Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England

A fascinating study of moral panics about religion, women, witchcraft, revolution, crime, and corruption, ranging from the late seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth, Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England considers whether media-driven 'law and order' panics proliferated after 1700, with the development of the newspaper press and heightened sensibility to crime and the anonymity of London, as well as the availability of legislative solutions from regular law-producing parliaments. Together the essays reveal the importance of opinion as an influence on government throughout the period, but they also nuance our understanding of the public sphere. Whereas sixteenth and early seventeenth-century panics imply a political culture where involving the people in affairs of state was exceptional, by the mid-eighteenth century media-savvy governments routinely sought to manipulate public opinion to legitimize their rule. Moreover, the popular discourses informing moral panics shifted from a fundamentalist religious mindset of heaven against hell to concerns about social problems such as crime and the corrupting effects of commerce. By 1800 the reading public was clearly much less deferential and more demanding of government: and the rule of law depended on extended public discussion, even though much of it took the form of sensationalist reporting and panic.