Victorian Crime & Punishment

[terrierkeeper]

http://vcp.e2bn.org/

Found this sight very interesting, especially mugshots of criminals.

[Mike Covell]

What a great site, I have a collection of Victorian Mugshots that I posted on the old boards, they were mainly from Yorkshire which is my home county and covered males and females, all ages.

Some of the ages were shocking (as young as 7) and some of the sentances seemed really harsh compared to todays!

[Mayerling]

I just used the web site, and was listening to the case of the child-murderer
Lucy Lowe. She was lucky about that act of clemency.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Along these lines, I'd recommend the 1937 film Never Too Late. You get to see the dreaded crank in operation.

}SPOILER ALERT{

You'll also see a little mite buckled to the wall in "the Jacket" with fatal results.

[terrierkeeper]

Frankly, I wish there were more material like this out on the net to go through. Especially in regards to juvenile offenders. As a historian and being very interested in the period, I want to see more. I've been looking all over the net and found nothing like this sight. A few education spots with one or two cases but nothing much else.

I like the picture and description along with crime committed and punishment meted out but I wish there were more details.

Admittedly the sentences are severe but It is really hard to feel sympathy for the offenders looking at them through modern eyes. Most modern offenders are juvenile delinquents out doing bad things for kicks or druggies stealling to fund their habits. Hunger and poverty are not that big for crime these days. Indeed, I find myself wishing courts were as severe now as they were then.

As for the woman who murdered her baby, I feel she got off too easy. I actually wish she had been executed.

[sdreid]

These sentences were down-right humanitarian compared to previous times. The other day, I was reading about an English woman in the 1500s who was boiled alive after she was convicted of serial poisoning.

[terrierkeeper]

It is hard to feel any sympathy for a murderess, especially one who strikes with poison no matter how many times she has struck evil is evil. After all, you can only hang once. Mary Anne Cotton got the short end of the drop when authorities got her. The Liverpoole Blackwidows got it though their end was quicker. I would say the punishment matched the crime in thier cases. But during the time of the American revolution, an eighteen year old woman was hanged by Britain for Shop lifting. That goes too far in exceeding the crime in regards to punishment.

But I like this sight for the files it presents. The pictures of the convicts. I get to see their faces as they look into the camera. ( I wonder what they're thinking as they realize their situation). I get to see their cloths. And their descriptions also helps me feel into period when they lived. And looking at their crimes is interesting. A boy gets sent up for stealing a rabbit or two. A nineteen year old servant girl gets four years for stealing a watch. A sixteen year old gets days penal servitude for stealing butter. A thirteen year old girl gets days penal servitute plus four or five years in reformatory. A boy of similar age gets similar sentence plus a good caning. It's all very very interesting to me.

[terrierkeeper]

I don't know if this is relavent but I found this on the web of the Children's Society.

http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/

It has some interesting articles on the period relating to juvenile crime and the victorian period. Case files of children they handled is also interesting.

[Ade]

Great site. I was really struck by how short most of them are. I looked at about 30 or 40 of the later mugshot ones, and only one person was over 5 foot 6 inches in height.

[Dark Ali]

Excellent link terrierkeeper, thanks for posting it!

[terrierkeeper]

http://www.learningcurv.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot25/snapshot25.htm

http://victorianvoices.com/resource_pack/crime_punishment_law/

These are rather small in comparison to the other sights but they may prove interesting to you as well.