Disparate treatment of the Irish in 19th Century English courtrooms

Anna Bindler, Stephen Machin, Randi Hjalmarsson and Melissa Rubio-Ramos

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of anti-Irish sentiment on 19th-century English jury decisions in criminal trials from London's Old Bailey. Using surnames to measure perceived ethnicity, Irish named defendants were 3% more likely to be convicted and 16% less likely to receive jury recommendations for mercy. Exploiting variation in expected punishment generated by the abolition of capital punishment, juries are shown to respond differently to extraneous factors when defendants were perceived as Irish. Similar patterns for Irish-named victims further support an interpretation based on ethnic animus. The disparities widened during the Irish Famine migration, and persisted thereafter.

Keywords: Irish; crime; criminal law; discrimination; economic history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 K14 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-law and nep-mac
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in The Economic Journal, 28, September, 2026. ISSN: 0013-0133

Downloads: (external link)
https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/141218/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:141218

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().