...The early Victorian period had been wracked by very high levels of theft, homicide, violence, and public disorder. Public discussion of crime in the 1840s had fequently assumed that it was widely endemic among the working population, and indeed that the categories of criminal, pauper and labouring poor, if not absolutely identical, were part of an interlocking social continuum. Crime rates began to fall, however, in the 1850s and 1860s, and plummeted after 1870.

Homicides, woundings and non-violent crimes against property reported to the police fell by more than half between 1870 and 1914. Juvenile crime was high in the 1870s but fell rapidly thereafter. Offences linked with drunkenness were high in the 1870s and 1880s, but then fell continuously down to the outbreak of the First World War. Theft from places of employment was still widespread in 1914, but on a far smaller scale than forty years earlier. Physical attacks on policemen remained common and were part of everyday street culture in many poor areas; but even so the overall rate of recorded asssault on the police declined by nearly two-thirds over the whole period. Large areas of London and other large cities that in the 1850s had been the soverign republic of armed gang-land had been converted by the 1900s into peaceful and well-patrolled, if not necessarily honest and affluent, suburbs. Only the relatively small categories of burglary and robbery with violence went against the general trend by rising sharply in the last few years of the period, a phenonomon which was widely interpreted by contemporaries to mean, not that popular honesty was once again on the wane, but that seious crime was now confined to a small class of professional criminals. A prominent police criminolgist, Dr Robert Anderson, argued in 1901 that crime in Britain could be permanently abolished within a decade if seventy habitual criminals known to the police could simpy be locked up for life and separated from all contact with the rest of the community.

...The endemic popular disorder and disruptions of the peace that prevaled in many areas in the 1840s had markedly declined by the 1870s and had almost vanished by the 1900s.

...The scenes of drunken violence common to all classes, that had accompanied sporting events such as Derby Day in the 1850s and 1860s, had been replaced in the 1900s by sober and self-disciplined gatherings such as the Cup Final and Lord Mayor's Show, where crowds of more than a hundred thousand were shepherded by a mere handful of uniformed constables (many of whom were weekend 'specials'). The new sense of order was symbolised by the Great London Dock Strike of 1889, when tens of thousands of banner-bearing workers marched through the streets of London 'giving the appearance of a great church parade', and twelve thousand pickets gave rise to only twenty arrests. An international survey of prostitution published in 1914 found that for safety, decorum and public order London resembled a gigantic 'open air cathedral', in stark comparison both with the other capital cities of Europe and with London itself some forty years before.

The reduction in crime in Britain was all the more astonishing because, at this time the ideas of Marx, Engels and others of a similar sort were spreading. There had been massive change and rapid urbanisation - all factors which might be expected to increase the level of crime.

Dr Harris goes through some possible explanations for this fall in crime which have been offered up by various people:

1. The growth and increasing efficiency of police forces.
2. The trend towards the physical segregation of property from poverty.
3. The priority given to the protection of property by other institutions in addition to the police.
4. Increased social integration of the working clas through education, religion, charitable exhortation and 'rational recreation'.
5. Rising working class prosperity.

She goes through each idea, giving reasons why she is not convinced. She then suggests "the dimunition of crime neeeds to be set in the context of a changing social and political culture, to discover whether declining crime, expanding citizenship, widespread participation in voluntary institutions and the growth of popular politics were unrelated movements or different facets of a complex but homogenous social trend."

She refers to the "growing sector of the working class who were organised in independent, self-governing associations." She remarks that "the vast majority of independent working-class associations - trade unions, friendly societies, and working-mens's clubs - were..extremely extremely severe on breaches of the law, and frequently expelled or prosecuted members found guilty of fraud or dishonesty.

She concludes, "It seems intuitively probably that many of the most prominent characteristics of mainstream working-class life in this period - community solidarity, parental authority, family integration, and mass membership of a wide range of self-governing associations - were at least as important as deterrence, police, and upper-class paternalism in explain popular acceptance of the law and the apparent diminution and marginalisation of crime in nearly all sections of British society."

It is encouraging (to me) that a specialist in the study of Victorian society should have come to this conclusion. It not exactly the same as my own idea. But it is in a similar vein. My own suggestion, as argued in The Welfare State We're In, is that that the radical toughening up of the conditionality of welfare benefits in 1834, forced individuals, families and communities to take responsibility for themselves. They were obliged to act more responsibly to make their way in the world. They were strongly incentivised to create and join friendly societies, mutual societies and trade unions. These further encouraged a sense of mutual responsibility. Meanwhile there was increased reason to avoid having children outside marriage. The illegitimacy rate fell, with consequent benefits to the children who grew up in circumstance which were less likely to lead them into crime. In short, in 1834, Britain faced up to its welfare problem, acted powerfully and the benefits came through over the following 80 years. (For more on this, see Chapter 2: "Social Security: Catherine's four dead boys and Frank's bingo blow-out")

Why is the extraordinary fall in crime in the Victorian era so little known about? To put in bluntly, because the victors write the history books. The victors in this case are those who have believed in the welfare state. They got their way. They created a massively enlarged welfare state. It does not suit them to report how things got a great deal better in the 19th century after a reduction in the scope of the welfare state.

Why do some very clever and well-educated people decline to believe that crime fell dramatically and to low levels? Because they have had no choice but to read the history written by the victors.

(This is a history, incidentally, in which Dickens is widely quoted as a source for actual conditions in the late 19th century. This practice is, of course good fun and very easy. But it is inappropriate since, in the first place Dickens was a melodramatist (as in Nicholas Nickleby) and in the second - as has been well documented - he was writing about the first half of the century. The use of Dickens as a teaching aid about the late 19th century is as misleading as it was when the Soviet Union used Dickens to inform its people about conditions in 20th century Britain.)