Detective work began in the 1860’s when the first murder was investigated. In 1862 the first photos were taken of a crime scene and criminals began to be photographed. It was believed that you could tell a criminal by the shape of their head. The Rogues Gallery was formed with the photos at Scotland Yard. Then the CID was set up, this didn’t go well and in 1877 there were 3 out of four officers discovered guilty of corruption.
Instructions for dealing with murder cases were introduced in 1879, they were that the body was not to be moved, nothing in the room must be interfered with and the public must be kept away. In 1884 a man called John Toms was convicted of murder because the paper that was found in the wound of the victim was the same as the wadding in the gun found on him. Later in 1892 parts of bodies were measured to help convict criminals of crimes as it was believed that there were no two people the same. This was called the Alphonse Bertillon method of identification. Fingerprinting was introduced in 1901 and it was in 1902 when there was the first person was convicted of murder by using fingerprinting. In 1901 the first police photographer was appointed. This was the beginning of the use of forensic evidence in murder cases.
Police in the late nineteenth century received very little training. Most of the time before they went out on the beat was spent practicing drills. Most of the skills were learnt on the job where police officers spent up to 14 hour a day. The one big thing expected of the police was a squeaky clean public appearance, you were not to be seen rendezvousing with women and you had to be seen attending church every Sunday. Their public image was very important because up until 1868 there had been no major disturbances that the police had to deal with. It was in the mid 1880’s that the police’s reputation began to go down hill when they charged on an unemployment demonstration in 1886. It was thought that they acted much too harshly. The worst case was in 1887 on 13th November when the police charged a demonstration by the Metropolitan Radical Federation and it was done using two squadrons of foot guards, the police force and also two squadrons of Life Guards. The reputation of the police was not helped when it was seen that they were favoring the upper class and the working class were being treated unfairly.
This attitude was only developed in the 1880’s because there were very little incidents in the 60’s and 70’s so the reputation on the police was kept high and there were no incidents to damage this reputation. The corruption between the forces didn’t help the publics trust, the average walking per day for a police officer was seven and a half miles and during the night two miles, and for 14 hours constant this made many officers uptight and touchy.
Police Numbers
The numbers of police went up as the numbers of crimes went up. The crime rate rose due to the large social changes of the period, there was industrialization and quickly growing cities. This caused new problems with law and order and this was a problem that the Victorian people were determined to solve. It was in 1840 that the crime rate was at its peak, most of this can be accounted for by the increase in population. In London there were so many people and this meant that there were not enough jobs to go around. There were many poor people in cities which made many people turn to crime. Thus the crime rate rose. Much of the crime was exaggerated by the press and in fact the main bulk of all crime was not murders and violence but merely petty theft. Examples of the types of crimes in the late 19th century were stealing, murder, violence, treason and debtors, chopping down trees in Downing Street was also illegal. Later in the 19th century it was made illegal not to send you children to school. Capital punishment, also know as the death penalty was the most common form of punishment before 1841, for anything stolen over the value of 25p, for murder, treason, stealing sheep, skipping hop wires and chopping down trees in Downing Street. In 1841 the only crimes that led to the death penalty were murder and treason. This was changed because juries were not convicting people of crimes because they did not feel that the death penalty was the right punishment. Many felt that being killed for stealing a loaf of bread was a little too harsh so many criminals got away. Also when a hanging took place it would attract many spectators, they would often turn up drunken and cause more trouble.
There were often too many spectators for the police to handle. This made the police very unnerving and caused them to use the aggressive behavior that had given them the bad reputation that they had. It was also a way that the family and relatives could free the person on the death stand by mobbing the stage and there were a few cases that had people escape. Capital punishment had become as popular as going to the cinema is now. People would come in a happy frame of mind and cheer once that the person on the
stand had been killed. There were often parties afterwards.
People were now starting to think that the punishment should match the crime and not out weigh it. It was believed that harsh punishments would warn criminals off and that it would make them see that if they were to commit a crime then this is what was going to happen but it ended up doing the complete opposite. When the government saw that their methods were not working they decided to change punishments. The biggest punishment became transportation. This is when people were convicted of a crime and then gathered in jails awaiting their voyage. When there were enough prisoners gathered they would load up a boat full of the prisoners and their voyage would begin. The journey would take around 4 months and the conditions would be very cramped. Then once they had arrived to their destination they would be assigned to families and given work to match their crime. The families that they were assigned to would supply their food shelter and clothes. The destination that all of the prisoners were taken to was Australia. English settlers had captured it and were now using it as their detention centre for criminals. The prisoners were set a time that they had to spend in Australia and all good behaviour was rewarded with an early ticket back to England. Many people would be on their best behaviour to get that ticket.
