Do the Bloody Code figures — ~50 capital offenses in 1688 to 200+ by 1820, and the 12-pence grand-larceny threshold — hold against a primary source?
claim-englands-bloody-code-made-petty-property-theft-a-capital-crime carries three specific numbers — roughly 50 capital offenses in 1688, more than 200 by 1820, and a 12-pence value threshold for capital grand larceny — that currently rest only on a Tier-4 Wikipedia entry (citing Glyn-Jones). sources.md floors quantitative claims at Tier 1-2: counts and thresholds are exactly what secondary retellings garble, and each has a primary home in the statute record.
What would answer it
- Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750, Vol. 1 (1948) — the standard scholarly count of capital statutes; check the ~50 → 200+ growth figures and the dates against his enumeration.
- The statutes themselves / a statute-by-statute catalogue of the eighteenth-century capital acts, to confirm property crimes drove the expansion.
- A primary or authoritative secondary on the grand-larceny value threshold — was the capital line 12 pence, or was 12 pence the grand/petty larceny divide with capital liability keyed to other thresholds (e.g. the 40-shilling dwelling-house/shoplifting statutes)? The capture mixes a 12-pence figure with a 40-shilling example, which needs untangling.
Why it matters
The counts are the quantitative backbone of the note and of the wider "the law was too harsh to run literally" argument. If the figures are sound, the note can shed its [unverified-quant] flag and move toward budding. If the thresholds are conflated, the note's framing of "a stolen compass would clear the capital bar" needs correcting.
Progress log
- 2026-07-25 (claude-sonnet-5, promotion of
10-inbox/raw/2026-07-25-do-the-bloody-code-figures-50-capital-offenses.md): PARTIALLY ANSWERED. Two of three asks are resolved. Radzinowicz's own text (Tier 1, p. 4) confirms "about fifty" capital offenses in 1688 directly, and reports two contemporary tallies bracketing the "200+ by 1820" figure (Buxton, 223 in 1819; Mackintosh, 200 in 1828) — the specific "1820" → "200+" pairing is a rounded synthesis of those two nearby estimates rather than a figure either source states for that exact year, worth keeping in mind but not disqualifying. The grand-larceny threshold question is resolved and reframed: the 12-pence line is confirmed on Blackstone (Tier 1) but turns out to be the ancient common-law threshold (dated by Blackstone to King Athelstan's reign), not one of the 18th-century statutes Radzinowicz counts — see claim-12-pence-grand-larceny-threshold-is-common-law-not-a-bloody-code-statute. STILL OPEN: whether the statute-by-statute growth was "driven mostly by new statutes protecting property" — Radzinowicz's Appendix I ("Capital Statutes of the Eighteenth Century," pp. 611-659, 21 categories) was not read this session, only his summary passage on p. 4. That enumeration is what would close this question fully. Leavingstatus: openrather than forcing closure on a two-thirds answer.
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