Crime and Punishment in Georgian Britain

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Crime and Punishment in Georgian Britain
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Law as integral to constitution and liberty
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Impartial justice, applying equally to mutineers
and a governor of Goree who committed murder
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Historiography

• 1970s Marxist or neo-Marxist perspective of
  E.P.Thompson, Douglas Hay and others Whigs and
  Hunters Albions Fatal Tree law as an
  instrument of social or even political control
  some crime regarded as illegitimate by
  authorities but legitimate by perpetrators eg
  poaching, rioting, wrecking. So what is crime?
  John Gays Beggars Opera (1728) contrasted fuss
  over a few pounds stolen by a highwayman and the
  wholesale corruption of Walpoles regime what
  are the causes of crime?
• John Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England
  1660-1800 (1986), focusing on assize records

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The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London 1674 to
1834

• Contains 101,102 trials, from April 1674 to
  October 1834
• http//www.oldbaileyonline.org/
• Robert Shoemaker, Tim Hitchcock,
• See also Frank McLynn, Peter Linebaugh

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Criminal law

• Tremendous growth in litigation, from C16th.
  Almost 30,000 cases in Court of common pleas and
  Kings bench in 1640 by 1820s an average of
  72,00 actions a year were started.
• Problem of delay. 1824 commission to investigate
  Chancery found one case with took 16yrs of
  preliminary work before a barrister had even been
  briefed, with costs of 3719
• Growth in legal profession. 1739 Society of
  Gentlemen practitioners in the courts of Law and
  Equity with provincial societies eg Bristol
  1770, York 1786

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treason

• 200 prosecutions in the decade 1795-1805
• Seditious libel, seditious words
• Riot and breaking the peace 3 or more assembled
  to do an unlawful acts constituted riot 1715
  riot act required groups of 12 or more to
  disperse within an hour of the reading of the
  proclamation

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Property and game

• Informal resolution
• Extension of the death penalty the Bloody Code
• Number of capital offences increased from just
  over 50 in 1688 to 160 in 1765 and 225 by 1815
• Many of these related to game there were 24 acts
  1671-1832 regulating the hunting of game. 1752
  Association for the Preservation of Game
  pressure groups.
• 1723 Black Act created 50 capital offences and
  responded to poaching by those who blackened
  their faces (response to 1722 Atterbury Plot
  jacobite - repealed 1823) 1741 and 1742 theft of
  sheep and cattle became capital offences
• For theft of monetary notes, deeds, bills 1742,
  1751, 1767, 1795, 1797
• Shoplifting 1699, for goods worth 5s

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• But
• There were four times as many executions in the
  early C17th as there were in 1750
• 50-60 of those sentenced to death were pardoned
  (except in years of crisis eg high rate of
  executions in 1780s) 90 by early C19th
• There were only about 20 people a year hung in
  London and Middlesex at end of century about 60
  for rest of country
• Benefit of clergy (1706 reading test abolished
  though many crimes specifically exempt eg murder,
  rape)
• Influence of Enlightenment ideas. Jeremy Bentham
  punishment should fit crime in a scientific
  manner
• Informal resolution, discretionary system via
  JPs, who part of a community jury leniency
• Does the flexibility in the system give the elite
  more power discretion was empowering? Frank
  McLynn

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Trends

• Shift from public to private (pillory
  infrequently used after 1775, abolished 1837
  public whipping of women abolished 1817 after
  being infrequently used after 1775, but private
  whippings increased hanging transferred after
  1782 to Newgate)
• and from physical punishments such as whipping,
  branding and hanging to reform through
  imprisonment and transportation eg last branding
  1789 burning at stake abolished 1790 1718
  Transportation Act allowed those guilty of
  capital offences to be transported (30,000 were
  from england, 13,000 from Ireland) disrupted by
  American war prison hulk ships on Thames to
  house gangs used to dredge the river resumed
  1787 to Australia

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After 1752 those convicted of murder were
sentenced to death with dissection or to be hung
in chains
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Policing

• No police force
• Parish officials eg constable watch unpaid JPs
  numbers increased (more than doubled in Sussex
  1680-1760) but many not active informers could
  sometimes lead to self-surveillance eg 40 for
  information leading to capture of a highwayman
• 1740s Henry and John Fielding appointed
  magistrate at Bow Street, London innovators.
  1750 appointed a select force from existing
  parish constables to curb criminal gang
• But anxiety about a professional police force
  (french!) in hands of government
• 1811, after a series of horrific murders in
  wapping, one contemporary said that they have an
  admirable police force at Paris, but they pay for
  it dear enough. I had rather half a dozen mens
  throats should be cut in Radcliffe highway every
  three or four years than be subject to the
  domicilary visits, spies and all the rest of
  Fouchés contrivances
• 1829 Metropolitan Police Act introduced by Peel,
  replacing parish constable with a professional
  force, unarmed but uniformed. Still encountered
  resistance in 1833 a jury returned a verdict of
  justifiable homicide on a policeman who had
  been killed breaking up a political meeting.

