State Trials : The Public Conscience

State Trials, Volume II (first published in 1972) contains cases concerned with witchcraft, the scandals of the prisons, and colonial administration gathered from the full edition of State Trials completed in 1826. The author has selected some of the most interesting and important trials for this volume.

The book includes a general introduction, explaining the significance of State Trials as a whole. Each selected case is then introduced by a short essay, which explains the events surrounding the trial and its importance in relation to legal history.

State Trials will always be one of the most vivid and fascinating accounts of English life in all documentary literature. Tales of murder, treason, bigamy, adultery, political conspiracy, the scandals of the prison system, and the brutality of imperial conquest are told through the words of the great and the humble. Murderers, pornographers, conquerors, and heroes, all come alive in their own words. This book will be a fascinating read for students and researchers of law and history, and general readers interested in the topic.

Donald Thomas was an academic historian of crime. He was the author of several studies of the criminal underworld as well as biographies of Robert Browning, the Marquis de Sade, Henry Fielding, and Lewis Carroll.