The Profligate Son: Or, A True Story of Family Conflict, Fashionable Vice and Financial Ruin in Regency England

In Regency England a profligate son was regarded as every parent's worst fear: he symbolised the dangerous temptations of a new consumer society and the failure of parents to instill moral, sexual, and financial self-control in their sons. This book traces the disintegrating relationship between an East India Company merchant and his son from teenage public schoolboy to convicted felon transported to Australia. It also provides new insight into relations of credit and debt, and the eighteenth-century criminal justice system.