After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Real Life Crime in Victorian London

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

"You've got to pick a pocket or two" says Fagan to Oliver Twist about the foggy streets of Victorian London where poverty and oppression abounded. Today we look at the every day crimes of Victorian London from pickpockets on omnibuses to the trauma of domestic violence with the help of Drew Gray, author of Nether World: Crime and the Police Courts in Victorian London.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AFTERDARK.You can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast

Rory and Kit here from the award-winning podcast, This Paranormal Life. Every week we investigate a paranormal story and decide if it's real or a hoax. Like the time a guy claimed he punched Bigfoot. Or when a UFO showed up at a football game in front of thousands of people. Each episode has sound effects, music and storytelling that feels so real, you'll never sleep again. You will. Stop it, you're going to scare away new listeners. Check out This Paranormal Life every Tuesday, wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Welcome to the streets of East London. Whitechapel to be exact. It is the late 19th century. Recently, a spate of murders has taken place within these few square miles. Amongst the inhabitants of this part of London are the workers and tradesmen who push the city forwards. Street hawkers trundle their wares over the cobbles as others rush around them. Shift workers from the factories massage their hands

as they journey home. But despite the dilapidation of the buildings, the stench of the smoke and the sweat in the air, the atmosphere is lively. There is so much more to this place than the horrific murders that have occurred here. Peeled eyes might spot the odd child darting through the assembled vibrant crowd.

Small old hands slip into pockets and remove personal items. You'd miss this, of course, if you didn't know precisely what to look for. So, to the eyes of a trained police officer in the late 19th century, Whitechapel was somewhere that would keep you on your toes. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And today we're going to be talking about crime in the 19th century. Now, we do talk a lot about crime on After Dark, but it's usually one type of crime more than any other. That is murder.

Today we're going to be setting that aside and we're going to be looking at the history of other crimes, the world of everyday crimes, some just as dark as murder, but we're going to be asking what they can tell us about the past, about the society in which they were committed, and some of the systems by which they were punished. Our guest today is Dr Drew Gray. He's a historian of crime and punishment in the 18th and 19th century, and his new book called Netherworld, Crime and the Police Courts in Victorian London, is out now. Drew, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You're very welcome. So let's start off by thinking a little

bit about the police and the police magistrates court in the 19th century. We're all quite familiar with a Dickensian view of 19th century London, Victorian London, covered in smog. There's children running about pickpocketing as we heard in that introduction. What role do the police have in dealing with some of those crimes? And what is the police court? What does it look like in this period? So the police who are really quite a new invention, because they only come along in 1829. So we've had a sort of a different sort of system of amateurish policing before that. So the new professional police that Peel brings in hit the streets in the early 19th century, in the early 1830s. And the streets is really

their battleground. So this is where they are. And they're very visible. They have blue swallowtail coats and big tall stovepipe hats, and they're carrying their truncheons. They're kind of blending in, but not blending in, with ordinary people going about their daily jobs and their daily pastimes. And they're there patrolling upset beat all day and most of the night in a way that London hadn't been

properly policed previously. We used to have watchmen that operated at night, but we didn't have patrols during the daytime. So this is new. And they're immediately going to run into, positively and negatively, all the people who also occupy the street, which might be the juvenile delinquents that you mentioned in the introduction, but it will also mean men who work selling stuff off barrows, costumongers who are selling their wares, those sorts of tradesmen. They're also going to be on the lookout for the pickpockets and the shoplifters and those sorts of characters.

And for anybody else who's causing an obstruction on the street, that can come into all sorts of different categories. Then of course we have the police courts, which are called police courts, but that's not necessarily because they belong have the police courts, which are called police courts, but that's not necessarily because they belong to the police. They're staffed by stipendary magistrates since the early 1790s, so throughout most of the 19th century. That starts off with seven or eight of these in London,

and gradually as we move through the 19th century we sort of get up into double figures. I think by the outbreak of the First World War there are 13 courts in London, 14 courts in London, all serving their local area with a little staff of two or three magistrates at each of them and usually a policeman attached. They're very closely linked to the police because it's the police that bring the people they've arrested to these courts and one of the things that's different about the 19th century to perhaps the century before it is that most of the prosecutions are now being brought by policemen or by the police

rather than you or I as an independent individual person. So Drew, these particular courts then, it sounds to me like they're dealing with a specific set of crimes. Would that be the case? Are they confined to certain things that they're going to be dealing with? It's almost as if they deal with pretty much everything and then there are some things that they can't deal with and they have to be pushed up through the jury court. So a magistrates court is a summary court, a court of summary jurisdiction. That means it's got

