Richard W. Ireland

‘An increasing mass of heathens in the bosom of a Christian land’: the railway and crime in the nineteenth century

As controversy concerning the future of Britains railways continues to be voiced, their influence in shaping social structures in the past perhaps remains unexplained. Yet the nineteenth-century revolution in transport had a most profound effect on the physical conditions and mentalities of contemporaries. Landscapes were altered, old towns irrevocably changed and new ones created; topographical spellings and pronunciation were standardized and time itself was robbed of local variation; a new vocabulary was devised and new occupations were invented. In the construction of the railways a vast labour force, around 200,000 labourers at mid century, drew workmen from their traditional employment and often very far from their original homes. In the operation of the railways, new possibilities of travel, for business and pleasure, changed fundamentally the patterns and perceptions of mobility. Given such revolutionary developments, it is highly improbable that patterns of crime and criminality and the measures taken to counteract them would be unaffected. This article attempts to assess and to illustrate the extent and nature of the changes in these areas caused by the coming of the railway.

The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England

tainties of private charity for the relief of children and the indigent poor in general under the existing system, not least because he maintained that lack of public accountability left funds exposed to ‘depredation’. But voluntary charity would be encouraged by the new National Charity Company because it could relieve relative indigence. Bentham planned the care of the sick, disabled and insane in Industry Houses too. The latter were to be gathered into one institution in each area of the country which would give them the benefit of experienced help in ‘this important department of medical care’. This may be so, but some of Bentham’s ideas cause disquiet. For example, his conviction that the disabled deaf could live alongside raving lunatics or the blind alongside the physically deformed seems unlikely to bring great happiness to anyone at all. All inmates were expected to perform some form of work, if at all possible, to meet the expense of their keep. Even the sick and aged, classified as ‘feeble hands’, could perform valuable tasks by caring for infants which would bring joy to all concerned. For example, by operating one specially designed machine a single aged person could rock ‘a multitude’ of babies. Under the existing system, Bentham pointed out, lunatics, the sick and the aged must either work or beg. In fact idleness was rewarded as the ‘Summit of Gratitude’ by the Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals for old soldiers and seamen. Once removed to an Industry House the inmate would find Bentham had planned every aspect of his day-to-day living, from housing to the food he was to eat (cheapest but plentiful) and bedding and clothing. All was to be provided on the basis of the ‘neighbour’s-fare’ or, ‘suitable-fare’ principle which was that ‘charity maintenance’ was not to be more desirable than that available to the self-maintaining poor. Finally, Bentham provided for a number of what he termed ‘Pauper Comforts’, which included some association with the opposite sex, including double ‘bed-stages’ or cells for married couples, and the right of apprentices to marry. The dense scholarly introduction to this volume of Bentham’s Poor Law writings by Michael Quinn calls for close and repeated reading which more than rewards the effort.

A Polite Exchange of Bullets: The Duel and the English Gentleman 1750–1850

process. The packing of juries, the suborning of witnesses, and the suppression of evidence or the extraction of confessions were, according to Vaughan, rare improprieties in a judicial system presided over by judges of the utmost rectitude and ‘Olympian calm’. The overall impression is perhaps unduly optimistic; this reviewer is revealing his own prejudices when he observes that no doubt in hell the administrative procedures are impeccable. Certainly he found it necessary to remind himself of the ill-educated nature of most defendants in the criminal justice system generally, the often trivial offences that had brought them there, the speed of disposal, the horrors of incarceration and so on. But Vaughan is not necessarily implying that taken as a whole the system was as benign as his particular study of murder trial procedure may suggest; merely asserting that the legal forms of the time were observed and the process not easily corrupted. His is a most salutary book, informative, interesting and occasionally surprising. All in all this is an important study, and one of which all those interested in criminal justice in the nineteenth century will have to take notice.