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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2008
Little is known about the lives of criminal offenders prior to their incarceration in past time. Knowing the background of offenders, however, may explain why they broke the law. This article explores young offenders in the Sundsvall region of Sweden, 400 kilometres north of Stockholm, an area with a booming sawmill-based economy in nineteenth-century Sweden. First, using prison registers, large-scale structural concepts are employed to explain the increasing number of incarcerations of young people reported during the period 1840–1880. Second, to uncover the offenders' demographic backgrounds and their socio-economic circumstances when arrested, they are identified in Swedish parish registers digitized by the Demographic Data Base (DDB) at Umeå University. These sources permit the application of retrospective life-course perspectives that are increasingly applied in modern criminology. These perspectives show that offenders were not primarily migrants or of poor origin, but that they frequently came from the region. Thus their parents were often also present in the community. In providing informal social control these characteristics – being local and having at least one parent nearby – are thought to lead to lower levels of criminality and imprisonment, but they were of little effect in preventing crime or incarceration. This study thus challenges the view of the criminal in past time as a lone individual arrested in an unfamiliar settings. Among the few female offenders observed, however, these factors were more typical; although gender accounts for low levels of criminality, their isolation and poverty did lead some women to theft.
1 This study concerns the urban centre of the region Sundsvall and five of its neighbouring parishes, which witnessed rapid industrialization: Alnö, Njurunda, Skön, Timrå and Tuna. The socio-demographic components typical of urban-industrial times were also seen in this very small area. See G. Alm Stenflo, Demographic description of the Skellefteå and Sundsvall regions during the 19th century (Umeå, 1994); S. Edvinsson, Den osunda staden: sociala skillnader i dödlighet i 1800-talets Sundsvall (Umeå, 1992); and L. Vikström, Gendered routes and courses: the socio-spatial mobility of migrants in nineteenth-century Sundsvall, Sweden (Umeå, 2003).
2 It was not until the 1840s and 1850s that criminal statistics in Sweden began focusing on youths. Men aged 15–21 committed about one crime in five in the 1850s. For women, this figure oscillated between 10 and 15 per cent. See R. Nilsson, ‘“Med hvarje år öka ju antalet af dessa unga brottslingar … ”’, in I. Andersson, K. Johansson and M. Lindstedt Cronberg eds., Tid och tillit: en vänbok till Eva Österberg (Stockholm, 2002), 371–88. For an overview of crimes in Sweden over time, see H. von Hofer, Brott och straff i Sverige: historisk kriminalstatistik 1750–1984 (Stockholm, 1985). Elsewhere, too, the statistical appearance of crime and anxiety for young offenders is dated to the early or mid-nineteenth century. See C. Emsley, Crime and society in England, 1750–1900 (London, 1994), 18–47; R. G. Fuchs, ‘Juvenile delinquency in nineteenth-century France’, in A. G. Hess and P. F. Clement eds., History of juvenile delinquents: a collection of essays on crime committed by young offenders, in history and in selected countries, Volume 1 (Aalen, 1990), 265–87; M. Joutsen, ‘Treatment, punishment, control: juvenile delinquency in Scandinavia’, in A. G. Hess and P. F. Clement eds., History of juvenile delinquents: a collection of essays on crime committed by young offenders, in history and in selected countries, Volume 2 (Aalen, 1993), 599–623; King, P., ‘The rise of juvenile delinquency in England 1780–1840: changing patterns of perception and prosecution’, Past and Present 160 (1998), 116–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. M. Magarey, ‘The invention of juvenile delinquency in early nineteenth-century England’, in Hess and Clement eds., History of juvenile delinquents, Volume 1 (Aalen, 1990), 325–46; and J. Muncie, Youth and crime: a critical introduction (London, 1999), 53–65.
