshing of statute law, the personal power of magistrates, and the attitudes of the local population.
Price: $35.00
Book number 85244