It immediately emerges from this edited collection of essays that David Jones was a widely respected historian, colleague and teacher. His early death was shocking, yet the decision to publish an edited volume of essays dedicated to Jones' contributions to social history can be applauded. He was an influential scholar developing his trade during the social history 'revolution' of the 1960s, and he clearly developed great drive and enthusiasm for history, particularly Welsh social history. Thi..

Ewen, Shane

OpenEdition

 Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History &
Societies 
Vol. 5, n°2 | 2001
Varia
David W. Howell and Kenneth O. Morgan (eds.), 
Crime, Protest and Police in Modern British Society :
Essays in Memory of David J. V Jones
(University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1999), x + 248 pp., ISBN 0-7083-1555-0
Shane Ewen
Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chs/755
ISSN: 1663-4837
Publisher
Librairie Droz
Printed version
Date of publication: 1 January 2001
Number of pages: 167-170
ISBN: 2-600-00664-8
ISSN: 1422-0857
 
Electronic reference
Shane Ewen, « David W. Howell and Kenneth O. Morgan (eds.), Crime, Protest and Police in Modern
British Society : Essays in Memory of David J. V Jones », Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History &
Societies [Online], Vol. 5, n°2 | 2001, Online since 02 April 2009, connection on 01 May 2019. URL :
http://journals.openedition.org/chs/755 
© Droz
167 
leurs statuts respectifs, échangeaient leurs rôles ou refusaient de s'y tenir... Ces con-
fusions paralysaient la justice, la crainte de la concentration des pouvoirs entravait 
le jeu des instances régulatrices... 
Si les policiers firent plutôt bien leur travail, qui percèrent à jour l'extravagant 
Alexandre, au Palais de Justice, aux ministères du Commerce, des Finances, les 
nommés se pliaient devant les élus, et, à Bayonne comme à Orléans ou à Paris, la 
puissance de la fonction élective sut mettre un terme aux tressaillements ou timides 
velléités de la justice. 
Entre le « député-roi », futur ou ancien ministre, l'avocat-député, futur ou ancien 
garde des Sceaux, une presse dont la puissance ne fait ressortir que plus vivement le 
manque de moyens et qui n'hésite pas à user du chantage pour se procurer l'argent 
qui lui manque, des banquiers et assureurs dupes ou complices, des ministres aveu-
gles ou incompétents, le tableau que dresse Paul Jankowski paraît - mais le détail 
des escroqueries de Stavisky, comme de son incroyable impunité peuvent justifier 
une telle lecture - à la limite de la caricature. 
Décidément cette IIIe République avait plus de défauts que les hommes de Vichy, 
de Gaulle et les résistants réunis n'en pourraient dénoncer les années suivantes. Le 
scandale Stavisky permet d'observer comment une société, aveugle à ses propres 
travers, se tourna contre l'État et ses officiers ou ses représentants. On ne s'étonne 
pas qu'il se soit trouvé si peu de parlementaires pour prendre le risque de défendre 
un tel régime le 10 juillet 1940. 
Carriérisme, cumuls de fonctions, jeux d'influence mis en lumière par les 
enquêtes et les péripéties de l'affaire sont pourtant bien banals et sembleraient 
anodins par rapport à d'autres affaires plus contemporaines. Un scandale financier 
somme toute moins grave que celui du Panama, une affaire à tout prendre moins dra-
matique que l'affaire Dreyfus, permet la mise au jour d'une «éthique et de ses 
blessures». Au delà de ce nouvel épisode des liaisons dangereuses entre l'argent et 
la démocratie, Paul Jankowsky se veut optimiste : « si les pratiques de la République 
en contredisent les idéaux, notamment dans le domaine hautement symbolique de la 
justice, la ténacité de l'idéal collectif fait naître une attention scrupuleuse, un sens de 
l'indignation et un violent désir de justice». 
Même si on ne suit pas l'auteur dans ses thèses et conclusions, on lit ce livre 
comme un roman, non seulement parce que le sujet s'y prête, mais parce qu'il est 
servi par une mise en scène des sources d'une aisance et d'une élégance rares. 
Jean-Marc Berlière 
Université de Bourgogne, 
Dijon, France 
berliere@alcyone.u-bourgogne.fr 
David W. Howell and Kenneth O. Morgan (eds.), Crime, Protest and Police in 
Modern British Society: Essays in Memory of David J. V Jones (University of 
Wales Press, Cardiff, 1999), x + 248 pp., ISBN 0-7083-1555-0 
It immediately emerges from this edited collection of essays that David Jones 
was a widely respected historian, colleague and teacher. His early death was shock-
ing, yet the decision to publish an edited volume of essays dedicated to Jones' con-
tributions to social history can be applauded. He was an influential scholar 
168 
developing his trade during the social history 'revolution' of the 1960s, and he 
clearly developed great drive and enthusiasm for history, particularly Welsh social 
history. This collection follows Jones' own academic interests (crime, popular 
protest, and policing), melding a wide range of methodological tools with a diverse 
historical field. In doing so, this collection is both consolidatory and challenging in 
its emphasis. For example, Clive Emsley continues to pursue the under-researched 
element of comparative policing, drawing contrasts and comparisons between the 
British and French systems of policing and their representation within modern 
popular culture. John Archer further develops the incidence of rural crime, adding to 
