Crime, Courts and Community in Mid-Victorian Wales

Rachael Jones

Description

This book explores the relationship between the justice system and local society at a time when the Industrial Revolution was changing the characteristics of mid Wales. Crime, Courts and Community in Mid-Victorian Wales investigates the Welsh nineteenth-century experiences of both the high-born and the low within the context of law enforcement, and considers major issues affecting Welsh and wider criminal historiography: the nature of class in the Welsh countryside and small towns, the role of women, the ways in which the justice system functioned for communities at that time, the questions of how people related to the criminal courts system, and how integrated and accepting of it they were. We read the accounts of defendants, witnesses and law- enforcers through transcription of courtroom testimonies and other records, and the experiences of all sections of the public are studied. Life stories – of both offenders and prosecutors of crime – are followed, providing a unique picture of this Welsh county community, its offences and legal practices.

Acknowledgments
List of figures
List of tables
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Montgomeryshire
2 The legal system
3 Montgomeryshire Constabulary
4 Petty sessions
5 Quarter sessions
6 Assizes
7 Theft offences
8 Vice
Conclusion
Bibliography

Sujets

• Histoire
• Great Britain
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786832610
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Crime, Courts and Community in Mid-Victorian Wales
Crime, Courts and Community in Mid-Victorian Wales
Montgomeryshire, People and Places
Rachael Jones -->

