THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

The idealized view of a countryside consisting of romantic rose-covered cottages and lusty, honest peasants loses a good deal on closer inspection.  There was indeed a mass of criminal activity, sometimes of a completely unconcealed kind.  The lawbreakers fell into three broad categories.  There were, first, the crowds or mobs that gathered to vent some grievance, more commonly one concerning a shortage of supplies of grain.  Second, there were numerous professional criminals, such as horse thieves, poachers, smugglers and wreckers, highwaymen and footpads, forgers and coiners, many of whom tended to frequent out-of-the-way areas of rocky coastline, forest fastnesses or remote moorlands where the arm of the magistrate failed to reach.  And there was, third, the individual villager who occasionally indulged in the stealing of game or other petty theft, and participated not only in drunken assaults and slander of neighbours, but also – though much less frequently – murder and rape.

Mingay/Countryside