18th & 19th Century British Crime & Punishment Flashcards
All 33 cards in this deck
What was highway robbery?
Robbing travellers on the roads, often by armed robbers on horseback; it was a capital crime under the Bloody Code.
Give one reason highway robbery had almost died out by the 1830s.
Mounted patrols policed the main roads into London (also: banks meant travellers carried less cash, and open land was enclosed).
What were the Black Acts (1723)?
Laws that made poaching a capital crime, including hunting deer or going armed or disguised in a forest.
True or false? In the years c1700–c1900 many ordinary people saw poaching as a social crime.
True. They thought it harmed nobody and was done to get food, and saw landlords as selfish for banning trespass on their land.
Give one reason smuggling grew in eighteenth-century Britain.
High import duties on goods such as tea, brandy and cloth made smuggled goods very profitable.
What did the Witchcraft Act of 1735 do?
It ended prosecutions for witchcraft and made it a crime to claim that someone was a witch or to claim magical powers, punished by fines or imprisonment.
Who were the Tolpuddle Martyrs (1834)?
Six Dorset farm labourers who formed a trade union; they were convicted of swearing a secret oath and sentenced to seven years' transportation as a warning to others.
Who were the Fielding brothers?
Henry and John Fielding, magistrates at Bow Street in London, who set up the Bow Street Runners in 1749 and later a horse patrol.
What did the Police Act of 1856 do?
It made it compulsory for every county and borough to have a professional police force, inspected by government.
What was the CID?
The Criminal Investigation Department, set up at Scotland Yard in 1878, in which plain-clothes detectives investigated serious crime separately from constables on the beat.
What was the Bloody Code?
The system of laws in the eighteenth century under which over 200 crimes, many of them minor property crimes, carried the death penalty, intended to deter others.
True or false? Under the Bloody Code nearly everyone convicted of a capital crime was hanged.
False. Juries often refused to convict and judges were reluctant to hang people for minor crimes, so many were pardoned or transported.
True or false? Transportation to North America ended because of the American War of Independence.
True. Convicts were then sent to Australia, where a penal colony was set up in 1788.
When did transportation to Australia end? Give one reason why.
- One reason: colonists in Australia objected to receiving more convicts.
When were public executions ended in Britain, and why?
1868; the authorities feared they caused crime and disorder, were treated as a holiday and made criminals seem heroes, so executions were moved inside prisons.
Who was John Howard?
A prison reformer who toured prisons and published The State of the Prisons (1777), calling for clean conditions, paid gaolers and religious instruction for prisoners.
Who was Elizabeth Fry?
A Quaker prison reformer who from 1813 worked with women prisoners in Newgate, setting up a school and chapel and teaching them sewing and reading.
When did Pentonville prison open?
1842, as a 'model' prison in London with 520 separate cells.
What was the separate system?
Keeping each prisoner isolated in their own cell, working and worshipping alone, so that solitude and religious reflection would make them feel remorse and reform.
Give one reason Pentonville prison was built.
To put into practice a new aim of reforming and rehabilitating prisoners rather than only punishing them (it also provided places as transportation declined).
Give one weakness of the separate system in operation at Pentonville.
Total isolation caused mental illness, with high rates of insanity and suicide among prisoners; it was also expensive to run.
Who was Robert Peel and what government post did he hold?
A reforming politician who was Home Secretary in 1822–27 and 1828–30 (and later Prime Minister).
What did the Metropolitan Police Act (1829) do?
It set up the Metropolitan Police, a force of about 3,000 uniformed, paid constables for London, based at Scotland Yard.
What did Peel's Gaols Act (1823) do?
It required gaolers to be paid, prisons to be inspected by magistrates, chaplains and doctors to visit, and women prisoners to be guarded by female warders.
What was Robert Peel's contribution to the death penalty?
He cut back the Bloody Code, abolishing the death penalty for over 100 crimes, mostly minor property offences.
What happened to the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1836?
After mass protests and a huge petition against their sentence, they were pardoned and allowed to return from Australia.
Give one reason prosecutions for witchcraft ended in the eighteenth century.
Scientific experiments, encouraged by the Royal Society, gave natural explanations for events once blamed on witches, so educated people grew less superstitious (also: greater prosperity and political stability).
Give one way views on the purpose of punishment changed in the nineteenth century.
More people came to believe punishment should reform offenders, not just deter crime and take revenge; this helped end the Bloody Code and shift punishment towards prison.
Give two features of Pentonville's design that kept prisoners apart.
Any two of: individual cells equipped for work, washing and sleeping, so prisoners seldom left them; walls too thick to talk through; masks worn at exercise; separate cubicles in the chapel.
Give one strength of the separate system at Pentonville.
It was much cleaner than older prisons, with far less disease (and many thought it was a fair level of punishment).
How was the separate system meant to stop prisoners becoming worse criminals?
Keeping each prisoner apart meant first offenders could not learn from or be influenced by hardened criminals, as happened in older shared prisons.
Why were Peel's Metropolitan Police given blue uniforms and usually no guns?
So they would look like civilians rather than soldiers; many people feared a military-style force, and officers were trained to use force only as a last resort.
Give one reason Peel was able to get the Metropolitan Police Act passed in 1829.
Crime rose in London after the economic downturn of 1826, convincing Parliament that the old watchmen and constables could not cope.