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS CARDIFF
© Rachael Jones, 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78683-259-7
eISBN 978-1-78683-261-0
The right of Rachael Jones to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Funding for this publication by the Marc Fitch Fund is gratefully acknowledged.
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Cover image: The Smithy, Manafon, Wales. Print from a glass plate negative held in the private collection of James Morley.
Cover design: Olwen Fowler
For my parents
Who never let me down
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Montgomeryshire
2 The Legal System
3 Montgomeryshire Constabulary
4 Petty Sessions
5 Quarter Sessions
6 Assizes
7 Theft Offences
8 Vice
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Appreciation goes to Richard Ireland for invaluable advice, and to Clive Emsley, Peter King, Richard Moore-Colyer, Keith Snell, Sujitha Subramanian and Thomas Glyn Watkin for important constructive criticism. I acknowledge the public library in Newtown, Powys, for its wonderful local history resources, and helpful and knowledgeable staff. I am grateful for the freely available access to the Ancestry website at local authority libraries, which enabled the start of this project.
I am very grateful to the Marc Fitch Fund and to Mrs D. L. Jones whose generous support enabled publication.
Finally, and most importantly, I give my appreciation to the people of nineteenth-century Montgomeryshire and the heritage they left.
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1: Montgomeryshire and its neighbouring counties.
Figure 1.2: The valleys of the Severn, Banwy and Vyrnwy
Figure 2.1: Social stratification of the Montgomeryshire Bench
Figure 4.1: Types of offences dealt with at petty sessions, 1869-78 (5,108 cases)
Figure 5.1: Percentages of cases appearing at petty and quarter sessions, 1869-78
Figure 5.2: Occupational representation on Newtown and Welshpool grand juries, 1869-78
Figure 5.3: Comparison of non-farmers in the list of potential jurors and in the jury, after 1871
Figure 5.4: Comparison of non-farmers in the list of potential jurors and in the jury, prior to 1871
Figure 7.1: Offences seen in quarter sessions each year (352 in total)
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.1: Number of flannel manufacturers and merchants in Welshpool
Table 2.1: League table of pay, 1871 (seasonal pay for haymakers has been multiplied to an annual sum for comparability purposes only)
Table 3.1: Ratio of population and acreage per constable
Table 4.1: Range of stolen items and the gaol sentences received at petty sessions, January, May and September 1869-78
Table 5.1: Length of penal servitude and corresponding length of transportation as set out by the first Penal Servitude Act of 1853
Table 7.1: Proportions of quarter session crimes related to population
Table 7.2: Proportion of quarter sessions crimes related to the population of Welshpool, Newtown and the remainder of the county
Table 8.1: Vagrancy offences attributable to known prostitutes, 1869-70
Table 8.2: Magistrates sitting at Williams s and Rowlands s trials at quarter sessions
Table 8.3: Prices of a range of items shown in advertisements in The Newtown and Welshpool Express , 1869-70
ABBREVIATIONS
DNB
Dictionary of National Biography
HMIC
Her Majesty s Inspector of Constabularies
ME
Montgomeryshire Express
Mont. Colls
Montgomeryshire Collections
NLW
National Library of Wales
NEW
Newtown and Welshpool Express
PCA
Powys County Archives
TNA
The National Archives
INTRODUCTION
AIMS , STRUCTURE AND METHODOLOGY
This book is a study of the public and personal experiences of Montgomeryshire people in the criminal courts, from aristocrats to paupers, male and female, the elderly and the very young, agriculturalists and industrialists. It examines social relations through the medium of the criminal justice system in mid-Victorian Wales, stressing social interaction and the comparative experiences of women, to see how these influenced and were reinforced by established legal procedures. A main intention is to understand local administration of justice through investigating the motivations and contributions of participants in law enforcement. It uses testimonies and courtroom interaction to uncover lives and the social significance of events. The localised environment within mid-Wales is a constant theme, and much reference is made to topography, including architecture, roads, watercourses and woodland. The book aims to highlight the study of landscape in relation to both offending and detection, whether in urban or rural situations. 1 Crowd responses to law enforcement are considered at a local level, 2 and much of the method of this book thus involves a form of local history now often termed microhistory: where local areas and personalities are used to explore wider themes; and where broader issues become understandable only via the lens of close micro study of people who are known individuals and their immediate surroundings. 3
Seminal work in the 1970s introduced the idea that a study of the courts could access the experiences of people about whom little hitherto had been written. 4 The fact that wider society was seen in court meant that the history of the criminal justice system was central to unlocking the meanings of eighteenth-century social history , 5 and herein lies the basis of the present work set in the later nineteenth century. While recognising that the class system was played out in court, the procedures of justice were shown to protect the interests of the general public throughout England and Wales, 6 and the importance of jury discretion will be built upon here. 7 Courts have a many-faceted nature, and a diversity of persons can affect the outcome of a case. Some historians have confined their investigative studies to small elite groups, but the present book is not limited in that way. Rather, it examines offenders, victims and witnesses and encompasses a wide range of offending, by considering over 5,000 cases. 8
The ground-breaking work of E. P. Thompson, while being of the people , nevertheless concentrated on men. 9 This left a space that started to be filled by feminist writers from the 1970s. 10 The work presented here investigates the whole community and makes comparisons between the experiences of men and women. It includes a chapter which specifically considers gender-related differences, looking particularly at how physicality affected the getaway part of the offence. It also considers a call for a study of history from below interacting with history from above , 11 and an end to segregation of urban from rural and for expansion of gender-shaped experiences of the working classes . 12 Women could use the law themselves, even taking men to court to resolve issues and demonstrating an impressive, perhaps surprising, knowledge of the legal system. 13
This book is a history from all sides. The nineteenth-century restriction of the administration of law to men only, in the form of judges, lawyers, magistrates and police, means that a study of crime and community will contain a sizeable focus on this part of society. 14 Analyses of many events will occur here, with a scrutiny of the associated activities of the Montgomeryshire Constabulary and Bench of magistrates, 15 filling large spaces in the knowledge of this county s legal procedures. The selection of Montgomeryshire was for several reasons. In classic works such as David Jones s Crime in Nineteenth-century Wales , the county receives scant attention, 16 and studies of Wales usually concentrate on industrialised areas, mainly in the south. 17 However, in a paper presented to Llafur - the Welsh People s History Society, which studies history from below - Jones, did use 300 cases from early 1860s Montgomeryshire for an investigation. In this, he concentrated on rural offences, mainly arson, poaching and vagrancy, with a decided leaning towards men s experience of crime. 18 There are some detailed studies of crime in Montgomeryshire by other historians but set in earlier time periods. 19 There is thus need for a study of crime and the whole community in the later nineteenth century in mid-Wales. The current work is, in many ways, a mid-Victorian extension of Melvin Humphreys s book on Montgomery-shire, in that the whole community is studied without an overall focus on one social or gendered group. 20 The important features of the county are that it had both English and Welsh characteristics from its long border, approaching 150 miles, with Shropshire and with four Welsh counties. Montgomeryshire also had dual agricultural and industrial features from its rich farming heritage and revolutionary fa