Ostentatious gowns and glamorous balls is the most popular way to describe the Victorian
era, however, far from those gigantic ballrooms,
in the dark and narrow alleys of the city, crime was rampant.
Common thieves, skilled and experienced pickpockets and famous murderers like
"Jack the Ripper" struck terror into British hearts during those years, forcing security
systems to excel and become more efficient in the search and punishment of these criminals.
Today we will play Sherlock Holmes as we track down the worst crooks of the Victorian era,
Welcome to Copernicus’s Galaxy.
Pickpockets: The most common crime during the Victorian era?
Not all of them had beautiful dresses and not everyone was admitted to the dances and
banquets they celebrated. As always, poverty at that time was abundant, the working class
often had nothing to eat, they were desperate to get money, but opportunities were few.
This scenario led a large percentage of people, especially young people,
to resort to taking what was not theirs, the most common occupation
being pickpockets. Children and young people were usually trained by older criminals so that
they could remove the contents of the pockets of wealthier citizens without arousing any suspicion.
Groups of pickpockets gathered in the most populated streets of the huge city of London
where they had an endless number of possible victims, such as the streets of Newton,
Dyot or the parish of St. Giles. Places that were known to be the headquarters
of most thieves and pickpockets in the city were racecourses, festivals, and museums.
Even executions and wakes were stalked by these skilled ruffians.
Despite the fact that the people of Victorian London were plunged into the terror that
the media fostered by sensationalism, there were few cases of crime involving violence,
with only 10% being violent crimes, while 75% was petty crime that was generally ignored
because it was small or not reported at all, with pickpocketing topping the list.
Although most pickpockets were male, there were also women showing equal skill,
like in the case of Jenny Diver, a superior wit. At the age of 15 years old, Jenny traveled to
London where she dedicated herself to honest and simple work, however luck was not on her side,
forcing her to work the next fifteen years as a pickpocket in the theaters.
She learned the language of the thieves' code and soon led her own group, with creative tactics such
as pretending to be pregnant or creating fake arms to hide what the real ones were doing.
She was arrested several times but still stole every day she had the opportunity,
until the sentence for pickpocketing crimes changed from hard labor to hanging.
The Terrifying Punishments during the Victorian Era
If someone does something wrong, it’s necessary to punish them, simple. To every action there is
a reaction. The justice system has always been in search of the most exemplary punishment.
Nowadays, sentences are much less harsh than they were in the Victorian era and although
they are not as brutal as those of antiquity, they are not known for being fair or humane.
The British authorities at that time did not distinguish between gravity and circumstances,
sometimes not even age would save any wretch from ending up behind bars
or with the noose around his neck, whether you were a cold-blooded murderer or a poor,
hungry young man who had dared to steal some bread out of hunger.
Those discrepancies in sentencing made it seem that the laws under which criminals
were tried were arbitrary and random. The punishments were not equal to the crime.
You could be let off with a small warning, or you could be sent straight to the gallows for
the same crime... of course, unless you spoke the language of money.
The rich could escape from almost any misdeed committed by paying a good sum of money,
except for cases such as murder or treason, for which you could not expect anything less than
being publicly hanged, a way to entertain the population while instilling fear.
At the beginning of the Victorian era, these public executions were a favorite,
having specific places such as "The three-legged mare" where they could
hang several prisoners at the same time, with an audience that sometimes reached 2,000 people.
With a little more luck, if you could call it that, you would be sent to prison where
you would be subjected to a long period of hard, repetitive labor, constant whipping, a damp cell
and almost no food or drink, to such an extent that the inmates would scream for help from
people passing by. An alternative to being sent to prison was the punishment of transportation,
it was practically the same, the only thing that changed was the location,
usually Australia, where they performed forced labor in a colony.
By the early twentieth century, popular opinion had shifted toward the cruelty
exhibited by the law, so British authorities reduced executions,
reserving them only for crimes of murder, and improved conditions inside prisons,
concentrating their efforts on rehabilitation rather than torture.
The Dreaded Victorian Prisons
The idea we have of what a prison is is not exactly a walk in the park,
they are all scary... Unless we talk about Norwegian prisons,
where being imprisoned could be more of a prize than a punishment... but for the rest
of us mortals the picture is similar, definitely none of us would have a good time behind bars.
Despite this, British prisoners of the Victorian era would envy the conditions offered by today's
prisons. Surely they would even prefer to serve their sentences in even one of the
most neglected prisons we have, because at least they receive food and water.
By 1811, the city of London was already a haven where violent and unpunished criminals
lived without worry. It was not until 1829 that the Metropolitan Police Force
was created. Now they could even arrest children for bowling or knocking on doors,
it sounds exaggerated, but the city became safe and quiet.
Those captured were locked up in semicircular prisons, such as the one in Pentonville,
where they spent their days doing hard labor and being whipped regularly. They
practiced a "separate system" where they deprived the prisoners of any human contact,
locking them in a cell except for brief periods of exercise.
They did not bother in the slightest to provide them with food, their faces were masked and they
were forbidden to speak as they believed it forced the inmate to reflect on his actions,
however, instead of encouraging a change in their behavior, this ended the lives of many prisoners.
Criminals who committed minor offenses were sent to the colonies that Britain had in different
locations for forced labor. Australia was the most popular destination, receiving up to 460
convicts per year. When they could no longer lock them in their prisons or send them away,
they had the idea to use old disused warships which they called "Hulks", and the poor souls sent
to these temporary confinements rarely managed to escape from their dark cells and damp walls.