3 For a few exceptions dealing with young offenders and also discussing their pathways, see Berlanstein, L., ‘Vagrants, beggars and thieves: delinquent boys in mid-nineteenth century France’, Journal of Social History 12 (1979), 531–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. O'Brien, The promise of punishment: prisons in nineteenth-century France (Princeton, 1982), 226–57; R. Schulte, The village in court: arson, infanticide, and poaching in the court records of Upper Bavaria, 1848–1910 (Cambridge, 1994); M. Taussi Sjöberg, Dufvans fångar: brottet, straffet och människan i 1800-talets Sverige (Stockholm, 1986), 145–60; M. Vejbrink, ‘En kontrollerad brottsling som historiskt fenomen’, in J. Sundin ed., Kontroll och kontrollerade: formell och informell kontroll i ett historiskt perspektiv (Umeå, 1982), 159–95.
4 The demographic information is based on the digitized parish registers stored in the Demographic Data Base (DDB). In this database, every individual is given an identity number that is unique to him/her: for example DDB-ID (Lars Löfblad) 824001130; DDB-ID (Michael Löfblad, father of Lars) 794001109; DDB-ID (Anna Jonsdotter, mother of Lars) 791000920.
5 Information on poor relief was generated from the parish meeting records from Tuna. These were investigated for an article analysing the recipients: Vikström, L., ‘Vulnerability among paupers: determinants of individuals receiving poor relief in nineteenth-century northern Sweden’, The History of the Family 11 (2007), 223–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Concerning the incarcerations of Lars Löfblad, see note 5, above. Concerning his brother, Erik Johan Löfblad, see the prison registers of 1841-08-25 (Sundsvalls stadshäkte), 1842-03-06 (Västernorrlands kronohäkte).
7 DDB-ID (Erica Åslund) 828002111; DDB-ID (Anna Cajsa Löfblad) 852001458.
8 Vikström, ‘Vulnerability among paupers’.
9 Prison registers 1869-07-07, 1870-05-31 (Västernorrlands kronohäkte); DDB-ID (Anna Cajsa Löfblad) 852001458.
10 Prison registers 1875-03-05, 1875-11-02, 1877-03-06, 1877-12-28, 1878-01-08, 1879-05-26) Västernorrlands kronohäkte); DDB-ID (Erik Michael Löfblad) 854003234.
11 Developmental life-course (‘DLC’) concepts are increasingly applied in modern criminology; see the introductions of Farrington and Thornberry and the contributions available in the books they have edited: D. P. Farrington ed., Integrated developmental and life-course theories of offending (New Brunswick, N.J., 2005) and T. P. Thornberry ed., Developmental theories of crime and delinquency (New Brunswick, N.J., 1997). Life-course perspectives and statistical means of incorporating them when observing the pathways of the criminals under study are discussed in other articles such as L. Vikström, ‘Illuminating the impact of incarceration: life-course perspectives of young offenders and their pathways in comparison to non-offenders in nineteenth-century northern Sweden’, Crime, History and Societies (forthcoming); L. Vikström, ‘Life prior to crime and after: developmental perspectives of young offenders arrested in nineteenth-century northern Sweden’, Social Science History (forthcoming).
12 Graff, H. J., ‘Crime and punishment in the nineteenth century’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7 (1977), 477–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Or, as is argued in the introduction of Joseph F. Sheley's edition on criminology, ‘[C]rime is a matter of sociological interest because it is defined within a social arena, it violates social rules, and it draws a social response. A criminal act is a social, though generally not sociable, act occurring in a social setting and implicated in a society's cultural and structural framework.’ See ‘A brief introduction to criminology’, in J. F. Sheley ed., Criminology: a contemporary handbook (New York, 1995), 1.
14 These theories belong to the typology school represented by Cesare Lombroso. See J. Katz and W. J. Chambliss, ‘Biology and crime’, in Sheley ed., Criminology, 275–303, and E. H. Sutherland and D. R. Cressey, Principles of criminology (Chicago, 1960).
15 Since the nineteenth century, a comprehensive body of sociological literature on criminal behaviour and its causes has been published. See A. C. Cohen, Deviance and control (New Jersey, 1966); R. K. Merton and R. A. Nisbet, Contemporary social problems: an introduction to the sociology of deviant behaviour and social disorganization (London, 1963); and T. Hirshi, Causes of delinquency (Berkeley, 1969). See also note 16, below.
