Research Areas
Simon Devereaux
Associate Professor of History
University of Victoria (Canada)
August 2011
British History, 1689-1837
English Legal & Institutional History
History of Crime, Policing and Punishment in Western Societies
Courses Taught
HIST 2120 – History of England ( in rotation with Drs Mariel Grant & Andrea McKenzie )
HIST 324A – Britain's Rise to World Power, 1689-1837 ( in alternation with HIST324B )
HIST 324B – English Society in the Eras of Defoe, Fielding, Austen and Dickens, 1689-1837 ( in alternation with HIST324A )
HIST 328B – Death and the Afterlife in England, 1750 to the Present
HIST 338 – Seminar in British History ( including “Punishment in the Age of Enlightenment”
)
HIST 339 – Topics in British History ( including “Punishment in Modern Societies” & “The
British Monarchy since1689” )
Brief Biography
I was born and raised in Nepean, Ontario. I received my BA in History and Political Science from the University of Toronto in 1989, and stayed there to pursue my MA (1990) and PhD
(1997) in British history with J.M. Beattie. From 1997 to 1999, I held a Killam Postdoctoral
Fellowship at Green College, University of British Columbia, where I worked with the late
Richard Ericson. Before coming to Victoria in July 2004, I served as Lecturer in British History at the University of Queensland, Australia.
I am currently finishing my first monograph, as well as a website project – “Capital Convicts at the Old Bailey, 1689-1837” – which are the fruition of more than a dozen years archival research.
I am also working on a textbook tentatively entitled Punishment in Modern England: Historical
Voices (Palgrave Macmillan), as well as a series of publications deriving from my capital punishment research.
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Books
Criminal Justice and English Government, 1750-1810: Convicts and the State (forthcoming)
Co-editor (with Paul Griffiths), Penal Politics and Culture 1500-1900: Punishing the English
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
Co-editor (with Allyson N. May & Greg T. Smith) , Criminal Justice in the Old World and the
New: Essays in Honour of J.M. Beattie (Centre of Criminology: University of Toronto,
1998)
Articles
“The Historiography of the English State during ‘the Long Eighteenth Century’,”
History
Compass , 7 (2009), 742-64; 8 (2010), 843-65
“Recasting the Theatre of Execution: The Abolition of the Tyburn Ritual,”
Past & Present , No.
202 (February 2009), 127-174
“From Sessions Paper to Newspaper? Criminal Trial Reporting, the Nature of Crime, and the
London Press, 1770-1800,” The London Journal , 32 (2007), 1-27
“Imposing the Royal Pardon: Execution, Transportation and Convict Resistance in London,
1789,”
Law and History Review , 25 (2007), 101-38
“The Abolition of the Burning of Women in England Reconsidered,”
Crime, History & Societies ,
9/2 (2005), 73-98
“The Fall of the Sessions Paper: The Criminal Trial and the Popular Press in Late Eighteenth-
Century London,”
Criminal Justice History , 18 (2003), 57-88
“The Making of the Penitentiary Act, 1775-1779,” The Historical Journal , 42 (1999), 405-33
“Irish Convict Transportation and the Reach of the State in Late Hanoverian Britain,”
Journal of the Canadian Historical Association , n.s. 8 (1997), 61-85
“The City and the Sessions Paper: ‘Public Justice’ in London, 1770-1800,”
Journal of British
Studies , 35 (1996), 466-503
Chapters
“The Promulgation of the Statutes in Late Hanoverian Britain,” in David Lemmings (ed), The
British and their Laws in the Eighteenth Century (Boydell & Brewer, 2005) , ch 4
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“Peel, Pardon and Punishment: The Recorder’s Report Revisited,” in Devereaux and Paul
Griffiths (eds), Punishing the English (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 258-84
“The Criminal Branch of the Home Office, 1782-1830,” in Devereaux et al (eds), Criminal
Justice in the Old World and the New (Centre of Criminology: University of Toronto,
1998), 270-308
“In Place of Death: Transportation, Penal Practices and the English State, 1770-1830,” in
Carolyn Strange (ed), Qualities of Mercy: Justice, Punishment and Discretion
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996), 52-76
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