Since the Registrar General began to count the signatures and marks made by brides and grooms in parish registers across England in 1839, contemporaries and later historians have used this data to ...describe rates of literacy during the Victorian period. Evidence from the marriage registers only tells us about the literacy of the marrying population at any given point in time. Moreover, by distinguishing between those who could read and write and those who could not, the marriage registers have helped to draw an artificial line between those who were literate and the rest of the population, ignoring the large number of semi-literates who played an important role in a society progressing towards mass literacy. This article uses data collected on the separate skills of literacy and the experience of schooling of those men, women and children who passed through the criminal justice system between c.1840 and c.1870 in an attempt to reconstruct patterns of skills acquisition among the lower classes during the Victorian period. Not only does this evidence further dispel myths about the existence of a so-called 'criminal class' with specific characteristics in Victorian England, but, even more importantly, it shows that the path towards mass literacy was uneven, far less predictable than previously allowed, and often only loosely tied to developments in formal schooling.
This article traces the changes and continuities in fictional stories of serial murder in London from the late-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. In particular, it shows how changes ...in the primary audience for metropolitan popular culture necessitated dramatic shifts in the tale of serial killing and narratives of violence. Thus, by the nineteenth century, as the lower classes had become the main supporters of both traditional and new genres of entertainment in popular culture, their experience of and fears and anxieties about urban change became intertwined with myths about serial killing and reflected in a new character of the public nightmare, Sweeney Todd, the barber of Fleet Street, who set out to effectively depopulate the capital with his ghastly murder machine.
This article explores the emergence of schemes for educating prisoners during the first half of the nineteenth century, focusing on the programme of instruction at Reading Gaol during the 1840s and ...1850s. During this period, the enthusiastic prison chaplain, John Field, convinced the local authorities to rebuild the county gaol, impose the separate system of prison discipline, abolish hard labour, and devote prisoners’ time to the intensive study of the Scriptures and other related texts. Reading Gaol provides an insight into how educational methods and techniques were modified to suit a particular environment – the prison – and a particular student body – convicted criminals. When viewed in its educational and penal context, Reading Gaol also shows that although schemes for educating prisoners have often (and rightly) been associated with spiritual reformism, wider bases of support ensured the survival of at least elementary instruction for illiterate adult prisoners even when central authorities pressed for the adoption of hard labour, hard board and hard fare in local gaols.
This article traces the changes and continuities in fictional stories of serial murder in London from the late-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. In particular, it shows how changes ...in the primary audience for metropolitan popular culture necessitated dramatic shifts in the tale of serial killing and narratives of violence. Thus, by the nineteenth century, as the lower classes had become the main supporters of both traditional and new genres of entertainment in popular culture, their experience of and fears and anxieties about urban change became intertwined with myths about serial killing and reflected in a new character of the public nightmare, Sweeney Todd, the barber of Fleet Street, who set out to effectively depopulate the capital with his ghastly murder machine.
...Victorian criminal records tell us that women also stole foodstuffs and fuel, and some men (or boys) resorted to prostitution. ...despite the promise offered by some of the sources Ager uses in ...this study-for example, the paupers' complaint book from Hoo Union in Kent, and those in the chapter on workhouse disobedience and rural protest-the approach taken and the research questions posed fail to account for the excellent work historians have done on recovering the agency of the poor.
PDF