16 For an overview and some critique of approaches that link crime to modernization, see G. Cavender, ‘Alternative approaches: labeling and critical perspectives’, in Sheley ed., Criminology, 349–67; M. Krohn, ‘Control and deterrence: theories of criminality’, ibid., 329–39; S.-Å. Lindgren, Om brott och straff: från sociologins klassiker till modern kriminologi (Lund, 1998), 20–43, 55–73, 103–13; Emsley, Crime and society, 18–47; and McDonald, L., ‘Theory and evidence of rising crime in the nineteenth century’, British Journal of Sociology 33 (1982), 404–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Scholars generally distinguish two types of social control, formal and informal, that affect criminal behaviour. See U. Drugge and S. Lindgren, Med dödlig utgång: om grova våldsbrott och sociala former i 1800-talets Sverige (Umeå, 2001), 135–8; B. Horgby, Den disciplinerade arbetaren: brottslighet och social förändring i Norrköping (Stockholm, 1986), 13–20, 97–128; Krohn, ‘Control and deterrence’; and Österberg, E., ‘Kontroll och kriminalitet i Sverige från medeltid till nutid: tendenser och tolkningar’, Scandia 57 (1991), 82Google Scholar.
18 R. Agnew, ‘Strain and subcultural theories of criminality’ in Sheley ed., Criminology, 306–27; Cavender, ‘Alternative approaches’; Lindgren, Om brott och straff, 44–54.
19 King, ‘The rise of juvenile delinquency’, 133–7; McDonald, ‘Theory and evidence’; Monkkonen, E. H., ‘A disorderly people? Urban order in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, Journal of American History 68 (1981), 539–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Graff, ‘Crime and punishment’, 477–91. Other scholars also emphasize the advantages of focusing on the features of offenders and applying longitudinal analyses instead of approaching huge statistical data. See Greenberg, D. F., ‘Age, crime and social explanation’, American Journal of Sociology 91 (1985), 2–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. J. Sampson and J. H. Laub, ‘A life-course theory of cumulative disadvantage and the stability of delinquency’, in Thornberry ed., Developmental theories, 133–61.
21 Boritch, H., ‘The criminal class revisited: recidivism and punishment in Ontario, 1871–1920’, Social Science History 29 (2005), 137–70Google Scholar.
22 Among other scholars who early on incorporated these two time concepts, including that of ‘family time’, into their historical analyses, two were Glen H. Elder Jr. and Tamara K. Hareven. See Hareven, T. K., ‘Family time and historical time’, Daedalus 106 (1977), 57–70Google Scholar, and ‘The history of the family and the complexity of social change’, The American Historical Review 96 (1991), 95–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elder, G. H. Jr., ‘Family history and the life course’, Journal of Family History 2 (1977), 279–304CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
23 See the sources in note 22, above, and also G. H. Elder Jr., ‘The life course paradigm: social change and individual development’, in P. Moen, G. H. Elder Jr. and K. Lüscher eds., Examining lives in context: perspectives on the ecology of human development (Washington D.C., 1995), 101–39.
24 J. Z. Giele and G. H. Elder Jr., ‘Life course research: development of a field’, in J. Z. Giele and G. H. Elder Jr. eds., Methods of life course research: qualitative and quantitative approaches (London, 1998), 5–27; Heinz, W. R. and Krüger, H., ‘Life course: innovations and challenges for social research’, Current Sociology 49 (2001), 29–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 See note 24, above, and also Bras, H., ‘Social change, the institution of service and youth: the case of service in the lives of rural-born Dutch women, 1840–1940’, Continuity and Change 19 (2004), 244CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Rand, A., ‘The precious and the precocious: understanding cumulative disadvantages and cumulative advantage over the life course’, The Gerontologist 36 (1996), 230–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sampson and Laub, ‘A life-course theory’, 143–5. Whether incarceration and the stigmatization it possibly implied added to the development of cumulative disadvantages upon release is discussed by me in another article, Vikström, ‘Illuminating the impact of incarceration’.