no jury. It's just got the magistrate sitting there in front of you. So in today's world listeners might be familiar with a modern magistrates court which has a bench of three magistrates. In London in the 19th century they just had one. The rest of the country would have two but in London London's special so London just has the one magistrate and these are trained barristers they they've had to have had seven years experience of being a barrister at law. So they know the law, they've got a clerk to support them, and they'll deal with everything from really, really petty crime like vagrancy up to, and you mentioned at the beginning, something like murder. However, if it came to a very serious crime

that should go before a jury, what the magistrate is going to do if he thinks there's a case to answer is he's going to send that up through the system so he'll send you to a jury court so you'll get tried at the Old Bailey for example for that offence. So it's not so much that there are crimes which are only exclusively for these courts, they're almost like a filtration process. A lot of things come through the magistrates courts courts and get sent on up, but a lot gets filtered out. So probably 90% of anybody's contact with the criminal justice system in the late 19th century is going to come at a police court, not at a jury court, which is interesting for historians because historians like me, historians of crime, we've nearly always concentrated on jury courts. We look at the top and not

at the bottom. I look at the top and not at the bottom. I look at the bottom rather than the top because I think it tells you a bit more about the society. Absolutely. Some of the offences that people come up for in these courts are so fascinating and they give a real flavour, I think, of what's happening out on the street. Just looking at the list in front of me of some of the offences, obviously you've got your pickpockets, your shoplifters, you've got sex workers, but you've also got things like offences around animal cruelty. And I think there's even an interesting anecdote about, is it the Salvation Army coming up in this court for disturbance of the peace, which I just love. Tell us about that, Drew.

Drew Yeah, so of course, the Salvation Army, which we're probably familiar with now as a sort of a really well established and respectable charity who do great work. They're kind of new in the 1870s. And one of the ways they sort of drive membership is by their marching bands, well-meaning religiously minded people joining the Saliyahmi and kind of trying to learn to play the tuba. But of course, that's dreadful. It's a cacophony of noise. And they set up in the streets to sort of sing their hymns and you know and try to recruit and to warn people off the demon drink, which is their real premise, and people locally get really upset about it. So working-class people get upset about it, particularly in Irish areas because these are Catholic areas and it's seen

as a provocation for the army to come and march through their areas, because it's a Protestant force. And in respectable middle class areas, you get this fantastic example of a bloke who comes running out of his house in a nice parade of houses to complain about the army, who pretend not to be able to hear his complaints because of all the noise. His wife is ill in the house, and he's just like, this is just a dreadful racket. And it ends up in court, which is why we know about it, because it ends up before a magistrate to sort of try and judge whether this is a nuisance, whether it's obstruction, maybe somebody's been assaulted in the process, you know, that they all of these things could end up in a charge. But it tells us that actually the Salvation Army in the 1870s and 1880s were not popular, even with the magistrates, because the magistrates look down their noses at them and think of them as non-conformists and not Church of England and so they don't

have much truck with them either. So I think it's kind of interesting that it tells us stuff about the army which we wouldn't have even uncovered otherwise. Are these courts a way of airing those kinds of civil disagreements? What are people's attitudes to the courts? Are they a useful bureaucratic system or do people take them with a pinch of salt? Some people have some historians have tried to categorise these courts as people's courts because ordinary people could use them much more easily than they could use civil law. You can't afford to go to a civil case and sue people. You can go into a magistrates court, police court in the 19th century and say, I'm not being treated properly by my employer.

I'm not getting poor relief from the parish. Somebody is trying to disrupt my trade on the pavement. These are all things you can go and complain about. That's ordinary people complaining about you. Women can bring their husbands in who are abusing them and they do in great numbers. So these are kind of course that you can use and they don't cost very much. So it might cost you a shilling for a summons, two shillings for summons, which is not insignificant, but it's not a lot of money. So they're accessible and they're open six days a week.

They're only closed three days of the year, Easter and Christmas, one other day, I think. Six days a week, 10 till five. They sometimes sit later to hear things. So you can find these courts. You can go to them and they'd be in your neighborhood and they're public. So the public can go into them and watch them. And they did. They went in and they watched it and they read about it in the newspapers. So it's kind of a soap opera. It's kind of East Enders or

Coronation Street but in the 1870s, 1880s. I wonder, Drew, what these courts feel like they need to send up. What's the criteria? If they're covering so many different things, what is the criteria for a case where they say this one ain't for us, let's send that one up? There's some technical stuff in there, and some of that is around the nature of the offence, a bit like today. So I think, I think today magistrates can deal with offences up to a certain point, and then they have to send them before a Crown Court. But from 1855, you could choose for certain offenses, for certain property offenses, you could choose to have those cases heard before a magistrate. Now, there's an advantage if you pled guilty.

