Industrial Sprawl and Crime Rates

The social and industrial growth of England during the Victorian period is generally well known, cottage industry and small mercantile ventures were replaced with industrialisation and manufacturing on a massive, and previously unprecedented, scale. The growth in employment opportunities in towns and cities prompted a mass exodus from rural areas into the rapidly industrialising towns. 

The social problem novel permeates the literary output of the Victorian period, whether a literary scholar or not, most people are familiar with at least one novel of the period which can be said to fall into the category of 'social problem' -from Oliver Twist to North and South the social condition of England as a result of industrialisation and urban expansion was firmly on the fore front of public consciousness.

By 1851 half of the population of Britain lived in towns, and by 1901 this had risen to 3/4, and it was this rapid growth which was considered the major cause of crime, as population density in cities caused the over crowding of slum areas and a concentration of poverty and subsistence living.  The anonymity and isolationist nature of sprawling slums precipitated and facilitated the rise of crime levels within the jurisdiction.  Without the careful scrutiny of a smaller, and more intimately acquainted, society these masses of the poor were inclined towards lawlessness and illegal behaviour - they were free of what was termed 'natural policing.' 

In 1852, M.D Hill (1792-1872), brother of Rowland Hill, the postal reformer, who had been a judge in Birmingham for 30 years, was examined by a House of Commons Committee on Juvenile crime and reported that:

A century and a half ago...there was scarcely a large town in this island...[by a] large town I mean [one]  where an inhabitant of the humbler classes is unknown to the majority of inhabitants...by a small town, I mean a town where...every inhabitant is more or less known to the mass of the people of the town...in small towns there must be a sort of natural police...operating upon the conduct of each individual who lives, as it were, under the public eye; but in a large town, he lives...in absolute obscurity...which to a certain extent gives impunity.

When this is viewed in light of the content of the social problem novel, we see it all but born out.  For example in Oliver Twist, we see a young man who's very name implies the operation of social determinism which will make him a criminal, the name Twist, referring to the hangman's noose which his namers believe he will ultimately meet, and when he is exposed to the slums of London, and their many inhabitants, he is capable of disappearing from his former masters and later being hidden from those friends who would seek to protect him from the criminal masses which are presented as thriving in those impoverished parts of the city.  

The social determinism, which Oliver overcomes with the revelation that his birth and parentage are not as abject as he had been led to believe, was considered a major motivation factor behind crime in urban London.  The poor, and ill educated, by virtue of their class of birth or parentage were more inclined than the wealthy towards acts of criminal behaviour because of the operation of biology and that it slum areas it was almost impossible to keep the honest poor from being exposed to the criminal poor, who were already acting upon their inborn, and here to fore, latent criminal proclivities, which their entire class possessed.  Andrew Mearns (1837- 1925) the chief author of The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor(1883) wrote:

Few who will read these pages have any conception of what these pestilential human rookeries [the worst housing districts] are, where tens of thousands are crowded together amidst horrors which call to mind what we have learned...of the slave ship...One of the saddest results of this over-crowding is the inevitable association of honest people with criminals...Who can wonder that every evil flourishes in such hotbeds of vice and disease. 

As already mentioned, Contemporary analysts did not believe that it was poverty alone that caused crime, rather it was a motivating factor which allowed latent criminal tendencies to surface.  In the Report of the Royal Commission on a Constabulary Force [1839] the social reformer Edwin Chadwick wrote:

We have investigated the origin of the great mass of crime committed for the sake of property, and we find the whole ascribable to one common cause, namely, the temptations of the profit of a career of depredation [theft], as compared with the profits of honest and even well paid industry...the notion that any considerable proportion of the crimes against property are cased by blameless poverty...we find disproved at every step. 

A narrow view, certainly, and an almost echoing, in tone, of Scrooge's interrogation of the charity workers demanding 'Are there no prisons, no poorhouses?' Assured in the expectation that the poor should voluntarily enter such places, but it was well known to Dickens, and his socially minded contemporaries, that these placed were often worse than the streets; with living conditions and hygiene so poor that death and

disease were rampant.  While these social institutions were in place to 'care' for the poor and prevent them from having to turn to crime as a means of survival, it should be noted that they might have been more honest, but they were certainly no safer.

