Crime and the Victorians

Page 5 of 6

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

The last years of the century were the years of England's most famous detective - Sherlock Holmes - who was first put before the reading public in 1887 in A Study in Scarlet. True to Victorian class perceptions, Holmes solved his cases through the mighty deductive powers of his intellect, running rings around the simple, and lower class, officers of the police.

But then detective policing had never figured prominently in the role of the new police forces that were established in England during the nineteenth century. For a long time detective police officers, working in plain-clothes, were seen as symptomatic of an intrusive system of spies and surveillance that was considered the hallmark of continental, especially French, police forces, and something that had no place in England. The English police took the prevention of crime as their watchword. The assumption was that the unskilled, working-class constable, patrolling his beat, usually at night, at a regulation two-and-a-half miles an hour, would deter offenders. In some instances it probably did, but it is always difficult to measure the extent and success of prevention.

Studying the history of crime and criminal justice in a society can tell us much about that society. The Victorians' perception of criminal offenders was linked closely with their perception of the social order in respect of both class and gender. Most offenders brought before the courts came from the working class. It did not matter that their offences were generally petty compared with the frauds committed by middle-class businessmen, it was the mass of petty offenders who provided the data for the image of 'the criminal'. Most offenders brought before the courts were male. This suited Victorian perceptions of the separate spheres, and ensured that women brought before the courts, especially for violent offences, tended to be treated more harshly than men. Not only had they transgressed the law, they had also transgressed the perceptions of womanhood. Recidivism was more serious among women probably because it was more difficult for a woman to live down the shame of a criminal conviction. Whether the Victorians were right to think that crime was in decline must remain an open question. But, the periodic panics over sensational crimes like 'garrotting' and the murders of Jack the Ripper, aside, perhaps they generally slept better than their descendants.

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Published: 2001-08-01