Victorian Villains

LOUD GAVEL STRIKES

'James Dunn Barr, prisoner in Glasgow, you are indicted

'at the instance of the Right Honourable James Patrick Bannerman Robertson,

'Her Majesty's Advocate, and the charges against you are that you,

'one, broke into William Gartley's house at 23 Preston Street, Glasgow,

'on January 26th in the year 1889,

'and stole a topcoat, a bed mat, a clock and a pair of slippers.'

There was nae point sayin' I didnae dae it. I did.

I stole the coat, the dress, the bed mats, the sheets,

the jacket, the clothes basket, the muffler...

There was another muffler an' all.

And then there was the clock and the pair of slippers.

And I suppose there was the scarf pin and the locket and the pipe.

See, I thought cos I was honest and pled guilty,

they'd gie me a few weeks in the jail like the last time.

That was the thing. They said cos I'd been up afore the court before,

they had tae me put in jail for nine months.

Before Victorian times, no distinction was made

between child criminals and the adult criminals.

They were treated in exactly the same way,

they were punished in exactly the same way, so they were taken

before the same courts, they were sent to prison along with adults,

and there are some examples of children actually being executed.

Some children as young as nine, ten, 11 or 12.

These children are hungry and they're very, very poor.

And they steal easy things to steal.

So they might take watches or jewellery or handkerchiefs.

Things that have a value. They're not stealing these things

cos they want them for themselves - they're stealing them so that they

can sell them in a second-hand shop and get money for them quickly.

You see, the rich folk, they would usually go oot and, er,

they'd leave the servants in the hoose.

They'd be cleaning up... they're distracted.

They would usually leave the windows open, and, thanks to my height,

I'd manage to sneak in, hide in the cupboards and wait till they leave.

Then I'm the only one in the hoose.

So, I just took what I wanted, left...back oot the window again.

That was it.

It was easy. And I suppose, the more you do it,

the easier it gets.

Cities and towns were expanding at a tremendous rate

in the Victorian period.

There was substantial problems that emerged, problems of overcrowding,

too many people simply living on the same streets,

severe problems of poverty, and I think we can see that

as leading to an increase in criminality.

This made the Victorians ask questions about what they could do

to solve this problem,

and what we see is the emergence of police forces

and the idea that those who committed a criminal offences

should be punished and should be sent to prison.

I cannae believe I'm stuck in here for nine months.

It was ma ain fault getting caught.

It was the last hoose in Bridgeton, and I...

shouldn't have gone there.

If I'd no' done that one,

I wouldnae be here stuck in this miserable cell.

Coming into prison for the very first time

must have been really frightening.

You'd be stripped of all your possessions.

You'd have your clothes taken away.

You'd be made to have a very cold bath,

which would be very unpleasant.

You'd have your hair cut into a prison style.

You'd be given a new set of clothes.

You'd really have your identity taken away from you.

The idea was to strip your personality

and just to make you a cog in the prison machine.

Very hard to identify a repeat offender in the Victorian period,

because...very difficult to keep records

in the way that a modern police force can keep records.

They didn't have the technology in the Victorian period

that the police and the Prison Service have today.

It was also very important that the record book included information

about any distinguishing marks that the prisoner had,

and the reason for this was because they needed to know if that person

came before the courts again and whether they were what was called

a repeat offender - somebody who had a prison record and therefore

needed to be treated very seriously if they committed another offence.

Photography was invented and developed in the mid-Victorian period.

It was actually a very new invention

at the point in time that we're thinking about.

It's interesting that almost as soon as photography was invented,

it started to be used by the prisons and by the police service

to record images of criminals.

When the prisoner was photographed,

they had to stand with a chalkboard in front of them.

On that would be written their name, their prison number and the date.

And another important aspect was that they had to hold their hands

about chest height, laid out in front,

so that all the fingers were apparent.

And this is really important, because some prisoners had missing fingers.

Indeed, it was quite common to lose fingers

in the machinery in factories and in other industrial accidents,

so whether you had all your fingers or not

was actually a very distinguishing physical feature.

For the Victorians, the invention of photography now meant they could

take pictures of criminals.

They could forever preserve that image, so that if you were caught

doing something later on, they could cross-reference it and they've got your picture.

