The Other Side of England: PART III: LAW AND LAWLESSNESS

It is 1844...and a vicious gang of robbers and thugs is terrorising a remote region of East Anglia. Rapacious, bloodthirsty and depraved, they have fled the London 'peelers' via the new railway to hide out in the small market town of Hamwyte, where there is no effective law and the pickings are easy ... isolated mansions and lonely farmhouses are burgled with impunity, their owners brutally tortured, their womenfolk viciously assaulted. The gang laugh at authority ... no act is too savage for them, no evil too great ... not even murder. The county constabulary - less than four years old - is looking for a man to bring them to justice and the county's chief constable turns to one of its first inspectors, Joseph Harrington, a former able seaman and battler against smugglers ... backed up by a new constable, Tom Tedder, a corn miller's son...