|
|
 |
| |
Law and order according to Victorian values
Terrorism, and the issues it raises, is unfortunately nothing new, finds Peter Gruner
Crime and Criminals of Victorian London by Adrian Gray. Phillimore, £12.99
ON December 13, 1867, at 3.45pm a barrel of gunpowder was wheeled down Corporation Lane, opposite what was then Clerkenwell prison, by a small group of Irish freedom fighters.
The barrel was placed against the prison wall opposite the exercise yard where a leading Fenian (the group was a forerunner to the IRA) was expected to be, writes Adrian Gray in his new book Crime and Criminals of Victorian London.
A ball was thrown over the wall as a signal to the Fenian. A tall man with a beard then lit the fuse and the barrel exploded. The wall heaved and shook, and then fell inwards with a crash. The blast breached the wall but did no good for the Fenians inside, for they were still locked in their cells and could only watch helplessly. The force of the blast demolished a wall 25 foot high and two feet three inches thick and wrecked a row of houses 60 feet away. Twelve people were killed and 120 injured.
The dead included two children aged 10 and eight. Thirty six injured were taken to St Bartolomew’s hospital and six to the Royal Free.
For a while any sympathy among Londoners for the Irish cause disappeared, even among such socialist writers as Karl Marx who said at the time: “The London masses, who have shown great sympathy towards Ireland, will be made wild and driven into the arms of a reactionary government.
“One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of Fenian emissaries.”
The incident was also significant in other ways. It resulted in the capture of a suspect who may have been innocent of the crime but who went on to become the last man to hang in public.
The government offered a £400 reward and soon suspects were apprehended. Six accused stood trial for the blast in April 1868 but evidence against them was said to have been weak and conflicting. One by one they were acquitted apart from Michael Barrett, who was found guilty and on April 27, 1868, was sentenced to death.
“There was an outcry at the verdict,” writes Gray. “If the others had been acquitted, why not Barrett? There was much conflicting evidence over his role – some said he lit the fuse, others that a James O’Neil and William Desmond did it.
“Barrett had an alibi that sufficiently impressed The Times newspaper for it to support a re-trial. Barrett’s defence was that he had given up his stevedore work the previous September due to illness and in that fateful December had been sleeping in Glasgow common lodging houses – the lowest rung of society.
But Barrett’s being in Glasgow at the time could not be proved and his sentence was carried out in May, 1868.
It was an ugly affair and the last public execution to take place in England. Gray writes: “As usual the crowd gathered the night before and there were the usual cat-calls, comic choruses, dances and even mock hymns, until towards 2pm, when the gaiety inspired by alcohol faded away as the public houses closed.” As the time of the execution drew near a “magnificently attired” woman took up a prominent position in a window overlooking the scene.
The crowd “hooted” her in derision, but she threw coins down to placate them. Barrett was then brought out and hung, his body left on the scaffolding for one hour.
Then the hangman appeared and cut down the body amid a storm of yells and execrations. The Times felt ‘a thankful feeling that this was to be the last public execution in England’. But doubts about Barrett’s guilt have remained even to this day.
Mr Gray provides a rich picture of the variety of criminal and political activity in the city. His book contains the familiar Dickensian themes of grisly murders and ragged street urchins joined by other dramatic cases, which show patterns of crime and illustrate the causes and effects of changes in criminal law.
There’s the famous murder of Lord William Russell in his home in Norfolk Street, off Park Lane, in 1840. What shocked respectable Victorian society was that he was murdered – heaven forbid! - by his own butler and valet Francois Courvoisier.
The case caused a sensation and The Times wrote: “The excitement produced in high life by the dreadful event is almost unprecedented, and the feeling of apprehension for personal safety increases every hour, particularly among those of the nobility and gentry who live in comparative seclusion.”
As it is today, prostitution was a major activity in Victorian London, with many thousands of women making a living by it and others in low paid trades like seamstresses using it to supplement their incomes.
In 1847 a Bill passed in the Commons, which would have made it illegal to procure a girl or to pay someone else to do so, was rejected by the Lords as it posed a danger to owners of property that might have been used as a brothel. As today, prostitution was always a high-risk activity, as the murderous Jack the Ripper was to demonstrate in the East End.
Gray shows how both pure greed and genuine mental illness were responsible for unpleasant cases - such as the murder of an elderly aristocrat in his bed or the poisoning of a series of ‘working girls’. The author covers the whole spectrum of theft, from the spectacular - including train robberies and the infamous garrotting gangs – to the mundane, such as petty thieving by servants. Other chapters focus on less publicised topics, including prosecution for possession of obscene material and the widespread rioting that typified popular politics. Changes in the law are charted, showing how new offences were created from old customs, and how the law was updated to deal with modern problems such as motorcars.
In a book that covers the complete range of crime, the reader will meet many colourful characters. With many gruesome details and excellent illustrations, this book will appeal to London and Victorian historians as well as the macabre-minded.
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