26 As most court books from the area under investigation were destroyed by the fire in the town of Sundsvall in 1888, they are not available. See Taussi Sjöberg, Dufvans fångar, 163. Whether the age interval 15–25 is relevant can be discussed but, regardless of time and place, studies show that most misconduct occurs in the early phase of life. See E. Allan and D. Steffensmeier, ‘Criminal behaviour: gender and age’, in Sheley ed., Criminology, 97–106; Greenberg, ‘Age, crime and social explanation’, 11–15; King, ‘The rise of juvenile delinquency’, 120–2; Muncie, Youth and crime, 47–82. In the nineteenth century, the average Swede married at the age of 27–28 and young people left childhood behind when they applied for confirmation at the age of 14–15. See M. Jacobsson, Att blifva sin egen, 111–17. These factors have helped to delineate the young offenders in this study. When imprisoned, only 4 per cent of a total of 406 individuals identified in the parish registers were married.
27 If not sent directly to gaol, they had to pay fines they usually could not afford, so they were put in prison on bread and water.
28 Thus an ‘offender’ is in the situational equivalent of being under arrest and acknowledged as a criminal in the prison registers. This definition connects to the labelling theories that consider someone a criminal only if he or she is defined as such. See E. Goffman, Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963), and E. M. Lemert, Social pathology: a systematic approach to the theory of sociopathic behaviour (New York, 1951); see also Cavender, ‘Alternative approaches’, 351–57; Lindgren, Om brott och straff, 73–85. However, to be included in the analysis of the offenders' demographic background, they must also be identified in the parish registers (see note 32, below).
29 On the gap between actual criminal behaviour and registered criminality, see Muncie, Youth and crime, 13–21; Nilsson, ‘Med hvarje år’, 381; and Österberg, ‘Kontroll och kriminalitet’, 69–70.
30 Although Swedish parish registers are unique in delivering continuous data, gaps exist because they were collected for bureaucratic, political and religious reasons. Women's occupations, for instance, are insufficiently documented. These registers must nevertheless be regarded as trustworthy. One clear advantage is that they allow longitudinal observation of almost every member of society. The validity of Swedish parish registers in general, and those of the Sundsvall region in particular, has been tested and verified. See A. Norberg, ‘Med betyget på fickan: den svenska folkbokföringen under industrialiseringsskedet', Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 1979, 151–78; Alm Stenflo, Demographic description, 17–33, 49–58; and Edvinsson, Den osunda staden, 27–31. For a presentation of the sources stored at the Demographic Data Base (DDB), Umeå University, Sweden, see www.ddb.umu.se/index_eng.html
31 See note 1, above.
32 Every individual offender of the total of 460 is not identified in the parish registers. First, some people did not report their residence to ministers in the Sundsvall region because they were settling there on a temporary basis. This also held true for offenders. Second, the personal data given in the prison registers do not always enable me to identify the individual in the parish registers. Common names and incomplete dates of birth jeopardized the identification process. Third, when arrested criminals sometimes gave false names. Hence, in this survey offenders with relatively solid links to the region under study are slightly over-represented.
33 E. Johansson, ‘The history of literacy in Sweden’, in H. J. Graff ed., Literacy and social development in the West: a reader (Cambridge, 1981), 151–82; D. Lindmark, Uppfostran, undervisning, upplysning: linjer i svensk folkundervisning före folkskolan (Umeå, 1995), 151–222; Pleijel, H., ‘Patriarkalismens samhällsideologi’, Historisk tidskrift 107 (1987), 221–38Google Scholar.
34 Most inspectors were well-known local farmers. See J. Sundin, ‘Kontroll – straff och försoning: kyrklig rättvisa på sockennivå före 1850’, in J. Sundin ed., Kontroll och kontrollerade: formell och informell kontroll i ett historiskt perspektiv (Umeå, 1982), 45–59, and M. Taussi Sjöberg, Brott och straff i Västernorrland 1861–1890 (Umeå 1991), 37–43.
35 Every young man or woman was required to belong to a household and serve a master. Otherwise, they did not receive a ‘certificate of means’ (laga försvar) and were labelled vagrants (försvarslös, lösdrivare). See G. Inger, Svensk rättshistoria (Lund, 1983), 164–249.