'..On February 4th, 1889, that you broke into David Whiteman's house,

'Dalmarnock Street, Parkhead,

'and there did steal two watches, a guard chain, a scarf pin,

'a locket, a pipe and case, and a muffler.'

I've been gied this uniform to wear and a prison number by what I'll be kent.

Prisoner 171. That's me.

Nae more James Dunn Barr frae Glasgow.

Nae more good clothes for me.

At least no' for the next nine months.

TYPEWRITER TAPPING

'On May 27th, 1877, James Fleming,

'belonging to the Fechney Industrial School in Perth,

'was apprehended on a charge of attempting to set fire to the institution.

'He has been examined by Honorary Sheriff Martin

'and committed to prison pending further investigations.'

I'm in a lot of trouble.

A was up in the court yesterday.

There were aw these men in long gowns saying things I didnae understand.

I did it, so I had tae plead guilty...

and now I'm in the jail.

The last place I stayed was called an industrial school,

but it felt mair like a prison to me.

My real hame's the street.

I've never had anyone tell me what to do

or had more than the clothes on my back...

but I was free to go wherever I liked wi' my pals.

I always got by, like.

I tried to stay out of trouble, but a policeman saw me begging,

and begging's no' allowed.

You're no' allowed to dae nothin',

so I got put in Fechney Industrial School.

Children who were sent to industrial schools hadn't committed any serious crime,

but there were concerns that if they were wandering on the streets,

they might turn to crime.

They might start thieving and they'd come into the company of criminals who would corrupt them further.

So the industrial school was an initiative to stop children from becoming criminal.

I've heard of kids being sent to reformatory schools for stealing,

but maist of the kids in the industrial school had just been

found wanderin' round the streets cos they had nowhere else to go.

Living in a slum in Victorian cities, in overcrowded houses,

several families living in the same property,

rats running around, lice, disease and dirt,

kids having to play in the streets, running around with no shoes on.

A really unpleasant experience.

It's like being poor is a crime.

When I got taken into the school,

a heard the headmaster tell the policeman that we'd been taught

to beg, cheat and steal since we were born.

But we hadnae done nothin'.

Well, not yet anyway.

The Victorians did believe in a criminal class.

They looked at the working classes and they looked at the people who were in deepest poverty,

and some of them, they said, were actually born criminals.

And this was really bad for you if you were growing up in that situation,

because you're likely to be identified as a criminal,

and it might just be cos of the way you look

or the area of town that you live in.

It was very different from my life on the street.

We had to get up at six in the morning

and work for 12 hours a day.

We'd have to clean the place before cleaning ourselves,

brushing our boots an' that. Then we'd be put to work.

Shoemaking, tailoring,

carpentry, wood chopping or gardening.

We'd get taught reading, writing and the Bible too.

We'd get some time to play every now an again,

but it was always over quick and then back to more work.

Sometimes we'd just sit there straightening nails for them

till our fingers near fell off.

The children's tasks did need to be profitable.

That was one of the ways in which the school got by.

Things like washing, laundry work, for example,

could attract quite an income from outside.

But there were also cases in which children seemed to be doing fairly

pointless labour, and there was some criticisms of that at the time.

These were things like the straightening of nails

which people could see little purpose for.

A range of punishments were used in industrial schools.

This would extend from things like solitary confinement

to withdrawal of certain types of privileges,

particular types of foods that were deemed to be special,

but we also know that corporal punishment

was used quite extensively.

For boys, this would consist of caning with a birch stick.

LOUD LASHING SOUNDS

Oh, I can almost feel it!

That was the reason I did it. I hated that school

and I thought that would be the only way to get oot of there.

And it wasnae just me.

It was ma pal, George,

who came up with the idea to burn the school doon.

We had it all worked oot.

We'd been collecting wood shavings from the workshop.

We'd put them in our pockets when nae-one was looking

and then hide them under the bench in the machine room.

It was Sunday when everyone was in morning worship.

George said we had to be quick.

He'd stolen some matches from the kitchen.

He lit one and gave it to me.

I was scared. I didnae want to be the one to dae it,

but it was burning down to my fingers.

And George was saying, "Hurry up! Dae it! Dae it!"

We could hear footsteps, so I flung it in, and it went up in flames.

Now George and me are both in the jail

and we're being sent to a different school - a reformatory school.

I've heard it's going to be worse than the one we were in before.