Transportation was the one punishment that made the crime rate fall. It had not begun to fall since transportation was introduced. Now that transportation had been introduced many Jurors were willing to convict more people, this began to reduce the amount of time, people had now seen that jurors were willing to convict so people bucked their act up. Australia was guaranteed to be a place where criminals could be sent as it was now apart of the British Empire so there was no other country that was likely to try and capture it. It was such a successful method of punishment that once the convicts had served out their punishment many would stay in Australia because they had become used to the calm, quite and peaceful life there. Australia became very popular in 1851 with the gold rush, gold there was discovered and many people tried to raise the money to buy a boat ticket there. The people that were transported to Australia were people who were persistent criminals that stole things like clothes, food and other goods. Any one that had taken part in protests and many Irish rebels were also sent there. It was mainly women that were sent to Australia. Full time transportation to Australia began in 1868.
Prisons in the 19th century were an absolute shambles and were in very poor conditions. The structural side of the prisons was a disgrace and had been hugely neglected. Most of the prisons in England were structurally disgraced. There was no separation between men, children and women; all sorts of thinks went on. Prisons were riddled with disease and there was absolutely no thought for good sanitation conditions, after all they are criminals. That was the view of many people in the 19th century. Debtors, people who had become in debt were jailed separately and they had little windows that lead onto the streets, this was for people as they passed to give money to help them pay off their debt and be freed. Prisoners were charged for food, drink and the privilege of a bed. Animals were not to be kept and beer was sold to those who could afford it. Prisoners were often chained to the walls to stop them from escaping. There was a lady called Elizabeth Fry and she managed to set up a committee after visiting a jail and this committee provided education for children, Bible classes and sewing for the women. Mrs Fry worked very hard to get the conditions of the prisons changed; she wanted men and women to be kept separate. She was after less harsh punishments for first time offenders and she wanted them to be sent elsewhere away from the harsher criminals. Better food and sanitation was also on her agenda. Those who were sentenced for less harsh crimes were learning many tricks of the trade from people like murderers; this was a bad way for the justice system to discipline people. Elizabeth Fry was worried about the amount of foul language spoken by very young children; she believed that it was wrong for children to be subject to the same treatment as adults. Prisons were controlled privately and were not fully under the Home Office Control until 1877. Before 1859 criminals were thought to be a lower class species and it was believed that they were unchangeable so most of the time they were not cared for or looked after like normal human beings. In 1860 the ’Silent System’ was introduced. This made the prisoners do hard labor and most of this was pointless, it was only done to keep the prisoners busy. Food was repetitive and often very boring. This was what the prisons remained like until the turn of the century.
The first prison for juveniles was opened in 1839 many children were still being sent to the same prisons as many of the adults.
Sir Robert Peel initiated the ‘Prisons Act’ of 1823, it was introduced to try and gain some order within the prison service. This didn’t work out as Sir Robert Peel had planned so another act was introduced in 1835 which said that there were to be five inspectors that would travel and inspect the country’s prisons and make sure that they are up to the new national standards that had been set. In 1844 a Surveyor General was appointed and he would be in charge of all controls over the new buildings of the prisons that were being built or extended. There were 54 new prisons that were built under the Surveyor Generals control and these provided 11 000 new cells. The new prisons were designed the same so that they adopted the new separate system where prisoners were kept in separate cells. In 1863 there were new guidelines introduced which under lined the Prison Discipline, in 1877 it was said that powers could be passed onto local government so that local prisons could be controlled better and more efficiently.
Women and crime were not that much of an issue in the late 19th century. Women’s crimes were treated very harshly and they were not lenient to the fact that they are women. The first women’s prison was opened in 1853. In 1861 it was made illegal for any women to have an abortion. What little female crime there was was in decline in the late 1850’s.
VICTORIAN PRISONS
Children were no exception when it came to punishment, age was not considered when convicting a child of a crime, children from as young a 10 were being hanged or transported. Many people were very shocked when it came to hearing of a child committing a crime and when Charles Dickens published his book ‘Oliver Twist’ it caused much worry amongst the general public. What worried most people was that most of what was written in the book was true! Child crime was so bad that the government set up a ‘committee for investigating the Alarming Increase In Juvenile Crime in the Metropolis’. Children began to be treated differently under the ‘juvenile offenses act 1847’ it said that anyone aged 16 and under were to be tried in a new kind of court. The biggest change in Child Crime were Reformatory Schools where they were sent here for
long periods of time meant to drag the children away from bad habits. Young offenders still usually began there sentences in an adult prison as the next three cases show:
In the early 19th century the job of the policeman was to prevent crime and not to solve it, nearing the end of the 19th century it became more solving and preventing. The new CID and guidelines underlining how an investigation and crime scene was to be dealt with, policing went through it’s rough patches in the 1880’s with baton charges but managed to pull through it. Policing gradually became better and more sophisticated and lead to what it is today. Street crime was on the decrease in the second half of the 19th century and burglaries which needed solving were on the increase, this is where the CID came in. Police in the 19th century was still very much in its infancy although had been around for almost a decade. Prisons came a long way in the late 19th century as well with many changes and reforms thanks to people like Elizabeth Fry. Punishments for crimes have come a long way as well; punishments were introduced to match the crimes and capital punishment abolished for over 200 crimes. Distinctions were made between children and adults and men and women and were treated accordingly.
Daryl Levett 10.1 10FF