Recently, project volunteers have been sorting through stacks of police documents (including wanted posters, telegrams, printed notices, and handwritten letters) in the possession of the Berwick Constabulary, dating from the 1880s and 1890s. Much of these documents have been variant forms of correspondences and incoming communications from other police constabularies from many diverse regions across the country. As to be expected, the most commonly reported crime in these documents concern the loss of property. Typically, the items most frequently stolen and pursued were watches (usually lever watches and their accompanying chains known as ‘Alberts’) and jewelry such as brooches. Following these, there were many listings of stolen clothing or material goods, with garments such as jackets and higher-end fabrics such as ‘Persian silk’ routinely being listed as lost. With some of these listings, there occasionally is found attached to the notice a selection of matching fabric swatches to help aid the police in their investigations
Many of the reports found in the archival documents were copies of itemized lists of stolen goods from Newcastle, usually describing the missing goods in great detail and likely an example of routine mass-distribution of information across the region’s police stations. As demonstrated through their recurrence within these documents, the frequency and commonality of this type of petty to mid-level, property-based crime shows us that the intersection between crime and poverty in this period was an interlocked phenomenon. Indeed, many of these instances of petty theft, such as the taking of small items like silk handkerchiefs, is exemplary of a kind of opportunistic criminal enterprise, and one was usually only small-scale in its remit. A key example of this is the case of a vagabond who spotted some clothes drying on a hedge and decided to swap them with his own and disappear with a freshly clean new wardrobe. There were several other instances of this type of opportunistic theft occurring in rural communities too, and usually these involved the taking of animals such as horses and/or livestock such as the stealing of two sheep in Hawick or another case of duck-napping in Crosshall outside of Eccles .
With many of these cases found within the documents, the role of transportation is clearly a crucial element in understanding how the 1880s and 1890s were experienced as decades that saw an increased interaction between mobility, geography, and the interaction of different social classes.
Similarly, with the transformation that increased mobility had brought for criminal opportunities, the uptake of transportation and technology by law enforcement was equally fervent. This is clear in the way these posters, notices, and letters held with the archives show the way in which crimes that have taken place, sometimes, in completely different regions of the country, are nonetheless circulated and made apparent to the numerous police forces across the nation. As with the roof-cutting burglary, which in reality has little to do with the Berwick constabulary, other similar cases such as the theft of some prized artwork in London (which included works by Constable and Alma-Tadema), demonstrate how communication lines had transformed the way in which police activity was increasingly expanding at the end of the century and had transformed local crime into something of national attention. The urgency of many of the letters also show that the postal system had reached an incredibly efficient standard by the 1890s, in which communication of crime was able to be successfully dispersed great distances within the space of 24-48 hours after its discovery. As is evident with these cases listed here, the breadth of the geography covered is wide and the breadth of communication is shown to be extensive with cases ranging from Portsmouth, to Cardiff, to Worcester, and up to Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Although much of these crimes demonstrate a similar kind of narrative in the way the events play-out in the reports, there are a few notable instances of slightly more unique approaches to theft. One such example involves a thief in Glasgow posing as a local barrack’s representative, described as ‘looking respectable’ and dressed as a soldier. The man acquired a significant number of watches from a city jewelers, convincing the shop owner that he was a liaison for the city’s barracks before disappearing with the items. It was found that a similar crime had also been committed in Edinburgh, suggesting that this individual had developed a successful system that was dependent upon his apparent credibility in order to poach these items with relative ease. It is notable the way in which the physical description of suspects often hinges around this idea of ‘respectability’, and there is clearly an unspoken code or shorthand of what qualities this term would suggest.
