Other forms of punishment included fines, branding, the pillory, and
whipping. Branding was first done on the face, but later on the thumb, with a
T for a thief, an F for a felon, or M for murderer. Punishment was designed to
make public the shame of the criminal and every town had its pillory and
whipping post. Time spent in the pillory was generally fairly short–an hour
or so–but even so, the rain of missiles thrown by the crowd sometimes
proved fatal, and pillorying proved to be a source of riot and public disorder
and the practice was progressively discontinued. Whipping, which actually
remained a legal punishment until 1948, was now carried out behind prison
walls rather than in public. As with executions, the public appetite for these
spectacles was waning.
The new police
As the nineteenth century began, fewer crimes were punished with the death
sentence–only the most serious offences were still capital crimes after 1861,
although sections of society, particularly the established church, continued to
robustly defend the death penalty. Executions now took place inside the prisons,
attended by officials and a chaplain. In 1790 burning was abolished, and in
1820, the last sentence of drawing and quartering was handed down, although
in the event the convicts (the Cato Street conspirators) were merely decapitated.
The problem of policing remained; the system of constables and watchmen
was clearly insufficient, especially in the rapidly growing industrial towns and
larger cities. In 1749, the author and magistrate Henry Fielding founded a force
of six officers, who became known as the Bow Street Runners. Unlike
Jonathan Wild and his ilk, the force was formally attached to the Bow Street
magistrates, and was paid from government funds. On the authority of the
magistrates, they gathered information and arrested criminals; the men were
trained for the work so that they were familiar with the law. Later, mounted
officers were added to the force. Under the direction of Fielding’s blind brother
John, a register of crimes was compiled, and information about crimes, stolen
goods and wanted felons was published–a move that led to the founding of the
Police Gazette. To their earlier duties was added the role of street patrols as a
step towards crime prevention. By 1797 there were sixtyeight men in the
force. Similar groups began to be set up across London from 1792. By the
1820s, however, they were in decline, with suspicions of corruption leading to
a public loss of trust in their honesty, and the force was disbanded in 1839.
Horrors such as the Ratcliffe Highway murders in 1811 fuelled the desire
for better policing in the capital. In 1829 the Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel,
passed the Metropolitan Police Act, founding London’s first official police
CRIME IN THE AGE OF INDUSTRY AND EMPIRE