Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies
Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 Varia
Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chs/1024 DOI : 10.4000/chs.1024 ISSN : 1663-4837
Éditeur Librairie Droz
Édition imprimée Date de publication : 1 janvier 1997 ISSN : 1422-0857
Référence électronique Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 [En ligne], mis en ligne le 03 avril 2009, consulté le 13 février 2021. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chs/1024 ; DOI : https:// doi.org/10.4000/chs.1024
Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 13 février 2021.
© Droz 1
SOMMAIRE
Éditorial / Editorial
Éditorial Version française Le comité de rédaction
Editorial English version The Editorial Committee
Articles
How violent were women ? Court cases in Amsterdam, 1650-1810 Pieter Spierenburg
« Harmful tramps » Police professionalization and gypsies in Germany, 1700-1945 Leo Lucassen
A decline in violence in Ireland ? Crime, policing and social relations, 1860-1914 Mark Finnane
Les villageois dans et hors du village. Gestion des conflits et contrôle social des travailleurs migrants originaires des montagnes françaises (fin XVIIe siècle-milieu du XIXe siècle) Laurence Fontaine
Forum
Crime, Justice and Society in Medieval and Early Modern Times : Thirty Years of Crime and Criminal Justice History A tribute to Herman Diederiks Xavier Rousseaux
Compte rendu / Review
Schreiner (Klaus) & Schwerhoff (Gerd), (Eds.), Verletzte Ehre. Ehrkonflikte in Gesellschaften des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit Köln, Böhlau Verlag, 1995 (ISBN : 3-412-09095-6) Pieter Spierenburg
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 2
Informations
Livres reçus / Books received
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 3
Éditorial / Editorial
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 4
Éditorial Version française
Le comité de rédaction
1 La question du crime révèle un ensemble de problèmes communs aux sociétés contemporaines, tels que la définition socialement acceptée de l'ordre et du désordre, la légitimité des structures et des moyens du maintien de l'ordre, la capacité à intégrer de nouveaux groupes sociaux ou les attentes des populations face à la justice... Dans cette perspective, l'enquête sur des sociétés ayant un rapport au crime fort différent des sociétés contemporaines, comme les sociétés anciennes, médiévales ou modernes, ou les sociétés non européennes permet de repenser les rapports actuels entre crime, régulation et société.
* * *
2 Dans les années soixante, les historiens sociaux ont rencontré « par accident » les archives judiciaires, voie d'accès aux muets de l'histoire. Ils ont donc privilégié l'étude des constantes et des variations dans les comportements criminels. Très vite, cependant, la notion même de « criminalité » est apparue anachronique et floue aux yeux des chercheurs et le positivisme « criminologique » par trop limité. Inspirés par des travaux plus critiques des sociologues de la déviance, d'autres chercheurs ont déplacé l'attention vers les instances de contrôle du crime, et ont mis en valeur les fonctions complexes des institutions juridiques et leur place dans les sociétés aux prises avec la violence. Dans un troisième temps, les historiens ont intégré le problème du crime dans l'histoire sociale du phénomène juridique et des processus de domination politique. De sorte que faire l'histoire du crime désormais c'est faire l'histoire des désordres et de l'ordre, un des lieux essentiels où, à propos du contrôle monopolistique de la violence, se joue l'évolution de la société moderne.
3 Le développement de travaux portant sur les institutions pénales, la justice, les peines, la police, la criminalité, est ainsi lié aux intérêts conjoints des historiens et historiens du droit pour les méthodes des sciences sociales et des sociologues, anthropologues, politologues et juristes pour une approche diachronique. Ces intérêts réciproques
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 5
témoignent de l'importance de la fertilisation croisée entre disciplines pour le développement des connaissances.
* * *
4 Dans ce domaine, sous l'impulsion du regretté Herman Diederiks, l'International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice a joué depuis 1978 un rôle déterminant par les réunions scientifiques internationales qu'elle a organisées et la participation de ses membres aux réseaux spécialisés des grandes sociétés savantes.
5 Ce champ de recherche arrive aujourd'hui à maturité, comme en témoignent les multiples bilans, ouvrages de synthèse, thèses et mémoires, le foisonnement de séminaires et de colloques ; la création de centres et d'équipes de recherche spécialisés.
6 Néanmoins, on observe un décalage certain dans le domaine des publications scientifiques. Domaine connexe à plusieurs disciplines, l'histoire pénale s'écrit tant dans les revues d'histoire que celles de sciences sociales (sociologie, criminologie, science politique, anthropologie) ou de droit. La quasi absence de revues spécialisées aboutit ainsi à une extrême dispersion des publications et nuit à la visibilité de nombreux travaux.
* * *
7 C'est pourquoi, nous avons pris l'initiative de vous proposer, avec le soutien de la Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, une nouvelle revue bisannuelle qui succède au IAHCCJ Bulletin, dont 21 numéros ont été publiés depuis 1978.
8 Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies se fixe un triple objectif :
9 — Diffuser des articles originaux de qualité en français et en anglais : monographies, synthèses, bilans, articles méthodologiques ou réflexions théoriques, soumis à l'évaluation d'un comité scientifique diversifié.
10 — Être un lieu de débat critique et de dialogue.
11 — Présenter des instruments de recherche : bibliographies, fonds d'archives, base de données, travaux en cours, etc...
* * *
12 Nous sommes conscients que le lancement d'une nouvelle revue est aujourd'hui une gageure. Mais nous savons aussi que beaucoup attendaient une telle initiative. Nous espérons être à la hauteur de cette attente !
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 6
Editorial English version
The Editorial Committee
1 Behind the question of crime lies a set of problems shared by today's societies : the socially accepted definition of order and disorder, the legitimacy of the structures and means employed to maintain order, the capacity of society to take in new groups, or what precisely people expect of the justice system. In this perspective, the study of societies whose relation to crime is very different from that of our own contemporary Western societies, such as ancient, medieval and early modern or non-European societies, fosters a reassessment of present-day relationships between crime, regulation and society.
2 In the 1960s, social historians “chanced upon” judicial and police archives and found in them a means of accessing voices not heard in history. They privileged the study of constants and variants in criminal behaviours. Rapidly, however, researchers came to see the very notion of "crime" as anachronistic and fuzzy, and "criminological" positivism as too narrow. Inspired by the more critical approach of sociologists specializing in deviance, other researchers shifted their attention to the agencies responsible for controlling crime and focused on the complex functions of the legal institutions and their place in societies struggling with the problem of violence. Still more recently, historians have included crime in the social history of legal developments and the processes of political domination. As a result, tracing the history of crime has become tracing the history of disorders and order, one of the essential sites in which, as far as the monopolistic control of violence is concerned, the evolution of modern society is played out.
3 The growing number of works on penal institutions, the justice system, penalties, policing, and crime, is thus bound up with the conjoined interest on the part of historians and legal historians in the methods of the social sciences and of sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and jurists in a diachronic approach. These reciprocal interests testify to the importance of exchange between disciplines in advancing knowledge.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 7
4 In this area, the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice, under the leadership of the late and much missed Herman Diederiks, has, since 1978, played a decisive role through the international academic meetings which it has organized and the participation of its members in the specialised networks of the major learned societies.
5 Today this field of research has come of age, as is testified by the outpouring of critical assessments, overviews, theses and memoires, the abundance of seminars and meetings, the creation of specialised centres and research teams.
6 Even so, the area of academic publication lags behind. At the crossroads of several disciplines, the history of criminal justice systems is as much a subject for history journals as it is for those publishing in the social sciences (sociology, criminology, political science, anthropology) or in law. The virtual absence of specialised journals has lead to a wide dispersal of the publications and is detrimental to the visibility of much of the work in this area.
7 This is why we have taken the initiative of proposing, with the support of the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, a new biannual review, which replaces the IAHCCJ Bulletin (21 issues since 1978) :
8 Crime, History & Societies has three goals :
9 — To publish original articles of quality in French and in English : monographs, overviews, assessments, articles on method or theoretical reflections ; these will be reviewed by a committee of internationally respected specialists.
10 — To provide a forum for critical debate and dialogue.
11 —To present research tools : bibliographies, archive collections, databases, work in progress, etc.