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courts

• London courts (Kings Bench, chancery, exchequer,
  common pleas)
• Local courts (ecclesiastical in decline)
  manorial (local estate matters) borough (market
  but also social) quarter sessions (roads, poor
  relief, social) assizes (twice a year, conducted
  by judges, with local grand jury social event
  with assize sermon heard serious crime eg
  murder, rape, burglary)

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Imprisonment

• Usually seen as means of holding men prior to
  trial
• Jails were private enterprises, with fees
• New attitudes esp after 1770s eg 1771 John Howard
  investigated prisons and found many abuses
  deficient food, poor sanitation, overcrowding,
  disease-ridden no segregation of sexes
• 1791 Benthams Panopticon as blue print for ideal
  prison - surveillance
• Houses of correction idea of rehabilitation or
  punishment for petty offence workhouse and
  prison. 1779 act recommended building of more
• 1794 Coldbath Fields House of Correction used
  solitary confinement 1817 similar Millbank
  Penitentiary

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Execution as public spectacle
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Popular attitudes to crime

• Popular Entertainment and public theatre
• Criminal was allowed to dress up for the occasion
• Procession to Tyburn, often stopping to drink
  along the way
• Samuel Richardson The face of everyone spoke a
  kind of mirth, as if the spectacle afforded
  pleasure in stead of pain, which I am wholly
  unable to account for .every street and lane I
  passed through bearing rather the face of a
  holiday that of that sorrow which I expected to
  see
• James Boswell I must confess that I myself am
  never absent from a public execution when I
  first attended them I was shocked to the greatest
  degree. I was in a manner convulsed with pity and
  terror, and for several days, but especially the
  night after, I was in a very dismal situation.
  Still, however I persisted in attending them and
  by degrees my sensibility abated so that I can
  now see one with great composure the curiosity
  which impels people to be present at such
  affecting scenes is certainly a proof of
  sensibility, not callousness. For it is observed
  that the greatest proportion of spectators is
  composed of women

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Celebrated criminals

• The criminal biography. Capt Alexander Smiths
  Compleat History of the Lives and Robberies of
  the Most Notorious highwaymen, foot-pads,
  shop-lifts and Cheats (1719) Capt Charles
  Johnsons General history of the Lives and
  Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen,
  Murderers, Street-robbers and Pyrates (1734)
  The Tyburn Chronicle (1768)
• John Rann, Sixteen String Jack because of the
  silk strings he tied to the knee of his breaches
  he robbed only the rich.
• Jonathan Wild, b. 1682, hanged 1725. instructed
  thieves to steal from people they could identify
  since they would pay for return of goods.
• Highwaymen eg Dick Turpin, who operated in early
  C18th Epping Forest hung 1739

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The Newgate Calendar

• RICHARD TURPIN
• A famous Highway Robber, who shot dead one of his
  own Comrades and was executed at York On 7th of
  April, 1739
• This notorious character was for a long time the
  dread of travellers on the Essex road, on account
  of the daring robberies which he daily committed
  was also a noted house-breaker, and was for a
  considerable time remarkably successful in his
  desperate course, but was at length brought to an
  ignominious end, in consequence of circumstances
  which, in themselves, may appear trifling. He was
  apprehended in consequence of shooting a fowl,
  and his brother refusing to pay sixpence for the
  postage of his letter occasioned his conviction.
•  He was the son of a farmer at Thackstead in
  Essex and, having received a common school
  education, was apprenticed to a butcher in
  Whitechapel but was distinguished from his early
  youth for the impropriety of his behaviour, and
  the brutality of his manners. On the expiration
  of his apprenticeship, be married a young woman
  of East Ham, in Essex, named Palmer but he had
  not been long married before he took to the
  practice of stealing his neighbours' cattle,
  which he used to kill and cut up for sale.
•  Having stolen two oxen belonging to Mr. Giles,
  of Plaistow, he drove them to his own house but
  two of Giles's servants, suspecting who was the
  robber, went to Turpin's where they saw two
  beasts of such size as had been lost but as the
  hides were stripped from them, it was impossible
  to say that they were the same but learning that
  Turpin used to dispose of his hides at
  Waltham-Abbey, they went thither, and saw the
  hides of the individual beasts that had been
  stolen.
•  No doubt now remaining who was the robber, a
  warrant was procured for the apprehension of
  Turpin but, learning that the peace-officers
  were in search of him, he made his escape from
  the back window of his house, at the very moment
  that the others were entering at the door.
•  Having retreated to a place of security, he
  found means to inform his wife where he was
  concealed on which she furnished him with money,
  with which he travelled into the hundreds of
  Essex, where he joined a gang of smugglers, with
  whom he was for some time successful till a set
  of the Custom house officers, by one successful
  stroke, deprived him of all his ill-acquired
  gains.