36 Concerning the social issue and fear of revolution in nineteenth-century Sweden, see Drugge and Lindgren, Med dödlig utgång, 271–7, and B. Petersson, “Den farliga underklassen”: studier i fattigdom och brottslighet i 1800-talets Sverige (Umeå, 1983), 16–68. A similar phenomenon is documented abroad; see Boritch, ‘The criminal class revisited’, 139–44; Monkkonen, ‘A disorderly people?’; and Muncie, Youth and crime, 47–77.
37 Inger, Svensk rättshistoria, 234–49; Taussi Sjöberg, Brott och straff, 37–43.
38 L.-G. Tedebrand, ‘Människor och strukturer intill 1860’, in L.-G. Tedebrand ed., Sundsvalls historia, Volume 1 (Sundsvall, 1996), 192–210, and ‘Gamla och nya stadsbor efter 1860’, in L.-G. Tedebrand ed., Sundsvalls historia, Volume 2 (Sundsvall, 1997), 101–36.
39 J. Björklund, ‘Tillväxt och differentiering: näringslivet 1870–1940’, in Tedebrand ed., Sundvalls historia, Volume 2, 7–39; Tedebrand, ‘Människor och strukturer’; Tedebrand, ‘Gamla och nya stadsbor’.
40 Migrants, not natural growth, contributed most to the population increase. Alm Stenflo, Demographic description, 35–45; Tedebrand, ‘Gamla och nya stadsbor’; and Vikström, Gendered routes, 69–79.
41 The population growth in the town was due to the influx of migrants to larger degree than was the case in the neighbouring parishes under study. It was only during the last decade under observation, 1870–1880, that the migration surplus surpassed that of the town of Sundsvall; see Alm Stenflo, Demographic description, 41–3, 101.
42 L. Vikström, ‘Mycket väsen för ringa ting: ungdomsbrottens utveckling i Sundsvallsregionen 1840–1880’, Oknytt 27 (2006), 41–68. In his reports, the county governor argued that the migrants, particularly those from Finland, ignored religious activities and thus were not registered in the parish records. Furthermore, he argued that the Finnish immigrants were particularly devoted to the bottle, which in turn caused their bad behaviour.
43 Although the law sought to control crime, it also instituted more humane punishment. See Inger, Svensk rättshistoria, 234–48; P.-E. Wallén, Svensk straffrättshistoria, Volume 2: Några huvudlinjer (Stockholm, 1973), 5–16; von Hofer, Brott och straff, 6:3–5.
44 Emsley, Crime and society, 21–7; King, ‘The rise of juvenile delinquency’, 133–7; McDonald, ‘Theory and evidence’, 416–17; Taussi Sjöberg, Brott och straff, 19–20; Österberg ‘Kontroll och kriminalitet’, 81.
45 From an aggregated point of view, Nilsson concludes that young people added to the general rise in crime during the second part of nineteenth-century Sweden but that in relative terms their proportion remained fairly stable; see Nilsson, ‘Med hvarje år’, 372–81.
46 Reports submitted by the county governors in Västernorrland, to which the region under study belongs, are discussed in Vikström, ‘Mycket väsen för ringa ting’.
47 Categorizing crime is always a difficult task, but violent crimes are usually separated from those related to property or disorder. See A.-M. Fällström, Konjunktur och kriminalitet: studier i Göteborgs sociala historia 1800–1840 (Göteborg, 1974), 101–11; von Hofer, Brott och straff; Horgby, Den disciplinerade arbetaren, 129–236; Petersson, “Den farliga underklassen”, 89–122; and Taussi Sjöberg, Brott och straff, 56–84. As advanced economic crimes were of rare occurrence, these are included in the category of theft. If one individual on the occasion of incarceration was arrested for two or even three types of crime, the different offences he or she was charged with are accounted for in Figure 3. Concerning the combination of crimes and to what extent this occurred, see Table 1.
48 Linking criminality to economic conditions is important but the results are difficult to interpret. Most scholars detect an increase of theft in bad times. However, along with rising material standards there are more things to steal, and during the nineteenth century this type of crime experienced a general increase. Hence, prosperous times tend to stimulate property crimes, just as do hard times. See J. Sundin, ‘Theft and penury in Sweden 1830–1920: a comparative study at the county level’, Scandinavian Journal of History 1 (1976), 265–92; Fällström, Konjunktur och kriminalitet, 141–9; and McDonald, ‘Theory and evidence’, 415–16.
