This collection of eleven essays looks at issues of corruption in urban Britain from 1780-1950. The contributions are drawn from a wide range of scholarly and disciplinary backgrounds and provide a broad analysis of the phenomenon of corruption, assessing how debates about corruption arose, the narratives used to criticise established modes of public conduct and their consequences for urban leadership.

Dr James R Moore is Deputy Director at the Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, UK. John Smith was formerly from the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester, UK.

Contents: Introduction: Corruption and urban governance, James Moore and John Smith. Part I Locating Corruption: Language and the Respectable: Scandals: a tentative overview, John Garrard; Corrupt and corporate bodies: attitudes to corruption in 18th-century and early 19th-century towns, Rosemary Sweet; 'Getting away with it' or 'punishment enough'?: the problem of 'respectable' crime from 1830, Gary Wilson and Sarah Wilson. Part II Managing Corruption: Attitudes and Ethics: Corruption and scandal in the port of Liverpool, Adrian Jarvis; Municipal corruption and political partisanship in Manchester 1885-95, James Moore; 'Ingenious and daring': the Wolverhampton Council fraud 1905-17, John Smith; The dramas of local government: personal ethics and public service in Winifred Holtby's South Riding, Clare Griffiths; Rotten boroughs: the crisis of urban policing and the decline in municipal independence, 1914-64, Chris A. Williams. Index.