Introductory description

This module covers the period from the late eighteenth century to the start of the twentieth. This is a transformative period in the history of crime and punishment in Britain moving from the ‘Bloody Code’ which characterised eighteenth century Britain to a punishment code resting on the prison system. The period witnessed the introduction of the police force, the rise and fall of transportation and debates about the nature of prison. The module is interdisciplinary drawing on scholarship from history, law, sociology, criminology, literature and politics. A variety of sources are consider including novels, memoirs, criminal records, newspapers and satire.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Note: this is an indicative syllabus. The precise content will be negotiated between students and tutor each academic year to reflect student interests and involve the students in all aspects of curriculum design and assessment as well as providing them with as many opportunities for practical research as possible. The tutor will provide template seminar outlines (with questions, sources, and bibliography) for students. The tutor, in conjunction with archivists at the MRC and Warwick Records Office, will provide descriptions of the available archives and other primary sources.

1. (Modern Records Centre) - syllabus design; selection of primary source material; introduction to archives for crime and punishment
2. (Warwick Records Office) - introduction to local archives particularly quarter sessions material; further selection of primary source material for module
3. The Victorian underworld – historiography
4. The Victorian underworld – sources
5. The Criminal Justice system – historiography
6. The Criminal Justice system – sources
7. Policing the city – historiography
8. Policing the city – sources
9. Prisons: a just measure of pain? – historiography
10. Prisons: a just measure of pain? – sources
11. The Garrotting Panic and the role of the press – historiography
12. The Garrotting Panic and the role of the press – sources
13. Violent women and girl gangs – historiography
14. Violent women and girls gangs – historiography
15. The construction of the juvenile delinquent – historiography
16. The construction of the juvenile delinquent – sources
17. A Study in Scarlet: literature and crime – historiography
18. A Study in Scarlet: literature and crime – sources

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a systematic knowledge and understanding of key themes in the history of crime and punishment in the long nineteenth century
• Critically analyse and evaluate a broad range of primary sources (including archival sources at the Modern Records Centre) relating to the history of crime and punishment
• Effectively communicate ideas, and make informed, coherent and persuasive arguments, relating to the history of crime
• Critically review and consolidate theoretical, methodological, and historiographical ideas relating to the study of crime from history and related disciplines (eg Sociology, Law, Literature)

Indicative reading list

Primary Sources

• Modern Records Centre: Archives of the Howard League for Penal Reform and National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders
• Warwick Records Office: Archives of the Warwickshire Quarter Sessions
• The Old Bailey Online
• Nineteenth-century British Newspapers (online)
• Illustrated London News (online)
• British Parliamentary Papers (online)
• Ancestry.co.uk: England and Wales Criminal Registers; Transportation records; Prison Hulk registers and letter books; Licences of Parole for female convicts (all online)
• Victorian Prisoners Photograph Albums (The National Archives Online)
• Henry Mayhew, The Criminal Prisons of London (1862)
• Novels of Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens

Secondary Sources

• Andrew Davies, The Gangs of Manchester (2009)
• Clive Emsley, Policing and its context, 1750-1870 (1996)
• Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900 (2017)
• Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prisons (1991)
• V. A. C. Gattrell, The Hanging Tree: execution and the English people, 1770-1868 (1996)
• Barry Godfrey and Paul Lawrence, Crime and Justice, 1750-1950 (2005)
• Drew Gray, London's Shadows (2010)
• Drew Gray. Crime, policing and punishment in England (2016)
• Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker, Tales from the Hanging Court (2007)
• M Ignatieff, A just measure of pain, the penitentiary in the industrial revolution (1989)
• Andrew Mangham, Violent women and sensation fiction : crime, medicine and Victorian popular culture (2007)
• P. Priestley, Victorian prison lives: English prison biography (1999)
• Heather Shore, Artful Dodgers: youth and crime in nineteenth-century London (2002)
• Haia Shpayer-Makov, The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England (2011)
• Roger Swift, Behaving badly? : Irish migrants and crime in the Victorian city (2006)
• Tammy Whitlock, Crime, Gender and Consumer Culture in nineteenth century England (2016)
• Martin Wiener, Deconstructing the criminal (1994)
• Martin Wiener, Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (2006)
• Lucia Zedner, Women, Crime and Custody (1991)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.