When Elizabeth Fry asked if she could lead prayers for the women inside Newgate gaol, the Governor was momentarily confused.
Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) sprang to the public’s attention in 1813, after asking the Governor of Newgate prison if she might be allowed to read prayers for the female inmates. To his amazement she wanted to do it not through the railings of the outer courtyard, but inside the gaol. And to his credit the Governor, feebly informing her that there was no precedent for such a thing, said Yes.
On his visits to Durham Gaol, prison reformer John Howard found conditions that were all too familiar.
‘There’s Nae Good Luck in Durham Gaol’ was the title of a music-hall song by Tyneside song-maker Tommy Armstrong (1848-1919). It would have been scant consolation to know it, but conditions in the 1770s were far worse than in Tommy’s day. Here, pioneering prison reformer John Howard takes us on a very personal guided tour.
In eighteenth-century England, the death penalty was the solution to almost any crime.
In Georgian England, the consensus was that the key to crime prevention was to dangle the hangman’s rope before every would-be criminal’s eyes. Whether he was guilty of shoplifting or murder most foul, the hangman awaited him. Yet to some at the Old Bailey the news that they wouldn’t be up on a hanging charge came as a disappointment, as George Wrong explains.
The politicians of Georgian England went to surprising lengths to shield domestic businesses from overseas competition.
A feature of the eighteenth century was the Government’s ongoing, desperate and self-defeating attempt to support English industry by slapping taxes, tariffs and regulations on overseas competitors. Here, historian William Lecky looks at a few of the more egregious examples, from banning foreigners’ products to denying them technology.
A thief was reluctantly obliged to relieve King George II of his valuables.
In addition to playing cricket for the MCC, Charles Greville kept a diary. When it came out in 1874, it drew alarm and outrage from the highest in the land, but the public loved it, not for any salacious gossip (which Greville shunned) but for the intimate insight into English society and policy that each scene gave them. This anecdote of George II is as curious as any.
A Welshman was not keen on handing over his employer’s money just because Tom Dorbel had a gun.
The following story was told by Captain Charles Johnson (fl. 1724-36), who is widely credited with kindling our national fascination with pirates and highwaymen. The captain tells it well but he is let down by affecting a Welsh dialect so near to being incomprehensible that I felt obliged to paraphrase the whole thing.
Karl Philipp Moritz described three kinds of criminal in Georgian England, from the gentlemanly cutpurse to the deadly footpad.
On June 20th, 1782, German tourist Karl Philipp Moritz was excited to find himself taking his first ride in an English stagecoach. During the trip, he and his fellow-passengers were regaled with stories of daring crimes in the neighbourhoods through which they passed, prompting Moritz to reflect on the perils of walking abroad in Georgian England.