Crime and Punishment

smuggling

• ‘wrecking’ seen as a customary right
• Often tea, though reduction in tax in 1784 reduced levels
• 1746 it became a capital offence to smuggle or prevent capture of smugglers; 1784 act make it a capital offence not to surrender goods to a revenue officer

Was there a rise in crime?

• Contemporary perceptions – Henry Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, and some Proposals for Remedying this Growing Evil (1751). Patrick Colquoun estimated in early C19th that of pop of 10.5m, 1.3m were indigent and criminal. Role of the press?
• but problem of evidence – does increasing number of indictments reflect actual rise or better prosecution?
• Regional variation. London was a special case – 0.5m in late C17th but 1m by early C19th, 1/10th of population. Anonymity. Gangs and footpads (armed robbers on foot) eg Jumping Joe Lorrison, executed 1792, had cat-like ability to jump into carts and rob them. Pickpockets – around the theatres. Duke of Cumberland had is sword stolen on way in to theatre; George III had his watch stolen in Kensington palace gardens. The Thames as source of smuggled goods.
• Regional studies suggest violent crime was falling. Beattie found that in Surrey and Sussex murder and manslaughter cases fell from 2.5% per 100,000 in 1660-1679, to 0.3% per 100,000 in 1780-1802.
• Property offences increased after a dip in mid C18th; blips after demobilisation. Study of crime in North East [Morgan and Rushton] showed peak of property offences in 1750s and then 1780s and 1790s; but also high incidence of female involvement [a third of accused in Durham and Northumberland were women, half in Newcastle]; and increasingly urban phenomenon

Gin Lane. 1736 act attempted to regulate it; 1751 act most successful, and this print from that year (when consumption was about 11m gallons; one in every 15 houses sold alcohol; excessive drinking thought to be cause of death for about one in eight adults c. 1800