Strange Sentencing and Social History in York’s Criminal Past

For Mitchell Coles, his project placement as part of the History, Community and Culture second-year module of indexing crime records at York Explore allowed a crucial insight into the changes in crime and punishment over the last two centuries. 

For my placement at York Explore, I was indexing records from the Calendar of Felons. These are documents, dating back to the 18^th and 19^th century, containing information about crimes that were committed in and around the York area as well as the court records and the sentences. I looked at documents from 1819-1941, and was to record information such as the names of the felons, where and when the felonies were committed and on when they were received by the court, I was also to write a brief description of the crimes. Then I looked at the Gaol (Jail) Delivery record for the same date to find what had happened to each person; from this I was to record the verdict of each crime and the sentences they received. The reason for doing this was to computerise, so that they will be accessible for longer and to more people.

Looking at these records was hugely interesting to me as I have been brought up with a father in the police. So, looking at these crime records reminded me of my childhood and crime stories. However, these were interesting for more than just that reason. It is hard to imagine what things were like two centuries ago, but these allow you to do that very easily. This allows you to get a better understanding of the judicial system and the community back then, which I personally really liked.

Furthermore, it is hard to imagine why certain decisions were made. For example, the sentences given for some crimes seem unreasonable whereas others are simply laughable: a woman murdered her new-born illegitimate child and was imprisoned for six weeks, another murderer could be fined just one shilling, whereas committing forgery could get you hanged. There seemed to be no one answer to a crime as a murderer could be given the sentence of a fine whereas another could be hanged or ‘transported beyond the seas for the rest of their natural life’. These made indexing these records interesting and entertaining at some points.

This placement also allowed me not just to get a glimpse into the work of an archivist or library worker but also work in general, as this was my first ever work experience. This has allowed me to learn valuable lessons about time management and motivation which, I will hopefully have learned from and will not make the same mistakes again. Overall, I enjoyed the placement and the experience of work.

Past Caring: The Poorest of York’s Past

In the latest of our History, Community and Culture module student blog posts, Niamh Quinn discusses the emotional social history research she’s been conducting as part of the York Explore Past Caring project. 

For my placement project, I worked in the archives of York Explore, documenting poor relief volumes from the 19^th century. Their aim is to digitalise these volumes, making the more accessible to the public and hopefully allowing for people to be able to find family members.

There were many reasons for people to have to apply for poor relief in the nineteenth century including disability, destitution and disease. The Poor Law Union was the main source of welfare for families and individuals who were in poverty. Welfare was distributed in many ways, through money, clothes, and medical assistance in the nineteenth century before the introduction of the NHS. However, in some cases, the workhouse was all the Union could offer as relief from poverty.

These records cover a great span of time, providing us with economic, social and public health history of the people living in York at the time. This gives us greater insight than ever into the lives of the citizens of York. Understanding the situations some of these people were in while applying for relief was extremely fascinating to me. Several of the people applying for relief were women in labour, which was shocking to me that they would have to come and apply for relief, however, as there was no NHS in place at the time my volume was written in 1875, some of these women could not afford to pay for a midwife and had no other option.

Another area that shocked me was the high quantity of recordings of children being deserted by parents at ages as young as four, and being sent to the workhouse by welfare officers. However, this was a time of great poverty in York, with overcrowding, unemployment and disease rife throughout the city. Considering these factors makes it easier to understand why there were so many orphans and deserted children.

In my volume there were a number of interesting cases, the most prominent one being the first entry I encountered, which recorded a man’s body being discovered in the river near Lendall Bridge, and as relief the Union paid for his funeral, as they never discovered who he was or his family. Most cases however were just families going through a rough patch financially, often down to illness or lack of work.

It is easy to often feel disconnected from the past, but these volumes remind us that those from the past were similar to us, going through struggles such as poverty just like us, and can help us reconnect with the city’s past.

 

Struggle and Squalor in Nineteenth-Century York

In the second of our History, Community and Cultures blog posts, second-year student Samantha Hallwood talks about fascinating social history in the York Archives with York Explore, and the relevance such work has in the modern day. 

Within the depths of the York Archives there are a vast number of volumes that focus on the poor citizens of York and how their lives were organised financially in the 19^th century. These volumes are the Report and Application Books, which were put in place by the York city council to provide aid and welfare to those who needed it most.

Laura Yeoman, the coordinator of this social history project, invited a small group of York St John students into a world of struggle and squalor, something which drew me in the moment I entered the Reading Room. Our goal was to collect all the information from the 96 volumes and index them onto a spreadsheet to make the documents more accessible to the public.

On day one of placement, I faced a challenge which took me time and patience to finally conquer – the terrible writing (I thought mine was bad)! One thing I have definitely taken away from this placement is the skill to decipher nineteenth-century writing which will definitely help for future records. Once I was able to understanding the writing, it was quite an easy and enjoyable process to go through. Though some may think it was repetitive, as many records are very similar, I believed it was intriguing. There was always a new story on the next page.

Though we had to be careful about what we could put in the spreadsheets, due to the sensitive nature of their poor relief claims, we also saw some surprises. Going through the Application Records you do wonder how some people actually received the relief they sought – especially one guy, who applied for it due to having an itch…! However, at the same time, you are introduced into a world of struggle which was so close to home to many of the inhabitants of York in the nineteenth century. Poverty was high, as was attendance at the workhouse. In one of the records I was assigned, a whole ward was dedicated to those who were sent to the workhouse, with around 50-60 people in this specific area.