12 We are aware that launching a new review at the present time is a gamble.
13 We also know that many of you have been waiting for this initiative. We hope to live up to your expectations !
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 8
Articles
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 9
How violent were women ? Court cases in Amsterdam, 1650-18101
Pieter Spierenburg
1 In his « Black Register of a Thousand Sins » of 1679, Jacobus Hondius, minister at Hoorn, indeed discusses exactly 1000 sins. Many are committed by specific categories of people. Sin nr. 970 involves « such women, who are members [of the Reformed Church] and nevertheless do not refrain from fighting and flinging publicly and to tear the cap from the head ». This behavior is a disgrace upon the community : « as men are not allowed to be fighters,... much less are women »2. The first of the quoted sentences sounds a little awkward, but it has been translated literally on purpose : Hondius' formulation can refer to women who attack persons of either sex, but it is clear, especially from the reference to removing someone's cap, that he primarily thinks of inter-female fights3. No doubt, he shared the judgment, that it was especially unbecoming for women to fight, with many of his contemporaries. Did Hondius find female violence also uncommon ? We cannot infer this from the fact that it is one of the last sins he discusses ; that is merely a consequence of the alphabetical order of his book. But we may take the harmlessness of the one concrete act he cites to mean that he considered serious female violence uncommon.
2 Like Hondius, historians have found female aggression to be uncommon. When the title of a publication has the words « women » and « violence » in it, the focus is often on women as victims rather than as perpetrators. Historians as well as criminologists have paid ample attention to male-on-female crime. Alternatively, typically female offenses have been studied, such as, for the period under discussion here, infanticide. These two perspectives are frequently combined. For example, in an overview article entitled « Women and Violence in Early Modern Europe » two third of the text is devoted to a discussion of infanticide, wife-beating and rape4. This emphasis on victimization and special offenses is understandable, since the subject of women and violence leaves few other choices. Every quantitative study available tells us that among prosecutions for homicide and assault women constitute a tiny minority.
3 However, the uncommon is worth studying in its own right. This article originated from a recalcitrant stand. Considering the story of women as victims too familiar, I
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 10
asked myself instead « can I find serious female violence, despite the odds » ? The emphasis here is on the word « serious ». I am not primarily interested in a few scratches, a slap in the face or pulling hair. The search is not for the stereotypical female fury, but for the limits of the historically possible. This means a study of a limited number of individual cases. As Walker and Kermode argue, the emphasis on aggregate rates often obscures women's crime-related activities5. Before turning to female violence, however, I will briefly discuss aggregate rates, as far as they pertain to women's share in total crime. This discussion is necessary, in order to differentiate between violence and other offenses and to consider the validity of theories based in biology.
4 Some historians use a rather broad definition of violence. Verbal injury, scolding and other words meant to hurt are often categorized as « verbal violence » While this may solve the problem of categorization, it is confusing from a linguistic standpoint. Verbal injuries are no encroachments upon a person's physical integrity, so they are not violence. They may lead to violence though, and they certainly are an important source for the study of honor. However, violence is understood here as any act of physical attack, ranging from a slap to stabbing someone to death. When the emphasis is on the emotional component of this behavior, the term « aggression » is appropriate. This is not to say that I believe that humans have a fixed amount of « innate » aggression, partly expressed and partly repressed or sublimated. Aggression may be defined simply as the propensity to attack ; aggressive behavior is behavior aimed at attacking another person. As I have argued elsewhere, infanticide hardly belongs to the sphere of aggression and attack, so that it should be kept separate from the study of interpersonal violence6. For the rest, all cases in which women were tried primarily for violent behavior (as opposed to morals or property offenses, etc.), will be explored. Because my main interest is in serious violence, I am using the records of the regular Amsterdam court, rather than lower tribunals dealing with minor conflicts.
5 Although the notion of an innate aggression was rejected, the question of biological factors –or nature vs. nurture, as it is often put– must receive further attention. The near-universality of women's low involvement in violent crime would suggest that biology somehow plays a role here. Nevertheless, most historians come out at the side of « nurture ». So does Andrew Finch in a recent study of women and violence in medieval Normandy. Because a few women were indeed engaged in serious assault, he argues, this makes a social or cultural explanation of the lesser female involvement in violent crime more plausible than a biological one7. The implicit idea is that the connection between physical constitution and behavior must be automatic : for a biological explanation to be valid, no woman committing serious violence ought to be found. However, I doubt whether this kind of « either-or » thinking brings us much further.
6 A more adequate approach is to be found in Norbert Elias' views on human emotions8. According to him, the opposition of « nature vs. nurture » is a false contrast. Biology is involved in the emotions of all animals. What varies is the degree to which emotional behavior depends on learning. In human emotions, in contrast to the behavior of other animals, learned ways have become dominant over unlearned ways. As a consequence, even some unlearned forms of behavior have lost their genetic rigidity. This applies just as much to aggressive emotions. The violence of human males and females is dependent on learning to a much greater extent than that of male and female
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 11
chimpanzees. Indeed, the amount and character of violence among men have varied greatly throughout history. The homicide rate, for which men were mainly responsible, has strongly declined since the middle ages and has increased again in recent times. Moreover, the forms and content of male violence have always been strongly shaped by cultural expectations. This is less clear in the case of violence among women. We may inquire, however, whether the modest amount of female violence we know about is also shaped by historical circumstances. For example, in groups with much male-female contact, did women imitate male forms of aggression ? If so, this would lend credibility to the thesis that learned ways are dominant over unlearned ways in women's violence- related behavior.
Gender, crime and violence
7 The notion of a dominance of learned ways may be clarified by looking at women's involvement in crimes other than violence. Earlier biological theories often posited a relationship between women's physical constitution and their share in criminality as a whole. However, women's involvement in total crime shows a much greater variation over time than their involvement in violence.
8 In the modern world, female crime rarely rises above 10 %. Figures were higher in preindustrial times. It used to be common wisdom that women tended to account for about one fifth of the defendants in criminal cases then. This conclusion was mainly based on English and French studies, which concentrated on the eighteenth century9. In the meantime, Dutch historians had come up with still higher figures for women's involvement in total criminality. Investigating the Amsterdam court records in the second half of the 1970s, I found that the ratio of female crime in that city approached 50 % at times, between the middle of the seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth10. Although this figure included typically female offenses as prostitution and child abandonment, the majority of women were prosecuted for theft or smuggling. Other Dutch scholars also found that the female involvement in crime in the Dutch Republic was much above one fifth. In Delft, for example, it was 36 % between 1591 and 181011. This picture is confirmed in a recent study by Manon van der Heijden12.
9 The Dutch evidence suggests that female crime was not a constant in the preindustrial period. Apparently, there has been a long-term process of decreasing female involvement in prosecuted crime. The credit for first having realized this, must go to Malcolm Feeley. Next to re-examining others' data, he analyzed a long-term series of records from the Old Bailey in London. The percentage of female defendants, which fluctuated between 30 and 40 from 1687 to 1795, then started to decline, until it was under 10 by 189513. Significantly, the trend was due less to the disappearance of typically female offenses and more to women's decreasing involvement in property crime. After a consideration of all factors which might have distorted the London figures, Feeley concludes that the downward trend was not an artefact, although he thinks that it reflected changing conceptions of femininity at the « control » side rather than women's real behavior. He discusses several possible explanations, which center around the decreasing public manifestation of women. Recent figures for Germany are –mostly, but not always– in line with Feeley's observations. About 30 % of Bavarian offenders in the first half of the seventeenth century were women. Around 1700 their share had decreased to about 25 %14. Figures for a later period refer to the whole of
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 12
Germany : women's share in total criminality declined from about one fifth in the 1830s to about one seventh in the 1920s ; their percentage among prosecutions for simple theft decreased from almost 30 in the 1880s to 20 in the period 1920-192415.
10 Although criminologists have been largely unaware of these historical data, it is a common supposition that changes in the status of women in modern society are bound to affect the level of female criminality. Crucial factors are the increased participation of women in the work force and, more important perhaps, the decreasing influence of the traditional female sex role which stressed passivity. Indeed, a massive rise in female crime has been prophesied, by social scientists and journalists, for at least fifteen years now. Unfortunately, for their predictions, the massive rise has failed to occur until now. The subject continues to have media interest, though. In 1995, for example, a leading Dutch newspaper reported twice about figures published by the Central Bureau of Statistics : they found that the number of female suspects had increased by 4 % while that of male suspects had decreased by 9 % during the period 1984-1994. Over the last three years, however, both the numbers of prosecuted women and men had increased, the second only slightly less than the first16. So, any rise there was in the proportion of female criminals was hardly significant. If indeed factors like a relatively high participation of women in the work force contributed to a relatively high share of women in crime in the seventeenth century, they do not have a similar effect today.