So let's say you're arrested for picking pockets, as many people were, especially young women. You know, you're on the omnibus and you've been picking pockets and you've been caught, and you're taken before a magistrate. Now, you have an option. If you go before a jury, you might get off. You might be able to persuade the jury or your lawyer might be able to persuade the jury or you might be able to have the right demeanor in court to get away with it and they won't find you guilty and you'll walk and that's great. But if you get found guilty, you can get a much stiffer sentence from a jury court than you will from magistrate who will just probably fine you, send you to prison for a few weeks or months or possibly a year, maybe a couple of years and that's about it. So the risk is smaller. So copper

play of guilty, get a reduced sentence. And for the magistrates again, they also have that risk with the police. They also have that risk reversed, as I think this person is guilty, but I don't, I'm not sure I have the proof. So they might hold you for a week, might put you in the cells for a week, so the police have more time to gather evidence against you. Then it comes back and then the magistrate has to make a decision. Do I send this person to court or do I deal with them summarily? If I send them to court, they might get off. If I deal with them summarily, at least I know that they're going to get three months or something and they're taken off the streets and they're given a bit of a reminder. So there's that kind of thing going on. Obviously,

there are some offenses like begging, vagrancy, other misdemeanors and obstruction, which are only dealt with at a summary level. But when it comes to something like theft, violence, there is a kind of movable feast, if you like, as to whether that goes up through the system or not. They're a great way of keeping the criminal justice system moving. We're aware in 21st century Britain of how difficult, how clogged up our courts are, how long it takes to get a case heard, which has negatives for both the victim of crime and for the potential perpetrator. But in the 19th century, I think that's moving much more quickly. So justice is swifter. It may not always be fair, but it's swifter. I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipscombe, and on Not Just the Tudors, from History Hit, I'm

looking for answers to the big questions about every aspect of life in the early modern period. Like how did the memory of Anne Boleyn continue to influence the court of her daughter, Elizabeth I? How were fairies brought to life on the Elizabethan stage? And how did the arrival of male-only doctors threaten the lives of women? In other words, not just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors, twice a week, every week. Subscribe now and follow me on not just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Rory and Kit here from the award-winning podcast, This Paranormal Life. Every week we investigate a paranormal story and decide if it's real or a hoax.

Like the time a guy claimed he punched Bigfoot. Or when a UFO showed up at a football game in front of thousands of people. Each episode has sound effects, music and storytelling that feels so real you'll never sleep again. You will. Stop it, you're going to scare away new listeners. Check out This Paranormal Life every Tuesday wherever you listen to your podcasts. Let's get into some of those individual stories then. I think we're about to hear from Anthony who's going to tell us the story of one particular person involved in the court and then Drew will get your take on this story. Court rise. The gathered audience at Marlborough Street Magistrate's Court hush, looking to the front

of the room where the magistrate, Mr. Hanne, sits in a semi-circular cave of wooden panelling. From behind his impressive wooden bench, he views the defendant. People shift in their seats, the court scribe stretches his fingers and a newspaper man scribbles down his observations. It's January 1889. And Miss Totti Faye is back in the dock. We've seen Totti before. Not always with the same name. Sometimes she goes by Lillian Rothschild.

Other times Violet St. John. Once or twice she has been introduced as Mabel Gray or alternatively Maud LeGrand or Lillie Levant. She must have reached more than 20 aliases, adding Blanche Herbert, Florence Larrade and Amy Sinclair to the roster. Dressed as our newsman reports, as a woman of the town, Tati's appearance would almost be smart were it not for the gaudy bright colours of her dress. She is charged with disorderly behaviour and drunkenness, having been arrested on New Year's Eve at

the Bath Hotel on Piccadilly. The proprietor had thrown her out for running undressed all over the hotel. Totti pleads with the magistrate, but it is no use. She is fined 40 shillings or another month inside. Quite a character. Drew, tell us who is Totti. She's obviously a woman who goes by different aliases. It sounds like from the innuendo in that account that she is a sex worker. Who is she and how have you

