Rosalind Crone

Reappraising Victorian Literacy through Prison Records

Since the Registrar General began to count the signatures and marks made by brides and grooms in parish registers across England in 1839, contemporaries and later historians have used this data to describe rates of literacy during the Victorian period. Evidence from the marriage registers only tells us about the literacy of the marrying population at any given point in time. Moreover, by distinguishing between those who could read and write and those who could not, the marriage registers have helped to draw an artificial line between those who were literate and the rest of the population, ignoring the large number of semi-literates who played an important role in a society progressing towards mass literacy. This article uses data collected on the separate skills of literacy and the experience of schooling of those men, women and children who passed through the criminal justice system between c.1840 and c.1870 in an attempt to reconstruct patterns of skills acquisition among the lower classes during the Vi...

From Sawney Beane to Sweeney Todd: Murder Machines in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Metropolis

ABSTRACT This article traces the changes and continuities in fictional stories of serial murder in London from the late-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. In particular, it shows how changes in the primary audience for metropolitan popular culture necessitated dramatic shifts in the tale of serial killing and narratives of violence. Thus, by the nineteenth century, as the lower classes had become the main supporters of both traditional and new genres of entertainment in popular culture, their experience of and fears and anxieties about urban change became intertwined with myths about serial killing and reflected in a new character of the public nightmare, Sweeney Todd, the barber of Fleet Street, who set out to effectively depopulate the capital with his ghastly murder machine.

Educating the labouring poor in nineteenth-century Suffolk

ABSTRACT This article demonstrates the utility of a new source, prison registers, for the history of literacy and education in nineteenth-century England. It focuses on two sets of prison registers from the two county gaols in Suffolk, located at Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds, which contain personal information on 16,690 individuals over the period 1840 to 1878. First, the article examines the context in which personal information about prisoners was recorded and tests the data against benchmarks from other sources to prove its reliability. Second, the article employs two methods, statistical analysis and digital mapping, to study in depth the rich data on prisoners’ literacy and schooling. Finally, the article shows how the results of this analysis significantly revise our understanding of the prevalence of schooling among the labouring poor, the use of different types of schools, the role of the partially literate in the drive towards mass literacy, and the importance of life-long learning.

Education in the working-class home: modes of learning as revealed by nineteenth-century criminal records

The transmission of knowledge and skills within the working-class household greatly troubled social commentators and social policy experts during the first half of the nineteenth century. To prove theories which related criminality to failures in working-class up-bringing, experts and officials embarked upon an ambitious collection of data on incarcerated criminals at various penal institutions. One such institution was the County Gaol at Ipswich. The exceptionally detailed information that survives on families, literacy, education and apprenticeships of the men, women and children imprisoned there has the potential to transform our understanding of the nature of home schooling (broadly interpreted) amongst the working classes in nineteenth-century England. This article uses data sets from prison registers to chart both the incidence and ‘success’ of instruction in reading and writing within the domestic environment. In the process, it highlights the importance of schooling in working-class families, but also the potentially growing significance of the family in occupational training.

What Readers Want: Criminal Intelligence and the Fortunes of the Metropolitan Press during the Long Eighteenth Century

From the late seventeenth century onwards, Londoners witnessed the tremendous proliferation of commercial printing generally and of newspapers in particular. In addition, during the eighteenth century, newspapers began to develop a modern layout and to incorporate more variety in their content. Historians have described the shift away from newspapers that strove to emulate the essay sheet towards newspapers that featured large numbers of advertisements and non-political news.1 Advertisements became increasingly important to newspapers over the course of the century as proprietors recognized the potential profits they offered and as readers began to demand them. For example, the success of one newspaper launched in 1731, the Daily Advertiser, led to the rapid emergence of several newspapers which included the term ‘Advertiser’ in their titles.2 While newspapers included advertisements for a wide range of goods and services, amongst these ‘crime advertisements’ became a typical feature.

City of Laughter: Sex and satire in eighteenth-century London (review)

In her diary written during the late 1770s, Elizabeth Shakleton recorded the immense disappointment she felt with the partner to whom she had pledged herself for life. Although the couple moved in privileged circles, she regularly recorded instances of her husband’s low behaviour: from, ‘The gentleman came home near 12 at noon and sans ceremony went snoring to clean bed – where he farted and stunk like a pole cat’, to ‘most exceedingly beastly so to a degree never saw him worse –he had made water into the fire’, and, on yet another occasion, ‘he shits in bed with drinking so continually’ (441). Anecdotes such as this designed to challenge our preconceptions about ‘refined’ society in late-eighteenth century London dramatically colour the pages of V.A.C. Gatrell’s new book, City of Laughter: Sex and satire in eighteenth-century London. In sum, Gatrell’s book is an exceptionally detailed study of the satirical and humorous prints published and disseminated by London print shops from 1770 to 1830. It is a lively and entertaining description of life in the metropolis at the turn of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the study is of immense value for all those working in the field of Victorian studies. First, Gatrell’s brave and expert use of visual evidence not only suggests that the book will be of significant interest to art historians, but, at a deeper level, demonstrates the increasing tendency for historians to cross traditional disciplinary boundaries in order to engage with new sources and prompt new, interdisciplinary discussion. More importantly, Gatrell makes some very loud and ambitious assertions about the processes that determined the social and cultural character of nineteenth-century England. These conclusions demand serious attention from practitioners in Victorian studies. City of Laughter is based on an analysis of the satirical prints that emerged in force after c.1770 and had a dramatic impact on metropolitan culture until c.1830. Around twenty thousand prints were published during this period. Although diverse, they can be roughly placed within two broad categories. While just over half were con cerned with political topics, from party and parliamentary upheavals to revolution in and war with America and France, the other half dealt with the character of society in London. It is mostly with the second set that Gatrell is concerned. He sees these prints as valuable social documents that provide a unique and valuable insight into ‘real’ life in the capital during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. In particular, he argues that the progress of these prints over the course of Reviews