Database Review: Crime, Punishment and Popular Culture, 1790–1920, by Gale Digital Collections

Crime, Punishment and Popular Culture, 1790–1920, the forthcoming archive from Gale Digital Collections, boasts more than two million pages of manuscripts, books, periodicals, photographs, and other materials that document the legal and criminal changes taking place during the long nineteenth century. From political and technological developments to calls for social and legal reform, this archive offers users a wealth of material that will interest scholars from a variety of disciplines. A number of well-known source libraries have contributed to this archive, notably the British Library, the University of Cambridge Library, the Library of Congress, and the Harvard University Law Library, making materials that were once dispersed now easily accessible in one online collection. Trial transcripts, police reports, personal notebooks, criminal case files, and other printed materials are now digitally accessible and will no doubt inspire exciting new research on the relationship between law, crime, and society during the nineteenth century.

While users of the Crime, Punishment and Popular Culture archive can explore these digitized materials using common search tools and keywords, the archive’s compilers have also organized many of the materials into carefully curated “collections.” For example, the “Law, Crime, and Society in Hanoverian England: The Old Bailey Proceedings, 1714–1820” collection is comprised of records of criminal proceedings brought before the King’s Commission of the Peace from 1714 to 1834. Court records detailing crimes from sedition to mutinies at sea can be found in this collection, along with witness testimonies, cross-examinations, and even advertisements for services such as midwives or tooth-cleaners. Another collection, the “Crime and the Criminal Justice System: Records from the U.K. National Archive,” emphasizes the inner workings of UK courts, prisons, and policing from 1780 to 1926. This collection includes prison ledgers, court records, and detailed letters to court officers recommending prison sentences and addressing other related topics. Users can even browse a drill manual for the constabulary force of Ireland and read detailed instructions about squad formations and a proper officer’s salute. Digitizing these primary source manuscripts has enhanced the legibility of many handwritten documents. For example, the Pelham Papers, found in the “Crime and Justice in Europe: Manuscripts from the British Library” collection, give scholars the opportunity to read handwritten notes describing how to best defend London against rioters, the state and purpose of prisons, ways to architecturally improve prison conditions, and the debate over whether labor or solitary confinement was the best form of prisoner punishment. Users can browse instruction books for the London Metropolitan Police and digitally flip through a “scrapbook” of prisoners who served time at the Oxford Gaol.

Readers of VPR will be interested to know that many of these digitized materials will complement and enhance current research being done on crime and punishment in print culture during the Victorian era. The newspapers and journals offered by the archive, such as the Howard League for Penal Reform’s Journal, provide accounts of nineteenth-century prison conditions and street crime. The “Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy, 1845–1920” collection contains the records of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, later known as the Pennsylvania Prison Society, which counted both Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush among its members. Scholars can read their Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy, which informed the public about Pennsylvania’s harsh prison conditions and the suffering of the city jail inmates. Readers of VPR will also be interested in the archive’s police newspapers. The National Police Gazette highlights the crimes of nineteenth-century New York and offers sensationalist crime columns like “Lives of the Poisoners: How They Killed and What They Killed With” and “Lives of the Felons.” Users can easily browse newspapers by article title, some of which are particularly attention grabbing—for instance, articles such as “Never Kick a Shark” and “He Wants His False Teeth Back” published in the Illustrated Police News. While exploring the archive, I found myself drawn to the fascinating advertisements scattered throughout these police newspapers, particularly the multitude of ads promising male readers their “perfect manhood...