Discovering criminal classes

Question 1

Who were the criminal classes made up of?

Answer 1

• Known thieves and depredators
• Receivers of stolen goods
• Prostitutes
• Suspected people
• Vagrants and Tramps

Question 2

Where was the term ‘criminal classes widely used?

Answer 2

France, Britain, and Italy

Question 3

What did the criminal classes express Britain’s anxiety around?

Answer 3

Poverty, crime, and criminality

Question 4

Where was the idea of criminals as social outsiders widely viewed throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries?

Answer 4

Britain

Question 5

What did urbanisation and industrialisation create?

Answer 5

Large working-class suburbs

Question 6

What did the language of class & conflict impact?

Answer 6

Understandings of crime

Question 7

What was the idea of an entire class responsible for?

Answer 7

Committing crime

Question 8

What were there similar ideas surrounding the criminal classes?

Answer 8

The continent (revolution)

Question 9

Where was the belief that “the poor and inactive classes were and always will be the best breeding ground for all kinds of criminals” held?

Answer 9

Italy

Question 10

What was a significant concern involving the criminal classes?

Answer 10

Difficult to locate geographically

Question 11

What were the significant 19th-century anxieties surrounding the criminal classes?

Answer 11

• The middle and upper class in upper Britain/France were concerned about the dangerous classes
• Cities were seen as sick
• Problems with hygiene and population in Paris
• An imbalance of genders
• Diseases due to crowded housing and poor water

Question 12

What were the concerns of the ruling class in the early 19th-century?

Answer 12

• The new rebellious working class
• Political disorder
• Italy and England blamed problems of unification on criminal poor

Question 13

What were the concerns in France regarding the criminal classes?

Answer 13

• Fears about the crime epidemic in the 2nd half of the 19th century
• Concerns about declining birth rate, disease, infanticide, and alcoholism
• Fear around the uprooted, outcast, hungry “dangerous classes.”

Question 14

Where were hard work and morality seen?

Answer 14

in societies where work was seen as a civic and national duty and laziness was seen as immoral

Question 15

What were Fregier’s views?

Answer 15

• Thought poor were not like middle and upper class
• Thought that the poor did not work and gave in to their passions
• Wanted poor to adopt middle-class values

Question 16

Given there was no one theory about criminal classes, what did some people label?

Answer 16

All workers as criminals

Question 17

Who argued that “moral entrepreneurs were among those who spread the idea about criminal classes?”

Answer 17

David Phillips

Question 18

What were some of Henry Mayhew’s views?

Answer 18

• Sympathise to the poor
• Understand that poor parenting and abusive employers might lead someone to a crime
• Believed criminality was connected to the offender’s dislike of steady work

Question 19

What were the views of dangerous women, particularly in France?

Answer 19

• The prostitute became to act as the symbol for the female criminal classes
• Females less likely to commit a crime

Question 20

What did the connection between laziness and crime inform ideas about?

Answer 20

Reform and punishment in prisons

Question 21

What did police in Britain, France, and Germany become more focused on in the 19th century?

Answer 21

Criminal classes

Question 22

What do studies of criminal classes help stimulate?

Answer 22

Biological theories of crime