In this study, A. W. Ager sets out to establish whether or not crime was a key strategy employed by the laboring poor to sustain their livelihoods in nineteenth-century England. His historiographical framework highlights the strategies of the poor in times of economic transition and hardship, focusing especially on the counties of Oxford and Kent in the south of England. In these counties, he notes the emergence of a hardening attitude toward poverty at the end of the eighteenth century and traces the subsequent relationship between poverty and crime as the Old Poor Law gave way to the New Poor Law of 1834. In particular, he asks whether the New Poor Law, with its harsh “workhouse test,” acted as a stimulus for criminal activity in both rural and urban areas. In brief, his answer is yes.

Ager provides much valuable detail on the operation of and discipline imposed by the workhouse system and demonstrates how the new system imposed severe restrictions on the poor. Workhouse conditions could be worse, in some cases, than those found in prison. The introduction of the New Poor Law also meant that many older practices, which were tailored to meet the needs of individual recipients, were officially discontinued, and that the poor were forced to endure a more highly regulated and disciplinary system. Did this lead to an increasing resort to crime? Ager explores this question by examining a number of key offenses, namely riots, petty theft, poaching, and prostitution.

He begins by recalling rioting and protests both within and outside the workhouse system. However, his account would profit from additional data. Ager claims that “recorded incidents occurred with considerable frequency” (39) but provides little direct evidence to support the view that they were, indeed, frequent occurrences relative to the size of the workhouse population. He cites two incidents, one from January 1845 and another that arose three years later, in which several inmates were involved in protests, but he provides little substantial detail on these cases, and it is not clear how representative such cases were of the actions of the poor within the workhouse system.

Ager's discussion of events outside the workhouse is more compelling. The account of the “Otmoor riots” (41–46) is well researched and written in a lively style. The discussion of the “Kent uprisings” is similarly engaging (although based on relatively little primary research and too reliant on secondary sources). It is not entirely clear, however, how the discussion of the riots fits within the broader theme of the book. The Otmoor riots, for instance, appear to follow well-established patterns of protest from the eighteenth century, and, given that they largely occur prior to the introduction of the 1834 Poor Law, it is difficult to see how they contribute to an understanding of one of the book's key themes—the responses of the poor to the introduction of the new welfare regime in the 1830s.

Ager's history of rioting and protest is followed by an account of crimes arising from more directly economic causes, namely poaching and theft. As other historians have noted, it is difficult to simply see poaching as a desperate measure undertaken by the poor as a last resort to maintain their households. Poaching could, at times, be a relatively well-organized and profitable enterprise involving those often well above the level of the ordinary poor. Nonetheless, Ager makes a strong case that many poachers, at least among those convicted before the courts, did act out of poverty. In some areas of Oxfordshire, the majority of convicts were unable or unwilling to pay court fines and had to suffer terms of imprisonment as a result. This pattern suggests perhaps a refusal to acknowledge the criminal nature of their activities, but surely it also indicates that many poachers caught by the court acted out of hardship (presuming the paying of a fine was a more appealing prospect than time in prison).

Ager also links the incidence of poaching to other forms of theft involving livestock (particularly sheep) and tends towards the reasonable conclusion that these, too, were often acts of desperation carried out by those with little alternative means of sustaining themselves. The question that is not adequately addressed, however, is how representative these convicts were of the wider population. Did they step outside widely accepted norms, or did their actions reflect widespread and accepted survival strategies common among the poorer sections of English society? Ager does cite the prosecution of Thomas Hall, who was clearly living in distressed circumstances, to demonstrate the poverty of some convicts. The research in this section is impressive, but Ager might do more to explain how representative this case was and how it fits into his wider understanding of the period.

Another strategy employed to bolster income that Ager examines is prostitution. Focusing on Chatham, he provides, through the use of multiple sources, examples of various individuals who worked as prostitutes in the town and suggests that they were often driven to prostitution by economic hardship. Here, the evidentiary basis for Ager's central argument is strong but perhaps not too surprising.

The study concludes with a discussion of the impact of official agencies of control—the police, prisons, workhouses, and the courts—on the nature of criminal behavior. Ager provides a useful summary of the working of such agencies (particularly in their treatment of vagrants) and of the often halting development of policing in the south of England, although his conclusions regarding institutions' impact on crime are, perhaps understandably, vague.

On the whole, then, the author has engaged in an impressive amount of research, but his work might be integrated more thoroughly into a wider study of crime and poverty in nineteenth-century England. This book might have benefited from a greater refinement of the central arguments and from greater care and oversight in the editing process (particularly given that it contains some unfortunate typographical errors).