11 Obviously, there is no uniform relationship between the general position of women in society and the percentage of women in the criminal justice system. This comes as no surprise. For one thing, the factor of social class complicates the matter. The declining public manifestation of women from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, which various historians have noted, primarily concerned the lower and lower-middle classes17. The increased participation of women in various sectors of public life in the second half of the twentieth century is mainly a middle-class phenomenon (and the middle and upper classes have always been privileged with respect to the risk of criminal prosecution). Second, the type of criminal activity is crucial. The high female involvement in crime in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries concerned property offenses more than anything else. In that period, the value of stolen goods (stolen by women and men), was usually rather low. When women stole, this was connected to their traditional association with providing food and taking care of the family's needs. If the level of women's participation in public life influences their tendency to engage in crime, it does so primarily by affecting their share in property offenses. Women's violence is quite another matter.
12 It is my hypothesis that the level of female violence is a function, first of all, of the power balance between men and women. Unlike women's public manifestation, this balance has consistently been uneven throughout the centuries and it has adjusted only slightly in recent times. Parallel to this, women have consistently accounted for a tiny proportion of violent crime. Feeley as well as the authors dealing with Germany observe that women were underrepresented in the category of violent offenses ; especially in assault cases and somewhat less in homicide. In Rotterdam, in the first half of the eighteenth century, only four cases of female violence were considered serious enough to be treated as a criminal rather than a correctional case18. In studies of earlier periods, in several European countries, the picture is similar : the female involvement in serious violence, except sometimes in domestic homicide, was insignificant19. For example, women made up 11 % in a sample of assault cases from
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 13
fourteenth-century England20. Well into the twentieth century, then, we are faced with a historical constant. What about recent times ?
13 A study by Schlossman and Cairns compares female delinquency in the USA in the 1950s and 1980s. The authors analyze the trials of adolescent girls in these two decades and they find indications for an increase in violence : « ... the combined data are consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a generational increase in the occurrence of assaultive behaviors by adolescent girls outside the home »21. According to Schlossman and Cairns, actual female behavior has changed as well as criminal justice policy. When faced with girls, the juvenile courts of the 1950s were bent foremost on punishing precocious female sexuality. This is not their primary concern today, even though the level of sexual activity by adolescents has not diminished. The authors propose a two-stage model : first, girls became a little more assertive and prone to violence ; next, juvenile courts and interventionist institutions changed their priorities, now attempting to curb girls' aggressiveness. Although the trend is intriguing, the difference between the 1950s and 1980s is far from spectacular. It would still be hazardous to predict that female violence will catch up with male violence, in accordance with a substantive shift in the power balance between men and women.
14 With court cases being so few in number, it is worth considering the additional evidence of popular literature, or street literature as Joy Wiltenburg calls it. Although it has little to tell about the incidence of female violence, it is indicative of men's attitudes toward it. Wiltenburg's study deals with early modern England and Germany. Female violence figures in broadsides telling the story of real crimes as well as in fictional literature, where crime and punishment are hardly at issue. In the broadsides, most offenses committed by women were family-related. Whereas the English loved to hear about husband murderers, the authors of German pamphlets focused on women, and men, who slaughtered their entire family in a moment of madness. Female violence in popular fiction, on the other hand, is usually acted out in a comic context. In both countries the victims of female violence are mostly men. We recognize the traditional motif of the world upside down. The scene usually is a domestic one, but especially in England women sometimes go out into the streets ; for example, when a party of them attacks the proverbially effeminate tailors. Woman-to-woman violence, more comical still than that of women against men, is especially rare in English street literature. When it occurs, this violence, too, often takes place indoors ; among mistress and maid, for example. The women seldom make use of knives or other weapons. They scratch, slap, pull hairs and throw or hit with all kind of objects22. Apparently, if the image of a woman imitating male violence like knife fighting was conceivable at all to the author of a popular play or story, he did not consider it a suitable motif.
15 The evidence shows that male popular authors considered the actions of violent women either as the « out-of-this-world » madness of a few individuals or –in fiction– as something to laugh about. Of course, the Netherlands may be different from England and Germany in this respect. Dutch popular literature has hardly been studied, but the work of Lotte van de Pol, dealing with prostitution, makes a beginning. Popular works on brothels and taverns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often were humorous too, but they also contained warnings against the impertinent activities of whores and madams23.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 14
Two Amsterdam women
16 In so far as the male authors of popular fiction presented the behavior of violent women as something to laugh about, not to be taken seriously, they helped sustain the notion that serious female violence did not exist. So let us see if we can find it nevertheless. The early modern Netherlands might be a good place for our search. It has been stated frequently that Dutch women of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries appeared more independent and self-assertive than their sisters in the surrounding countries24. Single women from the lower classes associated relatively easily with men ; married women were reported by foreign travellers to handle much of the family's business. Did this independence translate into a sizeable group of women who could stand their ground and hit an opponent sometimes ? Did women associate with violent men like knife fighters ?25. To answer that question, what could be a better starting-point than the case of the only woman in Amsterdam who ever received the punishment of a cut in the cheek, usually reserved for male knife fighters ?
17 Magtelt Jeekermans, fifty-one years old and born in Maastricht, lived with her husband and her sixteen-year old daughter, Barber, in one or two rooms of a house in a back alley. If there were other family members, the records do not mention them. The incident in question took place on Sunday, 2 October 1729. At eleven in the morning a certain Marrike came at the door, in the company of another woman, named Anna Smit. The reason for the women's visit lay in the sphere of gossip, verbal injury and honor ; a sphere familiar to preindustrial historians. They complained that Magtelt had called Marrike's daughter a dievegge (female form of « thief »). The complaint only led to renewed quarrelling, in which Barber and Anna, the « seconds » of the main protagonists, engaged most intensely. Each of them claimed that the other had slapped her. What happened next ? This was Anna's testimony in court : Barber attacked her and dragged her outside the room. In the corridor Barber held her in grip ; then Magtelt intervened and cut Anna's face with a knife. Barber denied having dragged Anna into the corridor : « she must have followed me there ». Asked whether her mother had cut Anna, she said it was dark in the corridor and she had only heard some noise. Magtelt herself stated : « I don't know if I have injured her. Because I was busy peeling potatoes, I had a knife in my hand. She touched me and I tried to throw her away from me ».
18 At the next session the court sentenced mother and daughter without further questioning. Barber got eight days on bread and water and Magtelt was « ... to be led on the scaffold, erected in front of the town hall of this city, and to receive a cut in her face at the executioner's hands ». She also got four years spinhouse and a banishment of ten years. We do not know how the audience at the « justice day », 21 January 1730, reacted to the offense and the punishment. The theater, staged by the court as usual, began with the decapitation of a man who had killed another in a knife fight eight years previously. Then two sheep thieves were hanged with a sheep above their head. The corporal penalties followed, of which Magtelt's was scheduled last but one. The clerk who compiled the list of scaffold punishments just wrote in the margin : « has given a female person a cut in her face ». The eye-for-an-eye punishment which she received, was meted out in Amsterdam to thirteen others, all men, between 1650 and 1750. After her appearance on the scaffold, the college of schepenen (the judges of the city's court)
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 15
treated Magtelt with greater clemency. She obtained « reduction » and was released from the spinhouse in July 1731 ; her banishment was remitted26.
19 Did schepenen find they had imposed too harsh a punishment on Magtelt Jeekermans ? Just a few months later they were remarkably lenient in a comparable case. The suspect they questioned was named Wijntje Alberts, twenty-nine years old and born in Leeuwarden. She served beer in a cellar on the waterfront. The court reproached her for keeping a disorderly place, since it was never quiet there, whereupon Wijntje blamed the disorder on her customers. This failed to impress the court. Two citizens and a harbor policeman testified « ... that people are continually quarreling there and that she, prisoner, is the most impertinent beast that can be imagined ». Next, the court heard the testimony of the victim, Susanna Stevens. Last Thursday night Susanna had entered Wijntje's cellar. The two women got into an argument, insulted each other and started a fight. Thus far, Wijntje confirmed the story, but Susanna went on : « she took a knife, cut through my apron and two skirts and then stabbed me in my right arm ». Wijntje denied having had a knife at all, maintaining that her adversary had kicked and beaten her. However, two watchmen arriving at the scene had seen Wijntje carrying a knife and threatening the victim ; a male servant had taken the knife from her hand. Again, schepenen immediately proceeded with a sentence at the next session : Wijntje was released with a rebuke27.
