2:00

To the eyes of a trained police officer in the

2:02

late 19th century, Whitechapel

2:04

was somewhere that would keep you on

2:06

your toes. Hello

2:35

and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And

2:37

I'm Anthony. And today we're

2:39

going to be talking about crime in

2:42

the 19th century. Now, we do talk

2:44

a lot about crime on After Dark,

2:46

but it's usually one type of crime

2:48

more than any other, that is murder.

2:51

Today, we're going to be setting that

2:53

aside and we're going to be looking at the history of

2:56

other crimes, the world of

2:58

everyday crimes, some just as dark

3:00

as murder. But we're going to

3:02

be asking what they can tell

3:04

us about the past, about the

3:06

society in which they were committed,

3:08

and some of the systems

3:10

by which they were punished. Our

3:13

guest today is Dr. Drew Gray. He's

3:15

a historian of crime and punishment in

3:17

the 18th and 19th century and his

3:19

new book called Netherworld, Crime and the

3:21

Police Courts in Victorian London is

3:24

out now. Drew, welcome to the show.

3:26

Thank you for having me. You're very

3:28

welcome. So let's start

3:31

off by thinking a little bit

3:33

about the police and the

3:35

police magistrates court in the 19th century.

3:37

We're all quite familiar with a Dickensian

3:40

view of 19th

3:42

century London, Victorian London covered

3:44

in smog. There's children running

3:46

about pickpocketing, as we heard

3:49

in that introduction. What

3:51

role do the police have in dealing

3:54

with some of those crimes and what

3:56

is the police court? What does it

3:58

look like in this period? So

4:01

the police who are really quite a new

4:03

invention because they only come along in 1829.

4:07

So we've had a sort of a different sort of

4:09

system of amateurish policing before that. So

4:11

the new professional police that Peel brings

4:13

in hit the streets in the early

4:16

19th century, in the early 1830s. And

4:19

the streets is really their battleground.

4:21

So this is where they

4:23

are. They're very visible. They have blue

4:26

swallowtail coats and big tall stovepipe

4:28

hats and they're carrying their truncheons.

4:31

They're kind of blending in but not

4:33

blending in with ordinary people going about

4:35

their daily jobs and

4:37

their daily pastimes. And they're

4:40

there patrolling a set beat all

4:43

day and most of the night in

4:45

a way that London hadn't been properly policed previously.

4:48

We used to have watchmen that operated at night,

4:50

but we didn't have patrols during the daytime. So

4:52

this is new and they're

4:55

immediately going to run into positively

4:57

and negatively all the people who

4:59

also occupy the street. Which

5:02

might be the juvenile delinquents that you

5:04

mentioned in the introduction. But it will

5:06

also mean men who work selling stuff

5:09

off barrows, costamongers who are selling their

5:11

wares, those sorts of tradesmen. They're also

5:13

going to be on the lookout for

5:15

the pickpockets and the shoplifters and those

5:17

sorts of characters. And for

5:20

anybody else who's causing an obstruction on the

5:22

street, that can come into all sorts of

5:24

different categories. Then of course we

5:26

have the police courts, which are

5:28

called police courts, but that's not

5:31

necessarily because they belong to the

5:33

police. They're staffed by

5:35

stipendary magistrates since the early 1790s.