come across about her in your research? Well, she's my new favourite obsession. Totti is probably born in the 1850s in Seven Isles, Cotton Garden in London, very, very poor area, probably the daughter of a costa monger. And probably Anne Anderson, as I can't find her in the records. Anne Anderson isn't an easy name to trace, of course, but unlike Totti, which comes up much more easily. So I think she is probably prostituting herself from about the age of 14, which is shocking, but not necessarily unusual. And as she moves through the years, she seems to have a sort of modus operandi. And I think it goes something

like this. She picks up men in the West End of London. And that, again, is quite a normal practice for sex workers in the 19th century. So the men have been out for the night, they've been to the clubs and to the theatres, and quite often theatre audiences would be a mingling of sex workers and the general public. And she's persuaded him to buy her a drink and then perhaps suggested that they go to a hotel. And she's then slipped the porter at the hotel a little bit of money to let them in by the back door and to ask no questions. the hotel a little bit of money to let them in by the back door and to ask no questions. And that I think probably works for her for a while. But my feeling is that gradually, where she is consuming alcohol as part of that process, it actually then becomes a prop and then she moves into dependency. So she becomes an alcoholic. So by the time we get

to the 1880s, Totti is an alcoholic. I think that then she gets caught up in frauds and petty thefts and more serious thefts. And that means she falls into the system in different ways. So she appears in court really often for drunkenness. And this amuses the reading public, amuses the newspapers. And she becomes a feature in the newspapers because of that, because on the one level, it's amusing, the colorful descriptions that you give of her. I mean, she has all these aliases. She has an array of rather strange clothes

that all seem to be cobbled together as if she's wandered into a charity shop drunk and gone on the other side. And all these things have just fallen onto her. That's how she looks. And it's sad the way the newspapers take the Mickey out of her for this. Because I think in one way what Totti's trying to do is get away from where she was born. She's actually trying to go up through the social level. She always describes herself as a lady. She says she's always got an excuse. She says, you know, I was waiting for my poor momma,

my momma, my poor poor mama's died. How dare this nasty policeman move me along because I'm a proper lady. And that's how she thinks about herself. And I think perhaps at the beginning, it's a useful excuse to fall on the mercy of the court. I think at the end, she believes it. She genuinely believes this. And the 19th century is not a century for social climbing. You know, people stay in their place. She's a working class girl from Covent Garden. She should stay where she is, not try and pretend to be someone. She's not a Dolly LeBlanc. She's Anne Anderson. That's who she is. Do you think that the police courts act as a vehicle to transform some of these people into almost popular characters, that the reality of their lives on the street and when they come

into the courts is very different from the version of them that is picked up in that process by newspaper men and rehashed in order to sell copy. Do you think there's a disparity there? Definitely. I mean, the reality is that newspapers have little vignettes about the stories. I mean, there are thousands of cases coming for the police courts every day across London, and maybe eight, maybe six, eight, ten get in the newspapers, the morning and the evening, and a few more at the weekend. They've got a short paragraph to tell you a story, maybe a bit longer sometimes. And yeah, they reinforce messages. We know this today, but perhaps, and this is definitely true of the 19th century. Newspapers don't just report news neutrally, they create news, they spin news,

they create a story, and they create one that suits their readers. So the readers of the Times might get a different slant to the readers of Reynolds newspaper, which is a much more working-class newspaper. Characters like Totti are useful. They reinforce the idea that working class, these sorts of working class women and sex workers are drunks, but they also then get used by campaigners who want to change the law on drunkenness, who want more support for people who are alcoholics. It's beginning to be understood in the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s that alcoholism is a thing. They just thought it was a moral failing before and now they're just thought it was a moral failing before, and now they're understanding that it's a mental health issue that needs to be treated

in an asylum, which of course is where Totti ends up. She ends up being taken from prison, from Wormwood Scrubs to Broadmoor Criminal Asylum, and then ends up in other asylums for the rest of her life before she dies in the early 20th century in an asylum in Surrey at Houghton. And she is used as evidence for people who are trying to push through the legislation that eventually ends up in the 1888 Inebriates Act. Parts of that act allow magistrates to send people to a retreat, to a sort of clearing up place. She's part of that, not necessarily deliberately, but she's used in that way. So they can be used for entertainment. While Totti's in prison, on one occasion, there's a music hall act which includes a Totti Faye. People in other parts of the country, just like in the Jack Ripper

case, are calling themselves Totti Faye. Or a woman who's found drunk in the street, well, that's a Totti Faye, isn't it? Because she's become that famous. One of the things which I think you're explaining really well, Drew, is that there is this cartoonish element or this very public facing element to some of these people and characters that are being described in the situations that they find themselves in the court. But then there's this darker side that's behind. So you mentioned in Tati's case the effects of alcoholism. And you mentioned earlier about women bringing their husbands to these courts for domestic abuse cases. I'm just wondering if you might be able to talk a little bit more about those cases in particular.