This experience has provided a though-provoking insight into a world which was not so long ago and not that different to our own. The rates of poverty are rising in the twenty-first century and it is unbelievable how these methods that were underwent in the Victorian period could be visible in our own world in a similar way. The time and effort that went into these records are clearly seen in the sheer amount that were produced and how so many people’s lives were improved by a slight or great amount, thanks to these officers that would evaluate their financial situation. If you were a single mother, widow or even if you had an itch, you could apply for relief to support not just yourself, but your dependents in order to escape the streets.

A Trip to the People’s History Museum

In this post, third-year student Mel Hewitt reflects on a trip to the People’s History Museum as part of the module Early Victorian England.

 

 

On the 24^th October, the English Literature and History departments organised a free trip to the People’s History Museum in Manchester. This was not an experience that I could let pass me by as I had never been to the museum before and since the trip was free, it seemed the perfect opportunity!

The People’s History Museum is dedicated to teaching people of all ages as well as inspiring everyone to get involved with ideas worth fighting for such equality and social justice. The museum is split into two galleries; the gallery on the first floor starts at the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 and finishes at the end of World War Two in 1945. The gallery on the second floor picks up after World War Two and concludes in the present day.

Not only did the museum have these two galleries open to the public but they also had an exhibit dedicated to the women’s rights movement through history with banners from the Suffragette movement up to signs displayed at the Women’s March this past year. I particularly enjoyed this exhibit as it was highly fascinating to be so close to the banners that led the marches to get women the vote. I recommend this exhibit for those who want to know more about women’s history; the ground floor covers part of this but the main gallery on the first floor includes information on the formation of the Manchester Suffrage Society in 1867 and the Women’s Social and Political Union founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her sisters in 1903. It was somewhat emotional to read of their struggle to gain the universal vote which paved the way for other rights to be introduced.

An incredible piece of the museum for me was on the second floor. The second floor of the museum focuses on social issues post-1945 and there was a section dedicated to the fight for LGBT+ rights. This part was something else entirely as it is a part of history close to my heart since my dissertation topic is on the struggle of the LGBT+ community since 1945. However, I soon realised that LGBT+ history plays a bigger part than I first thought since dotted around all floors of the museum are little notecards that explain the progress of LGBT+ history from 1819. It was heart-warming to see LGBT+ history being pushed to the forefront since it is so often ignored in historical education.

 

 

It is extremely easy to get lost in the museum, there is so much to read and learn. I think that because it is brilliantly set out, you can follow the timeline of events perfectly and in detail.

However, if wandering around a museum is not what you enjoy (though I highly doubt that), the museum has a wonderful gift shop boasting an impressive book collection covering subjects such as local history, women’s history and LGBT+ history. Across from the gift shop, there is café that has a lovely view of Manchester, so whilst your friends or family soak in the history, there is always the option of a coffee and a slice of cake (their chocolate orange cake is amazing!)

On a final note, I’d like to say thank you to the History and English Literature departments at York St John University for offering us this fantastic opportunity! It was an incredible experience and one I’m likely not to forget.

Cottonopolis and the Battle for the Ballot

In this post, third-year history student Catriona McKell writes about her recent trip to the Science and Industry Museum and the People’s History Museum in Manchester as part of the module 3HI505 Early Victorian England.

‘It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another.’

Dickens’s description of Coketown in Hard Times is supposedly inspired by Victorian Manchester. On a trip to Manchester, students taking the History third-year module ‘Early Victorian England’, along with English Literature students at York St John University, got to experience this Dickensian picture of a Victorian city for themselves. The Science and Industry Museum proved useful in our studies as we investigated Manchester’s past as ‘Cottonopolis’ (City of Cotton), and the global link cotton brought to Manchester.

The ‘Textiles Gallery’ in the Great Western Warehouse allowed us to see the machines that once made Manchester’s cotton world-famous, with a pre-lunchtime demonstration given by the museum showing us how the cotton was processed to make cloth. Whilst we only watched one of every machine, in a real factory there would be more than one floor with different rooms for the steps needed for the process. The noise just from one of these machines was loud enough, but to have several was so loud that workers used to have their own sign language known as Meemaw. What was more shocking was the fact that little children over the age of 5 were sent as scavengers underneath the working machinery to clean the floor and machine. The number of seconds they had to do this before obtaining a serious injury was beyond dangerous.

These offered some insight into the life conditions of factory workers at the time, a topic further explored in our visit to the People’s History Museum after lunch.

Some of the machines used to process the cotton into cloth at the Science and Industry museum.

Stamps for Cotton cloth to show the provenance of cotton  

The People’s History Museum also proved very useful in gaining information for our module, ‘Early Victorian England’.  The museum displayed numerous interactive screens and objects to explain how voting worked during the Victorian period and into the 21st century.

Chartism is one of the topics covered by the third-year module 3HI505 on the social history of Early Victorian England. The period saw the government run by property-owning men, limiting how much the working- class men (and women!) had on the politics of the country, and indeed how they led their lives. Disappointed by the Great reform Act of 1832, the Chartists looked to further reform the electoral system of the time to ensure that working-class lives would improve.

One of the documents on display at the museum was a poster by a Chartist leader, Henry Vincent, who was also a Member of Parliament. This proved particularly interesting as not only was this primary source an insight into local chartist history but also showed that the Chartists were not just from the working class.

The information that I have gained from both museums has allowed me to get a clearer picture of what life was like for society in the working period but also gave me a reminder of how much Britain benefited from the slave trade, the institution of slavery, and the commerce of colonial goods.

It was an enjoyable trip, and I would thoroughly recommend it to future students!