Teaching & Learning Guide for: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics? Nineteenth Century Crime Statistics for England and Wales as an Historical Source
Authors: Walliss John 
Published: August 2012

This guide accompanies the following article: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics? Nineteenth Century Crime Statistics for England and Wales as an Historical Source, History Compass 10/8 (2012): pp. 574–583, [DOI]: 10.1111/J.1478‐0542.2012.00867.x

Author’s Introduction

Official statistics provide a wealth of information for the historian on crime and the operation of the criminal justice process during the 19th century. Statistics of varying quality exist from 1805 onwards and are easily accessible via the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers online. However, like any historical source, the official statistics must be treated with caution and there is a debate among historians about their relative reliability and validity as a measure of crime and criminality during the period.

Author Recommends

Radzinowicz, L., and Hood, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750. Volume 5: The Emergence of Penal Policy (London: Stevenson & Sons, 1986).

Chapter 4 provides a very good overview of the development of crime statistics in England and Wales during the period. Over the course of the 19th century, the information contained in the official statistics changed, becoming increasingly detailed, and the authors chart this trajectory. This is an excellent starting point to understand what kinds of information the statistics contain.

Tobias, J. J., Crime and Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), chapter 2.

Sindall, R. ‘The Criminal Statistics of Nineteenth Century Cities: A New Approach’, Urban History Yearbook 13 (1986), 28‐36.

These two sources, written almost twenty years apart, provide a good critique of the crime statistics as measure of crime and criminality during the period. Both authors are highly critical of the statistics; Tobias concluding his chapter by stating bluntly “that criminal statistics have little to tell us about crime and criminals in the nineteenth century” (p. 25)

Gatrell, V. A. C., and Hadden, T. ‘Criminal Statistics and their Interpretation’, in E. A. Wrigley, (ed.) Nineteenth Century Social History: Essays in the Use of Quantitative Methods for The Study of Social Data. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 336‐96.

This chapter offers a counterpoint to the critique of the statistics as a source made by Tobias and Sindall. Gatrell and Hadden begin, like Radzinowicz and Hood, by charting the development of the statistics between 1805 and 1893, before then addressing in some depth what they see as the limitations of the statistics. In doing so, they suggest that these do not completely undermine their use, but, rather, they can still provide information about crime during the period if they are used with caution. In the second part of the chapter, they apply these ‘limiting conditions’ to the statistics, using them to chart various trends in crime and criminality over the period.

H. Taylor, ‘Rationing Crime: The Political Economy of Criminal Statistics since 1850’, The Economic History Review, 51/3 (1998): 569‐90.

R. M. Morris, ‘“Lies, Damned Lies and Criminal Statistics”: Reinterpreting the Criminal Statistics in England and Wales’, Crime, History & Society, 5/1 (2001): 111‐27.

B. S. Godfrey, ‘Changing Prosecution Practices and Their Impact on Crime Figures, 1857–1940’, British Journal of Criminology, 48 (2008): 171‐89.

These three articles provide a good overview of the debate between Howard Taylor and other historians over what Taylor refers to ‘the political economy’ of the statistics. In his article, Taylor puts forward a radical critique of the statistics, arguing that their relative stability over the period suggests that the police ‘rationed’ the number of criminals that were prosecuted to within levels that their financial and manpower resources would stretch. Indeed, Howard goes on, by keeping the number of prosecutions at an artificially low level, the police could both demonstrate their efficiency at deterring crime and present a reassuring public image wherein most offenders were caught and prosecuted.

Morris and Godfrey provide robust criticism of this claim in their respective articles. Morris argues that the Treasury did not in fact place a budgetary restriction on funding murder trials and that for the state to ration the number of murders that were prosecuted would have required a conspiracy of huge proportions that would have left some trace in the historical record. Similarly, Godfrey argues that if any filtering took place, it was not on the basis of financial considerations, but rather on the basis of which cases the police believed that they had a good chance of successfully prosecuting, with prosecuting officers possibly dropping weaker cases in order to increase (or at least not negatively impact on) their success rate.

Philips, D. Crime and Authority in Victorian England: The Black Country 1835–60 (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 41‐52.

P. King, ‘The Rise of Juvenile Delinquency in England 1780–1840: Changing Patterns of Perception and Prosecution’, Past & Present, 160 (1998): 116‐66.

C. A. Williams, ‘Counting Crimes or Counting People: Some Implications of Mid‐Nineteenth Century British Police Returns’, Crime, History & Society 4/2 (2000): 77‐93.

These two articles and chapter provide good examples of how the statistics may be approached from an interactionist position. All three show how the information contained in the statistics represent the outcome of a series of decisions made at various stages of the criminal justice process and how, in many ways, the statistics reveal more about the activities of the courts and police than about actual crime and criminality in the past.

Coleman, C., and Moynihan, J. Understanding Crime Data: Haunted by the Dark Figure (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996).

The debate over the reliability and validity of the 19th century statistics among historians parallels in many ways debates among criminologists over contemporary statistics. This book (particularly chapter one) provides a very good introduction to these debates.

Online Materials

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers

http://parlipapers.chadwyck.co.uk/home.do

The statistical reports for the nineteenth century are available via this website, and can be read either online or downloaded as pdf files. The easiest way to find the statistics is to browse the 19th century subject catalogue (law and order).

The Old Bailey Online

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

Another excellent source for the study of crime and the justice process during the period is the Old Bailey Online. The website includes the digitised proceedings for 197,745 criminal cases held at the Old Bailey between 1674 and 1913, as well as other related documents, such as the Ordinary of Newgate’s Accounts. The Proceedings are fully searchable and through a ‘statistics’ function, allow the user to generate tables and charts based on a range of information contained within them, such as age and gender of offender, offence and verdict.

Sample Syllabus

A small course on the 19th century statistics could be structured in terms of the reading suggestions provided above:

Introduction & Overview

An introduction to the statistics, using Radzinowicz and Hood as the core reading. Students would also be encouraged to spend time looking at the statistics themselves, examining their structure and types of information that they contain.

Week 2: Limitations of the Statistics

In this session, students would examine both the criticisms made of the statistics as a source by Tobias and Sindall, as well as Gatrell and Hadden’s response to these criticisms and the latter’s use of statistics to examine long‐term trends.

Week 3: The Taylor Thesis

This session would be structured around the debate between Taylor, Morris and Godfrey about the ‘political economy’ of the statistics.

Week 4: The Interactionist Position

This session would examine the interactionist approach to the statistics, using the three readings as a basis for discussion.