Industrial Britain

Question 1

What was Industrial Britain like?

Answer 1

• Industrialisation (the development of factories) and the growth of trade meant that Britain became the world’s wealthiest nation.
• Life for urban workers was grim, living in cramped, filthy and overcrowded conditions. Rural labourers lived in poverty, especially during the agricultural slump of the 1870s and 1880s.
• The government did not provide benefits for those out of work.
• Britains populations grew from 6 million in 1750 to 37 million by 1900, and there was a huge division between the rich and the poor.
• By 1850, more people lived in towns and cities than in the countryside. Most major towns were connected by rail. People moved to the new cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Bradford to work in the factories.
• The Enlightenment saw philosophers and scientists question widely held beliefs. Jeremy Bentham developed utilitarianism (the greatest happiness for the greatest number), which influenced government reforms.
• Literacy and democracy grew; more people read newspapers and by 1884 all men were allowed to vote regardless of class.
• Due to its empire, Britain ruled 1/5 of the world by 1900.
• Drunkenness became such an issue in the 19 century that the Temperance Movement was formed, which tried to persuade people to stop drinking alcohol.

Question 2

How did the industrial revolution impact crime?

Answer 2

• Petty theft was the most common type of crime, with factories and warehouses full of goods, middle-class homes stuffed with possessions, and banks opening in towns and cities.
• New crimes included fare-dodging and vandalism on railways, failing to send children to school, stealing water from standpipes, as well as ‘white-collar crimes’ such as businessman embezzling their investors.
• Only 10% of crimes involved violence and the murder rate was low.
• Most crime was opportunistic and committed by first-time offenders.
• About 3/4 of all offenders were men; the most common offence for women was prostitution.

Question 3

What caused an increase in crime rate?

Answer 3

• An increase in population, growth in trade and the environment of growing towns and cities led to a rise in crime after 1750.
• Overcrowded lodging houses packed with peoples possessions, and crowded alleyways, contributed to increasing crime rates.
• There was a very sharp increase in crime after 1815, when the Napoleonic Wars finished - thousands of soldiers returned home to face rising prices, failing wages and deepening economic recession.
• Poverty and times of unemployment also contributed to steep rises in crime rates.

Question 4

What ideas emerged about causes of crime?

Answer 4

• ‘Radical thinkers’ such as John Glyde made the link between crime and poverty, arguing that the poor environment in which working-class children grew up was the cause of crime.
• Those with more conservative (traditional) views blamed crime on the bad moral habits of the poor, especially drunkenness.
• A growing number of people joined the Temperance Movement. The movement argued that pubs left poor people without money, and led to gambling, prostitution and violence.
• Some thought that poor people made a deliberate choice to be criminals. They believed that children born into this ‘criminal class’ inherited criminal tendencies from their parents.
• Others argued that criminals could be identified by their physical features, such as the shape of skull or the hands.
• People in the 1800s were very interested in crime, enjoying the penny dreadfuls (cheap illustrated newspapers detailing the most shocking crimes) and Charles Dickens novels.

Question 5

What police force was established?

Answer 5

• In 1750, parish constables worked part-time and were unpaid. They were sometimes supported by watchmen, who patrolled the streets at night, and thief-catchers.
• The first experiments in professional policing were in London in the 1750s, with John Fieldings Bow Street Runners.
• The part-time constables were paid to patrol London streets each evening until midnight.
• There were 68 Bow Street Runners by 1800.
• In 1775, Fielding suggested extending the Bow Street Runners to the rest of the country, but his ideas were considered too radical at the time and wouldn’t influence attitudes until after 1780.

Question 6

Who was Sir Robert Peek and what was the Metropolitan Police?

Answer 6

• Due to rising crime rates at the start of the 1800s London’s Bow street runners, constables and watchmen were struggling to enforce law and order.
• People were opposed to the idea of a police force paid for by the government as they felt it wasn’t the governments job, it would cost too much and it might lead to brutal suppression putting an end to protest.
• In 1829, Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel set up the first Metropolitan Police force of 3000 men paid for by the government.
• ‘Peelers’ or ‘bobbies’ is were armed only with a truncheon and wore a uniform of dark blue tall hat and coat.
• The 1835 Municipal Corporation’s Act allowed towns across the country to set up a police force, although attitudes were slow to change because of money.
• The 1839 Rural Constabulary Act allowed magistrates to set up a police force for their country, although only 2/3 of counties had a police force by 1855.
• The Country and Borough Police Act of 1856 was the first step towards creating a national (under the control of the central government) police force as it ensured that local forces met national standards.

Question 7

What contributed to falling crime rates in the 1850s-1900s?