49 In the mid-1860s only four policemen looked after the law in the town of Sundsvall. According to the police inspector, Wilhelm Hellman, who regularly reported on criminal issues in the local newspapers, approximately 60–100 prostitutes could be found in the town in 1879; see J. E. Nilsson, Sundsvalls historia: Volume V, Tiden 1862–1888 (Sundsvall, 1943), 137–47; Vikström, Gendered routes, 233.
50 See note 48, above.
51 Horgby, Den disciplinerade arbetaren, 237–48; E. Österberg, ‘Civilisationen, våldet och kvinnorna’, in E. Österberg and M. Lindstedt Cronberg eds., Kvinnor och våld: en mångtydig kulturhistoria (Lund, 2005), 285–303.
52 See the discussion under the heading ‘Two sources and one data set allowing longitudinal observations’, above.
53 The correlation between the access to and consumption of liquor, on the one hand, and criminality on the other is a difficult one. See von Hofer, Brott och straff, 1:4–5; Horgby, Den disciplinerade arbetaren, 129–63; Monkkonen, ‘A disorderly people’, 554–7; Petersson, “Den farliga underklassen”, 36–9, 94–101, 224–32; H. Ylikangas, Knivjunkarna: våldskriminaliteten i Sydösterbotten 1790–1825 (Helsingfors, 1985), 49–77.
54 This relatively high percentage of female offenders is due to the under-registration of male offenders (probably seasonal labourers) in the parish registers. This was less the case among women and has rendered it difficult to identify male prisoners in the parish registers. According to the prison registers, female offenders comprised only about 10 per cent (see note 58, below), which reflects the average figure in Sweden. In the mid-1850s only one offender in ten of those charged was female. This national ratio declined to 6 per cent at the end of the century; see Nilsson, ‘Med hvarje år’, 375–8. In the county of Västernorrland, to which the region under study belongs, in 1861–1890 the percentage of female offenders was slightly higher and oscillated between 20 and 23 per cent. This percentage includes women older than 25; see Taussi Sjöberg, Brott och straff, 96–110.
55 See Allan and Steffensmeier, ‘Criminal behaviour’, 83–97; Lindgren, Om brott och straff, 86–92.
56 These spheres and the public–private dichotomy associated with men and women have been widely debated, particularly among feminist historians. See Janssens, A., ‘The rise and decline of the male breadwinner family?’, International Review of Social History: Supplement 42 (1997), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and J. W. Scott, Gender and the politics of history (New York, 1988). For an overview, see Vikström, Gendered routes, 249–56.
57 In 1846 a woman in Sweden was allowed to share an inheritance on roughly an equal footing with her brother. In 1858 her master lost the right to hit her and other servants, and, if unmarried, she attained majority at the age of 25. In 1884 this included all single women aged 21 or older, which was the same age as for men. See K. Widerberg, Kvinnor, klasser och lagar 1750–1980 (Helsingborg, 1980), 37–72.
58 According to the prison registers for the period 1840–1864, either no women or only one or two were incarcerated per year in the area and included among the young offenders under study. During the period 1865–1880, this number oscillated between zero and five women, except from 1879 when eight female offenders contributed to the peak of crimes reported that year (see Figures 2 and 3). During the period 1840–1864, about 9 per cent of all young offenders were women. For the period 1865–1880, this percentage increased to 11 per cent.
59 See M. Taussi Sjöberg, ‘Utslagna kvinnor i bondesamhället’, in J. Sundin ed., Kontroll och kontrollerade: formell och informell kontroll i ett historiskt perspektiv (Umeå, 1982), 137–40. In comparison to male offenders and non-offending women, female offenders paid a higher price for their incarceration in terms of lower life expectancy and limited chances to marry after release. This confirms that women in particular put their honour at stake when arrested. See Vikström, ‘Illuminating the impact of incarceration’.
