3 - “An Evil Quarter of an Hour about the Precincts”

Summary

This chapter demonstrates how, in the context of the local courtroom, the state remained vulnerable to contestation and public defiance by defendants of even the most modest means. Police prosecutions accounted for part of the rapid proliferation of summary prosecutions across the second half of the nineteenth century. This increase, however, was dwarfed by the meteoric rise in summonses involving regulations on health and public safety, social reform, minor disruptions of public order, and the collection of various fees and debts to municipal and corporate organizations. These cases raised crucial questions about the relationship between the state, the individual, and the community. They also revealed key fractures in the principles and methods that guided different facets of metropolitan governance. What were the limits of public authority versus individual autonomy? Where was the line to be drawn between public order and private liberty? What violations represented a genuine hazard to the “public good,” and how was the latter to be defined? And did courtroom authority in these matters ultimately lie with the municipal representatives who levied summonses or with the magistrates who adjudicated them?