5:37

So throughout most of the 19th

5:39

century. They start off with seven

5:41

or eight of these in London and gradually as

5:43

we move through the 19th century we sort of

5:46

get up into double figures. I think by the

5:48

outbreak of the First World War there are 13

5:50

courts in London, 14 courts in London. All

5:53

serving their local area with a

5:55

little staff of two or three magistrates

5:57

at each of them. And usually a

5:59

policeman attached. Andrew,

12:00

what do these courts feel like they need

12:02

to send up? What's the criteria? If they're

12:04

covering so many different things, what is the

12:06

criteria for a case where they say, this

12:09

one ain't for us, let's send that one

12:11

up? There's some technical stuff

12:13

in there, and some of that is around the

12:15

nature of the offence. A bit like today. So

12:17

I think today, magistrates can deal with offences up

12:19

to a certain point, and then they have to

12:22

send them before a Crown Court. But

12:25

from 1855, you could choose for certain

12:29

offences, for certain property offences, you could

12:31

choose to have those cases heard before

12:33

a magistrate. Now there's an advantage if

12:36

you pled guilty. So let's say you're

12:38

arrested for picking pockets, as many people

12:40

were, especially young women, you know, you're

12:42

on the omnibus and you've been picking

12:44

pockets and you've been caught, and you're

12:46

taken before a magistrate. Now you have

12:49

an option. If you go before a

12:51

jury, you might get off, you

12:53

might be able to persuade the jury or your

12:55

lawyer might be able to persuade the jury or

12:57

you might be able to have the right demeanor

12:59

in court to get away with it. And they

13:02

won't find you guilty, and you'll walk. And that's

13:04

great. But if you get found guilty, you

13:06

can get a much stiffer sentence from

13:09

a jury court than you will from

13:11

a magistrate who will just probably find

13:13

you, send you to prison for a

13:15

few weeks, or months, or

13:17

possibly a year, maybe a couple

13:19

of years, and that's about it. So

13:21

the risk is smaller. So copper

13:24

plea of guilty, get a reduced

13:26

sentence. And for the magistrates,

13:28

again, they also have that risk

13:30

or the police, they also have that risk reversed.

13:33

I think this person is guilty, but I don't,

13:35

I'm not sure I have the proof. So they

13:37

might hold you for a week, might

13:39

put you in the cells for a week. So the

13:42

police have more time to gather evidence against you, then

13:44

it comes back. And then the magistrate has to make

13:46

a decision. Do I send this person to court or

13:48

do I deal with them summarily? If I send them

13:50

to court, they might get off. If

13:52

I deal with them summarily, at least I

13:54

know that they're going to get three months

13:56

or something, and they're taken off the streets

13:58

and they're given a bit of a reminder.

14:00

So there's that kind of of thing going

14:02

on. Obviously there are some offences like begging,

14:04

vagrancy, other misdemeanours and destruction which are only

14:06

dealt with at a summary level. But when

14:08

it comes to something like theft and

14:11

violence, there is a kind of moveable

14:14

feast, if you like, as to whether

14:16

that goes up through the system or

14:18

not. They're a great way of keeping

14:20

the criminal justice system moving. We're aware

14:22

in 21st century Britain of how

14:24

difficult, how clogged up our courts are, how

14:27

long it takes to get a case heard,

14:29

which has negatives for both the victim of

14:31

crime and for the potential perpetrator. But in

14:33

the 19th century I think that's moving much

14:35

more quickly. So justice is swifter.

14:37

It may not always be fair, but it's

14:39

swifter. Have

14:57

you ever imagined what it would be

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towering above you in Renaissance Florence? To

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your face as you sail into the

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pirate port of Nassau? I'm

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Matt Lewis, host of the Echoes of

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History podcast. And if like me, you

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at Menards. Let's

17:05

get into some of those individual stories then.

17:08

I think we're about to hear from Anthony

17:10

who's going to tell us the story of

17:12

one particular person involved in the court and

17:14

then Drew will get your take on this

17:16

story. The

17:23

gathered audience at Marlborough Street Magistrates

17:25

Court hush. Looking

17:27

to the front of the room where

17:29

the magistrate, Mr. Hane, sits in a

17:31

semi-circular cave of wooden panelling. From

17:35

behind his impressive wooden bench he

17:37

views the defendant. People

17:39

shift in their seats. The court

17:41

scribe stretches his fingers and

17:43

a newspaperman scribbles down his

17:45

observations. It's January 1889

17:49

and Miss Tottie Faye is back in

17:51

the dark. We've seen Tottie

17:54

before. Not always with the

17:56

same name. Sometimes she goes

17:58

by Lillian Rothschild. other

18:00

times, Violet Sinjin. Once

18:03

or twice she has been

18:05

introduced as Mabel Gray, or alternatively,

18:07

Maud Legrand, or Lily Levant.

