Cheap Print, Crime and Information in Early Modern London: The Life and Death of Griffin Flood

Jenner, Mark S. R.; Liapi, Lena

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.

Citation

Jenner, M. S. R., & Liapi, L. (2022). Cheap Print, Crime and Information in Early Modern London: The Life and Death of Griffin Flood. Seventeenth Century, 38(2), 185-213. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2022.2144939

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 3, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Dec 9, 2022
• Publication Date: Dec 9, 2022
• Journal: The Seventeenth Century
• Print ISSN: 0268-117X
• Publisher: Routledge
• Volume: 38
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 185-213
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2022.2144939
• Keywords: Crime; early modern London; informers; pamphlets; print culture; neighbourliness
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0268117X.2022.2144939