The Elizabeth Brownrigg Trial

-          Largely, the most common crime in the period surrounding the Brownrigg case was theft.

-          The Brownrigg case is unusual on multiple accounts. One, murder as a crime was ‘rare’ and two, the depth and detail taken for the trial is extensive on account of the intrigue into the trial.

-          Servants often play a huge role in Brownrigg type trials (household). They tend to have ‘gossip’ to go off to create evidence. In the Brownrigg case they serve to corroborate a story and the character of Elizabeth.

-          Separate spheres serve to help explain why Elizabeth is prosecuted and the men are acquitted. Elizabeth is doubly punished. She transgresses what is deemed to be womanhood.

-          Part of these separate spheres come from the shifting class structure during the industrial revolution. Not only is there a shifting class dynamic but also class binary. Men have access to public spaces where women are confined to the home as the revolution creates jobs, but predominantly male roles.

-          Elizabeth also transgresses the idea of femininity and motherhood. She supposed to be ‘morally pure’, motherly, a mistress, etc. She is supposed to deal with servants ethically

-          James (the father) defends himself as the passive onlooker and have been lied to.

-          Elizabeth is framed as tall and physically imposing- manish. The prosecution aims to portray her as masculine and therefore capable of imposing physical violence.

-          Double deviancy thesis: a woman is not only a criminal but has defies womanhood and is therefore a ‘double deviant’. Women receive real cautions in the courtroom, not necessarily punishments but verbal telling’s off.  

-          Violence in context (workplace, schools, military) is perceived as okay. Violence in the home, as a correctional function is normalised which goes to say how bad the violence committed by the brownrigg’s was.

-          The Hanway Act- parish expected to pay premiums to encourage the new middle classes to treat parish children in a proper manner. It shows an acknowledgement of the violence towards children.

-          The Parish overseers do not step in. William Grundy does tell Mary Mitchel not to go back to her master’s but relatively speaking did nothing to prevent this.

The Old Bailey Proceedings

-          The Old Bailey Proceedings are of commercial interest. They were more expensive than a newspaper and so there may be interest to spin a story a certain way or publish more sensationalist cases.

-          The shorthand writers had a lot of power in what was written and what went undocumented.

-          The public interest has flipped from word of mouth to written interest.

-          May lack a lot of context. One example of an eight our trial being condensed into two thousand words which made up approx. one hour of the trial.

-          There is a tendency in avoiding sexual offences. Not seen as a serious offence and very very difficult to take it to the courts (more of a criminal justice thing rather than proceeding issue).

-          Defence attorneys spoke on behalf of their defendants.

-          Defence statements are condensed often. The publishers wanted it to seem as if the criminal justice system was genuinely doing something and serving its purpose.

-          The criminal justice system wanted to seem like it was serving its purpose to by prosecuting. Downplaying acquittals justifies its purpose in society.

-          This is seen to an extent today. Of all judicial actors in the press today, the defendant will always be heard and seen the least.

-          Until the later 20^th century, crime reporting is done by the lawyers themselves.

-          Things get excluded from the old bailey. Victims weren’t tagged until two years ago. Streets weren’t tagged. The jury isn’t tagged. Be careful of completely using a keyword search.

Arts of Public Performance: Barristers and Actors in Georgian England (extra reading)

-          The chapter argues that performances seen by lawyers today is rooted in the performances of barristers in the eighteenth century,

-          One striking theme to emerge from comedian, Charles Mathews’s memoirs is how often lawyers and actors alike appear to have used the occasion of assizes to study one another’s craft.

-          Actors like Mathews received compliments from barristers and ‘accused’ him of imitation.

-          Mirrors Thomas Grant’s account of Edward Marshall Hall who was the “great defender” of the Camden Town Murder (Trials That Define Modern Britain). However, that is from 1905.

-          The Old Bailey became more open and then more popular. The performance of the barrister was then encouraged to become more of a performance as it could lead them to more civil cases.

-          he physical reconfiguration of courtrooms from the late eighteenth century onwards may have positively encouraged members of the public to regard criminal trial as a mode of theatrical representation, as well as the increasing tendency of barristers to play to their audiences: judge, jury and general public alike

-          the illustrations of the old bailey show it to be packed 5.3 is particularly overwhelming in the lack of space.