18:10

She must have reached more than 20 aliases,

18:13

adding Blanche Herbert, Florence Lorade,

18:15

and Amy Sinclair to the

18:17

roster. Dressed, as

18:19

our newsman reports, as a woman of

18:21

the town, Tati's appearance would

18:23

almost be smart were it not for the

18:26

gaudy bright colours of her dress. She

18:29

is charged with disorderly behaviour and

18:31

drunkenness, having been arrested on New

18:33

Year's Eve at the Bath Hotel

18:35

on Piccadilly. The proprietor

18:38

had thrown her out for running

18:40

undressed all over the hotel. Tati

18:44

pleads with the magistrate, but it is

18:46

no use. She is fined

18:48

40 shillings or another month

18:50

in sight. Quite

18:55

a character. Drew, tell us who

18:57

is Tati? She's obviously a woman

19:00

who goes by different aliases. It sounds

19:02

like from the innuendo in that account

19:05

that she is a sex worker. Who

19:08

is she and how have you come

19:10

across about her in your research? Well,

19:12

she's my new favourite obsession. Tati is

19:14

probably born in the 1850s

19:17

in Seven Dials, Covent Garden in

19:19

London. Very, very poor area,

19:21

probably the daughter of a costa monger,

19:24

and probably Anne Anderson, as I can't find

19:26

her in the records. Anne Anderson isn't an

19:28

easy name to trace, of course, but unlike

19:30

Tati, which comes up much more easily. So

19:33

I think she is probably

19:35

prostituting herself from about the age of

19:37

14, which is shocking, but

19:39

not necessarily unusual. And as

19:42

she moves through the years, she seems to have

19:44

a sort of modus operandi. And

19:46

I think it goes something like this. She

19:49

picks up men in the west

19:51

end of London. And that

19:53

again is quite a normal practice for

19:55

sex workers in the 19th century. So

19:58

the men have been out for the

20:00

night. They been to the clubs and

20:02

to the theatres and quite often theatre

20:04

audiences would be a mingling of sex

20:06

workers and the general public and she's

20:09

persuaded him to buy her a drink

20:12

and then perhaps suggested that they go to a

20:14

hotel and she's then slipped

20:16

the porter at the hotel a little bit

20:18

of money to let them in by the

20:20

back door and to ask no questions and

20:22

that I think probably works for her for

20:25

a while but my feeling

20:27

is that gradually where she is consuming

20:29

alcohol as part of that process it

20:31

actually then becomes a prop and then

20:34

she moves into dependency so she becomes

20:36

an alcoholic so by the

20:38

time we get to the 1880s

20:41

Totti is an alcoholic I think

20:43

that then she gets caught up in frauds

20:47

and pecky thefts and more serious

20:49

thefts and that means she

20:51

falls into the system in different ways

20:53

so she appears in court really often

20:55

for drunkenness and this amuses

20:57

the reading public, muses the newspapers and

21:01

she becomes a feature in the newspapers because

21:04

of that because on the one

21:06

level it's amusing the colourful descriptions that you give

21:08

of her I mean she has

21:10

all these aliases she has an array of

21:12

rather strange clothes that always seem to be

21:14

cobbled together as if she's wandered into a

21:16

charity shop drunk and gone the other side

21:19

and all these things have just fallen onto

21:21

her that's how she looks and

21:23

it's sad the way the newspapers take the

21:25

mickey out of her for this because I

21:27

think in one way what Totti's trying to

21:29

do is get away from where she was

21:31

born she's actually trying to go up through

21:33

the social level she always describes herself as

21:35

a lady she says she's always

21:37

got an excuse she says you know I

21:39

was waiting for my poor mama my poor

21:42

mama's died how dare this nasty policeman move

21:44

me along because I'm a proper lady and

21:46

that's how she thinks about herself and I

21:48