60 Vikström, Gendered routes, 253–63.
61 Concerning illegitimacy in Sweden, see Frykman, J., ‘Sexual intercourse and social norms: a study of illegitimate births in Sweden, 1831–1935’, Etnologiska institutionens småskriftsserie 20 (1979), 4–17Google Scholar. The illegitimacy rates rose along the coast as the forestry industry began dominating the economy. In the 1870s, one child in four was born out of wedlock in the town of Sundsvall; see A. Brändström, ‘Utomäktenskaplighet och sociala nätverk: Sundsvall 1800–1895’, in T. Ericsson and A. Guillemot eds., Individ och struktur i historisk belysning: festskrift till Sune Åkerman (Umeå, 1997), 12. At the end of the nineteenth century, Schulte sheds light on high illegitimacy rates and accepting attitudes among villagers in Upper Bavaria; see Schulte, The village in court, 97–101.
62 See Schulte, The village in court, 97–118, and M. Taussi Sjöberg and B. Sandström, ‘Ensamma med skammen: barnamörderskor i Västernorrlands län 1861–1890’, in H. Norman ed., Den utsatta familjen: liv, arbete och samlevnad i olika nordiska miljöer under de senaste tvåhundra åren (Stockholm, 1983), 170–86.
63 Smart, C., ‘Criminological theory: its ideology and implications concerning women’, British Journal of Sociology 28 (1977), 89–100CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also Chesney-Lind, M., ‘Women and crime: the female offender’, Signs 12 (1986), 78–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
64 Beattie, J. M., ‘The criminality of women in eighteenth-century England’, Journal of Social History 8 (1975), 80–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wiener, C. Z., ‘Sex roles and crime in late Elizabethan Hertfordshire’, Journal of Social History 8 (1975), 38–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The issue of gender and criminality in history has captured increasing interest among scholars the past thirty years. In addition to the secondary works already cited, see Frank, S. P., ‘Narrative within numbers: women, crime and judicial statistics in imperial Russia, 1864–1913’, The Russian Review 5 (1996), 541–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; L. Zedner, Women, crime and custody in Victorian England (Oxford, 1991).
65 Emsley, Crime and society, 78–102; King, ‘The rise of juvenile delinquency’, 139–41; Monkkonen, ‘A disorderly people’, 539–59. If it had been possible to identify in the parish registers every offender (of the 460) in the prison registers during the period 1840–1880, more migrants would have been found. The result is also explained by the offenders' low age (15–25); some were too young to have relocated.
66 The region covered a tiny area in terms of Swedish geography. About 40 kilometres separated the town from the most remote parish.
67 At the turn of the nineteenth century, native-born Canadians were surprisingly frequent among recidivists in Ontario; see Boritch, ‘The criminal class revisited’, 155. Neither migrants nor their children dominated among delinquent boys in nineteenth-century France; see Berlanstein, ‘Vagrants, beggars and thieves’, 537.
68 In contrast to the long-standing notion that urban-industrial development turned people into lone individualists breaking with traditional ways of life, including close kin ties, family historians today detect that assisting family networks smoothed individuals' adjustment in times of large-scale socio-economic change; see Hareven, ‘The history of the family’, and A. Plakans, Kinship in the past: an anthropology of European family life 1500–1900 (Oxford, 1984).
69 Drugge and Lindgren, Med dödlig utgång, 135–8; Krohn, ‘Control and deterrence’; Muncie, Youth and crime, 207–19; Sampson and Laub, ‘A life-course theory’; Vejbrink, ‘En kontrollerad brottsling’, 82–4.
70 Spouses, parents, step-parents and children are the only type of network the parish registers acknowledge except for siblings, but because the latter often relocated they are difficult to track over time. Occasionally, the prison registers indicate ties between the offenders, for instance, if they had the same parish of residence, type of misconduct and date of imprisonment reported.
71 S. Åkerman, U. Högberg and T. Andersson. ‘Survival of orphans in nineteenth-century Sweden’, in Tedebrand ed., Orphans and fosterchildren: a historical and cross-cultural perspective (Umeå, 1996), 85; Alm-Stenflo, Demographic description, 75–87; Edvinsson, Den osunda staden, 82–92.