-          One lawyer described as a ‘perfect prostitute’. Francis Place found the spectacle distasteful and described barristers lacking integrity. The difference between actor and lawyers is at least actors were playing a character with integrity.

-          “A visitor to the now substantially larger courtroom ten years later complained that he did not ‘much like the Disposition of [it]. The Prisoner is too far off from the Jury as well as the Judges.’ Presumably he meant that the defendant seemed too far removed from judge and jurors for them to scrutinise his or her features as each piece of testimony was produced. It was presumably in an effort to compensate for this difficulty that, in February 1783, a mirror was placed directly above the defendant’s dock, contrived so as to reflect the light shining through the main windows of the courtroom directly upon the face of the accused”

-          the essential character of a defendant might be inferred, if not directly read, from their reactions to the evidence. Such a conviction spoke not only to the influence on the legal profession of treatises such as Hawkins’s, but also to a larger popular belief in the principles of physiognomy: the conviction that a person’s true or essential character might be read in his or her facial features.

-          PHYSIOGNOMY

-          how could a defence lawyer, who honed his courtroom performance through close observation of the actor’s technique, ever be entirely trusted not to ‘lie’ to a jury about his client’s innocence?

-          Charles Phillips defended a man who admitted his guilt to his defence council. There were ethical implications of defending a man known to be guilty.

• A class of offenders allegedly drawn to crime because of moral degeneracy rather than being driven to it by their material circumstances, who are blamed for the fall of social order. The criminal class was depicted as an "antisociety" with its own culture, language (cant), and solidarity.

• The criminal class was framed as a dangerous threat to respectable society, leading to campaigns for greater policing and moral reform. Literature, media, and official reports exaggerated the unity and size of this group, contributing to moral panic and justifying harsh punitive measures.

• Over time, the notion of the criminal class evolved, incorporating ideas of biological determinism and hereditary criminality during the Edwardian period, which added a pseudo-scientific layer to earlier moral judgments.

• There is no criminal class. The causes of crime such as poverty and socioeconomic conditions are not dependent on moral failings of a sub-section of society or biological factors; disproving the criminal class. The working class is not a homogenous entity. The "scientific" justification for the criminal class was pseudoscience that relied on anecdotal evidence and stereotyping.

Discuss how the Digital Panopticon project (referenced by Shoemaker and Ward) offers new ways to analyse 19th-century records. How might this digital approach challenge or confirm historical interpretations?

• The records created have acquired further importance in the digital age, as they make it possible to reconstruct convict lives, as the AHRC-funded Digital Panopticon project has done with the lives of 90,000 Old Bailey convicts who were either transported to Australia or imprisoned in England between 1780 and 1865.

• Micro-histories. Quantitative Analysis.

How did the collection of personal data about criminals evolve between 1780 and 1860, and what were the primary motivations behind this change?

• By 1860, vast amounts of personal information about criminals were collected and summarised statistically: in addition to their names, offences, verdicts and sentences, details were recorded about ages, places of birth, occupations, marital status, number of children and parentage; descriptions of their physical appearance (height, weight, eye and hair colour, ‘build’, marks and tattoos); whether they could read and write, their education and their religion; and previous convictions, character and behaviour in prison. In contrast, 100 years earlier virtually none of this information was routinely collected. Historians have argued that a new ‘taste for the collection of information’ about society developed in the 18th century but, until the very end of that century, this rarely extended to personal information about criminals.

In what ways did the development of criminal registers and statistics contribute to the institutionalisation of criminology as a discipline?

• The development of criminal registers and statistics contributes to the institutionalisation of criminology as an intellectual discipline as the statistics were all sourced from institutions as a reactive documentation of crime and its causes rather than proactive. It formed the bases of the study of criminology.

To what extent did Victorian efforts to classify criminals succeed in reforming offenders, as opposed to perpetuating stereotypes?