think perhaps at the beginning it's a useful

21:50

excuse to fall on the mercy of the

21:53

court I think at the end she believes

21:55

it she genuinely believes this and

21:57

the 19th century is not a century for social

21:59

climate You know, people stay in

22:01

their place. She's a working class girl from

22:03

Covent Garden. She should stay where she is,

22:05

not try and pretend to be someone she's

22:07

not a Dolly LeBlanc. She's Anne Anderson, you

22:09

know, that's who she is. Do

22:11

you think that the police courts

22:14

act as a vehicle to transform

22:16

some of these people into almost

22:18

popular characters? That the

22:20

reality of their lives on the street

22:23

and when they come into the courts

22:25

is very different from the version of

22:27

them that is picked up in that

22:29

process by newspapermen and rehashed

22:31

in order to sell copy. Do you think

22:33

there's a disparity there? Definitely. I

22:35

mean, the reality is that newspapers

22:37

have little vignettes about the stories.

22:39

I mean, there are thousands of

22:41

cases coming for the police courts

22:43

every day across London and maybe

22:45

eight, maybe six, eight, ten get

22:47

in the newspapers the morning and

22:50

the evening and a few more at the weekend. They've

22:52

got a short paragraph to tell you a story, maybe

22:54

a bit longer sometimes. And yeah,

22:57

they reinforce messages. We know this

22:59

today, but this is definitely true

23:01

of the 19th century. Newspapers don't

23:03

just report news neutrally. They

23:05

create news. They spin news. They create a story

23:08

and they create one that suits their readers. So

23:11

the readers of the Times might get a

23:13

different slant to the readers of Reynolds newspaper,

23:15

which is a much more working class newspaper.

23:17

Characters like Tottie are useful. They

23:20

reinforce the idea that working class, these sorts

23:22

of working class women and sex workers are

23:24

drunks. But they

23:26

also then get used by campaigners who

23:28

want to change the law and drunkenness,

23:31

who want more support for people who are

23:33

alcoholics. It's beginning to

23:35

be understood in the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s that alcoholism is a

23:37

thing. They

23:41

just thought it was a moral failing before. And now

23:43

they're understanding that it's a mental health issue that needs

23:45

to be treated in an asylum, which

23:48

of course is where Tottie ends up. She

23:50

ends up being taken from prison,

23:52

from Wermyr's scrubs, to Broadmoor,

23:54

criminal asylum, and then ends up

23:56

in other asylums the rest of her life before she takes

23:58

the time to get to the hospital. dies in

24:01

the early 20th century in an asylum

24:03

in Surrey at Horton. And

24:05

she is used as evidence for people

24:07

who are trying to push through the legislation that

24:09

eventually ends up in the 1888 Inebriates Act. Parts

24:13

of that act allow magistrates to send people

24:15

to a retreat, to a sort of clearing

24:17

up place. She's part of

24:19

that, not necessarily deliberately, but she's

24:21

used in that way. So

24:23

they can be used for entertainment. And,

24:26

you know, Wildtotty's in prison on one

24:28

occasion. There's a musical act which includes

24:30

a totee-fey. People in other parts

24:32

of the country, just like these in the Jack Meripa

24:34

case, are kind of calling themselves

24:36

totee-fey, you know, or a woman who's found

24:38

drunk in the street, well, that's a totee-fey,

24:41

isn't it? Because she's become that famous. One

24:44

of the things which I think you're

24:46

explaining really well, Drew, is that there

24:48

is this cartoonish element or this very

24:50

public-facing element to some of these people

24:52

and characters that are being described

24:55

in the situations that they find

24:57

themselves in the court. But then

24:59

there's this darker side that's behind.

