Crime During The Nineteenth Century In England example essay topic

Crime and Punishment in the Victorian England Crime is an act or omission forbidden by law and punishable upon conviction. This includes public offenses often classified as treason, felony, and misdemeanor. And, punishment is an act of punishing. To punish somebody is to afflict somebody with pain, loss, or suffering. The nineteenth century was the pivotal period of change in England in the treatment of criminals. In that period, public opinion began to turn against the barbaric severity of hanging laws.

One slight indication of the change in the peoples' attitude was that public execution failed as an attraction of the fashionable throng. Hangings were left for the pleasure of the low drunken mob. In the early nineteenth century, more than 200 capital crimes were recognized. As a result, 1000 or more persons were sentenced to death each year. The death penalty was commonly authorized for a wide variety of crimes. During the reign of George, more capital offences were placed on the Statue Book than under all the other kings and queens together.

Stealing goods worth 40 shillings was still grand larceny punishable by death. Children were still hanged for these offences. A girl of seven was hanged in Lynn for setting fire to a house. In 1801, 13-year-old Andrew Banning was executed for breaking into a house and stealing a spoon. Efforts to abolish the death penalty did not gather momentum until the commencement of reform movement. In London, in 1829, only 24 hangings for offences other than murder took place.

Nearly 3,000 people were committed for the capital crimes of house breaking and burglary in a single year, but only eight were hanged. Out of 1,601 persons who were sentenced to death in 1831, only 52, including 12 murderers, were hanged. England repealed most of the death penalty but a few of its capital statues. Where the complete abolition could not be achieved, reformers concentrated on limiting the scope and mitigating the harshness of the death penalty. Crime during the nineteenth century in England was being redefined as and industrialization and urbanization increased.

The social ramifications of overcrowding, poverty, immigration, and a growing disparity between rich and poor created new and inventive kinds of crime; as a result, as London approached the 1840's crime increased to new heights, and the community reacted accordingly. The metropolitan police, although established in 1829, began to expand and change its role due to increasing stratification of crime. By the 1840, larceny, pick pocketing were the most prevalent crime. As a direct result of this, houses and property were consequently being locked.

Contemporary newspapers were running advertisements for locks. Most of the ads boasted locks that could not be picked. That kind of ad was most striking, for new London society was changing. It also illustrates that, indeed, all types of crime had become rampant. Further, it showed the need for locked doors, windows, cellars, etc.

During the early modern period, there were frequent panics about crime and more general delinquency. These concerns resulted in legislation and some institutional initiatives, until fears about vagrants, disorderly apprentices and idle youth again subsided. However, in Britain there seems to have been a wholesale transition of such panics into a much more central place in political policy. This was partly a response to mass urbanization and the pervasive and seemingly relentless presence of the poor and criminal. Policing, prisons, and punishment were the subjects of various text and commentaries.

Writers began to publish their controversial report. Such publications appeared at a time when a backlash toward public execution; and the death sentence had begun to engender the search for the secondary punishment. There was an invention of juvenile crime during the nineteenth century. Children were still sentenced to death during the early nineteenth century. The axiomatic tension between systems of punishment and reformation condensed the death penalties for juveniles. Their sentence was reduced to transportation.

One exception was John Any Bird Bell, a 14-year-old murderer from Kent who in 1831, after cutting throat of another boy, was executed at Maid stone, crying out his last words, 'All you people take heed by me!' Those who were sentenced to transportation would be taken to the hulks at Chatham or Woolwich. Between 1825 and 1843, boys could be sent to a specially adapted juvenile hulk, the Earyalus at Chatham. Here, they would wait transportation to the colonies, to New South Wales, or from 1834, Point Per, a penal colony for boys in Van Diemen's Land. By the late nineteenth century, the new juvenile justice system was firmly in place. Various acts since 1850 had extended summary powers, and there were increasing calls for a separate juvenile court in which to process young delinquents. In this period, a reconceptualisation of youth crime, and various developments in social policy, as well as the activities of certain individuals resulted in a new language of youthful delinquency.

By the late nineteenth century, through a combination of legislation and institutional projects, voluntary initiatives, and cultural concepts culled from a particular response to; and understanding of; such crime, the juvenile offender had become a central figure, fully entrenched in Britain. The story 'The Three Strangers' occurred before 1830. In this story, there were three strangers. The first and the third strangers were brothers. The second one was the hangman.

The first stranger committed a crime by stealing a sheep to feed his starving family. By the law, he should be hanged, but he was not. When the third stranger let the people know why his brother committed the crime, they just treated that crime indifferently. People let him go, because that time was the time of reform movement. Further, it could be seen that the letter of law was defeated by the letter of the spirit. The letter of the law says he should be punished, and the letter of the spirit says he should not.

During the early nineteenth century, the number of hangings offences in England was estimated at 223. Later on, it was condensed to 17. In that time, people really started ruminating about the value of life. They believed execution was not the only solution. People should not be executed for a small crime. They started looking for the secondary punishment.

Education also played a role to support the reform movement. The nineteenth century police were crudely educated; and the magistrates thought it their duty to give a lesson to the criminal classes every chance they got. With the foundation of the police force, the tide of reform movement flowed even faster. In 1861, offences were reduced to present day four. These four crimes punishable by death which has remained for a century are: 1. Murder 2.

Treason 3. Piracy with violence 4. Setting fire to dockyards and arsenals. The last man to die for a crime other than those was Martin Doyle, who was hanged on August 27, 1861 for 'barbarous attempted murder. ' He was the last man to hang for this crime.

The new Act was passed the same year. Four years later, public executions were stopped. This was not out of consideration, for the wretches publicly done to death; but, because it had finally become too expensive and difficult to control the drunken rabble which attended them. The greatest spectacle to English life was over. None was hanged for pick pocketing, or stealing sheep, or larceny after the reform movement.

The criminals committing such small crime did not deserve the execution after then. The reformers argued, and the law changed eventually. The nineteenth century's reform movement in England really helped stop the execution of many lives. It was the time of radical change that made people ruminate about the value of life. In short, execution for a small crime went away in England after the drastic change in the hanging laws of the nineteenth century.