• The classification of criminals was not particularly successful in reforming offenders as it promoted a culture of anti-social behaviour. Whilst the collection of statistical data detailing the convicts may have been locally justified as a means to understand criminology and promote reform, the stereotyping of criminals served to further entrench criminals within the lifestyle.  The classification was created for control and surveillance as opposed to reforming prisoners. Youth culture shows the value in anti-social behaviour and the status that can be gained from the actions. Status cannot be achieved through wealth and stability, so instead it comes from violent actions.

How did 19th-century notions of the "criminal class" reflect broader anxieties about social order? Use examples from Beier’s analysis of Mayhew and the Victorian concept of the "dangerous classes."

• The criminal class framed against the “respectable classes,” effectively serving to ease moral panic by creating a clear dichotomy between the criminal and respectable class, as well as emphasising the effectiveness of policing. Respectability rather than class allows for greater insight into Victorian society. Rough vs. respectable. Class, race, and gender are still structurally significant. The idea of masculinity was developing as the stable, respectable, figurehead of the family; this opposed the public drunkenness in working class men. “The home is the Englishman's castle.” Gender roles are a middle class ideal. 

• Broader working-class activism and unity; the idea of the mob causes anxieties in the upper classes. The idea of the criminal class works to “other” this perceived mob. 

• The overarching argument made is that the construction of "dangerous classes" was informed in juxtaposition to the moral and social values of the elite while simultaneously controlling the criminalised populations. The "dangerous class" was developed from Victorian concerns about wilful immorality (biblical ideology; sin) as well as Edwardian ideology concerned with hereditary crime and eugenics.

Shoemaker R & Ward R (2017) Understanding the Criminal: Record-Keeping, Statistics, and the Early History of Criminology in England, 1780-1860.

• The overarching argument made is that the collection of personal data on criminals between 1780 and 1860, driven by local initiatives rather than centralised state mandates, served as an origin for the discipline of criminology that has not been traditionally recognised. The record-keeping by individual chaplains was not necessarily aimed at controlling criminals or forced by mandate but instead it reflected a moral effort to understand crime and its causes. This suggests an earlier foundation for criminology that traditionally recognised Lombroso as the father of modern criminology.

Beier, A. L., ‘Identity, Language, and Resistance in the Making of the Victorian “Criminal Class”: Mayhew’s Convict Revisited’

• The overarching argument made is that the Victorian concept of a "criminal class" was not simply imposed by elites and accepted, but was also informed through interactions between individuals like David Evans and the justice system. The study reveals how criminal identities were formed through harsh "colonial" punishments. The study focuses on language as a tool of both resistance and self-definition/autonomy. David Evans is used by Mayhew and Beier as an example of the culture amongst the supposed "criminal class," but Beier's analysis is informed by the actual crimes of David Evans rather than the caricature of the criminal he was originally presented to be by Mayhew.

This is all my own opinion on the main arguments being presented in the readings that were set for this week so I could be waffling.

"The degrading influence of prison life and contact with vulgar criminals, or the abuse of alcohol, to which better natures frequently have recourse in order to stifle the pangs of conscience, may cause criminaloids who have committed their initial offences with repugnance and hesitation, to develop later into habitual criminals,—that is, individuals who regard systematic violation of the law in the light of an ordinary trade or occupation and commit their offences with indifference." [p. 111]

"The criminal is an atavistic being, a relic of a vanished race. This is by no means an uncommon occurrence in nature. Atavism, the reversion to a former state, is the first feeble indication of the reaction opposed by nature to the perturbing causes which seek to alter her delicate mechanism. Under certain unfavourable conditions, cold or poor soil, the common oak will develop characteristics of the oak of the Quaternary period. The dog left to run wild in the forest will in a few generations revert to the type of his original wolf-like progenitor, and the cultivated garden roses when neglected show a tendency to reassume the form of the original dog-rose. Under special conditions produced by alcohol, chloroform, heat, or injuries, ants, dogs, and pigeons become irritable and savage like their wild ancestors." [p. 136]

• The respectability of ordinary jobs is highlighted, which does separate the working class and the criminal class.