25:01

So you mentioned in Tottie's case

25:03

the effects of alcoholism. And

25:05

you mentioned earlier about women bringing their

25:07

husbands to these courts for domestic abuse

25:09

cases. I'm just wondering if you might

25:11

be able to talk a little bit

25:14

more about those cases in particular. Yeah,

25:16

certainly. So all through the 19th century,

25:18

way back, in fact, women

25:20

had been bringing their violent

25:22

partners to magistrates, before magistrates,

25:25

for abuse. And

25:28

I think particularly in the 19th century, the police court

25:30

magistrates are quite keen for something to

25:32

be done about this. They want to

25:34

take a bit of a stricter line. They

25:36

recognize that this is a problem. I mean,

25:38

men arguably have had the right to abuse

25:40

their wives in the 18th and 19th century,

25:42

kind of. That's

25:44

been allowed as long as they didn't

25:47

go too far. And the classic one

25:49

is, as long as you don't beat

25:51

someone with a stick thicker than your

25:53

thumb, that's the kind of rhetoric. It's

25:56

pretty unpleasant stuff. But women constantly brought

25:58

their partners into the magistrates' courts. in

26:00

London, partly I think, to shame

26:03

them and because they wanted to stop

26:05

it. You can almost guarantee that if

26:07

a woman brought her husband in for

26:09

beating her it wasn't the first time,

26:11

it wasn't the second or the third,

26:13

it was the fifth, tenth, twentieth time

26:16

and finally she's had enough. But often

26:18

they don't want anything really done about

26:20

it and the issue there

26:22

of course is because if the court decides

26:24

to fine the man, well that's a cost

26:27

on the family purse, if they decide to

26:29

send him to prison, there's

26:31

the breadwinner off to jail for

26:33

months, that's no use at all. And in

26:36

some respects just by taking him to court

26:38

the woman has another risk because if he

26:40

goes home or if he comes out of

26:42

prison then he's likely to beat her again

26:44

in retribution for taking him in in the

26:46

first place. So sometimes it's probably a way

26:49

of alerting the neighborhood and the community

26:51

to what's going on, maybe the family,

26:54

the wider family to say I need

26:56

some support. Sometimes I think that the

26:58

women believe that the magistrate can divorce

27:00

them. He can't divorce them but he

27:02

can sometimes help them with

27:05

a separation and maybe try

27:07

and compel the man to pay sort of

27:09

a kind of alimony to support her, whether

27:11

that's very successful or not I doubt. But

27:14

women are in a very difficult position in the

27:16

19th century and a tremendous amount

27:18

of this is not being reported, it's not going

27:20

before a court. Drew,

27:22

how much agency then do you think

27:24

women had in the court space? You're

27:26

saying that often the court is

27:28

a tool for them to use to

27:31

alert their neighborhood or to give

27:33

their husband some kind of warning

27:36

in a way outside of

27:38

the home where they maybe don't have the same

27:40

level of agency or it's an active dangerous environment

27:42

for them. But then we hear about women like

27:44

Totti who are right

27:47

at the lowest levels of

27:49

society and having to engage

27:51

in these ways of survival

27:53

that are criminalized in the

27:55

19th century and indeed today.

27:57

And in Totti's case

27:59

it sounds like her agency is

28:01

stripped from her by the court

28:03

and she's made into literally a

28:05

musical character and

28:07

sent to prison and sent to an asylum.

28:10

So is the court somewhere where

28:13

women can find a voice and some

28:15

power or does it act as

28:17

just another way of oppressing them in this 19th

28:19

century world? Or is it a mixture of the

28:21

two? Is it more nuanced than that? I

28:24

think it is more nuanced. I mean,

28:26

the courts are male dominated spaces, you

28:28

know, as are the jury courts. No woman sits on a

28:30

jury in this country until 1919. So these are very male

28:36

dominated places, the judges are all male,

28:38

the madstrokes are all male and they come

28:40

from a very patriarchal society and the

28:42

19th century London is a very patriarchal

28:44

society. However, that doesn't mean that women

28:46

aren't involved. Women are workers, they have

28:50

a lot of agency in their communities

28:52

and the Whitechapel women, we talked from

28:54

Whitechapel at the beginning, Whitechapel is a

28:56

community where women have very strong roles

28:59

in that society. I

29:01

think when they come before the court

29:03

as supplicants, complaining about their husbands or,

29:05

you know, or they're coming in to

29:07

ask for poor relief or that

29:10

kind of thing, then as long

29:12

as they present themselves as honest, decent

29:14

women, then the courts will support them.

