Hell-Raising and Hair-Razing: Violent Robbery in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

Abstract

This piece investigates trends in criminal prosecutions in nineteenthcentury Scotland and considers whether fears of a crime epidemic which were prevalent in England at that time were also relevant in the northern context. Using legal prosecutions for robbery more specifically, the article offers an analysis of indictment trends which suggests the existence of a paradox in Scottish criminality, where in a context of heightened awareness and intensified concern about criminality (especially in relation to violent offences) the incidence of this type of criminality declined after the mid-point of the century. The piece also offers an investigation of the nature and incidence of robbery in Scotland during the nineteenth century and determines how the crime was carried out, by whom, and for what purpose. Comparisons are drawn between the Scottish and English experience of violent theft in order to establish certain distinctive characteristics about how robbery was committed north of the Tweed and to reason why a wider and more detailed analysis of crime in nineteenthcentury Scotland is warranted. Finally, the article offers some explanations for the decline in robbery and other violent offences in Scotland after 1850, including reference to the 'civilising process' hypothesis which merits closer attention in the context of Scottish criminal history.

Contextualising the Punishment of Death

“…80 Although nineteenth-century Scottish crime has not received the same level of historical attention as experiences south of the border, Kilday highlighted that fears over a robbery epidemic were similarly evident in Scotland as in England despite the much lower number of prosecuted cases north of the border. 81 In turn, the editorial rhetoric employed when reporting upon robbery cases that resulted in an execution in various ways epitomised judicial and press responses to the perceived rise in serious crime in Scotland in the early nineteenth century and goes some way towards explaining the high proportion of capitally convicted robbers who were subsequently executed.…”

A verisimilitude of pessimism: Scottish prisoner mug-shots, 1883–1927

“…In 1894 the British Secretary of State commissioned a report entitled "Identification of Habitual Criminals" tasked with finding "Best Means Available for Identifying Habitual Criminals". 1 The Ratcliffe High Murders in 1811 and Jack the Ripper murders in 1888 raised public concern (Kilday, 2013). Jack London's 1903 The People of the Abyss describes this urban 'underclass' as animalistic and living in squalor.…”