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“A Horrible Looking Woman”: Female Violence in Late-Victorian East London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2015

Andrew August
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Abstract

Scholars have attributed a steep decline in violent crime in nineteenth-century England to a “civilizing offensive” launched to discipline violent masculinities. In East London, however, a significant minority of those brought before summary courts on charges of violent offenses were women. Newspaper accounts of these cases show that some women committed assaults that resembled the violent actions of men. The courts and newspapers evaluated defendants against standards of femininity. Those women who successfully performed dominant versions of femininity received lenient treatment in the courts and approval in the newspapers. The courts harshly punished those who did not conform. These accounts reveal a campaign against disorderly femininities that paralleled the civilizing offensive directed against unruly masculinities.

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Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 844 - 868
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2015 

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References

1 East London Observer, 23 September 1882.

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27 Godfrey, Farrell, and Karstedt, “Explaining Gendered Sentencing,” 701.

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30 Davis, “A Poor Man's System of Justice,” 319.

31 Just over 7 percent of cases were described as involving “cutting” or “wounding” in some combination.

32 East London Observer, 26 December 1885; Thames Police Court Notebooks, December 1885. London Metropolitan Archives, PS/TH/A/01/006. Because of the violence, this case is included in the data set.

33 Emsley, Hard Men, 6–7.

34 Davis described lawbreaking as “endemic in working-class life.” Jennifer Davis, “Law Breaking and Law Enforcement: The Creation of a Criminal Class in Mid-Victorian London” (PhD diss., Boston College, 1984), 70.

35 Preliminary examination of other months in the Thames Police Court records and the East London Observer indicate that these months were typical in this regard.

36 East London Observer, 29 November 1884.

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39 Ross, “Survival Networks,” 15; Jennifer S. Davis, “Prosecutions and Their Context: The Use of the Criminal Law in Later Nineteenth-Century London,” in Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750–1850, ed. Douglas Hay and Francis Snyder (Oxford, 1989), 397–426, at 417.

40 D'Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, 51, 61.

41 Abraham, “Summary Courts,” 136.

42 Jerry White, The Worst Street in North London: Campbell Bunk, Islington, between the Wars (London, 1986), 96; see also August, Andrew, “A Culture of Consolation? Rethinking Politics in Working-Class London, 1870–1914,” Historical Research 74, no. 184 (May 2001): 193–219, at 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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44 Emsley, Crime and Society, 45.

45 This is quite different from the findings of Michelle Abraham in her study of Northampton and Nottingham, where she found few women charged with assaulting men. Abraham, “Summary Courts,” 120–21.

46 The proportion is somewhat lower in cases with only female assailants. In these cases, 28 percent of victims were the police.

47 This contrasts with Keven Felstead's findings for Staffordshire. See Kevin Felstead, “Interpersonal Violence in late Victorian and Edwardian England: Staffordshire 1880–1910” (PhD diss., Keele University, 2001), 203–4.

48 Joanne Turner, “Offending Women in Stafford, 1880–1905: Punishment, Reform and Re-Integration” (PhD diss., Keele University, 2009), 71; Godfrey, “Rough Girls,” 27.

49 Injuries were categorized as mild if the report mentioned them, but neither commented on their severity nor mentioned medical treatment. Cases with moderate injuries mentioned medical treatment and release without a hospital stay. Reports of significant injuries described those injuries as serious, or mention broken bones or a hospital stay. 65 percent injured by men suffered mild or moderate injuries, while 74 percent injured by women suffered mild or moderate injuries.

50 Davis, “Law Breaking,” 212.

51 Wood, Violence and Crime, 110.

52 East London Observer, 22 January 1881.

53 Godfrey has suggested that police were less likely to “bring in” disorderly or violent women than they were to arrest dangerous men. Godfrey, “Rough Girls,” 32.

54 Lucia Zedner, Women, Crime and Custody in Victorian England (Oxford, 1991), 297; Conley, Unwritten Law, 72; eadem, “No Pedestals: Women and Violence in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” Journal of Social History 28, no. 4 (Summer 1995): 801–18, at 801CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rowbotham, Judith, “Gendering Protest: Delineating the Boundaries of Acceptable Everyday Violence in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” European Review of History—Revue Européenne d'Histoire 20, no. 6 (December 2013): 946–66, at 955CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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56 Godfrey, Farrall, and Karstedt, “Explaining Gendered Sentencing Patterns,” 711, 717; Davies, “‘These Viragoes,’” 87. Abraham, “Summary Courts,” i, 15; Rowbotham, “Gendering Protest,” 955.

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59 D'Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, 148.

60 Davies, “‘These Viragoes,’” 79.

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63 By the 1880s, some middle-class women began to challenge these restrictions, venturing into previously off-limits public spaces. Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992), 46.

64 Marjorie Levine-Clark, Beyond the Reproductive Body: The Politics of Women's Health and Work in Early Victorian England (Columbus, 2004), 22.

65 Susie Steinbach, Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 2012), 133, 135.

66 Ellen Ross, “‘Not the Sort that Would Sit on the Doorstep’: Respectability in Pre-World War I London Neighborhoods,” International Labor and Working Class History 27 (March 1985): 39–59, at 48, 49; eadem, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870–1918 (Oxford, 1993), 27, 29, 109–10.

67 Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London 1870–1914 (London, 1996), 72.

68 Andrew August, Poor Women's Lives: Gender, Work and Poverty in Late-Victorian London (Cranbury, 1999), 118.

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70 Ross, “Fierce Questions and Taunts,” 592.

71 D'Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, 58–59; D'Cruze, Godfrey, and Cox, “‘The Most Troublesome Woman in Crewe,’” 250; Lynn MacKay, Respectability and the London Poor, 1780–1870: The Value of Virtue (London, 2013), 31–33.