20 The suspects in these two trials had engaged in typically male violence : cutting or stabbing with a knife. The great contrast in the court's treatment of Magtelt Jeekermans and Wijntje Alberts is striking. It cannot be explained by peculiarities of the trials. In both cases the evidence was incomplete, depending for the essential part on the victim's testimony. Both women were born outside Amsterdam. Possibly, Wijntje was an informer of the schout (the court's prosecutor, who directed the interrogations and acted as chief of police), but in that case we have to assume that the court did not bother recruiting someone with a dubious reputation for this job. It is also striking that schepenen were satisfied with just one interrogation, despite the remaining uncertainties. When male fighters gave unsatisfactory answers, they were usually questioned several times. So I propose another reading of the contrast in punishment : it testifies to the fact that the court had no tradition of dealing with serious female aggressiveness and assault. Faced with the unfamiliar, schepenen wavered from one extreme to the other.
Women and assault
21 Not every case of female assault was that serious. My file of women who committed nonhomicidal violence, covering the period 1650-1750, has been extracted from data sets originally compiled for an investigation of executions. These data sets consisted of (1) the sentences of all persons punished on the scaffold between 1650 and 1750 ; (2) a sample from all other criminal trials, leading to a nonpublic punishment, in this period. A third data set, collected more recently, consists of all trials for homicide during the period 1650-1810. The cases it contains of homicide by women will be discussed below. It follows that the assault file is made up of all women who received a scaffold punishment for nonhomicidal violence and a sample of women whose violent behavior led to a nonpublic penalty. Considering the small numbers involved, they had to be combined. This is allright, because we just saw that the lesser penalty did not preclude
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 16
a serious crime. One reason for this lies in the legal rule that a scaffold punishment could be imposed only on persons who had confessed their crime. If the accused persistently denied, whether or not under torture, while the court accepted the evidence, a nonpublic sentence was pronounced.
22 Even though two of the original data sets were created for a statistical analysis of punishment rather than crime, the quantitative figures about female violence derived from them are unambiguous. Twelve out of 144 killers were women. The balance is more uneven still when we consider assault followed by public punishment. A total of 159 persons were punished on the scaffold for assault and only three of them were women. In addition two women mounted the scaffold as accomplices of violent men. The cases with a nonpublic punishment actually belong to three samples, taken from the court's trials in three consecutive periods : 1651-1683, 1684-1716 and 1717-1749. The proportion of female defendants in assault cases was 13 %, 16 % and 6 %, respectively, in these periods28. Supplemented with a few trials of women for threatening behavior or complicity in violence, this makes twenty cases. Hence, the total file of women tried for nonhomicidal violence consists of twenty-five cases, including the two just discussed.
23 The first inquiry is into the degree of seriousness of the incidents concerned. To that end, the cases can be subdivided into three categories. Like Magtelt Jeekermans and Wijntje Alberts, some women had injured or threatened someone with a knife. The second category consists of the women who had not used a weapon. They had fought with their hands or had thrown objects at their adversaries. Thirdly, some women had accompanied violent men and were considered accomplices. Table 1 presents the numbers.
Table I : Degree of seriousness of fermale assault, 1650-1750
Source : Municipal Archive Amsterdam, Confessieboeken
24 Thus, a sizeable minority of women had made use of a knife. Once, the victim was male : Hilletje Cornelis, twenty-two, had injured a young man of nineteen. The intended victim, however, was a woman. It happened in the street on a Friday at midnight. The young man walked there and saw Hilletje when another woman was just passing her by. Hilletje intended to attack that woman with a knife, but the young man immediately intervened. While trying to wrestle the knife from Hilletje's hand, he was injured himself. The accused confessed this. She maintained she did not know the woman she wanted to attack. Rather than inquiring into her motive, the schout asked her why she carried a knife in the street that late. For no reason, she replied. Asked how she got the scar in her face, she claimed she had fallen into a glass29. Obviously, the court was surprised that a woman carried a knife in a public place ; and that at night. The fact that she had a scar in her face suggested that she had been in the company of knife fighters before.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 17
25 Like most defendants tried by the Amsterdam court, these women were overwhelmingly lower-class. Some were natives of Amsterdam though, like Aeltie Cornelis. She was twenty-four and it was her third trial. About her motives we hear little ; Aeltie just told the court that she had quarreled with her victim, Marie Sijmons, the evening before she injured her. Late the next night, when Marie was already asleep, Aeltie came to her room. Apparently, the door was unlocked, which must have been common in houses where a number of families and individual people rented a room. With a knife she carried, Aeltje inflicted two wounds in Marie's neck ; we are not told what kind of wounds. The victim said that the injuries had woken her up, but her assailant claimed that she was already awake. Two hours later Aeltie returned to the scene of the crime and the testimonies diverge again about what she said. Aeltie claimed she just wanted to see how her victim fared. According to Marie, she shouted... « are you still standing up ? I thought you were already dead and I'm sorry that I didn't give you the rest » and, when she left the room again : « lie down, you beast ». An interesting detail is that Aeltie confessed to have thrown the knife into a canal ; a routine for disposing of the evidence practiced by many male fighters30.
26 A typical excuse, often presented by male fighters, was that they had not intended to stab their adversary at all. They had just raised their knife and the other had carelessly « walked into it ». A few women came up with a comparable excuse. Annetje, a domestic servant born in Norway, said she had not realized at all that she had a knife in her hand. Annetje had been told that she would be fired and the question was whether she had cut her mistress' arm out of revenge. Another servant testified that Annetje had told her she intended to harass and beat the mistress before leaving the house. Annetje, denying the threat, told this story : « as I was cutting bread, I had a knife in my hand. At that moment the mistress wanted to beat me, but I raised my arm in defense. So it happened »31. A few other women rather claimed not to remember the incident. A washing-woman of forty-seven, accused of cutting the fingers of another woman, said she had been completely drunk ; an excuse for withholding information given more often by men32.
27 What conclusion should we draw from the fact that a number of women, like men, fought with knives ? Admittedly, the assault weapon often was or may have been a kitchen knife, but this can be interpreted in two ways. One way is to consider it an affirmation of women's ties to the domestic sphere. Such an interpretation is simple and misleading. The interpretation I propose is based on the fact that men also used their knives for cutting bread or peeling fruit. There was little differentiation between the knife as a weapon and the knife as a tool for handling food. When looked at it this way, the women injuring another with a knife exhibited typically male behavior. Certainly, it was considered male behavior and a violation of customary norms if a woman carried a knife in her pocket in the street. The case of Hilletje Cornelis confirms this. The court never made a fuss of men carrying a knife in their pocket, as long as they kept it there. On the other hand, in a domestic setting some women found a convenient excuse in the kitchen function of a knife : they used it so often, they implied, that they forgot they had it in their hand when someone bothered them.
28 Many of the remaining cases from the sample were rather trivial. Sometimes one wonders why an incident made it to a criminal trial at all. Take this case in 1659 : a forty-eight year old woman confesses to have beaten her mother, but she had intended to hit her sister, who evaded her. She was drunk, she admits. Maybe the case only went
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 18
to trial because the accused had already stayed in the spinhouse for three years33. In other cases we just hear that a woman had fought with or beaten another woman. Two women were accused of severe injury through biting.
29 Several violent women had acted as a member of a group. The case of Adriaentje Jans is especially revealing. Her occupation was said to be glove-sewer, but she arrived in jail « picked up from a whorehouse ». On a Sunday night at eleven three prostitutes, among whom Adriaentje, and a few pluggen (prostitutes' protectors) had attacked « two citizens and their vrouwen ». The latter word can mean wives as well as women (in this case, presumably, fiancées) ; the formulation is meant to convey first of all that they were respectable people, unlike their assailants. The motive for the attack was not recorded. The assailants pursued their victims over the New Bridge until the Texel Quay, where Adriaentje, according to the accusation, seized one of the women with force, reached for the ribbon in her hair, and injured her face. Adriaentje admitted to have seized the woman. She did it because one of the men had slapped her in her face34. Thus, she retaliated an attack from a man by counterattacking a woman from the group of opponents.
