4 - The ‘Vanishing’ Female Perpetrator of Common Assault

Summary

This chapter presents a detailed picture of the prosecution and conviction of female perpetrators of common assault during the last few decades of nineteenth-century Stafford, a medium-sized market town in central England. The analysis shows that the most likely picture for female criminality in England at this time was one of working-class, middle-aged women convicted for drunken and anti-social behaviour, and common assault. In theory, women were expected to be honest, sober and chaste. In practice, the women of Stafford were not passive and played a prominent role in the street culture of working-class neighbourhoods. By the turn of the century however, female offenders of common assault largely ‘vanished’ from the court records. This chapter suggests that it may not only have something to do with the increasing importance of policemen in resolving disputes before they turned violent, but also with the changes in the built environment. The emerging social housing replaced communal living with separate housing, restricting the conditions that formerly brought women into conflict with each other.