Crime and the Victorians

Page 4 of 6

• 1. Statistics
• 2. Sensational crimes
• 3. 'Criminal classes'
• 4. Penal policies
• 5. Detective policing
• 6. Find out more
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Penal policies

By the beginning of Victoria's reign the Bloody Code of the eighteenth century had all but disappeared. Capital punishment only remained for murderers and traitors. Transportation to Australia had reached its peak in the early 1830s; to all intents and purposes it ended in the early 1850s, not least because of the increasing hostility of colonists in Australia who objected to their land being used as a dumping ground.

'...Victorian liberal ideas of improvement and philanthropy began to feed into penal policy.'

Various experiments were tried in the treatment of prisoners. During the 1830s and 1840s attempts were made to enforce regimes of silence and/or isolation. If the problem was a moral one then, leaving offenders alone with their thoughts and their bibles, requiring them to work (thus learning of work's virtues), and providing them with occasional visits by the chaplain, was perceived as the way to their reformation.

By the end of the century, as the understanding of the criminal changed, the doctor and the psychiatrist had become at least as important as the chaplain. In addition, Victorian liberal ideas of improvement and philanthropy began to feed into penal policy. 1895 was a significant year for change in this respect. Sir Edmund Du Cane, a former officer of the Royal Engineers who had stamped his domineering personality on prison management as Chairman of the Prison Commissioners for nearly 20 years, resigned, and the Gladstone Committee published its report confirming the shift to a new, more liberal penal policy. In comparative perspective, however, this liberalism presents an interesting paradox. England had low murder rates in comparison with much of Europe, especially southern Europe, yet while many European governments were removing the death penalty, the abolition movement in England remained small and lacking in influence. Similarly, unlike many of their continental European neighbours, the English clung to corporal punishment as a penal sanction until well into the twentieth century.

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Published: 2001-08-01