Why was there so much crime in Victorian England?
There are plentiful reasons for the high crime rate in Victorian England but four main reasons appear to the most prominent. These are: poverty, lack of punishment, lack of police force and lack of technology. Really we just see Victorian England to have a high crime rate because nowadays it isn’t as popular due to development. Most crime was simply committed because no punishments were issued to those who had done it before. Nevertheless we can still find more probable reasons why their crime was higher than ours.
One of the biggest reasons was poverty. Homelessness and malnutrition was common on the dirty and crowded streets of Victorian London, and gave a desperate motive for crime; stealing mostly. Many young children didn’t go to school and were forced to find money by other means, pick-pocketing was a popular choice, as published by musical theatre performance ‘Oliver!’. These children were likely to have bad childhoods and may have grown up influenced by this; a common characteristic of a serial killer or murder is that they had traumatic or deprived childhoods. Poverty wasn’t getting any better meaning there was a huge difference between rich and poor, those who could afford clothes and food and big houses and those who couldn’t. The poorer civilization would have been more desperate to reach a higher quality of life thus executing their need through crime. Streets were incredible busy and low profile working class meant criminals could slip away into the crowds without appearing suspicious.
Another dominant reason why crime rates were so high in Victorian England was that it was easy to get away with. Criminals could easily disguise themselves in a street filled with lower and working class hanging around and upper class sticking out like sore thumbs. Most criminals would have been middle or lower class, who with low profiles weren’t easily recognisable so they wouldn’t find much difficulty approaching the streets and committing crime unnoticed. London
One of the biggest reasons was poverty. Homelessness and malnutrition was common on the dirty and crowded streets of Victorian London, and gave a desperate motive for crime; stealing mostly. Many young children didn’t go to school and were forced to find money by other means, pick-pocketing was a popular choice, as published by musical theatre performance ‘Oliver!’. These children were likely to have bad childhoods and may have grown up influenced by this; a common characteristic of a serial killer or murder is that they had traumatic or deprived childhoods. Poverty wasn’t getting any better meaning there was a huge difference between rich and poor, those who could afford clothes and food and big houses and those who couldn’t. The poorer civilization would have been more desperate to reach a higher quality of life thus executing their need through crime. Streets were incredible busy and low profile working class meant criminals could slip away into the crowds without appearing suspicious.
Another dominant reason why crime rates were so high in Victorian England was that it was easy to get away with. Criminals could easily disguise themselves in a street filled with lower and working class hanging around and upper class sticking out like sore thumbs. Most criminals would have been middle or lower class, who with low profiles weren’t easily recognisable so they wouldn’t find much difficulty approaching the streets and committing crime unnoticed. London