Section A: crime in the 18th and 19th centuries 

 

Smuggling 

  1. In the 18th century, more goods, including cloth, wine and spirits were taxed, and smuggling activity increased.  

  1. Increasingly, smuggling was organised by gangs, which the authorities found hard to deal with.   

  1. The Hawkhurst Gang controlled smuggling along much of the south coast from 1735 to 1749. The leaders, Arthur Gray and Thomas Kingsmill, were caught and hanged in 1748 and 1749 respectively.  

  1. Smuggling was sometimes helped by local communities. They were seen as popular heroes, and locals in coastal areas would help by unloading boats and hiding smuggled goods.  

  1. The upper classes benefited by buying cut-price luxury goods from the smugglers, so would help conceal their activities. 

  1. They were also difficult to track down because they often worked at night, and in secluded areas of the coast line.  

  1. Smuggling eventually ended because it became less profitable. The Prime Minister William Pitt lowered import duties in the 1780s, and it was reduced again in the 19th century.  

 

Highway robbery 

  1. Highway robbery involved attacking and robbing travellers on highways. It was a problem as far back as the Middle Ages, but it became more common in the 18th century for a number of reasons.  

  1. As trade increased there was more needed to move money around, but cheques did not exist and there were very few banks; travellers often carried large amounts of cash.  

  1. The countryside was much less populated than today, so there were many isolated country roads.  

  1. Turnpike trusts improved the road surfaces, and regular stagecoach services were introduced. This meant there were many more people on the roads.  

  1. Highway robbers who operated on foot were known as footpads and those who travelled on horseback were called highwaymen.  

  1. ‘Black Harry’ was a famous highwayman who robbed pack-mule trains in Derbyshire. He was eventually caught and executed at Wardlow Mires.  

  1. Highway robber was seen as a serious crime because it was committed on the king’s highway, and because it could involve theft of mail bags it disrupted the postal service.  

  1. In 1772 the death penalty was introduced for anyone found armed and disguised on a high road.  

  1. The crime decreased when mounted patrols started to be used on major roads in the 19th century, and also as the introduction of the banking system meant there was less need for people to carry large sums of cash.  

  1. The last reported case was in 1831.  

 

Poaching 

  1. This continued to be widespread, and there was a rise in gangs operating on a large scale. 

  1. The 1723 Black Act made poaching a capital offence and also made it illegal to blacken your face (a form of disguise) in a hunting areas. 

  1. Carrying snares or owning dogs that were suitable for poaching could be punished with a fine or prison sentence. 

  1. The Act was widely resented as being unfair, not least because landowners with land worth over £100 a year were allowed to hunt without restrictions. From 1823 poaching was no longer punished by death.  

 

 

The decriminalisation of witchcraft  

  1. During the reign of George II, the 1735 Witchcraft Act decriminalised witchcraft.  

  1. Those accused were now treated as confidence tricksters and faced fines and imprisonment rather than death.  

 

The treatment of the Tolpuddle Martyrs 

  1. The French Revolution in 1789, followed by further popular uprisings in France in 1830, led the British authorities to feel vulnerable and treat those seeking political change as criminals.  

  1. In February 1834, in the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset, a farm labourer called George Loveless, and five others were arrested for ‘administering an illegal oath’, which was a very old law intended to stop sailors organising mutinies.  

  1. The real reason was that the men had formed a ‘friendly society’ – an early form of trade union designed to protect their wages and help each other.  

  1. They were protesting about their low wage of six shillings a week, when the average wage for a farm labourer was ten shillings a week. 

  1. They were sentenced to seven years transportation.  

  1. Mass protests started to spread in their support. A demonstration in London was attended by 100,000 people, and 200,000 people signed a petition.  

  1. The home secretary, Lord Melbourne, refused to accept the petition, and the men were sent to Austrial.  

  1. Four years later, however, the government pardoned the Tolpuddle Martyrs and they returned home.