Gin and Justice

William Hogarth; Beer Lane and Gin Street

When one thinks of the underbelly of Victorian London the first thing that springs to mind is the image of the shadowy alleys of Whitechapel, where slum dwellers slink in gin soaked corners and their predilection for alcohol causing all sorts of criminal behaviour, as can been seen in this earlier image where the drunk and idling mother is allowing her child to fall from the steps in her stupor.  It was a condition of English poor life which

drew much contemporaneous attention, with critics such as William Hoyle in 1876 writing that alcohol had been responsible for turning England into a 'land of drunkenness, crime....[and]insanity.'  -

This was a view that was not entirely erroneous; the Reverend J.W Horsley (1845-1921), who had served as chaplain of the Clarkenwell Prison, London, engaged in an examination of the motivating and mitigating features of the criminal acts committed in his jurisdiction in his 1898 study Prisons and Prisoners.  He found that:

            ...half the cases of common assault, three-quarter of the assaults on the police and half the aggravated assaults were committed by drunken persons...Cruelty to animals...and children...of these, half might fairly be considered drink caused, as also might be half of the cases of malicious damage...and half of  such military and naval offenses...as come before the police courts...Then             [consider] the cases which are indirectly caused by drink, for example thefts     by or from drunken persons, and one arrives at the conclusion that half of all crime directly and an addition one-fourth as indirectly drink caused, is a moderate estimate...

Horsely argued, that while 170,000 people per year were charged with being drunken disorderly, there were other satellite crimes which were caused indirectly because of the consumption of alcohol or by people who were seeking access to alcohol.  He cited a number of case studies

            Stealing a pony and cart - a young man out on his employers business spends some of the money he has collected in a public house, and therefore fears to  face his master, recollecting the devil's proverb, 'As well be hung for the sheep as the lamb,' he sells the pony and cart.  As he expressed the matter to me, 'the  first word of your mouth when you're drunk is you don't care for nothing...

            Larceny-A married woman, aged 35, stole 30 shillings from her landlady to get drink...

            Begging- A woman, aged 44, seven out of ten children alive, her husband   fairly well to do, begged simply to get money for drink*. 

There is, of course, the argument that Horsley, as a leading temperance reformer, had an ulterior motive for blaming the condition of England's poor, and the high levels of criminal behaviour among (and involving) the Glasgow, consulting with police officers about the numbers of drunk individuals that were to be found on the streets of Glasgow in a given evening.  His study found that the average officer estimated that between 500-600 drunken individuals were to be found on Argyle Street, a major high street, on any given evening.  Over all, excesses of 9000 people in Glasgow were charged with drunk and disorderly behaviour, some in a condition of such stupor that they had been brought to the police station in wheel barrows. 

poorer classes on alcohol.  However, in 1858, a writer who called himself 'Shadow' wrote a study of

Despite the damning figures of Shadow and Horsley, the annual report of the Liverpool Head Constable for 1898 indicated that drunkenness was on the decline finding that:

          

  766 fewer cases of...drunk and riotous [behaviour] etc...Licensing Acts - the number of licenced-houses in the city had been decreased by 18 public houses and 2 beer-houses, and increased by 5 off-licenses...the number of licenced  premises...is:

            Public House: 1,865

            Beer House: 244

            Off-License: 153

            Total: 2,262

            Drunkness -

            The total number of arrests during the year: 4,292

            On a given night of the week:

            Sunday: 294

            Monday: 703

            Tuesday:544

            Wednesday: 452

            Thursday: 401

            Friday: 501

            Saturday: 1,398

This was a trend which was identified by the social critic Charles Booth, in his London based survey from 1902, which clearly identified that the number of arrests related to or involving alcohol were dropping as the new century progressed. 

*On  a side note, I find it interesting that the women both have the qualifying notes of being married and that one has a high number of living children, as though to state that these are otherwise 'good' women who have fallen low through the vice of alcohol- but that could be my personal hobby horse.  

Empirical Evidence in the Age of Empire

The Victorians valued empirical evidence in much the same way as it if valued today, as a way of measuring, dispassionately, an objective standard, ' what I want...' says Mr Gradgrind in Hard Times 'is facts.'  There was a prevalence, during the period, of the publication of statistics in magazines and periodicals for public consumption.  

There is a difficulty with these statistics because of the problems of ascertaining the truth behind them.  It is hypothesized that a significant portion of modern crimes go unreported, and statisticians posit that a significantly higher portion of Victorian crime also went unreported to the police.  One statistician posited that London crime statistics during the period are at least 50% higher than recorded.  

