Crime industrial 1700-1900

New crimes - overview

  • Smuggling

  • highway robbery

  • Poaching

  • tax evasion

  • protest after 1789 French Revolution

Changes to Crime

Smuggling

  • increased import duties

  • Hawkhurst gang controlled smuggling around south coast 1735-1749

  • Social crime - benefit form cheaper goods

  • 1780’s lowered import duties

Highway robbery

  • Threatening and attacking travellers

  • Taking valuable possessions

  • More roads / more people on them in 18th Century

  • 1772 death penalty was used

  • 1815 less common because mounted patrols

  • Towns were growing, but countryside was still isolated

  • Few banks so people carried large amounts of cash on them

  • e.g. Dick Turpin

Poaching

  • 1700 increase gangs poaching

  • 1723 Black act - stop gangs poaching

  • 1823 Black Act was repealed by Robert Peel, but it was still illegal, but no more death penalt

Protest

1715 Riot Act - capital offence for 12\ge people to meet and then not leave when a magistrate read out the act

Soldiers would be brought in, and the rioters would be hung or transported

Tolpuddle Martyrs

Agricultural worker, transported to Australia for 7 years for joining a trade union

The union wanted better pay, work conditions and rights

The leader was George Loveless

This caused 100,000 men to demonstrate in London and a petition of 200,000 signatures

Peterloo Massacre

A group of campaigners who wanted the working class (men) the ability to vote

16th August 1819, 60,000 people in St. Peter’s Field - Manchester. Demanding the vote for working class men

One main speaker was Henry Hunt

Yeomanry (sub division of military, special soldiers) helped ‘control’ crowd - most people tried to run away

11 people killed 400 wounded

12,000 troops deployed in area

2 ½ years in prison for Henry Hunt