29:16

If they come across as Harradans or drunks

29:19

or sex workers, the court will not support

29:21

them because they don't meet the ideals of

29:23

women. To some extent, that's true of men,

29:26

much less so. And I think

29:28

it's really interesting when you look at a case of shoplifting,

29:30

for example, which is classically

29:32

deemed as a female offence. In

29:34

the courts when they report it,

29:36

when the newspapers report it, because

29:38

again, the newspapers play a role

29:40

here in that whole agency and

29:42

characterisation that's super important, females, shoplifters

29:44

who are working class are named,

29:46

you know, be Betty Adams or

29:48

whatever. The female shoplifters from

29:51

the wealthier classes who have been

29:53

caught shoplifting in Harrids or wherever,

29:55

they're not named. It's a lady who

29:57

was taken before Marlborough and the police called.

30:00

Betty Adams was taken before Worship Street

30:02

Court. And the working

30:04

class girl will be sent to prison or

30:06

sent before a higher court. Most

30:08

likely, that's the most likely option. The middle

30:11

class woman won't be sent to prison. That

30:14

will quietly be dealt with and

30:16

the shopkeeper will have his goods back and

30:18

everyone will forget all about it. And presumably

30:21

the woman will get some help. And

30:23

that's a completely different way. So

30:25

I think it's, whilst gender is

30:27

massively important in understanding that society,

30:30

class, unfortunately, class is

30:32

just as important, if not more important

30:35

to understand that society. So it's where

30:37

you're from as much as what

30:40

body you're born into. That's so interesting, the

30:42

point you make about class, Drew, because I've

30:44

been having conversations online with people

30:47

who consume history that aren't in academia or

30:49

aren't professional historians. And one of the things

30:51

that they find frustrating is

30:53

the repeated, in

30:55

the public sphere, the repeated emphasis

30:57

on elite histories or

31:00

even middling histories. But actually

31:02

what you're describing here is that

31:04

these court archives are a wealth

31:07

of working class histories. And I

31:09

was just wondering to what extent you think

31:12

that the working class histories we come across

31:15

are dictated by these kind

31:17

of legal proceedings because often that's

31:19

one of the only places we're

31:21

gonna find names, addresses, job titles.

31:25

I'm just wondering how you feel that those kind

31:27

of legal archives have shaped working class histories. I

31:29

mean, my interest in history was

31:32

really sparked as an undergraduate by

31:34

crime history because it allowed me

31:36

to get in touch with working

31:38

class people and their histories, that kind

31:41

of social history, but also

31:43

when you look at sort of the history

31:45

of the workhouse, those sorts of struggles. So

31:47

those sorts of things tell us about working

31:50

class people. So I think that the resources

31:52

are problematic and they get better

31:54

in the 19th

31:56

century and much into

31:58

the 20th century because... It's like I had

32:01

a student recently who said he wanted to

32:03

look at crime and punishment through the diaries

32:06

of working class people in the 18th and

32:08

19th century and I said, you can't, you

32:11

just can't because they

32:13

didn't leave diaries. Either

32:16

they couldn't write, because many could read

32:18

but not write, or they could just write their name,

32:20

but also when are they going to get the time?

32:22

We campaigned in the

32:24

late 19th century for the 10-hour day.