Answer 7

• The most important role of these new police officers was in preventing crime. They were responsible for removing drunks, prostitutes and vagrants from the streets, and also for dealing with pubs that allowed Sunday drinking, gambling and illegal sports.
• Police officers main function wad the prevention of theft and violence.
• Some important developments in crime detection included the first use of detectives by the Metropolitan Police in 1842 and the introduction of the CID (Criminals Investigation Department) in 1878.
• By the mid-1880s there were 800 detectives.
• New technology began to aid crime detection, including photographing crime scenes from the 1880s, the use of the telegraph in 1867 and the use of fingerprinting in 1897.
• Courts developed little during this period; however, it became more common for lawyers to act for the prosecution and for the defence, and trials became longer and more formal.

Question 8

What were the new changes in capital punishment?

Answer 8

• In the 1789s executions were brought inside prison walls as the government grew concerned about the rowdy behaviour of the ‘lower classes’ on ‘hanging days’, but they were often held on a roof so people could still witness them.
• In the 1780s a more humane form of hanging was introduced called the new drop, which meant the condemned person fell through a trapdoor and died more quickly.
• Humanitarian views from the Enlightenment contributed to a fall in executions, dropping from 871 between 1800 and 1809 to 297 between 1830 and 1839. More people thought execution for minor crimes was morally wrong.
• Between 1832 and 1837, Sir Robert Peels government reduced the number of capital crimes; after 1837, only murder and attempted murder punished by hanging. In 1868 public executions were made illegal.
• In 1872, the more humane long drop was introduced, which calculated how much rope was needed to break the neck instantly, leading to a quick and painless death.

Question 9

What was the transportation punishment?

Answer 9

• From 1750, prisoners who had committed crimes that didn’t carry the death penalty were transported to America to work on plantations.
• Initially the government stored its prisoners on hulks (old, rotting warships situated on the River Thames). Conditions were overcrowded and terrible and diseases such as typhus led to many deaths.
• After Americas declaration of independence in 1776, Britain was forced fo find a new destination.
• During the 1780s, the government decided to send its prisoners to south-eastern Australia, after the country had been mapped and claimed for Britain by Captain Cook in the 1770s.
• Australia was chosen because it was unknown and therefore might deter criminals, it might reduce crime in Britain by removing people from the ‘criminal cases’ and the convicts would provide the labour needed to build Britains new territory in Australia.

Question 10

When did transportation peak?

Answer 10

• The first fleet left Britain in May 1787, carrying 736 convicts. It took 8 months to get there, during which time 48 convicts.
• The majority of convicts had committed theft and some of them were political prisoners, such as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, who were accused of forming a trade union.
• All convicts faced either 7 years, 14 years or a lifetime of hard labour.
• Conditions were harsh. Prisoners often carried out hard physical labour with iron chains around their ankles.
• Most prisoners who had served their sentence then worked for one of the free settlers; fee could afford the cost of the return journey home.
• By the 1830s, transportation came under criticism for the inhumane conditions of the journey and the penal colony, from ratepayers who had to support the families of transported men, from those who thought it was a ‘soft option’ and from the authorities in Australia who didn’t want convicts dumped on them.

Question 11

How were prisons reformed?

Answer 11

1) Prisons in 1750 were overcrowded and insanitary. Prisoners were expected to pay for everything, including bedding, candles, food and coal.
2) After 1770 people such as John Howard and Elizabeth Fry began to campaign for reform. Their actions went on to have a much wider influence.
3) John Howard’s The State of the Prisons (1777) recommended that gaolers should be paid a salary, and each prisoner should have their own cell.
4) Elizabeth Fry, a Quaker (a member of a Christian movement), brought reforms to the overcrowded and unsanitary women’s section of Newgate Prison.
5) Millbank was the first national prison to be built in 1811, but only opened in 1816. Discipline was a massive problem and the prison failed.
6) The government then introduced the 1823 Gaols Act to regulate local prisons. This meant that each prisoner was to have a separate cell. JPs had to visit their gaols and report on their conditions.
7) Following the decline of transportation in the 1840s, the government began to build national prisons, including Pentonville in 1842. By 1877, 90 prisons had been built or rebuilt.
8) Many of these new prisons used the separate system in which prisoners were kept apart from each other to reflect on their crimes. This often led to loneliness and mental breakdowns.
9) From the 1850s, the silent system was used instead: prisoners were allowed to work alongside each other but they weren’t allowed to speak to one another.
10) As a response to the garrotting panic of the early 1860s, prisons were made harsher, with the 1865 Prisons Act Emphasising ‘hard labour, hard fare and hard board’. This brutal system stayed in place for 30 years.