In a similar vein to the ‘respectable’ watch thief, there were multiple instances of embezzlement and fraud found in the reports, often which required a level of coercion and subterfuge greater than the standard opportunistic pilfering found in watch and brooch thefts. One such case involved a man known by the name of H. G. Henry who described himself as a retired army captain and went around the Tyneside area taking out finely furnished rooms under the pretence that his belongings and money were delayed in arriving. Once suspicions started to encroach upon Mr. Henry, he then disappeared without paying for the rooms and services he had made use of. Other such cases of fraud include an incident concerning door-to-door subscription fraud, another regarding cheque fraud committed in Glasgow and a case of embezzlement by John Bough [BA/P/15/4/94] from Liverpool who was suspected of attempting to leave the country with the £13 (£1640 in 2018) he had swiped from his cash register at the Liverpool Patent Stopper Mineral Water Company.
One case concerning embezzlement shows the unique way in which police communication can serve as a glimpse into the way in which perception and memory were used to help further investigations during the period. In the case of a man called Charles Mackie, accused of embezzlement in 1890 [BA/P/15/11/95], the notice shows a perfect distillation of the way in which physical description was utilised within police communication in order to compensate for the lack of photographic evidence: Mackie is described as having ‘one eye nearly turned out of sight when looking upward but is in the habit of looking at the ground’. Other cases echo this kind of thumbnail character sketch in which small details are registered, with one describing a suspect as having a ‘squeaky voice’ and a ‘fast walk’, whilst another is described as having worn out shoes, another as having noticeable dental issues, and another describing a man in his 70s who, conspicuously, sported a ‘long light-coloured wig.’ It is through these small instances of eccentricity in the reportage that many volunteers find glimmers of something tangible when working with these documents that help to enliven the past through their specificity.
One surprising revelation found in the sifting of these documents is the fact that violence is featured less prominently than initially suspected. This could be because, as today, theft was clearly a more common crime; but it could also be that also be that cases of violence that did occur within a district were generally dealt with in a swifter manner and thus the need for inter-district communication was reduced. That being said, there are, of course, some notable cases of violent crime such as one of matricide in Edinburgh committed by Henry Lang [BA/P/15/11/101], a case of murder-suicide concerning insurance, and a poster on an Italian gang murder in London in 1890, complete with an illustration of the suspect, Michele Ardolino.
In a similar vein, there were some occasional cases of missing persons and even more uncommonly, cases of missing children, such as Mary Ann McKinley who had escaped from the South Shields workhouse [BA/P/15/15/28]. Also found was a report of a missing 2-year-old girl called Margaret Campbell, who was allegedly taken by ‘trampers’ from her home at 6 Fleet Court, Gallowgate in Newcastle in 1885. The report contained detailed descriptions of her appearance, describing her hair as being cut in a ‘can-can’ fashion and that she was wearing a ‘blue flannel petticoat and dark blue flannel frock’ but, crucially was without hat, stockings, or boots. Another case that was uncovered has a kind of tragic sensationalism to it that nonetheless shows the level vulnerability operating within Victorian society: it tells of a parcel which arrived in Bristol from Edinburgh and was opened up to reveal the body of dead, 2-week-old baby. Though only one document, it nonetheless bears the weight of a multitude of different narratives ranging from the immediate questions of who, why, and what happened, to larger stories of infant mortality and poverty to the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses such as postpartum psychosis (if, indeed, this is even part of this case’s story).
Many of these cases bear the burden of requiring further investigation by the very nature of them being fragmentary glimpses into larger stories of lives that have at some point intersected with the law. It this kind of meeting with the ordinary and the everyday of the past that many of our volunteers have found most rewarding and illuminating when working with the documents. Like a small window into otherwise anonymous and forgotten lives, the documents provide a network between the past and the present and help to refocus the idea of where history occurs as in small actions and eccentric personalities that nonetheless reverberate back to us today. In addition to mediating would-be forgotten individuals, the documents also show through their annotations, scribblings, misspellings, and messy handwriting the very sense of aliveness between the past and today that can only be recovered when holding a faded telegram or a scuffed letter, with all its inkblots visible to see.
Ryan McNab