Poverty and Crime Flashcards
(43 cards)
Evidence
Legislation
Literature - Defoe Moll Flanders; newspapers, ballads/prints; Hogarth prints (good/bad child, harlot/rake’s progress)
LACK of evidence - the ‘dark figure’ of crime
“bookends”
Start: old poor laws, private charity
End: New Poor Law (1834); Captain Swing and Luddite riots; rise of urban industrial poor
Change over period:
ANDREW: 1685 - inherited Elizabethan 1601 Poor Law (localised, un/deserving poor, administered by overseer of Poor and JP) 1690's: SCPK 1720's: workhouses and charity schools 1730's: fall of schools 1740's: seeking rise in pop. for wars; hospitals 1770/80's: decline of hospitals 1790's: charities of self-help
New Poor Law - about
1834 KING - link betw. local poverty/admin via central decision making by Poor Law Commissioners. Guardians paid and assisted by professionals; deliberate test of need for paupers; principle of “less eligibility”. uniformity via. larger units, but admin baggage remained, instability between supply/demand.
Punishments
Bloody Code: Porter: from 50 capital offences in 1689 to 200 in 1800 - seen as excessive by contemporaries - only 1/3 actually hanged
Cost of poor
Porter - £6-700,000 in 1700; £2 mil in 1800.
Old Poor Law
Porter - “a useful technique of control”
Legislation - qualities/quantities
Webb - 1690-1790: 15,000 bills in front of Parliament; only 1 in 5 became statutes. 1000 regarding crime/law/admin. On average 5 passed p.a.
Porter: legislation treated “surface symptoms, not root economic causes”
King - Between 1601 and 1850 = 264 general and 100 local acts on welfare. Issue w. changes in law: unforseen welfare consequences ie. cleaning streets = sanity but no trad. jobs in waste removal.
1779 - branding for crime stopped
Legislation - acts
1690 - Board of Trade est. to help regulate poor
1700 - Vagrants Removal Costs Act INNES - “shifted responsibility for financing the removal of vagrants from the parish to the country”
1717/8 - Transportation Act - transportation of convicts (10,000 Irish under this!)
1723 - Knatchbull’s Workhouse Act (wave of workhouses est.)
1782 - Gilbert’s Act
1795 - Speemhamland System
1818/9 - Sturges Bourne Acts (to correct earlier abuses of pensions)
1826 - Peel’s Criminal Justice Act
1827 - Select committee of criminal convictions est.
1834 - New Poor Law
Knatchbull’s Workhouse Act
1723 - prompted a wave of founding workhouses (though very inefficient) - KING - an “enabling” act for localities to take action, care could be provided by contractors.
Gilbert’s Act
1782 - more sensitive against harshness of previous laws; allowed parishes to form workhouses together; controlled because required permission of 2/3 ratepayers.
Speemhamland System
1795 - King - sliding scale of poor relief tied to grain prices and wages.
Law: aiding rich or poor?
Eastwood: law the “footstool of privilege” ; courtroom the “most usual point of contact between social extremes”
Vicious cycle in which legislation such as enclosure (41% westminster legisl…) prompted rise in poaching and therefore tighter punishment laws…
VS. Innes - legislation “the majority were introduced by backbenchers” ie. promoting local needs; eg’s of parishes helping to fund prosecution via rates: Eynsham, 1785, sheep stealing a “parish charge”
Prosecuting Societies also formed for similar purposes.
Peel’s Criminal Justice Act
Innes: 1826; “extended discretionary entitlement to costs” eg. Ox, 1821, 12% of county spending on fair court cases.
Role of the middling sorts:
Local office holding - JP, overseer of poor, parish churchwardens, constables, private charity/running of; founders of societies like the SPCK (1698)
Living standards of the poor
Porter - in some London parishes 3 in 4 children died before the age of 6. Provincial towns too small for “elaborate spacial apartheid”, unlike London/Birmingham with suburbs.
Social mobility
Porter: Opportunities for social mobility - eg. Lancelot “Capability” Brown was the son of a tradesman.
Range of occupations in Birmingham
Porter - in the 1770’s = 250 Innkeepers, 77 merchants, 64 bakers. By the late c18, 40-50% families = wage earning.
London and charity
JORDAN - by 1660 Londoners = 34% of all national charity.
ANDREW: Times reported 1/6 of London’s population as criminal.
PORTER: 10 charities in London 1771-80; 30 1791-1800.
Sources of charity
Public and private. Over time = decline in charitable establishments/bequests - bc. of property ideas? Fears of corruption?
Hospitals more effective than work houses because they allowed poor to heal and go back to work again.
SPCK
Society for Promoting of Christian Knowledge, est. 1698. By 1732 had founded 123 schools in London.
Lying-In hospital
Founded 1749, London. Strong element of “sentimental benevolence” from u/m/c’s (ANDREW)
Foundling Hospitals
Opened 1739, part of national policy of population increase for war. Criticised for encouraging licentiousness and abandonment of children. Poor care - 1756: 1384 children and 4-55% died before age 2.
Lock Hospital
Founded 1746, treated venereal disease, hard to justify because founder had “colourful” past. Navy used it, and venereal disease ruined the health of many “potentially useful citizens”.