Yeah, certainly. So all through the 19th century, way back in fact, women had been bringing their violent partners to magistrates, before magistrates, for abuse. And I think particularly in the 19th century, the police court magistrates were quite keen for something to be done about this. They want to take a bit of a stricter line. They recognize that this is a problem. I mean, men arguably have had the right to abuse their wives in the 18th and 19th century, kind of. That's been allowed as long as they didn't go too far. And the classic one is

that as long as you don't beat someone with a stick thicker than your thumb, that's the kind of rhetoric. It's pretty unpleasant stuff. But women constantly brought their partners into the magistrates' courts in London, partly, I think, to shame them and because they wanted to stop it. You can almost guarantee that if a woman brought her husband in for beating her, it wasn't the first time, it wasn't the second or the third, it was the fifth, tenth, twentieth time, and finally she's had enough. But often they don't want anything really done about it. And the issue there, of course, is because if the court decides to fine the man, well, that's a cost on the

family purse. If they decide to send him to prison, there's the breadwinner off to jail for months. That's no use at all. And in some respects, just by taking him to court, the woman has another risk because if he goes home or if he comes out of prison, then he's likely to beat her again in retribution for taking him in in the first place. So sometimes it's probably a way of alerting the neighborhood and the community to what's going on, maybe the wider family, to say, I need some support. Sometimes I think that the women believe that the magistrate can divorce them. He can't divorce them, but he can sometimes help them with a separation and maybe try and compel the man to pay a kind of alimony to support her. Whether that's very successful or not, I doubt. But women

are in a very difficult position in the 19th century. And a tremendous amount of this is not being reported, is not going before a court. Drew, how much agency then do you think women had in the court space? You're saying that often the court is a tool for them to use to alert their neighbourhood or to give their husbands some kind of warning in a way outside of the home where they maybe don't have the same level of agency or it's an active dangerous environment for them. But then we hear about women like Totti who are right at the lowest levels of society and having to engage in these ways of survival that are criminalised in the 19th century and indeed today. And in Totti's case, it sounds like her agency is stripped from her by the court and she's made into literally a musical character and sent to prison and sent to an asylum. So is

the court somewhere where women can find a voice and some power or does it act as just another way of oppressing them in this 19th century world? Or is it a mixture of the two? Is it more nuanced than that? I think it is more nuanced. I mean, the courts are male dominated spaces, you know, as are the jury courts. No woman sits on a jury in this country until 1919. Yes, so these are very male dominated places, the judges are all male, the magistrates are all male, and they come from a very patriarchal society. And the 19th century London is a very patriarchal society. However, that doesn't mean that women aren't involved. Women are, you know, women are workers. They have a lot of agency in their communities and the Whitechapel women, we talked from Whitechapel at the beginning, Whitechapel is a community where women have very strong roles in that society. I think when they come before the court as supplicants,

you know, complaining about their husbands or, you know, or they're coming in to ask for poor relief or that kind of thing, then as long as they present themselves as honest, decent women, then the courts will support them. If they come across as harridans or drunks or sex workers, the court will not support them because they don't meet the ideals of women. To some extent, that's true of men, but much less so. And I think it's really interesting when you look at a case of shoplifting, for example, which is classically deemed as a female offense. In the courts, when they report it, when the newspapers report it, because again, the newspapers play a role here in that whole agency and characterization that's super important.

Females shoplifters who are working class are named, you know, it'll be Betty Adams or whatever. The female shoplifters from the wealthier classes who have been caught shoplifting in Harrods or wherever, they're not named. It's a lady was taken before Marlborough Police Court. Betty Adams was taken before Worship Street Court. And the working class girl will be sent to prison or sent before a higher court, most likely, that's the most likely option. The middle class woman won't be sent to prison, you know, that will quietly be dealt with and the shopkeeper will have his goods back and everyone will forget all about

it and presumably the woman will get some help. And that's a completely different way. So I think it's whilst gender is massively important in understanding that society, class, unfortunately, class is just as important, if not more important to understand that society. So it's where you're from as much as what body you're born into. That's so interesting, the point you make about classroom, because I've been having conversations online with people who consume history that aren't in academia or aren't professional historians. And one of the things that they find frustrating is the repeated, in the public sphere, the repeated emphasis on elite histories or even middling histories. But actually what you're describing here is that these court archives are a wealth of working class histories.

