SOCIAL CONDITIONS

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

By the time Queen Victoria came to the throne, the use of stocks and pillory as forms of punishment were no longer used. Public whippings still took place until the late 19th century and the death penalty (hanging) persisted until the 20th century. Some children had been sentenced to death in the early 1800s for crimes committed but this happened to no children throughout the Victorian period.

Children often experienced violence at home, school and work and many poor children survived by joining street gangs and turning to crime to survive. At the beginning of the 19th century ,child criminals were punished in the same way that adults were, namely being sent to adult prisons, sometimes transported abroad for theft and they were on occasion whipped and sentenced to death.

Daily life in jail was also the same for children as for the adults: prisoners had to get up at 5 a.m. and go to bed at 10 p.m.

Jail Timetable

5am – 6am Wash and clean cells
6am – 8am Tread wheel, pumping, grinding corn and cleaning corridors
8am – 9am Breakfast and oakum picking
9am – 10am Chapel
10am – 12noon Tread wheel, pumping, grinding corn, oakum picking or industrial employment
12noon – 1pm Dinner and oakum picking
1pm – 6pm Tread wheel, pumping, grinding corn, oakum picking, industrial employment
and cleaning corridors
6pm – 7pm Supper and oakum picking
7pm – 9pm Instruction

During the 19th. century people began to worry about neglected children and in 1844 the Ragged School Union was formed. As well as giving basic lessons many schools provided food. As time went on, some also opened refuges where children could sleep, especially in the extremely cold weather.

Many believed that by giving the children an education they would be enabled to lead a better life in the future. They would be able to find work and would not need to steal in order to live.

Perception of Criminals

At the beginning of Victoria’s reign people tended to think of criminals as individuals in the lower reaches of the working class who they thought were reluctant to do a day’s work. The problem was thought to be a moral one. There were also concerns about the dangerous classes who, it was thought lurked in the slums waiting for the opportunity for disorder and plunder. By the middle of the century the term `criminal classes` was more in vogue – it was used to describe a social group stuck at the bottom of society. Towards the end of the century, developments in psychiatry had led to the criminal being identified as an individual suffering from some form of behavioural abnormality that had been either inherited or nurtured by dissolute and feckless parents.