John Maurice Beattie (1932 – 12 July 2017) was a British legal historian.
He was born in Dunstan near Newcastle upon Tyne, England and studied history at the University of San Francisco.[1] He was awarded a master's degree by the University of California and a PhD by King's College, Cambridge, where his supervisor was John H. Plumb.[1] Beattie was appointed to the University of Toronto's Department of History in 1961, where he was a member for 35 years.[2]
His Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 is considered a seminal work in criminal and legal history.[2]