Victorian Crime and Punishment

Catching the Criminal

• most prosecutions carried out by private individuals (the victim of the crime), not by the police
• guilty people were taken to parish constable or magistrate
• early policemen were known as Perlers or Bobbies
  • set up in London in 1829 by Robert Peel
  • then again after the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 → the start of campaign to improve public law
• the County Borough Police Act of 1856 saw the start of the Modern Police Service

Types of Offences

• it depended on the type of offence to which court defendants were sent
• the normal place of trial were Quarter Sessions and local Petty Sessions
• two types of offences:
  • Summary Offences
    • people were guilty of minor crimes, e.g. being drunk or causing disturbance
    • sent to Petty Sessions → a speedy process and no jury
  • Indictable Offences
    • people were guilty of serious crimes
    • sent to Quarter Sessions (fairly serious offences) → in front of a bench of magistrates or before a judge at the Assizes (very serious offences, e. g. murder or robbery with violence)
    • the jury decided on the verdict, the judge or magistrates on the sentence

The Courts and Judiciary

• court conditions and the treatment of the victim and the accused was very different from today
• trials were often very quick and prosecutors, judges and jury had more power and choice

Sentences and Punishment

• Victorians believed in punishment but didn’t know what it could be
• one attempt to stop the growth of crime was making the punishment severe (hanging or transportation)
  • people were angry and as a result, fewer crimes carried a compulsory death sentence
  • transportation often used for serious crimes

Types of Punishment

• Transportation
  • criminals were sent to the colonies to serve their sentence → any criminal with a sentence 7 years or more
  • it removed the criminals from the society and it was cheap
  • replaced in the Victorian period with Penal Servitude:
    • transportation abolished after the Penal Servitude Act of 1857
    • means ‘serving a sentence that is meant to punish the prisoner’
    • included hard labour and served in the country
  • reasons:
    • to depopulate overcrowded prisons
    • the lack of labourers to support the settlers
• Hanging
  • the most serious punishment for serious offences (e. g. treason or murder)
  • in 18th century, death sentence was even for minor offences (e. g. picking pockets or stealing food) → caused by people in poverty
  • ordered only by the Assize judges
  • at the start of the Victorian period, executions were carried out in public outside the gaol (= jail) → they were public spectacles
  • the Prisons Act of 1868 made it mandatory that all executions are made inside the prison
• Imprisonment
  • not as common until the late 18th century
  • Oscar Wilde imprisoned for homosexuality in 1895
  • prisons served as lock-ups for debtors and places where the accused were kept before the trial
  • in Victorian era, prisons were an acceptable punishment for serious offences and served as a means to prevent crime → it became the main form of punishment for all kinds of crimes
  • two types of prison system:
    • county and shires gaols
      • ranged from small lock-ups to large gaols and Houses of Correction
    • convict gaols
      • run by central government in London
      • included holding prisoners as part of the transportation process
      • situated at ports or in decommissioned naval vessels called ‘hulks‘ (used in times of shortage of prisons) → poor, insanitary conditions
• Hard Labour
  • used in quarrying, building roads or labouring on the docks
  • sentenced for a few days, weeks or even years
  • in the early 19th century were kids sent alongside adults
  • reasons:
    • to teach them the value of hard work
    • to prevent others from mischief and committing crime
    • the need for cheap labour
  • also carried out in prisoner’s cell or under guard → they walked on a treadmill or a tread wheel which provided flour to make money for the gaol
    • in later times, there was no end product and they walked on it only for a punishment
• Physical Punishment
  • most of physical punishment had already died out → seen as barbaric
  • whipping still seemed just and humane
    • increased in private as other forms of punishment (e. g. hanging) were restricted
    • public whipping of women abolished in 1817, men in the 1830s
    • private whipping not discontinued until 1848
• Sending to the Armed Forces
  • sometimes they were sent to the navy as it was difficult to recruit people due to the hard conditions
• Fines
  • not very common as most people were poor and unable to pay

Crime, Poverty and Reforms

• at the end of 18th century, both crime and poverty increased
  • the Industrial Revolution made many people rich but some (both in rural and urban areas) were very poor
• the crime rate increased rapidly as people moved to towns and cities → increase in theft and rioting and public disturbances
• in rural areas, many labourers couldn’t support their families and they turned to crime → poaching common in rural areas and petty theft in urban areas
• the mid 19th century was a time of great social unrest
  • several movements led to civil disturbances – Chartist Movement – people from working-class were upset that they don’t have the right to vote

Crime and the Victorians

• they had faith in progress and believed that crime could be beaten
• it was practise in the Metropolitan Police until the 1930s that thefts were reported as lost property
• violent behaviour was frowned upon and severely punished by courts
  • the new police forces established across the whole country in the 1850s helped to suppress these forms of public behaviour

Sensational Crimes

• the general pattern of crimes was declining but there were occasional panics and scares generated by appalling offences
  • in 1850s and 1860s were panics about street robbery known as ‘garrotting‘
  • the murders of the Jack the Ripper in the autumn of 1888 confined to a small area of London provoked a nation-wide
• most offenders were young males and most offences were petty thefts
• most offences committed by women were prostitution → ‘victimless’ crimes
• domestic violence rarely came before the courts → it could destroy the family’s reputation
• big financial scandals and frauds committed by businessmen were described as an exception to the rule – ‘a black sheep’ or ‘a rotten apple’ but not a criminal

‘Criminal Classes’

• at the beginning of the Victorian era, criminals were equated to working-class people who were considered reluctant to do an honest day’s work and preferred idleness, drinks and an easy life
• by the middle of the century, ‘criminal classes’ suggested a social group stuck at the bottom of the society
• at the end of the century, due to the developments of psychiatry and Social Darwinism, criminals were identified as an individual suffering from a form of behavioural abnormality that has been inherited or nurtured by parents

Penal Policies

• at the beginning of the Victorian era, capital punishment remained only for murderers and traitors
• transportation was at its peak in 1830s and ended in 1850s → due to the hostility of colonists in Australia who objected to their land being used as a dumping ground
• England clung to corporal (= physical) punishment until the 20th century

Detective Policing

• England’s most famous detective Sherlock Holmes at the end of the century – he solved his cases through his intellect
• detective police officers were seen as an intrusive system of spies and surveillance

• most offenders put before court were from the working-class and male
• they provided the image of ‘the criminal‘ even though their crimes were petty in comparison to the frauds committed by middle-class businessmen
• women put before the court were treated more harshly → they transgressed the law and the perceptions of womanhood
• the Victorians believed that crime was in decline but the facts and events (e. g. Jack the Ripper) speak otherwise