30 Men, for their part, routinely beat women when they had a grudge against them ; that is, in the social milieu we are dealing with35. Sometimes these men were encouraged by a female companion, as in the case of Marry Jans. At age seventeen, she had been employed briefly in a « dancing-room, » but now, at age twenty-six, she was living with her mother, engaged to Pieter Mattijse and pregnant by him. With Pieter and another couple she had visited a tavern and on their way back they encountered two women. Jokingly, Pieter asked these women if they would buy them a beer. The reply was : « ask it from your whores whom you have with you ». This insult started a fight in which Pieter slapped one of the women on her bare buttocks. His mate, wanting to do the same to the other woman, lifted her skirt, but she was too strong and prevented him « to execute his evil plan ». Marry was condemned for encouraging her menfolk. She admitted having shouted « beat them until the devil takes them »36.
31 A few other women tried for complicity in violence also were charged with encouraging the men they accompanied. In 1726 a certain Thomas van der Val was interrogated about an incident in which he, a friend and two women had confronted two men. Thomas admitted to have stabbed one of these men in his side, adding that the women had shouted « come on, give him something »37. Prostitutes might be tried along with their violent protectors. One woman, for example, had been arrested after the two men who had to keep an eye on her, had severely beaten up a client who had made trouble in her room38. The charge against some women amounted to no more than having been present at the violent activities of their male companions, who might have escaped themselves. A female defendant in 1664, for example, had this to say : « with my fiance and his friend I went to a winehouse at the apple market. On our way there, we met three men, who were to embark on a ship with my fiance, and a woman. They all accompanied us to the winehouse. On our way back, I was a little behind and suddenly I noticed that our company was confronting another group. There was a fist fight, but I have not seen any knife drawn. When I wanted to leave, my hand was injured and then the deputy-schout arrested me » 39. Obviously, police attention had been aimed at the entire fracas, but she was the only one arrested.
32 In most cases, the women tried for being present at violence were questioned rather as witnesses than as suspects. Their fault was to have been in the company of the actual
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 19
offenders40. They had been together with aggressive men, who were no good in the eyes of respectable people. Watchmen or schout's servants found it a matter of course to arrest them together with the male suspects. The magistrates found it convenient, when such a dishonorable woman was in custody anyway, to interrogate her about the details of the incident. Even when it turned out that her own role had been minimal, the court did not bother about the procedure. Schepenen pronounced a sentence – banishment, imprisonment or release with a rebuke– nonetheless, for having been present at the scene. This might be legally construed as having refrained to prevent violence from happening. Alternatively, the court may have routinely equated presence with encouragement and, hence, complicity.
33 Next to the degree of seriousness of female violence, the victim's sex is a crucial variable. In table 2 this factor is combined with that of the scene of the crime : someone's home or a public place. For obvious reasons, the complicity cases must be excluded here.
Table 2 : Female assault : victim's sex and scene of the crime, 1650-1750.
Source : Municipal Archive Amsterdam, Confessieboeken
34 The ratio of female to male victims is no less than 8 : 1. Obviously, women tended to attack other women, rather than men. This was reflected most tellingly in the case of Adriaentje Jans, who retaliated an attack from a man by counter-attacking a woman from the group of opponents. The factor « scene of the crime, » on the other hand, is in balance. Of the scenes recorded, seven were public and seven domestic. If the complicity cases were included, it would be ten public and nine domestic. Since we are dealing with lower-class women, the relative prominence of public scenes is not surprising. In Amsterdam as well as other large cities at the time, these women spent more time in the streets than their sisters from more respectable classes.
35 The case of male victim in a public place actually was quite trivial. The defendant had thrown mud and stones at a servant of justice, for undisclosed reasons41. The other case of female-on-male violence is interesting, because the defendant actually had a grudge against the victim's wife. Clara Walraven, convicted no less than nine times before, wanted to take revenge on a witness who had testified in her last trial. The witness was a woman, but her husband suffered the revenge. Clara had scratched his face, beaten him and broken some of the house's window-glasses42. Possibly, the victim's wife was out when Clara, expecting her to be in, went to her home, If that was the case, it confirms the exceptionality of women attacking men. Also when the victim was another woman and someone intervened, it was most likely to be a man. This happened in a second case of a maid confronting her mistress because of a dismissal. The mistress, living at the Herengracht, was said to be of the city's highest rank. Nevertheless, her maid called her a « thunder beast » and « a whore, » saying « shall I
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 20
get you a pimp ? ». The next day the maid returned to the house and attempted to beat the mistress and her daughter. Male servants prevented her from doing this43.
36 The case with a child victim belongs to the sphere of mental disturbance rather than aggressiveness. Dorothe Dorens stayed with a married couple who had a one-and-a-half year old child. One Sunday morning she went out, saying she had to get the money for her lodging fee. The wife entrusted the child to her for a walk. In the Plantage (a park) she decided to strangle the child with a tie, but just in time, as she later said in court, the voice of God told her to stop. She took the child to the policemen in the nearby watch-house, who reported that she looked confused but the child fresh and healthy ; the tie was loose. Dorothe was banished from the city for ever44.
37 The fact that many cases from the sample were rather trivial suggests that serious female violence was an unfamiliar thing in court. Was it also an unfamiliar sight in the city ? Any speculation about a dark number is futile. It should be noted, however, that only cases in which violence was the principal offense could be considered. Possibly, side-stories of female aggression can be found in the interrogations of women tried for property offenses. A consideration of the women's age, finally, brings no surprise. Of the twenty-five defendants in the sample, one was under twenty, fifteen were in their twenties, five in their thirties and four over forty. This is a normal age-distribution for any group of criminals, male or female.
Female homicide
38 Between 1650 and 1810 the Amsterdam court tried 144 killers. A major trend concerns the victims : after 1750 a much larger proportion of victims than before were intimates45. Looking only at homicide cases with a woman as perpetrator, it is impossible to identify a trend over time. The file of female killers (with noninfant victims) consists of only twelve cases : 8.3 % of the total. This is a remarkable fact. Between 1524 and 1811 the ratio of prosecuted to detected homicide in Amsterdam fluctuated between 1 :3 and 1 :9. As it may be assumed that men had more opportunities to flee from the scene of the crime and escape the city than women had, the actual rate of female homicide may have been two to six times the rate of prosecutions of women for homicide. That would amount to a woman killing a noninfant person in the city (with over 200,000 inhabitants) once in every seven years at least and once in every two years at most during the period 1650-1810. In view of the low number of trials, there is no point in tabulating them. It should be noted, however, that there was only one case of a woman who put an adult man to death (the other male victims were children).
39 Likewise, in only one of the twelve cases the scene of the crime was a public place ; and not even quite public in the sense of open to everyone's view. Cieper Malysz, a Jewish girl of eighteen, killed her friend Roosje, thirteen and also Jewish, in the women's toilet under one of Amsterdam's many bridges. Roosje had asked Cieper to take some of her possessions to the pawn-shop, but the latter had cheated her friend. When Roosje wanted her things back and Cieper did not have the money, she panicked. She told her friend to accompany her to the public toilet, where she stabbed and cut her five times, after which she pushed the body through the toilet's bars into the canal. She also took Roosje's earrings. When two Christian citizens arrived at the scene, Cieper blew out their lantern and ran away, but she was arrested that very night46.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 21
40 The remaining eleven incidents took place in either the killer's or the victim's home, which often was the same anyway. Money was involved in four more cases, but neither of them was a straightforward robbery. A young woman, who had recently arrived in the city from Denmark in the hope of finding employment, constantly quarrelled with her landlady about the lodging fee. One morning the quarrel escalated : the landlady beat her lodger with a broomstick and the latter smashed her opponent's head with an axe. Although she broke up one of her landlady's suitcases after the murder, she left its contents on the bed47. A married woman strangled her neighbor, when the latter had fallen asleep after they had drunk liquor together. Then she took her gold chain and silver bag. She told the court that her creditors were pressing her and that she had been desperate about getting money ; her husband knew nothing of this48. Another married woman was poor and desperate too. She had borrowed money from a woman whose servant girl she was acquainted with, but she was unable to pay it back. In her own home she murdered the servant, who came to get the money ; then she went to the house of the servant's mistress and murdered her there49. The final killer in this group was a servant girl herself, aged twenty-eight. She hated the old women, two sisters, in whose house she worked. When one mistress was asleep and the other again made the servant angry, she strangled the old woman and left the house with money and jewelry50.