What were Public Executions like in the 19th Century?
We all know that in ancient times things were different, people did not live long,
either because a simple flu took them away, they died of hunger or were executed in
different ways just for breathing next to the wrong person... either burned at the stake
on charges of witchcraft or like Catherine Murphy, in 1789 for being a counterfeiter.
The condemned were beheaded, quartered and even disemboweled by law for much of Britain's history,
but the gallows take first place for the most executions. Only during the reign of Henry VIII,
Bishop Rowland Lee publicly hanged more than 5,000 people in Wales.
This death sentence, along with the pillory, prevailed during the Victorian era until the
early twentieth century. Reserved supposedly for murderers, traitors and repeat offenders,
until the late nineteenth century, these executions were public
and extremely lucrative because the number of people attracted by what seemed a spectacle
was immense. Sometimes, the best places to witness them were sold and nearby establishments used to
see more activity in their businesses while some poor devil breathed his last breath.
The condemned person was usually taken to the gallows in the back of a cart.
During the time that the journey lasted, people enjoyed throwing various objects at him,
including spoiled food. Insults were not absent either,
because they insisted that your last moments be the most unhappy of your life.
One of the last public executions was held in a Welsh town called Swansea
in April 1866. The condemned was an 18 year old Robert Coe, for having murdered his friend and
co-worker in cold blood. He took him to the bottom of Graig Dyffryn forest where he decapitated
him with an axe, all to get the 30 pieces of silver he owed him from his last paycheck.
The most famous murderers of the Victorian era
We all know Jack the Ripper... well, his story,
since it was never known who committed those murders. To this day it remains one of the
greatest unsolved police mysteries in history. His victims were 5 women whose throats he slit,
mutilated and removed several of their organs with a surgeon's precision in 1888 . Because of this,
the authorities believed that the culprit had medical knowledge.
Women also entered the list of the worst killers of this era, and boy did they earn their place.
Kate Webster, the Richmond murderer, was a maid of Julia Martha Thomas. She took her life by pushing
her down the stairs, strangling her and finally dismembering and boiling her beyond recognition.
Remains were found in a landfill, while the head was only recently found in 2010
buried in the garden of a famous naturalist and presenter.
Even worse was Amelia Dyer, a ruthless woman who was dedicated to the sale of babies in 1869.
The ladies with children that their parents did not want were forced to leave them in
the hands of Dyer believing that they would be better cared for,
not knowing that they were signing the death sentence for most of them.
About 400 babies died of starvation, were drugged or strangled and then thrown into the Thames
River .... it all came to light, literally, as dozens of infants' bodies were recovered from
the water. It took the jury only 4 minutes to convict Dyer, and she was hanged in 1896.
Finally, there was the married couple who conspired and murdered the wife's former lover,
Marie Manning, to steal her fortune and flee. They were arrested in 1849 and were publicly
hanged together, this execution was attended by the famous writer Charles Dickens who
indignantly wrote a letter to the newspaper "The Times" criticizing such a spectacle. He
later was inspired by the wife to create one of the characters in the novel "Bleak House".
Jack the Ripper, the first and most famous serial killer of the era
134 years have passed since the neighborhood of Whitechapel and
all of London was plunged into terror and uncertainty by a series of brutal murders.
More than a century later and still no one knows who or why such atrocities were committed.
The legend of Jack the Ripper will remain just that ... a legend,
because no one could ever discover his identity and probably no one ever will.
There have been many atrocious murderers, but Jack the Ripper has something that manages to
continue to intrigue us, something that obsesses us to such a degree that there
are those who are still looking for any clue to clarify the mystery...
The only thing that is known about him is that he killed five women from the same neighborhood,
their throats were slit and their organs removed, all in just a span of 70 days.
In the early morning of August 31, 1888, the body of Mary Ann Nichols was found in Buck's Row,
in the poor neighborhood of Whitechapel. She had her throat sliced from side to side and
her abdomen cut open, at that time the authorities did not know that she would only be the first...
Eight days later, Annie Chapman turned up with two cuts to her throat
identical to those of the previous victim, her abdomen stabbed and her uterus removed,
she had been seen half an hour earlier with a gentle looking man. It was several weeks before
Jack claimed two other lives in a single night, both Elizabeth Stride, and Catherine Eddowes, the
former had wounds identical to the past victims, but there were no incisions in the abdomen so
there was doubt as to if the perpetrator was the ripper or if the murder may have been interrupted.
Only 45 minutes later, Eddowes was found with her throat cut and no kidney or uterus.
The last of these poor women was Mary Jane Kelly who was found on her bed,
with a wound from her throat to her spine and all her organs scattered on the floor.
As if this were not enough, her face had also been mutilated, according to the words of the coroner:
"The viscera were found in different parts: The uterus and kidneys, under the head;
the other breast, next to the right foot, the liver next to the feet,
the intestines next to her right side and the heart was missing from the pericardial sac".
There were plenty of criminal profiles, thousands of suspects,
due to the inability of the police to even put a face to the killer,
everyone drew their own conclusions... but in the end it was of no use, it was never known who Jack
the Ripper really was and justice will never be given for the lives of these five poor women.
In a time full of cruelty and mystery that does not seem to be so far away,
little do we really know what stories those neighborhoods hide
nor what or who are still to be found under the waters of the River Thames, no matter what is
waiting for us in those dark alleys, we will be here to tell you about it, at Copernicus’s Galaxy.