There is also the complex issue of identity, the number of individual offenders may well be lower than reported because of the extensive use of aliases.  The severe sentencing practices meant that many offenders went to great lengths not to be associated with their past misdeeds.  As Reverend J.W. Horsley noted in his 1887 book, Jottings from Jail:

            We take very little notice of names and ages in prison, as from various reasons they are apt to alter with each entrance.  Thus Frederick Lane, 15, has just been sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.  He has previously been in custody as Alfred Miller, 15, John Smith, 16, John Collins, 16, John Kate, 16, John Klythe, 17, John Keytes, 17.  

As the Quarterly Review 1874 found that:

...our readers in comparing the numbers of criminals in more recent years with those of an earlier period must...remember the additions which have been made to the population of the country.  The number of criminals is not much more than half in 1873. out of 23 millions of people, of what it was in 1841, out of 16 millions...In other words, whilst the growth of population has been nearly 45%, crime has actually diminished by about 25%. 

Frederick Engles (1820-95) blames the rise and expansion of the proletariat in industrial towns like Manchester and London for the rise in crime statistics from 1805 to 1842.  The Condition of the Working Class in England, (1844/45) by Engles, found that in 1805 there were 4,065 crime reported in England and Wales, but by 1842, 4,497 arrests were made in Lancashire alone, and 4,094 in Middlesex, including London.  The reported arrests for these two regions formed a quarter of the entire crime statistics for the country but their populations did not form a quarter of the entire population of England and Wales.  

However, from 1848 on-wards there was an almost year on year fall in those committed to penal custody, with the exception in 1854.  This fall is posited as the result of the higher level of police control during the period, their expanded powers and effectiveness facilitating a fall in penal sentences and crimes committed.   

Quarterly Review, October 1874

By 1840 the number of police officers employed by the Metropolitan Police force has risen to over 3,500 and police powers had been expanded inline with social needs, as the Judicial Statistics 1856-1873 reflects:

The commitments for trial in ...1856 show an unprecedented decrease...this must...be largely attributed to the extended powers of Justice of the Peace [i.e Magistrates] to deal summarily in cases of larceny under the Criminal Justice Act 1855.  

'High Culture and Good Literature'

In the arts you often find yourself at events and conferences with speakers and attendees from other disciplines; sometimes history, or language studies, and sometimes it is a discipline like Media.

There has, historically, been a presentation of Media studies as something which is somehow easier or less worthy than the study of history or literature.  It has been designated as the 'soft' option or somehow easier than literary engagement because it related to a field of study which constitutes 'low culture.' 

Despite the fact that I fall within what is arguably one of the most stereotypically 'academic' fields, engaging with the classical English canon of Dickens et al, I whole heartily disagree with the disparagement of media and related fields as somehow constituting 'low' culture. 

Despite the current opinion of the Victorian novel, of Doyle and Dicken's constituting some of the highest forms of cultural exposition, the fact is that few of those who wrote novels that are now considered canonically significant were attempting to write in some effort to create 'high' culture.  They were written for the general public and serialised in papers and magazines for mass consumption.  In much the same way that Shakespeare's plays were of contemporaneous universal appeal, so Dicken's in his own time was 'Mister Popular Sentiment.'  They wrote mysteries, intrigues, thrillers, and bildunsgromen meant for the delectation of the public and their perennial appeal is testimony to the skill of their writers.  In the 1996 film Shakespeare in Love which, although fictional, expressed the opinion of the period when playwrites were considered 'vegrants and peddlers of bombast' - and given the number of bawdy jokes in Shakespeare's plays it is hardly surprising.  

Literature was the 'media' of the past, they are ways of representing the human experience in a way that it accessible to the common man, and so it is perhaps time to re-imagine the definition of the 'canon of literature' as the expression of imaginative culture to a 'canon of human experience' which can encompass the new and adaptive media world in which we now live.  It is a world in which internet fictions and collective story telling are as legitimate a representation of writing talent as anything which is released from a publishing house or where serialised television shows imagine the ideal human future in the way that Star Trek or Doctor Who present man kinds engagement with the universe in the same way that Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World or 1984 expose the hopes and frailties of human kind. 