41 Three women killed one or two of their own children, all three in a context of desperation or mental disturbance. The first victim was an illegitimate child of three ; its mother, part-time prostitute, alone and depressed, had just been beaten both by a few pimps and her landlady51. A young widow, who had stabbed to death her legitimate son and illegitimate daughter, said she had done it « out of poverty, sadness and debts »52. The third woman, obviously disturbed, had already spent a year in the pest- house as insane. She was a Catholic, married, had borne five children, four of whom had died, and the fifth, a son of eleven, was mute. Asked why she had killed that son, she gave no coherent reply : it had to be done or else the child would be « sulphured » [in hell ?] ; now she could die peacefully without being tormented by the Pope53.
42 Two cases were love affairs. A man and his concubine made an ingenious plan to murder his wife and they succeeded. The two lovers each had an equally active part in the murder54. The other love affair is the oldest lesbian crime passionnel recorded in the Netherlands. No men were involved here, just three women. One of them stabbed her presumed rival in the presence of her lover55. The case has become a cause célèbre in Dutch gay historiography56. The file contains just one case of a wife who killed her husband. It is a tale of domestic tensions. Anna and Jan were both widowed when they married. She had two children from her former marriage, he one ; together they had a child of sixteen months. Preceding the crime, the couple quarrelled almost daily. They were poor. On the fatal night Jan had reproached Anna for giving too much food to her own children. He kicked her and hit her head. When she reached for a knife, he retorted : « why would I not drag you by your hair and kick the bowels out of your belly ? » He kicked her again. Anna reacted with « I warn you ; stay away from me ; I will defend myself with the knife ». Jan shouted « thunder child ; I'll break your neck ». Then Anna stabbed Jan. She immediately ran out of the house, cruising the city for some time. When she came back, she made coffee for her husband, who had been bandaged in the meantime. She also helped him put on a clean shirt. He said « don't cry ; I'll make it ». Shortly afterwards he died57.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 22
43 This tale of domestic tensions invites a little comparison with male homicide. The story is no different from the common sequence of events in domestic homicide, except that the eventual killer is the wife, not the husband. In the historical literature on female violence it is sometimes stated that, once women crossed a certain threshold, they were capable of excessive violence. Neither this case, nor the others cited lend credibility to this view. For every type mentioned, there were male parallels among Amsterdam murder trials. Among male defendants were clumsy robbers smashing someone's head with a spade, men maiming there victims, disturbed fathers killing their young children, and jealous lovers. Female killers, then, were not an exceptional type. They were less numerous only, because they almost never committed one other type of homicide, which was predominant among male killers.
44 The female homicide file contains one such case : an insult, a quarrel, a fight, a knife drawn, one of the parties fatally injured. When men did such things, however, the scene was a tavern, from where they went to the street. In this case, the scene was a home. A woman named Engel Sybrants owned the house and she rented rooms to Maria Borman and to Jannetie Fagelaar and her fourteen-year old daughter. The latter had been asked by her mother, who suffered from a fever, to get her some beer. Because she had stayed away too long, Engel reproached her upon her return. The daughter replied with impertinent words. Then Maria came from downstairs, rebuking Jannetie's daughter for her impertinence toward the landlady. This caused Jannetie to yell at Maria : « mind your own business*. Various insults followed from both sides. Then Maria walked up to Jannetie, pulled her hair and called her a married men's whore. The insult was serious indeed ; even prostitutes themselves looked down upon colleagues who accepted married men as clients58. Jannetie, just busy cutting a piece of bread, thrust the knife in Maria's chest, while uttering the same words she had said. Then Jannetie dropped the knife. Maria was able still to pick up a piece of wood, which a fourth woman, not mentioned before, attempted to cast from her hand. Then Maria fell down and died shortly afterwards. Jannetie told the court that she had intended no harm and just wanted to defend herself. This cannot have been convincing, but the judges seemed uncertain again how to evaluate the case. For a similar deed, a man would normally have been decapitated. The schout indeed demanded capital punishment for Jannetie, but schepenen imposed the penalty of sword over head and a banishment of twenty years59.
45 Again, a knife was the murder weapon ; it was used in six of the twelve cases of female homicide. Five times the method was strangling and once an axe was the murder weapon. The strangling cases complicate the comparison with the assault file, because the nonhomicidal equivalent of strangling would be just to grab someone's throat and I never encountered this as an offense in its own right. A few differences and similarities between the homicide and assault files call for comment nonetheless. The greater frequency of the knife in the homicide file reflects the fact that women did not partake of the tradition of knife fighting, in which the aim usually was to give one's opponent a cut or two. For women, the threshold impeding the use of this weapon was higher, so when they crossed that threshold, the result was more likely to be fatal. A second difference concerns the proportion of child victims : only one in the assault file, but four out of fourteen (or five, if we include thirteen-year old Roosje) in the homicide file. Here, too, an explanation suggests itself : when a woman beat a child, this would normally be regarded as a disciplinary act inviting little comment ; only in extreme
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 23
cases, violence against children was prosecuted. The most significant difference concerns the scene of the crime. Whereas all but one of the homicidal incidents took place in a home, in the assault file public places came to 50 % (and they would still come to 37 % if all unrecorded crime scenes were in fact homes). Women, it seems, almost never resorted to extreme violence, except in domestic conflict. Together, the differences suggest that, in the case of female defendants, unlike in that of male defendants, we cannot take homicidal violence as indicative for all violence. Cases of assault by women should always be taken into consideration.
46 The principal similarity concerns the near absence of adult men as victims : one out of fourteen in the homicide file and two out of nineteen in the nonhomicidal file. These figures seem conclusive. However serious female violence was, women seldom attacked men. This conclusion forms an intriguing contrast with Wiltenburg's observations from popular literature. In this literature, women did attack men and, in works of fiction, female violence took place in a comical context. For their part, men seldom reserved their aggression for their own sex : they beat women both in popular literature and the reality represented in court records. Often, this happened under the influence of alcohol. What about alcoholic women ?
47 Only a few women, prosecuted for assault, said they had been drunk. The silence in the interrogation protocols of other female defendants can mean either one of three things : it was simply not recorded ; women were ashamed to admit this in court ; violent women were drunk less often than violent men. Whatever was the case, women were a visible presence in the tavern culture, in which male knife fighters set the tone. Women frequently figure in the interrogation protocols of men tried for homicide or assault. Since these women usually appeared in court only as witnesses, their alcohol consumption mattered less to those questioning them. In the world of taverns women themselves seldom became violent. The stories told by knife fighters are often rich in detail, but women primarily take the role of background accessories. When they pay a visit to a man or go out with one or more of them, they are the man's sweetheart or fiancee. In other cases, respectable witnesses or the court clerk routinely call them « whores » (which does not necessarily refer to professional prostitution). Thus, the women associating with knife fighters did so in a context of either traditional courtship or dishonorable sexuality, but they hardly partook of the culture of violence. When harassed by a man in a tavern, many women chose to avoid the man rather than to defend themselves. Or they sought the protection of another man, which they regularly enjoyed. Even in the tavern culture, then, few women resorted to (serious) violence.
48 That women often sought male protection, indicates that they did not disapprove of violence per se. Several women encouraged men in their violent behavior. One woman incited a man to serious violence. The case is outside the file with female defendants, because only the man was sentenced. The relationship between Grietje Barents, a thirty-six year old salt seller, and Pieter Egerse, a twenty-four year old sailor, remains unclear. They may have been lovers. Grietje just admitted that she had occasionally ordered drinks to be brought to Pieter's room, which they had consumed together, and that her little daughter had picked up Pieter from his room a couple of times. He was not interrogated about the character of their relationship. Earlier, in any case, Grietje had been sleeping with a certain Christoffel Mijgenaar. He was probably the father of her child ; Grietje had sued Christoffel in vain. Now that he had won the suit, he was about to marry another woman. Grietje often complained to Pieter how much this hurt
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 24
her feelings. In court, she denied having incited her friend to take revenge for her on Christoffel, but several witnesses had heard her say as much and Pieter himself confessed to have acted at her instigation. She had provided him with money to buy a knife and promised to give him more if he would injure Christoffel with it. Before he succeeded in this, they had pursued the intended victim in the streets several times, she with her face hidden behind her headdress. Each time there was no good opportunity, or maybe Pieter was afraid. In the evening of 28 December 1697 the two of them waited on Christoffel in front of his house. When he left, Grietje, again with her face covered, encouraged her friend anew : « there he is ; do it now ». They followed the victim until he stopped near a baker's store. Grietje demanded from her companion to stab Christoffel in his back. Pieter objected : « the man can die from that ». Finally, he cut Christoffel's cheek and nose.