• Animalistic depictions as a metaphor for the criminal.  Lombroso is suggesting criminality and its growth amongst the urban working class is a biological regression. The use of the word savage is, through a post-colonial lens, used to other criminals by using imagery that is often racialised.

Analyse the following excerpt from Henry Mayhew (1862) The Criminal Prisons of London (London: Griffin, Bohn, and Company), pp. 89-90.

The habitual criminals . . . are a distinct body of people. Such classes appear to even the rudest nations, they being, as it were, the human parasites of every civilized and barbarous community. The Hottentots have their “Sonquas,” and the Kaffirs their “Fingoes,” as we have our “prigs” and “cadgers.” Those who object to labour for the food they consume appear to be part and parcel of every State – an essential element of the social fabric. Go where you will – to what corner of the earth you please – search out or propound what new-fangled or obsolete form of society you may – you will be sure to find some members of it more apathetic than the rest, who will object to work; even as there will be some more infirm than others, who are unable, though willing, to earn their own living; and some, again, more thrifty, who, from their prudence and their savings, will have no need to labour for their subsistence."

• Identifies a distinct criminal class.

• Racialised language for the 'savage' natives of Africa; othering the supposed "criminal class" through a racial lens that is commonly accepted.

• Clear objection of a "lazy attitude," which is the supposed cause for crime. Reminiscient of the saying, "the devils makes work for idle hands." Mayhew's excerpt is somewhat similar to a modern day "hustler" mentality that is often accompanied with criticism of people on benefits in modern-day society.

·       Drama of execution – performance of punishment?

·       Exhibition of physical suffering to deter crime

·       Good way for a state that lacked control to display power

·       Above interpretation similar to that of an 18^th-century criminal law reform who argued execution was an insensitivity to human suffering

·       Michel Foucault – examining shift from scaffold to prison he describes radical displacement

·       Systemic suspicion – makes taken for granted world strange

·       Spectacle of execution replaced by quiet, thorough prisons

·       Execution involved use of the body in a ritual that taught lesson of obedience

·       Modern system argues to only touch the body to reach soul of offender but Foucault disagrees

·       Bad economy of power – new strategies of manipulating the individual

·       Think in new ways about transition from society that celebrated public infliction of pain to withdrawn from horror of spectacle of suffering

·       Reexamine humanitarian reform

·       Puts aside issue of intentions around motives of reformations

·       Analogy of human body to explain how society worked

·       Analogy helped shape beliefs around the execution

·       Punishment of offender’s body to do with mechanics of pain

·       Body politic arose from a theological narrative to compensate for the imperfections in the human body after the Fall

·       Assize sermon – delivered at assizes by prominent Anglican cleric

·       Mentions of body politic in assize sermons increases from around 1750 – rising crime levels after peace of 1748

·       Hierarchy within body reinforced by reference to hierarchy of body in cosmic order

·       Social body existed to provide a remedy to sin

·       Social body might compensate for human weaknesses, but it was too mortal and therefore subject to ills of body

·       A healthy constitution was one where every part knew its place and duty, especially the respect owed to superiors and the reverence due the community

·       Disease that threatened society was disorder and anarchy

·       Each individual or each organ had its own need and peculiar function, but no part had a separate life apart from the existence of the whole

·       By the early eighteenth century, the danger to the community seemed to arise less from a conflict between monarch and parliament than from the changed character of the country and the altered habits of the people

·       Vices of the poor threatened society

·       Little dispute of the origins of crime – problem lay in its control and containment

·       The sense of social connection upon which the metaphor of the body politic rested was described in a variety of ways

·       Ceremonies and rituals of social life helped weave fabric of communities

·       Society constructed from principle of learning by example – crime was a bad example

·       Magistrates had to see crime in social context but were often lazy and partially sighted

·       Gallows became symbol of cleansing society

·       Assizes – regular and exemplary justice

·       Lawyers against capital punishment – part of Wilkite movement

·       William Eden – limit to society’s right to inflict pain

·       Individual defined less by duties associated with his station than personal decisions and ambitions

·       This concern with the social consequences of punishment reveals the extent to which the reformers were inspired not just by a concern to create new safeguards to protect the individual but also by a desire to refashion society