72 Ross, “Fierce Questions and Taunts,” 576.

73 Andrew Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty: Working-Class Culture in Salford and Manchester, 1900–1939 (Buckingham, 1992), 65.

74 Zedner, Women, Crime and Custody, 297.

75 See Godfrey, Farrall, and Karstedt, “Explaining Gendered Sentencing,” 706.

76 Wood mentions kicking as one aspect of male violence that attracted particular attention and condemnation in the later decades of the nineteenth century. Wood, Violence and Crime, 90.

77 According to Zedner, repeat offenders among women were viewed as the least promising subjects for reform efforts. Zedner, Women, Crime and Custody, 112, 143. See also Davis, “Law Breaking,” 169.

78 East London Observer, 17 June 1882 and 28 June 1884.

79 Ballinger, “Masculinity in the Dock,” 463; Martin J. Wiener, “The Victorian Criminalization of Men,” in Men and Violence: Gender, Honor, and Rituals in Modern Europe and America, ed. Pieter Spierenburg (Columbus, 1998), 197–212, at 206; Archer, “Men Behaving Badly,” 51–52; Godfrey, “Rough Girls,” 33; Godfrey, Farrall, and Karstedt, “Explaining Gendered Sentencing,” 715; Wiener, Men of Blood, 28, 62.

80 Conley, Unwritten Law, 67.

81 Frost, Ginger, “‘She is but a Woman’: Kitty Byron and the English Edwardian Criminal Justice System,” Gender and History 16, no. 3 (November 2004): 538–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D'Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, ch. 7.

82 D'Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, 155.

83 East London Observer, 11 March 1882. Sullivan was sentenced to fourteen days with hard labor.

84 Ibid., 17 June 1882.

85 Ibid., 28 July 1883. Though the magistrate commented on how bad Regan's behavior was, she was sentenced to only seven days with hard labor.

86 Ibid., 20 September 1884. Gale was sentenced to the maximum of six months with labor.

87 Conley notes the general skepticism toward working-class women's ability to be truly women. Conley, Unwritten Law, 71. George Robb discusses similar depictions of women as masculine in appearance. See Robb, George, “Circe in Crinoline: Domestic Poisonings in Victorian England,” Journal of Family History 22, no. 2 (April 1997): 176–90, at 178CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also Rowbotham, “Gendering Protest,” 959.

88 Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, 1998), 51.

89 Ibid., 57–58.

90 Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight, 61–62; Koven, Slumming, 205–15.

91 East London Observer, 20 May 1882. Gilbert was ordered to find a surety of £20 for six months of good behavior. Headings on East London Observer reports of police court cases appeared in all capital letters. This formatting has been retained here.

92 Ibid., 3 June 1882. McCarthy was fined 10s plus 10s costs, with a threat of fourteen days in prison in default.

93 Ibid., 28 July 1883.

94 Andrew Davies cites the use of “exotic” language to describe female gangsters. Davies, “‘These Viragoes,’” 85. See also Susan E. Grace, “Female Criminality in York and Hull 1830–1870” (PhD diss., University of York, 1998), 33; Mahood, Linda and Littlewood, Barbara, “The ‘Vicious’ Girl and the ‘Street-Corner’ Boy: Sexuality and the Gendered Delinquent in the Scottish Child-Saving Movement, 1850–1940,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 4, no. 4 (April 1994): 549–78, at 552Google Scholar.

95 Koven, Slumming, 183, 188–89.

96 East London Observer, 19 June 1880.

97 Ibid., 5 August 1882.

98 Ibid., 14 June 1884.

99 Ibid., 26 August 1882.

100 D'Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, 194.

101 East London Observer, 21 October 1882.

102 On ambivalent attitudes toward cohabitation in late Victorian courts, see Ginger Frost, Living in Sin: Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England (Manchester, 2008), 32.

103 East London Observer, 30 August 1884 and 6 September 1884.

104 Frost, “‘She is but a Woman,’” 543, 546–47; Levine-Clark, Beyond the Reproductive Body, 22; Ballinger, “Masculinity in the Dock,” 468.

105 Zedner argues that a biological/medical view of female criminality spread at the end of the nineteenth century, though she focuses on the description of women as “feeble minded.” Zedner, Women, Crime and Custody, 50, 78–83, 274–75.

106 Ballinger, “Masculinity in the Dock,” 477.

107 East London Observer, 23 August 1884. For an analysis of a similar case, see Frost, “‘She is but a Woman.’”

108 Ibid., 30 August 1884.

109 Ibid., 4 October 1884.

110 Ibid., 31 May 1884.

111 Ibid., 4 December 1880.

112 Curtis, Jack the Ripper and the London Press, 93.

113 Conley notes that authorities who used this term were “apparently blinded” to the irony. Conley, Unwritten Law, 167.

114 East London Observer, 5 November 1881.

115 Ibid., 14 May 1881.

116 Ibid., 21 February 1880 and 13 March 1880; Standard, 10 March 1880.

117 March 1880, trial of Sarah Beckett (29), Old Bailey Proceedings Online, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, accessed on 13 April 2015, t18800322–320.

118 By way of comparison, a similar case with a male defendant a couple of weeks earlier at the Old Bailey resulted in the same sentence. Joseph Wheeler, convicted of wounding his wife with a knife and hammer, received eighteen months imprisonment. Old Bailey Proceedings, t18800301–275.

119 Davis, “A Poor Man's System of Justice.”

120 Bailey, Peter, “‘Will the Real Bill Banks Please Stand Up?’ Towards a Role Analysis of Mid-Victorian Working-Class Respectability,” Journal of Social History 12, no. 3 (Spring 1979): 336–53, at 347CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacKay, Respectability and the London Poor, 9.

121 Lee, Policing Prostitution, 60, 63.