Cheap print, crime and information in early modern London: The Life and Death of Griffin Flood

Mark Jenner; Lena Liapi

doi:10.1080/0268117X.2022.2144939

Cheap print, crime and information in early modern London: The Life and Death of Griffin Flood

Mark Jenner, Lena Liapi

History

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This article centres on the pamphlet The Life and Death of Griffin
Flood informer (1623), which tells the career and execution through
pressing of an informer and murderer working in early modern
London. It outlines what archival research reveals about this figure,
and thereby re-examines how far crime pamphlets were rooted in
social actuality. Secondly, it shows that The Life and Death does not
follow what historians have identified as the conventions of rogue
literature and murder pamphlets, and that scholars’ treatment of
cheap print has often overlooked its generic instability and inconsistency
of tone. Finally, it highlights how the representation of
Flood’s career as an informer casts new light on attitudes towards
non-citizens within early modern London. The article concludes by
arguing that The Life and Death (and many similar pamphlets)
invoked communitarian understandings of justice, and emphasized
neighbourliness, social peace, and charity, rather than the themes
of redemption and divine retribution.

Original language	English
Number of pages	29
Journal	The Seventeenth Century
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2022.2144939
Publication status	Published - 9 Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Crime; early modern London; informers; pamphlets; print culture; neighbourliness

Access to Document

10.1080/0268117X.2022.2144939Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cheap print crime and information in early modern London The Life and Death of Griffin Flood
© 2022 The Author(s)
Final published version, 8.76 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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