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Britain
of the 19th century was a country suffering deeply in the
throes of its own evolutionary forces. Many important transitions
were under way, including Britain's transition from a monarchy-style
royal government to a more truly representative parliamentary
democracy; The Industrial Revolution; Chartism and the demand
for more equal rights; and the conservative moral bent of
the ruling class during the latter years of Queen Victoria,
also known as the Victorian Era.
As Britain struggled with questions of identity and to reinvent
both its economy and its society, a huge cross-section of
socioeconomically underprivileged citizens fell through the
proverbial cracks and had little recourse but to succumb to
the realities of Darwinian social principles; given the neglect
shown to them by the government and the wealthier ruling classes,
they had to resort to survival by any means necessary. In
a large number of cases, this meant turning to a life of crime. 
One of the most interesting aspects of this underclass of
people is that they existed either in the same or nearby geographical
proximity to the middle and upper classes, particularly in
London; after dark, in particular, an entire alternate universe
of crime ranging from petty theft and rampant prostitution,
to extortion and murder, arose and breathed a very vivid life
of its own. The squalid morals, or lack thereof, of this netherworld,
were in direct opposition to the labyrinthian and strict morals
of the Victorian Era, yet many so-called noble citizens more
than dabbled in the darker side of life. This twilight world,
as it was sometimes called, reached its zenith and most publicly
acknowledged status during the 1895 trials of noted homosexual
and hedonist author Oscar Wilde. However, the government had
acknowledged fourteen years earlier either its inability or
unwillingness to combat the underbelly of its own society,
when in 1881, Scotland Yard's director of criminal investigations
admitted he was powerless to stop even 13-year old girls from
turning to prostitution in order to survive. London was the
'finest' example of England's national tragedy, leading the
noted British sociologist
Henry Mayhew to observe in 1851 that: "the extent of misery,
ignorance, and vice, amidst all the wealth and great knowledge
of the 'first city in the world,' is to say the least, a national
disgrace to us all." (Thomas, 1998, p. 11)
It is worth pausing here to note that without a doubt, crime
existed among the middle and wealthier ruling classes during
the time period in question. As Emsley (2004) notes, fraud
in the upper-class or merchant business world was prevalent
in the mid-1850s. But the term 'criminal underclass' - popularized
in England during the 1860s -- is relevant and appropriate
because it rightly implies a structure and organization to
the netherworld existing alongside so-called proper Victorian
society. To the extent that classification helped the wealthier,
ruling elites, perceive the criminal underclass as an exotic
or foreign group of people, or perhaps barely human, the term
'criminal underclass' was pejorative in nature, but it also,
in historical retrospect, is useful because it does delineate
a cross-section of British citizens who were semi-organized
from a sociological perspective. Exempt from the privileges
of British citizenry, many of the poor also considered themselves
exempt from its rules, and in turn, created and lived by their
own. Due process of law and fairness were not hallmarks of
the organizational system governing the criminal underclass,
but then again, they did not distinguish the legitimate British
governing systems either. While the law enforcement structures
of the British government evolved considerably during the
19th century, for the better, they were still unequal to the
challenge posed by crimes committed by those who existed in
the twilight world.
By 1850, London had grown from a turn-of-the-century population
of approximately 875,000 to a teeming metropolis of over two
and a half million souls. No longer a city sustained by agrarian
culture, London was now home to a bizarre conglomeration of
citizenry determined to survive at all costs, existing alongside
those who from birth had never given a thought to the struggle
for food, clothing, and shelter, because they had never had
a reason to do so. Of those in the former category, there
were two types, "those who were destitute or starving, and
those who had chosen to live beyond the missionary reach of
bourgeois society." (Thomas, 1998, p. 13). Some people simply
did not care for the direction in which the Industrial Revolution
was taking Britain, and chose to take their chances in makeshift
economic systems of their own, including street vendors, numbering
in the tens of thousands, who "traded in fruit, vegetables,
and fish from market barrows. [also trading] upon wits and
usually in opposition to the Metropolitan Police." (Thomas,
1998, p. 13). There were also those who earned starvation
wages making garments or various tapestries, working outdoors,
and then, as the Industrial Revolution truly began its Darwinian
transformation and the lack of a social safety net really
began to show its ugly head, another subclass of people moved
into London, a "wandering tribe of hawkers, street-entertainers,
and baggers, drawn to London in the hope of better times."
(Thomas, 1998, p. 13) It was within these subcultures that
arbitrary rules of law and criminal behavior of all shapes
and sizes.
Most of these crimes were minor, relatively speaking, and
contrary to the sensationalized headlines from English newspapers
about such horrific incidents as the Jack the Ripper murders
in 1888, violent crime rates in England were actually a bit
lower than in other European countries of the era. Most arrests
were for offenses such as petty thievery, committed mostly
by young men. Women committed so-called victimless crimes,
such as vagrancy, public intoxication, and prostitution. As
Emsley (2004) points out, domestic violence was a serious
problem, but incidents generally did not make it into the
courts, due to the fact that amongst the working-class communities,
it was still a fairly socially accepted idea that a married
man, as head of a household, was entitled to 'discipline'
his wife and children as he saw fit, even if that included
laying a hand on them. Then, as now, alcohol was frequently
a catalyst for criminal behavior as much as it was the behavior
itself.
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