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It is best to think of this topic under four heads: crime, policing, the legal process, and punishment.
By 1750, British law had long distinguished between civil and criminal offences. Civil law was largely a matter for the propertied elites and had its distinct London courts, for example the Court of Chancery which dealt with disputes over wills and inheritance. Criminal law, which covered offences against property and the person, such as theft, robbery, assault and murder, violence, and disorder, was a much more general concern for the population and was the basis for the bulk of offences committed throughout the period. In the eighteenth century the criminal law was dominated by a concern to protect property in the face of endemic low-level economic crime. Society was also violent, and during the later eighteenth century considerable anxiety existed at the apparently increasing levels of murder. From the early nineteenth century, society became less violent, although low level robbery and affray remained common; and attention turned to questions of drunkenness, prostitution, and other forms of disorderly conduct.
In part this reflected changes in the way society was policed. In 1750 policing was still very rudimentary and based on medieval models of the often part-time village constable, who was supplemented for incidences of riot or mass violence by the military. More organised professional police forces were slowly introduced, but not until 1829 in London, and the 1830s and 1840s in the larger towns, and only after 1856 in the countryside. The overwhelming model of policing was the constable walking a beat. Detective forces, investigating and solving crimes, were only established towards the end of the Victorian period.
People caught up in the criminal system would generally find themselves being dealt summary justice by ‘justices of the peace’ or ‘magistrates’, members of the local elite, almost all without legal qualification, who heard minor cases in each locality, usually without a jury. The ‘police courts’ of the Victorian city operated in this way. More serious offences would be remitted to the Assize Courts, which held judge and jury trials. In both cases the trial process was rudimentary. Defendants often had no legal representation and were not allowed to testify in their own defence until 1898.
The eighteenth-century system relied heavily on deterrence. There was no hope of preventing crime directly or of catching most perpetrators, so the consequences of being caught and convicted were made so draconian as to hopefully dissuade potential criminals. The Black Act (1732) created the ‘Bloody Code’, which prescribed death as the penalty for over 200 offences, including potentially trivial ones like pickpocketing. Although courts were reluctant to convict for capital offences, and the Bloody Code was dismantled in the 1820s and 1830s, public hangings continued until 1868. Before 1853, the main alternative was transportation, first to the Americas, and from 1787 to Australia. Except for minor crimes, (such as being drunk and disorderly), which might be dealt with by a fine, imprisonment very gradually took over, especially between 1842 and 1877 when many new prisons were built. The regime was harsh, often involving hard labour on treadmills or in stone-breaking yards; prisoners were often separated, and conversation prohibited. [522]
Recommended readings in this area are: Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900 (2005), Helen Johnston, Crime in England 1688-1815. Experiencing the Criminal Justice System (2015), Barry Godfrey, Crime in England 1880-1945. The rough and the criminal, the police and the incarcerated (2014), Carolyn Steedman, Policing the Victorian Community (1984), Randall McGowen, ‘Getting to know the criminal class in nineteenth century England’, and the primary source collection 19th Century Crime and Punishment.
- Critical Concepts
- Genre
- History and Politics
- Modern Critical Approaches
- Culture