The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd - by Donna T Andrew & Randall McGowen (Hardcover)

About the Book

Revealing the deep anxieties of a period of English capitalism, this history tells the remarkable story of a complex forgery uncovered in London in 1775. 19 photos.

Book Synopsis

The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd tells the remarkable story of a complex forgery uncovered in London in 1775. Like the trials of Martin Guerre and O.J. Simpson, the Perreau-Rudd case--filled with scandal, deceit, and mystery--preoccupied a public hungry for sensationalism. Peopled with such familiar figures as John Wilkes, King George III, Lord Mansfield, and James Boswell, this story reveals the deep anxieties of this period of English capitalism. The case acts as a prism that reveals the hopes, fears, and prejudices of that society. Above all, this episode presents a parable of the 1770s, when London was the center of European finance and national politics, of fashionable life and tell-all journalism, of empire achieved and empire lost.

The crime, a hanging offense, came to light with the arrest of identical twin brothers, Robert and Daniel Perreau, after the former was detained trying to negotiate a forged bond. At their arraignment they both accused Daniel's mistress, Margaret Caroline Rudd, of being responsible for the crime. The brothers' trials coincided with the first reports of bloodshed in the American colonies at Lexington and Concord and successfully competed for space in the newspapers. From March until the following January, people could talk of little other than the fate of the Perreaus and the impending trial of Mrs. Rudd. The participants told wildly different tales and offered strikingly different portraits of themselves. The press was filled with letters from concerned or angry correspondents. The public, deeply divided over who was guilty, was troubled by evidence that suggested not only that fair might be foul, but that it might not be possible to decide which was which.

While the decade of the 1770s has most frequently been studied in relation to imperial concerns and their impact upon the political institutions of the day, this book draws a different portrait of the period, making a cause célèbre its point of entry. Exhaustively researched and brilliantly presented, it offers both a vivid panorama of London and a gauge for tracking the shifting social currents of the period.

From the Back Cover

"The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd is stunningly wrought. Anyone with the slightest interest in crime or its history, in the press and sensationalism, in the cultural history of modern economic and urban life, in London or eighteenth century England could not fail to be intrigued by the stories of two identical twin brothers--one good, happily married and respectable, the other not so good and living with a courtesan--who die hand-in-hand on the gallows. Are they the victims of their own corruption, or of the wiles of the wicked Mrs. Rudd? This book is micro-history at its best."--Thomas Laqueur, author of Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud

"Dee-li-cious!!! Immensely readable, this delectable true-crime story of eighteenth-century forgery, deceit, and ambition casts light on a wide range of socially significant sites, from the credit market to the world of fashion, from the law court to the imperial stage. The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd is a tour de force of historical scholarship, and it's an engrossing story as well."--Mary Poovey, author of A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society

Review Quotes

"An absorbing tale of the lifestyles of the rich and infamous. "The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd gets positively gripping as the authors walk us through the political, social, financial, legal and media background of the whole episode."--"Toronto Star

About the Author

Donna T. Andrew is Professor of History at the University of Guelph and author of Philanthropy and Police (1989). Randall McGowen is Professor of History at the University of Oregon.