Although on occasion the Bow Street Runners, then-London law enforcers, would travel to the countryside where one of their criminal cases might take them, the areas of the countryside were policed by magistrates. These, in turn, appointed bailiffs, who imprisoned and linked criminals to said magistrates. Justices of the peace dealt with minor crimes in minor sessions. The most serious cases were held four times a year in the Quarterly Sessions. The most serious cases were referred by the Quarterly Sessions to the sitting judges to be heard at the Assizes.
The Magistrates were appointed by the Crown and came from the landed aristocracy, the rural gentry and the Anglican clergy, who were often related to the noble houses.
According to Roger Swift, who wrote on the Judiciary in 19th-century England (see full title of summary below), the country’s magistrates wielded considerable power. Many towns had still been incorporated, so these and the country were the province of the magistrate. “The magistracy exercised a wide range of administrative responsibilities which included the licensing of breweries, the inspection of prisons and lunatic asylums, the superintendence of roads, public buildings and charitable institutions, and the enforcement of vagrancy laws. … (and they) adjudicated in dispute resolution…” (p.75)
These men presumably dealt with justice, but the poor suffered greatly and the biased magistrates had the children transported to Australia for stealing bread for their sick mothers. Poaching, carried out to feed starving families whose land had been fenced off by their wealthy neighbors, was severely punished. Transportation and hanging were common. Although many gentry landowners employed the poor on their estates, much of the injustice continued until reforms came during the Victorian period.
Soldiers returning from the peninsular wars, lacking families and able to pay for passage into the country, unable to find employment, were caught up in poaching. Saturday’s breach was frowned upon, so drinkers and gamblers caught like this were placed in action on the public ‘green’ for all to see. Abuses occurred in the northern areas of England, for example in mining, where workers were paid in food or goods rather than money well into the Victorian period.
Compared to London, the dangers on the field were minor. Despite this, some biased magistrates still treated vagrancy with transportation. Usually this punishment was seven years, but in the case of the children, the hearts of the mothers were broken, because if their children survived the boat trip, they were never seen again. Work among the Botany Bay gangs was said to be tough. Only the strong survived and few managed to return to England.
The world of Regency England for the poor, the underprivileged, and the outsiders, was truly a dangerous place. My heroes and heroines had a lot to face in their fight against oppression.
Summary: The English urban magistracy and the administration of justice in the early nineteenth century: Wolverhampton 1815-1860. By Roger Swift, Chester College of Further Education
From: Reswift. ‘Crime, Law, and Order in Two English Towns in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Exeter and Wolverhampton Experience, 1815-56’ (University of Birmingham Ph.D. Thesis. 1981), 322-51.
Published in: history of midlandsthe leading magazine covering the history of the English Midlands.