72 According to most historical studies, the life chances of infants and small children tended to be more negatively affected than older children by a parent's death. The gender of the dead parent could also matter, as did whether the widow/widower remarried. Some scholars argue that orphans' social mobility was little affected by loosing a parent at a young age. See Åkerman, Högberg and Andersson, ‘Survival of orphans’; Beekink, E. F., van Poppel, F. and Liefbroer, A., ‘Surviving the loss of the parent in a nineteenth-century Dutch provincial town’, Journal of Social History 32 (1999), 641–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Derosa and M. Oris eds., When dad died: individuals and families coping with family stress in past societies (New York, 2002); and T. Bengtsson, C. Campbell, J. Z. Lee et al. eds., Life under pressure: mortality and living standards in Europe and Asia, 1700–1900 (Cambridge, 2004).
73 A comparative study of the offenders in relation to non-offenders shows that the latter had more access to two parents (50 vs. 44 per cent) at the time the offenders were arrested; see Vikström, ‘Illuminating the impact of incarceration’.
74 DDB-ID (Selma Wallmark) 862002185. Information on Selma was also generated from the local newspapers in Sundsvall from 1879. These were investigated for another purpose. See Vikström, Gendered routes, 248.
75 Boritch, ‘The criminal class revisited’, 139–44; Emsley, Crime and society, 48–77; Lindgren, Om brott och straff, 48–54; Monkkonen, ‘A disorderly people’.
76 Economic resources shape individuals' life courses, but the issue of how to place individuals in social groups has been disputed. Most scholars agree that occupation can indicate a person's status and they have also developed different systems of social classification. See R. Erikson and J. H. Goldthorpe, The constant flux: a study of class mobility in industrial societies (Oxford, 1992), and M. H. D. Leeuwen, I. Maas and A. Miller eds., HISCO: Historical international standard classification of occupations (Leuven, 2002). The classification used above employs the system developed by researchers in Sweden. Partly because of the scarcity of cases linked to each categorization, the social stratification is modified. See Edvinsson, Den osunda staden, 39–43, and Vikström, Gendered routes, 49–51.
77 Because of all the under-reported seasonal labourers who lived in the area temporarily, the large number of unskilled workers was probably even more pronounced than Figure 4 suggests. See Alm Stenflo, Demographic description, 49–60; J. Björklund, ‘Tillväxt och differentiering’; Tedebrand, ‘Människor och strukturer’; and Tedebrand, ‘Gamla och nya stadsbor’.
78 As were most young women in this area, they were devoted to the domestic sector and were acknowledged as maidservants (pigor) (see the section ‘Crime characteristics and gender differentiations’, above). Three seamstresses and a few women lacking occupational data were also found. See Vikström, Gendered routes, 246–71.
79 L. Edgren, Lärling – gesäll – mästare: hantverk och hantverkare i Malmö 1750–1847 (Lund, 1988); L. Magnusson, Den bråkiga kulturen: förläggare och smideshantverkare i Eskilstuna 1800–1850 (Stockholm, 1998), 11–56, 251–345.
80 Monkkonen, ‘A disorderly people’, 550–1; J. C. Schneider, Detroit and the problem of order, 1830–1880: a geography of crime, riot, and policing (University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1980), 3–5, 40–52, 135–9; Österberg, ‘Kontroll och kriminalitet’, 80.
81 B. Björk and J.-B. Schnell, Sundsvallsstrejken: samtida dokument och historisk belysning (Sundsvall, 1979); J. Björklund, Strejk – förhandling – avtal: facklig aktivitet, arbets- och levnadsvillkor bland sågverksarbetare i Västernorrland 1875–1914 (Umeå, 1976).
82 M. Dunge, Båtsmän: en etnologisk undersökning om båtsmännens villkor i två socknar i Blekinge i början av 1800-talet (Göteborg, 1982); B. Furuhagen, Berusade bönder och bråkiga båtsmän: social kontroll vid sockenstämmor och ting under 1700-talet (Stockholm, 1996).
83 Vikström, ‘Life prior to crime and after’.