his own work and that of David Jones within poaching. In so doing, however, Archer 
introduces a new dimension to the debate. Whilst it can be argued that poaching in 
the rural South and East of England was traditionally related to poverty; Archer's 
analysis of the Lancashire conurbation raises the important issue of poaching as an 
area of organised crime to serve the markets of the major urban areas of the county. 
There is also a general challenge to traditional economic and social history, in that 
there is an emphasis, as Jones himself was well known for, on the Welsh experience. 
Welsh history understandably constitutes a diverse field, similarly to Jones' own 
work, as evidenced in Dorothy Thompson's warm appreciation of his work and 
friendship, and Dwyryd Jones' bibliography of his colleague's publications. 
The introductory chapter by David Howell and Kenneth Morgan identifies three 
key themes that reflect the wide academic interest of David Jones : Welsh social 
history, popular protest, and crime and policing. An additional theme may be added 
to this list, that of the underlying debate over consensus and conflict. Morgan's his-
toriographical essay on Welsh social history astutely raises the interdependency of 
consensus and conflict within modern British society. Archer also recognises these 
two juxtaposing, yet reinforcing, notions in discussing the prevalence of rural tradi-
tions such as poaching (which can be clearly identified historically in East Anglia). 
Ideas relating to consensus and conflict can also be identified clearly in Howell's 
essay on rioting in eighteenth-century Wales, Owen Ashton's work on the Chartist 
and Republican W. E. Adams (a 'second-line Chartist'), and Neil Evans' portrayal 
of the unemployed in South Wales and their reaction to the Means Test. The funda-
mental conclusion that emerges from this wide range of case studies is that it is too 
naive to differentiate between consensus and conflict in a practical sense where 
institutional and personal relationships are far more complex than the theory of 
Weber et ai. allows them to be. 
Another key area of interest that emerges from this collection is the idea of 
regionality. Gone are the days when widespread generalisations could be made 
about the spatial experience of British social and economic history. Jones can be 
partly thanked for such a shift in emphasis from the national to the local. However, 
in pursuing local differences and contingencies, Jones also identified relationships 
between the local and the national, and recognised that the local dimension can, and 
does, reinforce the national debate. For example, his work on Welsh Chartism was 
not conducted as a distinct trajectory to that of English Chartism; rather, it both chal-
lenged existing assumptions about public order and added to an already strong 
national picture, whilst also locating the nature of Welsh Chartism and the Rebecca 
Riots within the long-term process of rioting and social disorder. Thus, work on 
Chartism, poaching, policing, and public disorder highlights clear and discernible 
regional variations in experience, whilst also serving to add to the national picture. 
For example, Ashton's essay illuminates the differences between Adams' 
169 
Cheltenham Chartists and those groups more inclined to physical force. This is, of 
course, related to organisational and personal influence within the different regions 
of Britain. However, a further strength of Jones' personal contribution to the history 
of crime and public order was his ability to draw comparisons between traditionally 
distinct categories - the rural and urban, the religious and secular, the political and 
apolitical - and contend that experience of crime, disorder and policing ran across 
spatial boundaries. It is evident that the experience of policing is bound to have had 
clear differences in, for example, industrial Birmingham and agricultural 
Cambridgeshire, yet Jones was able to discern similar patterns in language, thought 
and action in, for example, the imposition of police forces in these contrasting com-
munities, their duties, and the public perception towards them. 
The major strength of this collection is that, whilst it may arguably appear delib-
erately disjointed in places, the themes that emerge are interrelated, and the book 
successfully moves beyond a mere analysis of crime, protest and policing. Rather, 
the essays variously contribute to debates concerning class, particularly regarding 
the formulation of distinct groups and classes within society. In so doing, various 
organisations and influential individuals are identified as challenging, often in an 
organised manner, such alleged organic societal 'norms'. For example, Hugh 
Dunthorne presents a lucid assessment of the influence of Cesare Beccaria's Essays 
on Crimes and Punishment (1764) on convincing early-modern English reformers 
of the necessity to moderate the penal system and introduce aspects of rehabilitation. 
Ashton's work emphasises the diverse influence of W. E. Adams, both as a Chartist 
agitator and a republican, in local, national and international circles through the 
establishment of societies to create links between like-minded groups, such as the 
Friends of Italy or the Friends of Poland. Neil Evans introduces the role of organi-
sational agitation on a much broader scale, drawing parallels between the Chartist 
marches on Newport gaol in 1839 and those of the National Unemployed Workers' 
