Night Raiders: Burglary & The Making of Modern Urban Life in London, 1860—1968 by Eloise Moss (review)

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, and crimino-logical literature, and built upon a foundation of varied archival sources, including newspaper reports, official documents, popular media and fiction, and commercial marketing. Night Raiders provides a history of burglary that offers a nuanced perspective, within a broader social and cultural context.

Chapter 1 focuses on media representations of "real life villain" Charles Peace (4). Moss maintains that the "fiction" of the burglar narrative had the "capacity to become orthodox in official accounts" (42). Chapter 2 engages with fictional burglars giving rise to a "culture of pleasure" regarding burglary (44). Offering a more fluid perspective on "public attitudes towards crime" than often posited by most historians, Moss highlights the coexistence of both a culture of fear and a culture of pleasure surrounding burglars (65). Chapter 3 engages with the effects of popular and official representations of burglars on conceptualizations of gender. The rise of professional burglars, who were consistently male, was, according to Moss, at least partly "about constraining the pace of [women's] advancing citizenship" (87). Chapter 4 further emphasizes the gap between the actual experience of burglary and the shifting archetype of the burglary narrative. Representations of the crime and criminal served as a "conduit" for the articulation of issues such as the social composition of the city of London, as well as furthering the "pleasure culture" associated with the offense (108).

Chapter 5 engages with the commercial burglary narrative, and the use of marketing to instill a "culture of fear" about burglars. In contrast to popular narratives, insurance providers sought to eradicate the romanticized burglar from the public domain. Moss demonstrates the "agency of commerce in the formulation of cultural, social and political responses to crime and criminals" (131). By considering these responses together, Moss is able to reveal the impact of competing burglar narratives on everyday life. Furthering this strain, Chapter 6 engages with the manifestation of this process in the home, through the prospering of the security technology industry.

Finally, Chapters 7 and 8 focus on representations of burglars in postwar London. Chapter 7 highlights that, when faced with profound social change, the fears constructed by the media, the market, and the state in order to mobilize citizens into protecting themselves against burglary contributed to falling public confidence in the police and "changing modes of citizenship" (184). Chapter 8 charts another reinvention of the burglar narrative: By positing burglary within the context of espionage, burglary once more became emblematic of the national conversation in relation to much broader issues, such as gender, communism, and the security of the home.

Through offering a history of a single crime, Night Raiders "affords a window into a period of dramatic social change in London and across Britain," which serves to emphasize continuing narratives relating to gender, class, and wealth in particular (208). Moss's approach provides a diachronic perspective to a literature that is often synchronic. By considering the changing representations, both through time and across sectors, Moss's account acknowledges "radically different agendas to which...