49 Whereas Pieter was punished on the scaffold with whipping and a cut in the cheek, Grietje's case was « kept in reatu » (undecided)60. This means that schepenen considered it possible that Grietje's claim that she had nothing to do with the crime was true and, by implication, that Pieter's story about pursuing the victim together was false. If so, we can only guess why schepenen were content to leave the matter at that. Whether Pieter had acted on his own or with Grietje's complicity, however, Grietje had refrained from attacking herself the man she was angry at.
Conclusion
50 The behavior of most Dutch women would have pleased the reverend Hondius. They were no fighters. The Amsterdam court prosecuted few women for violence and a fair number of them, moreover, were charged with trivial acts. The small size of the resulting files made it futile to look for changes during the period studied. The low figures for female violence are in line with the findings of other historians. Throughout preindustrial Europe women were no fighters, though primarily because of cultural codes older than Hondius' religiously inspired admonitions. In their turn, these cultural codes were a function of an uneven power balance between men and women. Clearly, this balance was uneven also in the social world of the women who did become violent.
51 The minority who defied cultural stereotypes and religious warnings is interesting in its own right. In several ways, these women imitated male types of aggression. Some cut at their opponent with a knife. They knew about routines like throwing the knife into a canal and, when in court, claiming they had been drunk. Women's violence, no less than women's abstention from violence, depended on a learning process. This is consistent with Elias' notion that in human emotions, learned ways have become dominant over unlearned ways61.
52 The women in question learned about the culture of violence through close contact with men participating in it. Almost all Amsterdam defendants, male and female, belonged to the segment of the city's population from the lower-middle class downwards. But the women prosecuted for violence, on average, belonged to the lower echelons of that segment. If a woman had an occupation listed, it was usually domestic service or some lowly-paid trade. Several women were denoted as whores, indicating their distance from the respectable citizenry. Some were indeed professional prostitutes. In short, the great majority of the women discussed belonged to a social milieu at the border of the respectable and the unrespectable segment of the working
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 25
classes : just like the male fighters whose behavior they imitated. These women and men lived a great part of their lives in the street or in taverns. This makes it understandable that female assault took place in public as well as domestic settings. The group of women making up the assault and homicide files hardly overlapped with that other group foreign travellers commented about. The independently-minded women they encountered must have been middle-class or at least from the upper echelons of the working classes.
53 The conclusion that women tended to attack other women, rather than men, contains few surprises62. Of course it had something to do with men's greater bodily strength. But socio-cultural factors are likely to have operated too. The culture of violence was a male culture and women recognized this. Some might imitate male violence, but they did not step into the male world. Female violence was same-sex violence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beattie, J. M, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800, Oxford, 1986.
Charles, L., Duffin L., (eds.), Women and Work in Preindustrial England, London, 1985.
Deursen, A. Th. van, Plain Lives in a Golden Age. Popular Culture, Religion and Society in 17th-century Holland, Cambridge, 1991 (orig. 1978).
Diederiks, H., In een Land van Justitie. Criminaliteit van Vrouwen, Soldaten en Ambtenaren in de 18e Eeuwse Republiek, Hilversum, 1992.
Elias, N., On human beings and their emotions. A process-sociological essay, in Featherstone M. et al, (eds.), The Body. Social Process and Cultural Theory, London, 1991 (orig. 1987), p. 103-125.
Everard, M., Ziel en zinnen. Over liefde en lust tussen vrouwen in de tweede helft van de 18e eeuw, Groningen, 1994.
Faber, S., Strafrechtspleging en criminaliteit te Amsterdam, 1680-1811. De nieuwe menslievendheid, Arnhem, 1983.
Farr, J. R.., The pure and the disciplined body. Hierarchy, morality and symbolism in France during the catholic Reformation. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1991, 21, 3, p. 391-414.
Feeley, M. M., Little D.L., The vanishing female. The decline of women in the criminal process, 1687-1912, Law & Society Review, 1991, 25, 4, p. 719-757.
Finch, A., Women and violence in the later middle ages." The evidence of the Officiality of Cerisy, Continuity and Change, 1992, 7, p. 23-45.
Garrioch, D., Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740-1790, Cambridge, 1986.
Hanawalt, B. A., Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348, Cambridge (Mass.), London, 1979.
Hanawalt, B. A., (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, Bloomington, 1986.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 26
Heijden, M. van der, Criminaliteit en sexe in 18e-eeuws Rotterdam. De verschillen tussen vrouwen- en mannencriminaliteit tussen 1700 en 1750, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis, 1995, 21, 1, p. 1-36.
Herlihy, D., Opera muliebria. Women and Work in Medieval Europe, New York, 1990.
Hill, B., Women, Work and Sexual Politics in 18th-Century England, Oxford, 1989.
Hondius, J., Swart register van duysent sonden, Amsterdam, 1679.
Hufton, O., Women and violence in early modern Europe, in Dieteren, F. and Kloek, E., (eds.), Writing Women into History, Amsterdam, 1990, p. 75-95.
Johnson, E. A., Urbanization and Crime. Germany1871-1914, Cambridge, 1995.
Kermode, J. and Walker, G., (eds.), Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England, London, 1994.
Lynch, K. E., The family and the history of public life, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1994, 24, 4, p. 665-684.
Meer, T. van der, De wesentlijcke sonde van sodomie en andere vuyligheden. Sodomietenvervolgingen in Amsterdam, 1730-1811, Amsterdam, 1984.
Mohrmann, R.-E., Volksleben in Wilster im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Neumünster, 1977.
Pol, L. van de, Vrouwencriminaliteit in de Gouden Eeuw, Ons Amsterdam, 1982, 34, p. 266-268.
Pol, L. van de, Beeld en workelijkheid van de prostitutie in de 17e eeuw, in Hekma, G., Roodenburg, H., (eds.), Soete minne en heische boosheit. Seksuele voorstellingen in Nederland, 1300-1850, Nijmegen, 1988, p. 109-144.
Pol, L. van de, Prostitutie en de Amsterdamse burgerij. Eerbegrippen in een vroegmoderne ste- delijke samenleving, in Boekhorst, P. te et al, (eds.), Cultuur en maatschappij in Nederland, 1500-1850. Een historisch-antropologisch perspectief, Meppel, 1992, p. 179-218.
Pol, L. van de, Het Amsterdams Hoerdom. Prostitutie in de 17e en 18e eeuw, Amsterdam, 1996.
Schama, S., Overvloed en onbehagen. De Nederlandse cultuur in de Gouden Eeuw, Amsterdam, 1988 (orig. 1987).
Schlossman, S., Cairns, R.B., Problem girls. Observations on past and present, in Elder, G.H., Jr., et al, (eds.), Children in Time and Place. Developmental and Historical Insights, Cambridge, 1993, p. 110-130.
Spierenburg, P., Judicial Violence in the Dutch Republic. Corporal Punishment, Executions and Torture in Amsterdam, 1650-1750, Amsterdam, Dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1978.
Spierenburg, P., The Spectacle of Suffering. Executions and the Evolution of Repression : From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience, Cambridge, 1984.
Spierenburg, P., The Prison Experience. Disciplinary Institutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe, New Brunswick, London, 1991.
Spierenburg, P., Faces of violence. Homicide trends and cultural meanings : Amsterdam, 1431-1816, Journal of Social History, 1994, 27, 4, p. 701-716.
Spierenburg, P., Long-Term Trends in Homicide. Theoretical Reflections and Dutch Evidence, 15th to 20th Centuries, in Johnson, E.A. and Monkkonen, E.H., (eds.), The Civilization of Crime. Violence in Town and Country since the Middle ages, Urbana, Chicago, 1996, p. 63-105.
Tilly, L.A., Scott, J.W., Women, Work and Family, New York, 1978.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 27
Ulbricht, O., (ed.), Von Huren und Rabenmüttern. Weibliche Kriminalität in der frühen Neuzeit, Köln, 1995.
Wiesner, M.E., Working Women in Renaissance Germany, New Brunswick, N.J. 1986.
Wiltenburg, J., Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany, Charlottesville, London, 1992.
Woolf, S., (ed.), Domestic strategies. Work and family in France and Italy, 1600-1800, Cambridge, 1991.