However, that is not to say that television and film, which constitute the modern equivalent, have no way of entering the modern consciousness in the same manner that Sherlock Holmes, Oliver Twist or even Macbeth have become committed to the annals of history.  If canonicity if based upon the volume of contemporaneous uptake then television shows like Seinfeld, Dallas, and friends will become part of the TV age's cultural legacy; film series like Bat Man, Avatar, and Titanic will represent the theatrical contribution of the digital generation.  I do worry about the future literature classes that will call for historical commentary on a generation which has 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight as top selling literary works but to turn up your nose at the study of the Media and related fields is to prove yourself as short sighted as those who burnt books or banned plays - they are the modern expression of imagination, as new and innovative as plays or 3 volume novels were in their own times. 

While not every play or book ever written is remembered; those which best reflect human experiences have become the canon, we must be careful not to lose a powerful tool of cultural examination, that will be used by future generations, due to our own intellectual snobbery by consigning television, film and games to the cultural scrape heap simply because we do not see their immediate cultural significance.  

The Criminal Female

I have spent the time since the Viva pouring over a text from 1895,  The Female Offender, by Professor Caesar Lombroso, part of the Criminology Series published T. Fisher of London.  I stumbled upon it in the Library, I believe it’s an original and I am pretty sure it should be in short loan not full loan, since I now have it until October.

The introduction, written by W. Douglas Morrison, expresses the surety that Lombroso’s study of criminal anatomy will shed light on what creates and defines an offender and allow the penal system to better administer justice.  I find it incredibly interesting that in an introduction to a ‘scientific’ text about the physical deformities of female offenders, Morrison manages to make it through the entire introduction only mentioning female offenders once.

Morrison does however point out the rather interesting statistic that in the US, in 1850, 6,737 (1:3,442) people were housed in prison accommodation for a variety of reasons, by 1890 this number had swelled to 82,329, (1:757) and this increased was described contemporaneously as ‘a tide that has no ebb.’  A huge increase by anyone’s standards, although nothing to today’s US prison population.

Lombroso’s study examined a number of races and nationalities, with some measure of outsourcing of the post mortem examinations to various countries.   The monograph upon which the entire 620 page study is founded studied the anatomy of:

• 26 skulls and 5 skeletons in the possession of Signor Scarenzi  (All prostitutes)
• 60 subjects who died in a prison in Turin, examined by Messrs. Varaglia and Silva
• 17 in Rome, examined by Mingazzini and Ardú

Constituting

• 4 Prostitutes
• 20 Infantacides
• 2 Complicity in Rape
• 14 theft 
• 3 Arson
• 4 Wounding
• 10 Assassins 
• 1 Abortion

On a purely curiosity basis I want to know the measure of their definition of ‘assassin’.
Anyway!

For Lombroso physical deformity and criminality walk hand in hand, he identifies deformities in the face and skull and equates those with criminal behaviours, drawing connections between specific deformities, their prevalence in woman, as opposed to men, and the sorts of crimes committed by women with specific deformities.

Lombroso posits that the number of cranial anomalies present in a skull indicates a propensity towards criminal behaviours and that the number of anomalies can determine the type of crime that those women were predisposed to.  His observation that male criminals had a higher number of anomalies would seem to lead to the suggestion that it takes fewer abnormalities to turn a woman into a criminal than it does a man.

Lombroso’s work was, in effect, a method of using the physicality of women against them, women who suffered from genetic deformities, or who were simply unprepossessing were criminalised because of their appearance and any lack of feminine grace they might have possessed with hairy moles ‘marking degeneration in the female subject.’  It is hard to believe now that this was ever considered science, logic would dictate that when examining a woman in her 60’s that wrinkles would be a sign of ageing rather than her moral degeneration.  Taken in isolation, you could be forgiven for thinking they were describing a Disney witch rather than an attempt to 'scientifically' render the female criminal's features.  

He cites the case of Maria Köster who killed her mother with a hatchet – Lombroso posits that her facial asymmetry and asymmetrical pupil was indicative of her predisposition.  He identified a large number of ‘features’ of the female criminal, from projecting ears, flat nose, to ‘Mongolian features’ – an expression of casual racism which is hardly surprising when an examination of the plates provided in the book show several woman who bear obvious features of being mixed race.

However, while the work incites nothing short of horror in me, as a modern reader, the work makes the acceptances that ‘a man suffering from an attack of typhoid fever cannot be subjected to the same dietary, to the same exercise, as another person in the enjoyment of ordinary health.  The regime to which a patient is subjected must be suited to the anomalous condition in which he happens to be placed.  Criminal codes to be effective must act upon precisely the same principle,’ This is one of the first times, in my reading, that I have seen any sort of acknowledgement made of the adaptive nature of criminal penal administration. While it is not aimed at women, this acceptance would seem to be a first step towards the acceptance of the unique judicial position of criminal women.