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JACK COLLET ALIAS COLE Highwayman, who robbed in
the Habit of a Bishop. Executed at Tyburn, 5th of
July, 1691, for SacrilegiousBurglary

• THIS unfortunate person was the son of a grocer
  in the borough of Southwark, where he was born,
  and from whence, at fifteen years of age, he was
  put out apprentice to an upholsterer in
  Cheapside. He did not serve above four years of
  his time before he ran away from his master and
  took to the highway. We have not an account of
  abundance of his robberies, though it is said he
  committed a great many but there is this
  remarkable particular recorded of him, that he
  frequently robbed in the habit of a bishop, with
  four or five of his companions at his heels in
  the quality of servants, who were ready to assist
  him on occasion. Collet had once the ill fortune
  to lose his canonical habit at dice, so that he
  was forced to take a turn or two on the road to
  supply his present necessities in unsanctifying
  garments. But it was not long before he met with
  a good opportunity of taking orders again and
  becoming as holy as ever. Riding from London
  down into Surrey, a little on this side of
  Farnham, he met with Dr Mew, Bishop of
  Winchester, and commanded his coachman to stop.
  The Bishop was not at all surprised at being
  asked for his money, because when he saw his
  coach stopped he expected that would follow. But
  when Collet told him he must have his robes too,
  his lordship thought him a madman. There was no
  resisting, however the old doctor was obliged to
  strip into his waistcoat, besides giving him
  about fifty guineas, which Collet told him he had
  now a right to demand, by having the sacerdotal
  habit in his possession. Collet followed this
  trade till he was about thirty-two years of age,
  and, as if he had been determined to live by the
  Church, he was at last apprehended for sacrilege
  and burglary, in breaking open the vestry of
  Great St Bartholomew's, in London, in company
  with one Christopher Ashley, alias Brown, and
  stealing from thence the pulpit cloth and all the
  communion plate. For this fact he received
  sentence of death, and was executed at Tyburn on
  Friday, the 5th of July, in the year 1691. This
  Brown and Collet had before robbed St Saviour's
  Church, in Southwark.

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smuggling

• wrecking seen as a customary right
• Often tea, though reduction in tax in 1784
  reduced levels
• 1746 it became a capital offence to smuggle or
  prevent capture of smugglers 1784 act make it a
  capital offence not to surrender goods to a
  revenue officer

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Was there a rise in crime?

• Contemporary perceptions Henry Fielding, An
  Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of
  Robbers, and some Proposals for Remedying this
  Growing Evil (1751). Patrick Colquoun estimated
  in early C19th that of pop of 10.5m, 1.3m were
  indigent and criminal. Role of the press?
• but problem of evidence does increasing number
  of indictments reflect actual rise or better
  prosecution?
• Regional variation. London was a special case
  0.5m in late C17th but 1m by early C19th, 1/10th
  of population. Anonymity. Gangs and footpads
  (armed robbers on foot) eg Jumping Joe Lorrison,
  executed 1792, had cat-like ability to jump into
  carts and rob them. Pickpockets around the
  theatres. Duke of Cumberland had is sword stolen
  on way in to theatre George III had his watch
  stolen in Kensington palace gardens. The Thames
  as source of smuggled goods.
• Regional studies suggest violent crime was
  falling. Beattie found that in Surrey and Sussex
  murder and manslaughter cases fell from 2.5 per
  100,000 in 1660-1679, to 0.3 per 100,000 in
  1780-1802.
• Property offences increased after a dip in mid
  C18th blips after demobilisation. Study of crime
  in North East Morgan and Rushton showed peak of
  property offences in 1750s and then 1780s and
  1790s but also high incidence of female
  involvement a third of accused in Durham and
  Northumberland were women, half in Newcastle
  and increasingly urban phenomenon

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Gin Lane. 1736 act attempted to regulate it
1751 act most successful, and this print from
that year (when consumption was about 11m
gallons one in every 15 houses sold alcohol
excessive drinking thought to be cause of death
for about one in eight adults c. 1800
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Sexual crime

• petty treason was a servant killing a master or a
  wife killing a husband (1351 act)
• Sexual offences including bigamy 1753 Hardwicke
  Marriage act clarified what constituted a
  marriage
• 1782 comments by one judge on beating wives

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Judge Buller and the rule of thumb
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Prostitution c.40-50,000 in early C19th
London Defoe, Moll Flanders (based on Moll King,
executed 1720) Hogarths Harlots progress
depicted decline of country girl into a poxed
whore
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Campaigns for moral reform

• Impact of religious toleration?
• Two major campaigns 1689-1720 (75,000
  prosecutions0 1780s (crisis after war with
  America), 1787 proclamation vs vice and 1787
  Proclamation Society, had strong Pittite support
  but never really a popular movement 1802 Society
  for the Suppression of Vice did have greater
  lower social appeal, to bring about prosecutions.
  
• Drew on religious zeal and fear of immorality but
  also idea of moral failings of criminals and
  political loss of virtue/public spirit
• Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge founded
  1699
• 1702 Society for Propagation of the Gospel
  Overseas
• 1783-4 Sunday school movement, 1785 Sunday School
  Society evangelical movement

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What is the purpose of punishment?

• Deterrent?
• Retribution?
• Rehabilitation?