7.2 Crimes and criminals

×

Fuelled by lurid stories in national newspapers, the Victorians were very preoccupied with what they perceived as the problems of crime. The popular view prevailed that Britain was a dangerous place; Dickens’ characters – Magwitch in Great Expectations, Fagin in Oliver Twist – resonated with a public who saw the dark dens and alleys of their towns and cities as hives of criminal activity peopled by murderers, thieves and pickpockets. Public executions drew large crowds eager to see the guilty paying their dues to society. But whilst there was an expectation that criminals should be appropriately punished, there was less of a consensus as to why people committed crimes. It was easy to blame an apparently degenerate class who, it was thought, were inherently evil, immoral and corrupt. It was in the Victorian age that the British gradually began to acquire a more realistic understanding of what drove people to crime and a greater degree of sensitivity as to how to deal with those who were often the victims of exploitation.