In Regency England a profligate son was regarded as every parent's worst nightmare: he symbolized the dangerous temptations of a new consumer society and the failure of parents to instil moral, sexual, and financial self-control in their sons. This book tells the dramatic and moving story of one of those 'profligate sons': William Jackson, a charming teenage boy, whose embattled relationship with his father and frustrated attempts to keep up with his wealthy friends, resulted in personal and family tragedy. From popular public school boy to the pursuit of prostitutes, from duelling to debtors' prison and finally, from fraudster to convicted felon awaiting transportation to Australia, William's father (a wealthy East India Company merchant) chronicled every step of his son's descent into depravity and crime. This remarkable source provides a unique and compelling insight into the relationship between a father and son at a time when the gap between different generations yawned particularly wide. Diving beneath the polished elegance of Britain in Byron's 'age of surfaces', the tragic tale of William Jackson reveals the murky underworld of debt, disease, crime, pornography, and prostitution that lay so close beneath the veneer of 'polite society'. In a last flowering of exuberant eighteenth-century hedonism before the dawning of Victorian respectability, young William became disastrously familiar with them all. The Profligate Son combines a gripping tale with cutting-edge historical research into early nineteenth-century family conflict, attitudes towards sexuality, credit, and debt, and the brutal criminal justice system in Britain and Australia at the time. It also offers challenging analogies to modern concerns by revealing what Georgians believed to be the best way to raise young men, what they considered to be the relative responsibilities of parents and children, and how they dealt with the problems of debt during the first age of mass consumer credit.

About the Author
Nicola Phillips is an expert in gender history and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Politics at Kingston University. Her first book was on women in business from 1700 to 1850, and her research focuses on eighteenth-century gender, work, family conflict, and criminal and civil law. Nicola is also an advocate of public history. A co-founder of Kingston University's Centre for the Historical Record, she is also a member of the National Archives User Advisory Group and the Historical Association's Public History Committee, and has acted as a historical consultant for the National Trust, the Royal Mail, and Addidi Wealth Ltd. She has also contributed to radio and TV programmes on gender history.

Reviews
A tale of juvenile folly turning into serious crime is afforded by Nicola Phillips's splendid The Profligate Son ... which charts the boy's chosen path to its sordid and inevitable end and in the process makes an age come wonderfully alive. * The Wall Street Journal *
Nicola Phillips tells this colourful tale well, but she also takes the opportunity at various points to describe the context in which the Jacksons moved. There is much to be learned in this book about the duties that a father was thought to owe to a son and vice versa; about the workings of the law, particularly in relation to debtors; about the process of transportation; and about the government of a colony in its earliest days. It is the work of an historian with a sure-footed knowledge of the period, and one who understands the value of archival research. * Leslie Mitchell, English Historical Review *
The engine of this book is its author's empathy, but Phillips also has an eye for detail ... There is so much to admire here ... Phillips is an excellent historian. * Literary Review *
It's a very sad story: Phillips tells it impeccably, in racy parts interspersed with compelling accounts of daily life in debtors prisons; she evokes and explains the illusionary and illusory nature of credit. She writes brilliantly about the high roller's descent into low life; about how society looked both ways, to money and to morals (how familiar is that?); about the nuances of fraud, forgery and great expectations. * Clare Brant, Times Higher Education *
A white-knuckle ride into the abyss of the Regency Underworld. * Cotswold Life *
This book is a cautionary tale of absorbing and unremitting decadence, criminal and otherwise... It is the work of an historian with a sure-footed knowledge of the period, and one who understands the value of archival research. * The English Historical Review, Leslie Mitchell *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199687541
Author Nicola Phillips
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 416g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 137mm * 19mm