For more than 200 years, everyday life in Britain has been beset by a variety of dangers, from the mundane to the life-threatening. Governing Risks in Modern Britain focuses on the steps taken to manage these dangers and to prevent accidents since approximately 1800. It brings together cutting-edge research to help us understand the multiple and contested ways in which dangers have been governed. It demonstrates that the category of 'risk', broadly defined, provides a new means of historicising some key developments in British society. Chapters explore road safety and policing, environmental and technological dangers, and occupational health and safety. The book thus brings together practices and ideas previously treated in isolation, situating them in a common context of risk-related debates, dilemmas and difficulties. Doing so, it argues, advances our understanding of how modern British society has been governed and helps to set our risk-obsessed present in some much needed historical perspective.

1. Introduction - Risk and the History of Governing Modern Britain, c. 1800-2000 by Tom Crook and Mike Esbester. - Part One: Early Risk Societies. - 2. Risk, Prevention and Policing, c. 1750-1850 by Francis Dodsworth. - 3. Rethinking the History of the Risk Society: Accident Reporting, the Social Order and the London Daily Press during the Early Nineteenth Century by Ryan Vieira. - Part Two: Environmental Risks. - 4. Artificial Britain: Risk, Systems and Synthetics since 1800 by Chris Otter. - 5. Danger in the Drains: Sewer Gas, Sewerage Systems and the Home, 1850-1900 by Tom Crook. - 6. Public Health and Public Safety: Disinfection, Carbolic and the Plurality of Risk, 1870-1914 by Rebecca Whyte. - 7. Risk, Time and Everyday Environmentalism in Modern Britain by Timothy Cooper. - Part Three: Mobility and Leisure Risks. - 8. Drunk Driving, Drink Driving: Britain, c. 1800-1920 by Bill Luckin. - 9. Risk on the Roads: Police, Motor Traffic and the Management of Space, c. 1900-1950 by Chris A. Williams. - 10. 'Maximum Supervision': Risk, Danger and Public Water in Post-War Britain by Glen O'Hara. - Part Four: Occupational Risks. - 11. Risk, Responsibility and Robens: The Transformation of the British System of Occupational Health and Safety Regulation, 1961-1974 by Christopher Sirrs. - 12. Il/legitimate Risks? Occupational Health and Safety and the Public in Britain, c. 1960-2015 by Paul Almond and Mike Esbester. - 13. Conclusion: Governing Risks in Britain and Beyond by Arwen P. Mohun, Thomas Le Roux, Tom Crook and Mike Esbester