CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
by Catherine Haill, V & A
Theft, treason, larceny, fraud, arson, shooting, stabbing, poisoning, blackmail, bigamy and murder - all were subjects sure to please audiences at theatres and `penny gaffs' in the 19th and early 20th centuries. East End audiences were especially fond of a good murder, and a double helping of murderous fare was not uncommon, as at the Pavilion, 26 May 1844, when the blood-spattered Hamlet was followed by Ada the Betrayed, or the Murder of the Old Smithy. Murder was still a capital offence in 19th century Britain. Executions were public spectacles until 1868; people sold positions at windows overlooking public execution sites, so a taste for staged crime and retribution was hardly surprising. Theatre managers knew its pulling-power, and when gory action was on offer, their playbills ensured its emphasis with larger, bold typeface for spine-chilling phrases such as `Blood will have Blood', and `Discovery of the Murderer by Dreams'. When full-colour posters were introduced later in the century, the subject often depicted was the moment the villain fired the gun, or pushed the heroine off the cliff.
Crime was no more common in the East End in the early 19th century than in some other parts of London, but the area changed drastically throughout the century. By 1831 when Shadwell and Wapping were already built up, there were only a few houses on the northern side of Commercial Road; Hackney was still a straggling street; Limehouse and the Isle of Dogs were not developed, and Stepney Green and Bethnal Green were still green. As the industrial revolution gathered steam over the next two decades however, there was a vast increase in population from Hackney Downs to the Isle of Dogs, and by 1839 a contemporary source lamented Bethnal Green's population of: `80,000 souls with only 3 clergymen to look after them'.
As the area disappeared under bricks and mortar, tenement housing and the high concentration of the poor in the East End saw a rise in crime which the establishment of the Metropolitan Police Force in 1829 could never contain. In the worst areas in the late 1830s and 1840s, housing was overcrowded, street-lighting was non-existent, streets were filthy and foul-smelling, and water came from standpipes. `Rookeries' - areas where the narrow alleyways and closely-built houses formed an enclave - were safe havens for petty criminals such as the fictional Fagin's den of young pickpockets, or the murderous Bill Sykes, brought to life in various dramatisations of Dickens' Oliver Twist.
Fictional murders made popular stage adaptations, such as those of Sweeney Todd, the 'demon barber of Fleet Street' created in a Penny Dreadful magazine story serialised in 1846-1847. Real murders were also staged and became East End favourites, such as the case of Maria Marten, the Suffolk girl whose killer William Corder was hanged in 1828, or that of Carlo Ferrari, a fourteen year-old Italian boy who made his living on London streets with his performing white mice. He was murdered in 1831 by the burkers, or body-snatchers John Bishop and Thomas Williams, of 3, Nova Scotia Gardens, Bethnal Green, and James May of Newington. The Murder of Carlo Ferrari the Italian Boy! was seen at the Pavilion, 27 September 1862, and as Carlo Ferraro the Italian Boy, or, the Burkers of Bethnal Green at the Britannia Theatre in March 1874. The horrendous murders of Jack the Ripper that scandalised the East End in 1881 were not staged at the time however, perhaps being considered a little too close to home for nervous theatregoers walking the ill-lit streets of Whitechapel.
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Subject Terms: Brigands and robbers,Thieves,Crime,Todd, Sweeney (Legendary character),Pirates,Gin,Name Terms: Sheppard, Jack, 1702-1724,Turpin, Richard, 1706-1739,Mansong, Jack, d. 1781,Fenning, Elizabeth, 1793-1815,Abershaw, Jerry, ca. 1773-1795,
East London Theatre Archive
