Johnson, Crime and Punishment, in Four Cases

Thursday 26 March

6.30pm-8pm (Doors open 6pm) £20 / 2 for £36

Crime was rife in Georgian London, but so too was punishment. Hear how Samuel Johnson struggled to reconcile his compassion for people in desperate situations with his unwavering sense of Justice.

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Join us for a fascinating exploration of Samuel Johnson's entanglements with ideas of criminality and causality. Four experts offer their insights into ways in which Johnson wrestled with wrongdoing, his own, as well as those of other people, and tried to stake out the terms of a shift in the way society addressed and corrected them.

Crime was rife in Georgian London, but so too was punishment. In the eighteenth century, you could be hanged for more than 350 offences, including wounding a hawk, fraternizing with gypsies, and defacing some, (but not all) of London's bridges. People were sent to prison for being in debt as was the case with the poet Richard Savage; and street walkers were sent to Bridewells for 'correction', while those who paid them for their services went scot free.

Samuel Johnson had a boundless compassion for people in desperate situations, and at the same time, an unwavering sense of Justice. All his life, he vied with the difficulty of reconciling these two pillars of his character, and of good society itself. How successful he was, and how far he influenced the shape of the century that followed, will comprise some of the questions that these series of short talks will raise.

Ticket includes a welcome drink and a chance to view Dr Johnson's House.

Doors open & welcome drink: 6pm

Talk & Panel Discussion: 6.30pm-8pm

SPEAKERS:

Dr Lucy Powell

Professor Paul Davis

Professor Henry Power

Miriam Al Jamil

Limited capacity. Early booking advised. A small number of priority tickets have been set aside for members.

Accessibility

There is regrettably no step-free access to Dr Johnson's House.

There are seven steps to access the entrance (with a handrail).

The building is a four-storey townhouse with a staircase between each floor.

There are handrails on each side of the staircase and visitor seating in every room.

Toilets are located down a steep set of stairs.