Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900

Emsley, Clive

doi:10.4324/9781315144719

Cited by 66 publications

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“…63 However the discretionary powers of the jury did not escape their contemporaries, 64 and historians of nineteenth-century criminality in England have pointed out the increasing number of cases being sent to summary courts instead of quarter sessions courts. 65 The 1848 Summary Jurisdiction Act and subsequent acts, followed the tendency observed on the continent due to the sheer number of offenses that had to be tried: 66 the duties of the justices of the peace were increased and many more offenses fell under their purview, notably simple larceny without violence. As such, the number of criminal acts tried by juries declined, while the work of the summary courts increased dramatically.…”

Section: Judicial Practice and Gender Expectationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Petty Criminality, Gender Bias, and Judicial Practice in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Pluskota¹

2018

Journal of Social History

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Recent studies on gender and crime tend to emphasize the differences in the treatment of men and women by the criminal courts. Historians researching western European criminal justice have proved that in many instances women were treated with more leniency than men. For London, between 1780 and 1820, Peter King has shown that the judges and juries of the Old Bailey were more likely to sentence a male suspect to death than a woman and that acquittal rates were higher for women. 1 Deirdre Palk, building on King's findings for the same period, has pointed out that gender may also have played a role in the discretion shown by decision-makers when granting a pardon. 2 Work on female prosecution and sentencing for other countries or cities highlights a similar gender bias towards women: for instance, Renée Martinage and subsequently Virginie Despres have examined the assizes of northern France in the first half of the nineteenth century, noting that when men and women were accused of stealing food, juries were more likely to set a woman free than a man. 3 Shapiro and Ferguson, both working on the Parisian assizes, have highlighted the indulgence shown by juries and magistrates towards women who performed according to gender norms and emphasized their own status as victims. 4 For Italy, Mary Gibson shows that, at the end of the nineteenth century, women accused of infanticide and abortion were treated more favorably by the penal code if they carried out the act in order to "save their own honor." 5 Likewise, Dora Dumont has explained that the Bolognese tribunal at the very start of the nineteenth century was not inclined to prosecute women who took part in rural riots. 6 Similar conclusions were drawn in the Netherlands: Albert Eggens highlights how criminal women from * The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

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Section: Judicial Practice and Gender Expectationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Petty Criminality, Gender Bias, and Judicial Practice in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Pluskota¹

2018

Journal of Social History

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“…In a Scottish prison commission report it is stated "many serious crimes in Scotland are committed by travelling thieves from England" (p. 7). 2 Pooley (1994) observed a high mobility among obtaining goods and money false pretence criminal in the north of England during 1880-1910. Emsley (1996 explains that two major phenomena caused members of the public to perceive a rise in violent crime.…”

Section: Figure 1 Herementioning

confidence: 99%

A verisimilitude of pessimism: Scottish prisoner mug-shots, 1883–1927

Holligan

Maitra

2018

Visual Studies

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This paper examines the stigmatisation of identity. Historic prisoner mug shots taken in two Scottish prisons during the late Victorian period constitute a part of archival base of this study from which generalisations to the contemporary world are conjectured. Cultural criminologists propose crime is normatively framed (Hayward and Presdee 2010). Arntfield (2016) ventures the claim that mug shots belong with a larger symbolism within a discourse of crime and culture. This article examines the scientific and cultural environs within which a dangerous semiotic of the mug shot image originated. The 'gaze' of the mug shot, it is argued, suffers from class stigmata circulating elite Victorian scientific laboratories and drawing-rooms. Criminal anthropology, it is argued, constructed visual sources as tools for reaching certainty, but in this project generated processes of social closure (Brubaker, 2004). Morphological deviations from the norm defined the 'criminal body'.

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“…As Clive Emsley documents, contemporaries believed that most women of the so-called criminal classes, particularly prostitutepickpockets, worked for or were romantically involved with male thieves of the ilk of 'Davy the Gun'. 25 Police records reveal narratives of women stealing and selling sex to support men. In 1911, for instance, Constable Hickling reported that Maud Rouse alias Corn Beef Maud, whose husband was in gaol in England, had most recently been supporting a man named Strickland with her illicit earnings until he had to go off shearing.…”

Section: Sisters In Solidarity?mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Us Girls Won’t Put One Another Away’: relations among Melbourne’s prostitute pickpockets, 1860–1920

Piper

2017

Women's History Review

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Larceny from the person, or pickpocketing, was the most common form of indictable crime committed by female offenders in turn-of-the-century Melbourne. It was an offence particularly likely to appear within the criminal careers of recidivist female offenders. Female pickpocketing, however, was notoriously difficult to prosecute. The usual differences found in trial outcomes for men and women were exacerbated by the specific contexts in which such robberies occurred, that is in the context of solicitation or sex work. This not only meant victims were reluctant to prosecute, but that women's offending often took place within criminal subcultures that fostered interpersonal relationships between women that served to support them throughout the commission of the crime and during the trial process.

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Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900

Cited by 66 publications

References 0 publications

Petty Criminality, Gender Bias, and Judicial Practice in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Petty Criminality, Gender Bias, and Judicial Practice in Nineteenth-Century Europe

A verisimilitude of pessimism: Scottish prisoner mug-shots, 1883–1927

‘Us Girls Won’t Put One Another Away’: relations among Melbourne’s prostitute pickpockets, 1860–1920

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