Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T15:07:00.641Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Informers and Their Social Networks in Eighteenth-Century London

A Comparison of Two Communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Jessica Warner  and
Frank Ivis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The informer’s particular contribution was to pollute the public well, to poison social life in general, to destroy the very possibility of a community; for the informer operates on the principle of betrayal and a community survives on the principle of trust. (Navasky 1981)

An intervention that rewards informers creates enormous stresses within the community that it targets, forcing each of its members to choose among three possible careers or alliances: solidarity with the larger community, collaboration with other informers, and membership in neither group (this last career is reserved for informers whowork on their own).

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , winter 2001 , pp. 563 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2001 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baker, W. E., and Faulkner, R. R. (1993) “The social organization of conspiracy: Illegal networks in the heavy electrical equipment industry.” American Sociological Review 58: 837–60.Google Scholar
Bearman, P. S. (1993) Relations into Rhetorics: Local Elite Social Structure in Norfolk, England, 1540–1640. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Beresford, M. W. (1958) “The common informer, the penal statutes and economic regulation.” Economic History Review 10:221–37.Google Scholar
Boissevain, J. (1974) Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators, and Coalitions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Brewer, J. (1989) The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Clark, P. (1987) “Migrants in the city: The process of social adaptation in English towns, 1500–1800,” in Clark, P. and Souden, D. (eds.) Migration and Society in Early Modern England. London: Hutchinson: 267–91.Google Scholar
Clark, P. (1988) “The ‘Mother Gin’ controversy in the early eighteenth century.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 38: 63–84.Google Scholar
Corfield, P. J. (1982) The Impact of English Towns, 1700–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Critchley, T. A. (1979) A History of Police in England and Wales. London: Constable and Co.Google Scholar
Davison, L. (1992) “Experiments in the social regulation of industry: Gin legislation, 1729–1751,” in Davison, L., Hitchcock, T., Keirn, T., and Shoemaker, R. B. (eds.) Stilling the Grumbling Hive: The Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689–1750. New York: St. Martin’s: 25–48.Google Scholar
De Veil, T. (1748) Memoirs of the Life and Times, of Sir Thomas Deveil, Knight, One of His Majesty’s JUSTICES of the PEACE, for the Counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surry and Hertfordshire, the City and Liberty of Westminster, the Tower of London, and the Liberties thereof,&c. London: M. Cooper.Google Scholar
Ennett, S. T., and Bauman, K. E. (1993) “Peer group structure and adolescent cigarette smoking: a social network analysis.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 34: 226–36.Google Scholar
Erickson, B. H. (1981) “Secret societies and social structure.” Social Forces 60: 188–210.Google Scholar
Freeman, L. C. (1978-79) “Centrality in social networks: Conceptual clarification.” Social Networks 1: 215–39.Google Scholar
Gould, R. V. (1991) “Multiple networks and mobilization in the Paris commune, 1871.” American Sociological Review 56: 716–29.Google Scholar
Granovetter, M. S. (1974) Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Landau, N. (1986) The Justices of the Peace, 1679–1760. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Linebaugh, P. (1991) The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Maitland, W. (1760) The History and Survey of London from Its Foundation to the Present Time. 3rd ed. 2 vols. London: Printed for T. Osborne.Google Scholar
Mathias, P. (1959) The Brewing Industry in England, 1700–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McLean, P. D. (1998) “A frame analysis of favor seeking in the Renaissance: Agency, networks, and political culture.” American Journal of Sociology 104: 51–91.Google Scholar
Navasky, V. S. (1981) Naming Names. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Padgett, J. F., and Ansell, C. K. (1993) “Robust action and the rise of the medici, 1400–1434.” American Journal of Sociology 98: 1259–1319.Google Scholar
Priestley, P. (1980) Community of Scapegoats: The Segregation of Sex Offenders and Informers in Prison. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Rogers, N. (1989) Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, N., Fingrutd, M., Ethier, M., Karant, R., and McDonald, D. (1985) “Social movements and network analysis: A case study of nineteenth-century women’s reform in New York State.” American Journal of Sociology 90: 1022–54.Google Scholar
Rudé, G. F. E. (1959) “‘Mother Gin’ and the London riots of 1736.” Guildhall Miscellany 10: 53–63.Google Scholar
Rule, J. G. (1981) The Experience of Labour in Eighteenth-Century Industry. London: Croon Helm.Google Scholar
Scott, J. (1991) Social Network Analysis: A Handbook. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, R. B. (1991) Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, c. 1660–1725. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, R. M. (1979) “Kin and neighbors in a thirteenth-century Suffolk community.” Journal of Family History 4: 219–56.Google Scholar
Suitor, J., and Keeton, S. (1997) “Once a friend, always a friend? Effects of homophily on women’s support networks across a decade.” Social Networks 19: 51–62.Google Scholar
Warner, J. F., and Ivis, F. (1999) “‘Damn you, you informing bitch.’ Vox populi and the unmaking of the Gin Act of 1736.” Journal of Social History 33: 299–330.Google Scholar
Warner, J. F., Ivis, F., and Demers, A. (2000) “A predatory social structure: Informers in Westminster, 1737–1741.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33: 617–34.Google Scholar
Wasserman, S., and Faust, K. (1998) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Webb, S., and Webb, B. (1963) The Parish and the County, English Local Government. London: Frank Cass and Co.Google Scholar
Wellman, B. (1979) “The community question: The intimate networks of East Yorkers.” American Journal of Sociology 84: 1201–31.Google Scholar
Wellman, B. (1992) “Men in networks: Private communities, domestic friendships,” in Nardi, P. (ed.) Men’s Friendships. Newbury Park, NJ: Sage: 74–114.Google Scholar
Wellman, B., Wong, R.Y.-l., Tindall, D., and Nazer, N. (1997) “A decade of network change: Turnover, persistence and stability in personal communities.” Social Networks 19: 27–50.Google Scholar
Wilson, T. (1736) Distilled Spirituous Liquors the Bane of the Nation. London: Printed for J. Roberts.Google Scholar