1810–1830 was a crucial period in the development of New South Wales, when the legal foundations of a free-settler and emancipist society were laid. This book explores the relationship of a colonial people with English law and looks at the practice of law among the ordinary population. Paula Jane Byrne traces the boundaries between property, sexuality and violence, drawing from court records, dispositions and proceedings. She asks: what did ordinary people understand by guilt, suspicion, evidence and the term 'offence'? The book reconstructs the legal process with great detail and richness and evokes the everyday lives of people in the colony. It focuses on the different valuing of males and females and analyses the complex gender relations of the early colony. This book innovatively ties recent ideas on convict society and Australian colonial women's history to the legal, economic and social history of early New South Wales.

'Those who seek historical treatment of crime will surely welcome this book, both because it illuminates a little known area of history and because it is based on primary source material.'

Nancy Wolfe Source: The Criminologist

'Her methodology and conclusions should interest a broad spectrum of scholars - legal, social, feminist, and economic historians, sociologists, and anthropologists … the book is as much about method as substance. Just as the author's ideas have relevance for studying criminal law, her methodology also has application to other kinds of legal history … Surely an exposé like Byrnes' … merits a new look at legal history methodology …'

Albert J. Schmidt Source: Journal of Social History

'Byrne achieves a remarkable sense of the local gendering of space, geography, housing, and other colonial Australian sites, as well as an often colorful evocation of the theater and conflicts of male/female interactions in streets, inns, households, workplaces, and courtrooms. … The strengths of Byrne's book include the strong grounding of empirical research underlying the readings, analyses, and arguments advanced. … [A]n important, innovative, and, above all, gendered contribution to a cultural history of colonial Australian criminal law.'

Judith Allen Source: American Historical Review

'The historian of crime can draw on this work for useful information and some insightful analysis.'

Source: Social History