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By Root 1910 0

have also collected and published a considerable amount of primary material for the colonial period—court records, very notably. This is much less true for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some scholarly editions of primary sources are especially valuable because of their notes and introductions. Various volumes of the Archives of Maryland might be mentioned; but probably the best of all is Peter C. Hoffer and William B. Scott, eds., Criminal Proceedings in Colonial Virginia (1984), which includes the records of trials in Richmond County, Virginia, for the period 1711 to 1754; almost as good is Joseph Smith, Colonial Justice in Western Massachusetts (1639-1702): The Pynchon Court Record (1961), another fine example of scholarly editing.

For the nineteenth century, there is precious little in the way of scholarly editions of legal records. Of course, for much of the century there are published case reports, in hundreds and hundreds of volumes—too much for anyone to digest. These are, of course, appellate cases. The trial courts are astonishingly obscure. On nineteenth-century criminal justice, there are two fascinating comparative studies, Michael S. Hindus, Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767—1878 (1980), and Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century American South (1984). For federal criminal law there is Dwight F. Henderson, Congress, Courts, and Criminals: The Development of Federal Criminal Law, 1801-1829 (1985). An intensive and useful study of a single jurisdiction is Allen Steinberg, The Transformation of Criminal Justice, Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (1989); there is also valuable material in David J. Bodenhamer, The Pursuit of Justice: Crime and Law in Antebellum Indiana (1986). Jack K. Williams, Vogues in Villainy: Crime and Retribution in Ante-Bellum South Carolina (1959), is lively and informative. On the later part of the century, see Lawrence M. Friedman and Robert V. Percival, The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870-1910 (1981). The petty courts are pretty much neglected, which is no surprise; but there is a start on a literature: Theodore Ferdinand, Boston’s Lower Criminal Courts, 1814-1850 (1992); John R. Wunder, Inferior Courts, Superior Justice: A History of the Justices of the Peace on the Northwest Frontier, 1853-1889 (1979). There is also some coverage of these courts in Friedman and Percival’s Roots of Justice, and in Steinberg’s book about Philadelphia.

On police history, there is a good deal to choose from, comparatively speaking. I have already mentioned David R. Johnson’s book, American Law Enforcement: A History. Particularly noteworthy are Roger Lane, Policing the City: Boston, 1822-1885 (1967); Wilbur R. Miller, Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London, 1830-1870 (1977); Samuel Walker, A Critical History of Police Reform: The Emergence of Professionalism (1977); Robert M. Fogelson, Big-City Police (1977); James F. Richardson, Urban Police in the United States (1974); David R. Johnson, Policing the Urban Underworld: The Impact of Crime on the Development of the American Police, 1860-1887 (1979); and Sidney L. Haring, Policing a Class Society: The Experiences of American Cities, 1865-1915 (1983). Eric H. Monkkonen’s book, Police in Urban America, 1860-1920 (1981), is particularly thoughtful and insightful. There is also a literature on the FBI; for example, Sanford J. Ungar’s study, called simply FBI (1975). There is not much on the history of detective forces; on private detectives, there is Frank Mom’s study, “The Eye That Never Sleeps”: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (1982). A fine study of a neglected subject is Gary T. Marx’s book, Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (1988).

Prisons and penitentiaries have gotten their share of attention, too. On the origin of the penitentiary system, nobody should overlook David J. Rothman’s interesting and controversial book, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order