Night Raiders: Burglary & The Making of Modern Urban Life in London, 1860–1968

Night Raiders is the “first history of burglars and burglary in modern Britain,” exploring confrontations “between criminal and householder inside their homes during the period 1860 until 1968” (2). Generally subsumed in the broader category of theft within academic literature, burglary, according to Moss, needed a “fresh appraisal” (4). Charting the history of burglary, considering what burglars stole, and where they stole it from, alongside broader social and political conceptions of the crime and the criminal, Night Raiders connects the offense to its shifting, “social, cultural, political, economic and technical context” (12). While acknowledging the inherent limitations in researching the history of burglary, Moss’s approach focuses on the narratives relied upon by the State, popular media, and commercial sectors in relation to burglary, and the implications of the shifting versions of the offense, thus offering a grounded approach to historical research. The approach is interdisciplinary, contributing to historical, sociological, legal,...