We shouldnae have done it.

My name's Jane Angus. I live in Govan on the River Clyde.

My dad works at the shipyards.

My folks, me and my two sisters,

we live in a two-roomed tenement on Main Street.

Well, I did live there before all this trouble.

Before I was caught stealing.

It was back in May.

I was in Greenock, a bit further doon the Clyde.

There was a real thrang of people at the train station.

A paddle steamer had just arrived at the quay from the Isle of Bute.

I seen this well-dressed lady.

She was waiting on the platform for the train back to Glesgae.

She put her basket doon,

and...I picked it up.

WHISTLE BLOWS You! Stop!

I was nearly out the station. I was nearly away.

But the next thing I know, she's screaming for the police and I'm in the jail.

Miss Nelson was her name... the lady whose basket I stole.

She was frae Grangemouth.

The basket had her jewellery in it.

The policeman, Sergeant Mearns, said the jewels were worth £50!

I don't know what came over me.

I was famished.

Look at me, I'm skin and bone!

I was locked away in the jail in Greenock for ten days and nights.

Then they brought me here. It's called a reformatory school.

I have to stay here for five year!

The Victorians tried something new.

They very much thought that it was wrong

to keep adult prisoners and child prisoners together,

so they set up a new institution called the reformatory school.

The idea behind this was that it would be a training school,

effectively, for child criminals.

Rather than simply punishing them, it wanted to change their lives.

It wanted to take them off the streets,

to give them a short, sharp, shock, because in some cases, they would

be sent to prison for a short time as well,

but then to lead them into a new life.

It's very hard to say whether reformatory school was cruel or kind.

By modern standards, most people would think it was fairly cruel,

but, by Victorian standards, it wouldn't have been too bad a place.

Certainly that was the intention -

to create an environment where children would have the space

to learn to behave,

but also to learn important life skills.

There was a very strict routine that involved

a very regimented timetable.

Absolutely every second of the day was detailed in advance,

in terms of where you had to be and what you had to do.

Children had no free time to pursue their own interests

and they didn't really have any rights.

We get up at six every morning.

The first thing we have to do is wash.

Breakfast is bread and butter with a big mug of tea.

In the mornings, we do schoolwork - reading, writing and arithmetic.

Then it's dinner time - 20 past 1 every day.

You could set your watch by it!

Monday is barley soup and potatoes.

Tuesday is stewed beef and potatoes.

Wednesday is bread and cheese.

Thursday is barley soup... and potatoes.

Friday we get a bit of fish...

..and potatoes.

Saturday is lentil soup... and potatoes.

Sunday we get stewed beef...

and potatoes.

Every week's the same.

The Victorians had clear ideas about the, sort of, the separation between

boys and girls and the sorts of things that they would do in life.

A Victorian boy in a reformatory

would be expected to learn basic manual labouring skills.

He would learn carpentry skills so he could work.

Whereas, a young girl, it'd be quite different.

Most girls that came out of reformatory schools

would be expected to go and work in service,

so that means as a servant in a big house.

They need to learn how to behave as a servant.

They would also need to learn how to sew and cook -

those are the sorts of skills that a young girl would need

when she left a reformatory.

Our school mistress is soor-like. I've never seen her smile.

There's so many rules.

We're not allowed to talk when we're eating or working.

Her punishments are harsh.

If you don't behave, you get bread and water for your dinner.

I dinnae mind that as much as being locked in a room on your ain.

I heard that some boys ran away from their reformatory school in Paisley.

We've been warned that if we try and run away, they'll cut our hair off!

I left the reformatory school in June 1878.

I didn't want to be a servant, so I managed to get a job

in the shipyards, along with my dad, working as a French polisher,

finishing off all the wood in the cabins.

It's not just men that work in the ships, you know!

But my health was poor.

I had to stop working and I quickly got worse.

They said I had consumption.

It was in my lungs - they were all choked up.

You would notice the onset of consumption,

because you'd develop a nasty cough and you'd also very, very rapidly

lose weight and become very, very feeble.

We still have what was called consumption now,

but we call it tuberculosis, and it is very, very serious,

but it's not the killer today that it was back in the 1870s.

I knew there was nae cure...

and so did they.

I passed away on August 4th, 1879,

just eight days short of my 18th birthday.