And I was just wondering to what extent you think that the working class histories we come across are dictated by these kind of legal proceedings because often that's one of the only places we're going to find names, addresses, job titles. I'm just wondering how you feel that those kind of legal archives have shaped working class histories. I mean, my interest in history was really sparked as an undergraduate by crime history because it allowed me to get in touch with working class people and their histories, that kind of social history. But also when you look at sort of the history of the workhouse, those sorts of struggles. So those sorts of things tell us about working class people. So I think that the resources are problematic

and they get better in the 19th century and much into the 20th century because it's like I had a student recently who said he wanted to look at crime and punishment through the diaries of working class people in the 18th and 19th century and I said you can't, you just can't because they didn't leave diaries. A, because either they couldn't write because many could read but not write or they could just write their name, but also, when are they gonna get the time? They work, you know, I mean, we campaigned in the late 19th century for the 10-hour day. I mean, when are you gonna be doing any writing your diary?

You know, just not gonna happen. So I think the crime records give us that information, you know, so the Old Bay Online gives fantastic information about individuals, the newspapers give us information. But we don't often have the voices. And that's the thing that's sad to me, because you don't hear them. In the police courts and the reports of them, someone like Totti Fay, who stands up in court, you hear her. It may be there for entertainment, but at least you hear her voice.

That's kind of nice. Do you think that askewed working class histories then, because we're seeing them through the lens of legal proceedings? Do you think that's something we're left with but kind of have no choice but that's what we have to work with as you're saying in terms of your student who asked about the diaries, they just don't exist. So do you think that gives us a particular slant that we need to work against often? David Pettis Yeah, but that's what a historian's job is. You're trained to look at sources, you're trained to analyse sources, not take them at face value, to read between the lines, quite literally to kind of look into the gaps in archives and work out what's missing there.

And court records are great for that because they're not of a baton report. I get my students to reconstruct criminal trials and I get them to think about what isn't being said here? What would you want to ask? What do you think that question has been asked there? What do you want to ask? Let's see if we can piece that stuff together. And you have to be creative and you have to be analytical and you have to kind of work on best-case scenarios of what you've got. So reconstructing history is really important. History isn't simple. The stories are great, but you have to read those stories in context and you have to read those stories in context

and you have to read those stories with a sharp eye. And I think you will never get 100% the truth, but you'll get as close to it. It's been absolutely fascinating, Drew. Before we let you go, we've talked about quite heavy topics and I just wonder if you've ever come across any crime that really stood out for you as being a little bit lighthearted and possibly a little bit enjoyable in these court records. I find myself admiring some of the people. That's the thing. I find myself admiring people and their ingenuity. And I know sometimes we see them as criminals or as people who are trying to blag stuff or, you know, get away with things. But

I think some of the ways in which people try really hard to survive in that really difficult world, we have to think, this is a world with no social welfare policy, with very limited access to medicine, you know, where people are going to mostly die relatively young compared to our society, where people have really hard lives. And I suppose it's the strengths that they show in surviving through that. So I can't really give you a hilarious quip for the end, but I would say that it's the humanity that you see,

sometimes as well in the magistrates, magistrates handing down money to people, magistrates making sure that a woman is okay, intervening with the parish authorities to make sure that children who are being abused are rescued from that situation. Even the Salvation Army doing good things as well as making a terrible round. Those sorts of things are things that make me feel better about it. It's not all doom and gloom. I suspect that's reflected in our courts today. In our society, we often focus on the negative for understandable reasons.

But there's probably just as much as positive out there if you only go and look for it. Well, I think that's a perfect upbeat note on which to end this episode. Drew, thank you. That's been so fascinating. And I think there are a lot of our listeners

who will be interested in Drew's book, which is called Netherworld Crime in the Police Courts in Victorian London, which is out now. Drew, thank you very much. If you have enjoyed this episode, please leave it a five star view. It helps other people find the podcast and subscribe to the podcast wherever you find your other podcasts. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you again next time. time. showed up at a football game in front of thousands of people. Each episode has sound effects, music, and storytelling that feels so real, you'll never sleep again.

You will. Stop it. You're going to scare away new listeners. Check out This Paranormal Life every Tuesday, wherever you listen to your podcasts. you