Reading through the description of the degenerate female I was disconcerted to see that I fit the mould of more than one, I am of ‘unusual short stature’, ‘gigantic canine’,  deep set eyes’, with ‘prehensile feet’, and ‘very black hair’…so all in all…it’s a wonder I haven’t killed more than one person by now.

The Great Conference Debate

 I will be spending the next few months writing up my first conference paper with a view to trotting it out left, right and centre over the course of the coming year - although I suppose technically I have the potential to trot out 3 or 4 papers from my first chapter since I cover a few smaller issues within it. 

As I sat down to start my alterations I was made to consider the fact that far ahead of my submission I was laying all of my cards on the table.  My final viva is about 2 years away and yet I am hesitant to divulge all of the nuances of my argument to a public who have not my best interests at heart.  I highly doubt that my ideas are so wholly marketable as to warrant 'theft.'  If such things are even capable of being stolen in a real sense.  After all at this moment there could be someone examining the Victorian novel through the medium of the law in some other college and their expression and mine might be so different as the render our works polar opposites but  still the nagging little fear has remained.

In reality there are positives and negatives to creating and delivering conference papers.  On the positive there is the capacity to test one's theories, to dip a toe into the receptive waters and see how the academic public at large find your theories and the weight of your argument -on the whole a worthwhile endeavour.  After al, you might as well be told by a room full of strangers a year ahead of your viva that your argument lacks clout as to wait until the viva itself and be told that you need to beef up your content.  On the other hand, it does come down to jumping the gun! To go to a conference and tell the world about the theory or academic model that you are pinning a career on seems risky!

I suppose it is the paranoia and nerves of a first timers and is born mostly out of my nerves about answering to a panel of strangers! Answering to my faculty and fellow PhD's is one thing but strangers who don't understand me or my work and trusting my expression to carry me through is rather another!

THERE! That's my weekly existential crisis committed to paper!

The Search For A Title

I mentioned in the last post the problems I was having with my title well, I felt I should elucidate a little on this.  When I created my chapter structure I had a very clear idea of what it was I was intending to write about –the writer and the legislative process! It was all nicely planned in my head; I had trial transcripts of various authors’ entanglements with the law and I was intent upon drawing connections between these transcripts and the contents of their novels but then I started writing and a much more interesting idea came to the fore and rather quickly stole the show, an examination of the expression of authorial attitudes towards legal Realism and legal Formalism.  I was rather smitten (and yes I know it’s sad to be smitten by a chapter idea but there it is) and I proceeded with an examination of how authors expressed their disdain or support for these ideologies in their work, specifically in their characterisation. 

I was chugging along swimmingly, the chapter is complete and I’m looking at my finished piece, very different to what I had started writing, but still operating under the same working title that I had given it 3 months ago and which now no longer fits.  I was struggling to come up with an idea and moaned my displeasure to facebook, looking for some indulgent sympathy rather than an answer.  I didn’t get my answer, although one person did offer genuine assistance, but my bad mood was considerably lightened by some of the mock answers I received:

• "Law and The Victorian Novel A Time Traveler's Approach: Timey Wimeyness in the Judicial Process”
• 
  
• “Pride, Prejudice, and Cocaine: Regency drug law in operation” ‎
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• "Mr. Popular Sentience: The Borg and Dickens"
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• “People I know who would've been hanged by now and why”
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• "Formalist Legal Acquisitions and Brains: Propriety Rights and Legality in Pride Prejudice and Zombies"
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• “To kill a mocking bastard: Provocation law in the Deep South”
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• “War and my "piece”: Sex Crimes and Tolstoy”
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• “The Law's a Posterior - Legality and Victorian Gentility”
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• “Law Love A Duck - Cockneys and Illegal Animal Husbandry”
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• “Tyburn Tree - A history of deforestation in the greater Bangkok area”
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• “I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self defence - Pleas of diminished responsibility in the works of Bob Marley”
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• “I shot the sheriff, and they say it is a capital offence - Problems of ambiguity in the legal application of the death penalty in the works of Bob Marley”

I am not ashamed to say that I am tempted to actually attempt a conference paper on more than one of these!  Sex crimes and Tolstoy! There might be a nice little paper in there somewhere!  Anyway! I still have no thoughts as to my new title but I’m sure it will come!