Movement and the various other unemployment clubs in South Wales in marching 
against the unpopular Means Test from 1934-1936. 
In pursuing this line, however, other essays in the volume respond by tracing 
changing perceptions towards the institutions responsible for maintaining law and 
public order, underpinning such norms, in society. Thus, the police, as the official 
'agent' of government (in its broadest sense), whether political or apolitical, remain 
sensitive to public opinion. This is represented in Peter Stead's essay tracing the 
growing battle over viewer figures for 'Cop T V from the 1970s onwards, which can 
be juxtaposed with the traditional perception of the local 'bobby' (a.k.a. Dixon of 
Dock Green) of the 1950s and '60s. Modern police television drama is more reflec-
tive of the late twentieth-century policing environment and, in particular, the police 
officer and his/her relationships with colleagues. It emerges that even the police 
officer is susceptible to 'scandal' - whether financial or sexual - and 'corruption', 
and is not actually, as traditionally represented, above the law. The recent change in 
emphasis of ITV's The Bill, and BBC's City Central clearly reflect this shift. 
Meanwhile, Clive Emsley compares traditional public perceptions towards the 
police in Britain and France, drawing parallels between the centrally imposed gen-
darmerie on the continent, and the locally accountable police forging friendly ties 
with the public on the British streets. The idea that the British public consent - either 
tacitly or explicitly - to the notion of their police as the defenders of public order is 
thus contrasted sharply with the idea that the French public have little input into the 
structure and function of the state's police system. 
170 
This book, thus, is a fitting tribute to the life and work of David Jones. It is a mix 
of idealism and pragmatism, melded with a concise analysis of the empirical date, 
which forges an interrelationship between crime, protest and policing and the wider 
economic, social, and political environment. In celebrating the work of Jones, it also 
helps to set the agenda for future research in this field. With the recent shift towards 
an emphasis on inter-personal crime and violence, and government strategies 
towards crime statistics and police administration, Jones' work is regularly referred 
to in footnotes as a major methodological contributor to this field over the past three 
decades. His work, therefore, retains both its relevance and interest for all social and 
economic historians alike. 
Shane Ewen 
University of Leicester, UK 
sde3@le.ac.uk 
Frédéric Chauvaud, Les experts du crime. La médecine légale en France au 
XIXe siècle, Paris, Aubier (collection historique), 2000, 298 p., ISBN 2-7007-
2323-6 
Si l'histoire des théories médico-légales du second XIX e siècle a fait l'objet de 
nombreux travaux5, en revanche, celle de l'émergence du personnage de l'expert et 
des pratiques de ce médecin légiste manquait. Le livre de Frédéric Chauvaud, 
comme la publication du cours de M. Foucault sur les anormaux6 viennent combler 
ce vide. Chauvaud, qui avait jusqu'à présent centré son intérêt sur le crime, offre par 
ce volume non plus seulement une plongée précise et documentée dans ce regard des 
médecins sur le crime, mais une analyse attentive et plurielle de cet autre corps, 
qu'est la médecine légale. Il dresse à partir de sources variées - ici une affaire cri-
minelle, là un traité, plus loin un rapport d'expertise, le quotidien de ces médecins, 
interroge leurs gestes et explicite leurs actes. Retournant l'objectif photographique, 
l'historien dépeint ainsi le hors-champ du crime et son évolution tout au long du 
XIX e siècle. Mais surtout, à travers ce livre et en dépit d'un plan discutable - pour-
quoi avoir isolé l'histoire de la profession d'expert médico-légal de celles de leurs 
pratiques, Chauvaud fait l'histoire de la naissance de cette parole singulière qu'est 
celle de ces médecins experts devant les tribunaux. 
Il y a en effet chez l'expert médico-légal tel qu'il émerge progressivement au 
milieu du XIX e siècle un paradoxe central et probablement très intéressant si l'on 
examine sur une plus longue durée le rapport de la médecine et des médecins avec 
le monde social, si l'on travaille sur l'histoire du pouvoir médical. Le livre de 
Chauvaud dessine ainsi en creux comment la parole du médecin qui pour des raisons 
de déontologie doit demeurer dans le secret passe progressivement de ce domaine 
privé à l'espace public. L'auteur écrit ainsi l'histoire d'un discours qui est constitué 
à terme comme «porteur de vérité». Ainsi, cette enquête met à jour de manière très 
5
 Notamment ceux réalisés autour de Laurent Mucchielli (Histoire de la criminologie française, Paris, 
l'Harmattan, 1994), ou Christian Debuyst (Histoire des savoirs sur le crime et la peine, De Boeck 
Université, 1995). 
6
 Cf. M. Foucault, Les anormaux, Cours au Collège de France, 1974-1975, Paris, Hautes Études, 
Gallimard, Le Seuil, 1999. 


David W. Howell and Kenneth O. Morgan (eds.), Crime, Protest and Police in Modern British Society : Essays in Memory of David J. V Jones

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David W. Howell and Kenneth O. Morgan (eds.), Crime, Protest and Police in Modern British Society : Essays in Memory of David J. V Jones

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