My name's John Smith. I'm from Blairgowrie, Perthshire.

I work as a ploughman for the farmer, Mr Mitchell.

Sometimes, when he asks, I run errands for him to the town,

collecting goods and that from local shops.

It was Mr Mitchell, he went straight to the police

when he found out that he owed money for goods he says he never bought.

He told them that I, John Smith,

must have forged his signature on letters, pretending to be him,

ordering fancy goods from the shops - shoes, boots and a shirt.

The letters all said that Mr Mitchell would pay for everything later.

But it couldnae have been me,

it couldnae!

Cos...I cannae write.

I left school when I was 12 to work on the farm.

I never had time for writing. I told that to Inspector Ross.

He's the policeman who came and arrested me.

But he didnae believe me.

'John Smith!'

The Victorians didn't really make a distinction in the early part of the 19th century

between children and adults - they were just small adults, really.

They could have spent up to three months waiting for trial in the early part of the 19th century.

It would be hard for children in those days to understand what was happening to them

when they went up to a court or a prison.

'John Smith, on this day, January 25th, 1876,

'this court hereby finds you guilty of all charges against you.

'That you did falsely...'

They had the letters in court - the ones that asked the shopkeeper

to give me the clothes and the boots.

The letters that I wrote pretending to be Mr Mitchell.

Of course I can read and write, and well for a ploughman.

It's just that things haven't gone well for me lately.

I ran away from hame and fell into some bad company.

I told that to the Sheriff.

I'm only 14, I said.

I hoped he'd no' be too hard on me.

He gie us six calendar months.

Six months locked up in here.

For hours every day, I have to do this.

Separating the fibres on these old bits of rope.

Picking oakum, it's called.

It's hard on your hands, like, and can cause terrible blisters.

It hurts,

but then again, I was a farmhand, so I'm used to grafting.

They use the rough bits for sealing the joints on ships.

I wonder where this will end up. Australia maybe.

There were a range of punishments that were used in prison.

One of the most important was the silent system,

which meant that the prisoner had to conduct all their daily activities in complete silence,

without talking to the other prisoners.

The reason for this was that it was thought that it meant

they wouldn't be able to corrupt or contaminate the other prisoners

and, similarly, they wouldn't be corrupted by them.

It could be worse.

If I was a year older, I'd be turning the crank.

You just turn a heavy handle on a machine for hours and hours,

and for no reason.

It doesn't even do anything useful.

It's just there to keep you busy.

It seems stupid to me to have folk doing something useless,

but I wouldnae dare to say that.

Then again, I wouldnae dare to say anything.

I'm no' meant to talk, and it's a long day when you cannae talk to anyone.

The Victorians would expect to use a philosophy of "spare the rod and spoil the child".

Fortunately, children wouldn't have to be punished in this way.

Children wouldn't be put through the crank, but they would be whipped

and they would be birched and they would have their food stopped.

So there were pretty serious punishments for you as a young offender.

Whipping was used as a punishment in prison

for boys under the age of 14.

It would involve a whipping table

and prison wardens who would whip the boy with birch sticks.

It seems unlikely that this was used for girls,

but it was undoubtedly used for boys on quite a regular basis.

SOBBING

I dinnae want to think about the poor soul in the next cell.

Just hearing his sobbing is bad enough.

I'll keep my heid doon. I'll do as they say.

I'll pick oakham, nae bother!

The sooner I'm oot of this place, the better.

The warden says I'm lucky I wasn't transported to Australia.

In the early Victorian period, transportation was used as a very important form of punishment.

This mean that you were to be sent overseas to Australia

to start a new life there,

but it was a very extensive regime of discipline, hard labour

and a very brutal experience.

Taking a ship across the oceans in the 19th century

is quite a perilous affair at the best of times.

To do it as a prisoner, shackled and below decks,

it's almost a death sentence, because it might not actually make it to Australia.

So this is a real sentence being taken to, effectively,

a whole continent that is a prison

where there's no chance of escape, but then, at the end,

some chance of redemption, because once you've served your sentence,

which might be seven years or 14 years,

you get the chance to live and work in that colony and start a new life.

At least I'll be hame by September and helping with the harvesting.

This rotten place...

it isnae for the likes of me.

Once I'm oot, I'm turning over a new leaf.

I won't be back here, that's for sure.

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