32:27

I mean, you don't, when are you going to

32:29

be doing any writing your diary? You know, just

32:32

not going to happen. So I

32:34

think the crime records give us that information,

32:36

you know, so the Old Bay online gives

32:38

fantastic information about individuals, the newspapers give us

32:40

information, but we don't often have the voices

32:43

and that's the thing that's sad to me,

32:45

because you don't, you don't hear them. In

32:47

the police courts, in the reports of them,

32:49

someone like Tothi Fay who stands up in

32:52

court, you hear her. It may be there

32:54

for entertainment, but at least you hear her

32:56

voice. That's quite a noise. Do

32:58

you think that has skewed working class histories

33:01

then, because we're seeing them through the lens

33:03

of legal proceedings? Do you think that's

33:05

something we're left with, but kind of have no choice,

33:07

but to, that's what we have to work with, as

33:09

you're saying in terms of your student who asked about

33:11

the diaries, they just don't exist. So

33:13

do you think that gives us a particular slant

33:16

that we need to work against often? Yeah, but

33:18

that's what the historian's job is, you know, you're

33:20

trained to look at sources, you're trained to analyze

33:22

sources, not take them at face value, to read

33:24

between the lines, quite literally to

33:26

kind of look into the gaps in archives

33:28

and work out what's missing there. And

33:31

court rep was great for that because they're not

33:33

of a baton report. I get my students to

33:35

reconstruct criminal trials and I get them to think

33:38

about what isn't being said here? What would you

33:40

want to ask? What do you think that question

33:42

has been asked there? What do you want to

33:44

ask? Let's see if we can piece that stuff

33:46

together. And you have to be creative and you

33:49

have to be analytical and you have

33:51

to kind of work on best-case scenarios

33:53

of what you've got. So reconstructing

33:55

history is really important. History isn't

33:58

simple, the stories are great. but

34:01

you have to read those stories in

34:03

context and you have to read those stories

34:05

with a sharp eye and I think you

34:07

will never get 100% the truth but you'll

34:11

get as close to it. It's been absolutely

34:13

fascinating Drew. Before we let you go we've

34:15

talked about quite heavy topics and I just

34:17

wonder if you've ever come across any crime

34:19

that really stood out for you as being

34:21

a little bit light-hearted and possibly a little

34:24

bit enjoyable in these court records. I

34:26

find myself admiring some of the people.

34:28

That's the thing. I find myself admiring

34:30

people and their ingenuity and I know

34:33

sometimes we see them as criminals or

34:35

as people who are trying to blag

34:37

stuff or you know get away with

34:39

things but I I think some of

34:41

the ways in which people try really

34:44

hard to survive in that really difficult

34:46

world we have to think this is

34:48

the world with no social welfare policy

34:50

with with very limited access to medicine

34:52

you know with where people are going

34:54

to mostly die relatively young compared to

34:57

our society where people have really hard

34:59

lives and I suppose it's

35:01

the strengths that they show in surviving

35:03

through that. So I can't really give

35:05

you a hilarious quip for the end

35:08

but I would say that this it's

35:10

the humanity that you see sometimes as

35:12

well in the magistrates. Magistrates handing down

35:15

money to people, magistrates making sure that

35:17

a woman is okay, intervening with the

35:19

parish authorities to make sure that children

35:21

who are being abused are rescued from

35:24

that situation. Even the Salvation Army doing

35:26

good things as well as making a

35:28

terrible route. Those sorts of things are

35:30

things that make me feel better about

35:32

it. It's not all doom and gloom

35:35

and I suspect that's reflected in

35:38

our courts today. You know our society we

35:40

often focus on the negative for

35:42

understandable reasons but there's

35:44

probably just as much as positive out there if

35:46

you only go and look for it. Well

35:49

I think that's a perfect upbeat note on

35:51

which to end this episode. Drew thank you

35:53

that's been so fascinating and I think there

35:55

are a lot of our listeners who will

35:57

be interested in Drew's book which is called

35:59

Netherworld Crime. in the police courts in Victorian

36:02

London, which is out now. Drew, thank you

36:04

very much. If you have enjoyed this episode,

36:06

please leave us a five star review. It

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