Abstract
While it is important for scholars to study the current criminal climate, historical records on crime should not be ignored. It is important for researchers to understand criminal trends so that recent crimes are not perceived as unprecedented but merely continuations of criminal behavior. John E. Archer, a Fellow at the Royal Historical Society, tries in his book The Monster Evil: Policing and Violence in Victorian Liverpool to delve into violent crime in Victorian Liverpool. This city had a particular reputation for being an immoral and abnormally violent place. He uses a variety of methods in his book but he specifically focuses on qualitatively detailing crime in Victorian Liverpool. Two main newspapers were used, Liverpool Mercury and Porcupine, but other national and local newspapers were also examined and their criminal articles were pulled and described in the book. The author also used official data from witness depositions and the annual registers of Liverpool coroner’s court. There were also some official police records and annual head constable’s reports that were examined so that statistics on the types of crime and overall crime in Liverpool could be determined. Finally, the records for the Liverpool Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children were used in cases of violence against young children. All of these methods make for a compelling and well-rounded historical account about crime in Liverpool from 1850 to 1900.
This book presents 13 chapters, in three parts, detailing the extent of crime in Victorian Liverpool and the police reaction to it. This allows the reader to fully understand Victorian Liverpool’s criminal atmosphere. Part I (Chapters 1 and 2) details the history and unique components that made Liverpool a hot bed for criminal activity. Liverpool was perceived by all of Britain to be the main source of criminality in the country through both statistics and media reports. Part II delves into the police with two chapters that describe how the introduction of a formal policing unit, as opposed to dock and night watchmen, was met by the community and what obstacles these “new policemen” faced. Part III is perhaps the most interesting in which the details of various crimes perpetrated in Victorian Liverpool are examined. This is the largest part at eight chapters and a variety of crimes with both female and male perpetrators are described such as infanticide, domestic violence, murders, and sexual assaults.
The first chapter of Part I examines the features of Liverpool that contributed to its criminality. The most notable is that it was a seaport and this led to an influx of immigrants, particularly Irish, into the city. Archer mentions the “official” statistics of the time and how this and media reports added to Britain’s perception that Liverpool was a criminal center. These statistics faced various problems such as Liverpool including infanticide in its murder counts while other European cities did not and Liverpool’s policy of only magistrates throwing out cases while other cities dropped charges by a variety of means. These statistical missteps perhaps added to the rest of Britain’s perception that Liverpool was a criminal hot bed. Chapter 2 further examines some of the causes of criminality in Liverpool. The first is the economic and living conditions of the poor in Liverpool, which lead to concentrated areas of poverty in the city. One in particular detailed by Archer is Chisenhale Street which had a large number of people (1,539 persons) in one of the smallest amount of spaces. Second, Archer details how alcohol played a significant role in crime in the city. The author highlights a constant tug of war between conservatives who wanted closer control of pubs and the majority of the public who wanted leniency for drunken crimes. These two chapters add together to give a crucial contextual understanding of Liverpool and why its criminality should perhaps have been expected.
Part II (Chapters 3 and 4) gives an overview of how the police department was founded, organized, and accepted in Liverpool. This organized police unit was started in 1836 but there were dock, day and night police before this. However, these police forces were privately funded and the “new police” were intended to be a more centralized police force. The main difficulty with this new police force was that from 1852 to 1880 the police were very paramilitary and while this was heralded by the government; the public’s reaction was very different. Chapter 4 discusses the tension that existed between the community and the police force. One of the main contentions that emerged was that the police force was mainly Protestant and they were dealing with newly immigrated Catholic Irish. This tension between the two religions frequently led to violence and mistreatment on both sides. The paramilitary makeup of the police force may have increased the togetherness of the officers but it did lead to an “us versus them” mentality which also increased the anger and crime between the police and public. There were few official records on violence perpetrated by the police as in Victorian Liverpool and in present day there exists the “blue line” in which the police protect their own. However, the media did mention the extreme hostility toward and from the police.
The last part of the book (which includes Chapters 5 through 13) details various violent crimes that perhaps differentiated Liverpool from other British cities. These chapters discuss male-on-male crime, the role of the Irish in crimes, street gangs, female-perpetrated crimes, domestic and sexual violence, family violence, crime by juveniles, and violence toward children. Two of these crimes in particular draw the reader’s attention. The first crime that was seen in excess in Liverpool was infanticide. These women were typically seen as victims themselves by the courts as most were single mothers who could not take care of themselves much less their children. However, a woman harming her child did go against Victorian ideals on a woman as a wife and mother. These standards were also what led to the influx of another crime discussed in the book: domestic violence. It was difficult for police to interfere in domestic situations as it was the common belief that what happened in the home stayed in the home. Men were also excused their violence when their female partners did not measure up to these Victorian standards by drinking, hanging around other men, or not completing household chores. These two crimes detail how Victorian ideals affected the criminal justice system. Women were seen as victims both when they killed their children and when their husbands abused them unless the women did not fall in line with Victorian standards. These crimes highlight a theme throughout this part of the book where victims were just as much on trial as the perpetrators in the Victorian criminal justice system. This does not seem to have changed significantly today as victims’ behavior, especially in sexual and domestic violence cases, is as important to police, lawyers, and judges as the behavior of the perpetrator.
While the book did provide an extensive history of crime in Victorian Liverpool, the organization of the book left something to be desired. The book began with an overall history of the Liverpool police force. While this might be necessary so the reader can fully understand the types of crimes in Liverpool and the criminal justice system’s response to these crimes, this first part of the book was the hardest to read as it lacked the number of newspaper articles and stories that made the latter chapters of the book so captivating. These chapters were so strong because the reader was able to fully immerse themselves in the stories on crime in Victorian Liverpool. In conclusion, I recommend this book to scholars and professionals. This book would be a great resource in studying crime across time and countries. I do believe that undergraduate students will be particularly interested in the last part of the book, where historical accounts of various crimes are examined.