NOTES
1. An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at the meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, November 1995. I am grateful to the participants in the session and to Manon van der Heijden for their comments. I also profited from the comments of the anonymous reviewers, who reviewed the article for CHS. 2. Hondius (1679, p. 436). Fighting in general, which implicitly means by men, is condemned as sin nr. 915 (ibidem, p. 415). 3. Removing a woman's headdress was a shaming ritual practiced in several parts of Europe at the time. See Farr (1991) and Mohrmann (1977, p. 237-238, 278 (note 55)). 4. Hufton (1990). 5. See their introduction to Kermode and Walker (1994, p. 4). 6. Spierenburg (1996, p. 72-73). The Amsterdam court tried only a handful of cases of infanticide anyway. Trials for giving birth to a dead baby without calling a midwife were slightly more frequent. Obviously, this offense cannot be defined as violence at all. In her contribution to Ulbricht (1995, p. 314) Silke Gottsch also excludes infanticide from a discussion of female violence. 7. Finch (1992, p. 38). 8. Elias (1991). 9. See the overview in Heijden (1995, p. 4-7). 10. Spierenburg (1978, p. 106-109). 11. Diederiks (1992, p. 71). See also Faber (1983, p. 253-254). 12. Heijden (1995). 13. Feeley and Little (1991, p. 722). Although Little is a co-author in this article, the ongoing project is Feeley's. 14. Behringer in Ulbricht (1995, p. 74-78). In Schwerhoff's contribution on Cologne, however, the female share in total crime fluctuates around 15 % in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centu- ries (Ulbricht, 1995, p. 87-89). 15. Johnson (1995, p. 188-189). The figures have been re-calculated, since Johnson presents women's crime rates as a percentage of men's crime rates, not total crime. 16. De Volkskrant, 10 May and 12 October 1995. 17. On long-term changes with regard to women and work : Tilly and Scott (1978) ; Charles and Duffin (1985) ; Hanawalt (1986) ; Wiesner (1986) ; Hill (1989) ; Herlihy (1990) ; Woolf (1991). It should be noted that women's public manifestation involves more than their participation in the work force. In the life of local communities, for example, women continued to play an important role and that role must be called a public one. See also Lynch (1994), who argues against a too rigid dichotomy of pri- vate vs. public life. 18. Heijden (1995, p. 16). 19. For the Middle Ages, see Finch (1992) and the literature he cites (p. 28). For the early modern per- iod, see, among others, Beattie (1986, chapter three).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 28
20. Hanawalt (1979, p. 123). 21. Schlossman and Cairns (1993, p. 119). 22. Wiltenburg (1992, p. 188-250). 23. Pol (1996). 24. See, for example, Deursen (1991, p. 81-84) ; Pol (1982) ; Schama (1988, p. 409-416). 25. On knife fighters, see my contribution to the meeting of the Social Science History Association, Atlanta, Nov. 1994 (to be published in a collective volume I am editing). 26. R.A. 387, fo. 249, 251vs (Magtelt Jeekermans) & fo. 249vs, 251vs (Barber Overruyter) ; R.A. 638 : 21 Jan. 1730 ; archive nr. 347 (spin- en werkhuis), inv. nr. 40, fo. 223. On reduction : Spierenburg (1991, p. 144-147, 185-188). R.A. means Municipal Archive Amsterdam, Archive nr. 5061 (Oud- Rechterlijk Archief). 27. R.A. 388, fo. 89vs, 91vs (quote on 90vs). 28. Spierenburg (1978, appendix B, table 26). 29. R.A. 355, fo. 120vs, 124. Year 1706. 30. R.A. 332, fo. llvs, 12, 12vs, 26. Year 1687. 31. R.A. 342, fo. 1, lvs. Year 1695. 32. R.A. 351, fo. 233, 237vs. Year 1702. 33. R.A.313, fo.7. 34. R.A. 349, fo. 194vs. Year 1700. 35. Cf. my contribution to the meeting of the Social Science History Association, Atlanta, Nov. 1994 (to be published in a collective volume I am editing). That men routinely beat women has also been reported for 18th-century Paris : see Garrioch (1986, p. 85-86). 36. R.A. 313, fo. 98, 100, 101 (Pieter Matijsse) ; fo. 99, l00vs (Marry Jans). Year 1660. 37. R.A. 385, fo. 74vs, 85vs (Johanna Meyer) & fo. 49vs, 83 (Thomas van der Val). 38. R.A. 325, fo. 30vs, 39vs, 43. Year 1679. 39. R.A.316, fo. 153. 40. There was a male parallel to this in the form of a (young) man found in the company of thieves : when nothing could be proved against him, he was still banished or given another light punishment. 41. R.A. 318, fo. 94. Year 1668. 42. R.A. 344, fo. 132vs, 133. Year 1697.1 listed the scene as unrecorded, because it is unclear whether Clara had entered the victim's house or attacked him at the door. 43. R.A. 384, fo. 135. Year 1726. 44. R.A. 397, fo. 48vs, 73. Year 1738. 45. Spierenburg (1994, p. 709-712 ; 1996, p. 88-94, written in 1992). The percentage of female killers mentioned here is slightly different, because I found a few additional cases of homicide since then. 46. R.A. 408, fo. 65vs-72, 113vs, 120vs. Year 1748. 47. R.A. 316, fo. 82, 84vs (Elsje Christiaanse). Year 1664. 48. R.A. 355, fo. 184, 193, 196vs, 203vs (Ceelitie Cornelisse). Year 1706. 49. R.A. 406, fo. 227vs-245, 247vs, 253vs ; R.A. 407, fo. 1-6, 21 vs (Hendrina Wouters). Year 1746. See also Spierenburg (1984, p. 65-66). 50. R.A. 486, p. 2, 6, 15, 326 ; R.A. 487, p. 34, 99, 116, 128, 167, 330 (Grietje Franse) Year 1799. 51. R.A. 320, fo. 57vs-58vs (Trintie Pieters) Year 1772. 52. R.A. 393, fo. 215vs, 222 (Sara Abiatar) Year 1736. 53. R.A. 452, p. 419, 432, 448 (Maria Meijbeek). Year 1783. 54. R.A. 426, p. 170, 183, 193, 207, 248, 270, 351, 449, 514 ; R.A. 427, p. 1, 59, 171, 225, 284, 330 (Nathaniel Donker) + R.A. 426, p. 227, 282, 319, 335, 354 ; R.A. 327, p. 17, 64, 231, 258, 282, 331, 479 (Dorothea Bosselman). Year 1766-1767. 55. R.A. 468, p. 272, 295, 335, 356, 362, 442 (Bartha Schuurman). Year 1792.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 29
56. See Meer (1984, p. 139-42), and Everard (1994, p. 136 et sq.). 57. R.A. 419, p. 536, 540 ; R.A. 420, p. 13, 18, 87 (Anna Grotenhuijs). Year 1761. 58. Cf. Pol (1988). 59. R.A. 409, fo. 187, 190vs, 204vs. Year 1750. On the penalty of sword over head : Spierenburg (1984, p. 79-80). 60. R.A. 347, fo. 226vs, 269vs (Pieter Egerse) ; R.A. 347, fo. 228, 234vs, 269vs (Grietje Barents). 61. See above (in reference to Elias, 1991). 62. Schwerhoff arrives at the same conclusion for Cologne in the period 1557-1620 : see his contribution to Ulbricht (1995).
ABSTRACTS
Historians have found female violence, especially serious violence, to be uncommon. However, the uncommon is worth studying in its own right. The article first defines violence and then discusses women's share in total crime. While the proportion of women committing property offenses has been considerable in the past, women's involvement in violence has always been rather low. It may be hypothesised that the level of female violence is a function of the power balance between men and women. Unlike women's public manifestation, this balance has consistently been uneven throughout the centuries. The article then discusses the data on female violence in 17th and 18th-century Amsterdam, based on a sample of 25 assault cases and 12 homicide cases. Two exemplary incidents are presented first. From them it is concluded that the court had no tradition of dealing with serious female aggressiveness ; faced with the unfamiliar, the judges wavered from one extreme to the other. Next, the court cases are discussed thematically ; the principal findings are : (1) A sizeable minority of women made use of a knife ; in some respects they imitated male violence. (2) A few other women were tried for complicity in violence ; they were charged with encouraging the men they accompanied. (3) The ratio of female to male victims was 8 :1 ; women tended to attack other women, rather than men. (4) Female homicide differed in one respect from female assault : all but one of the homicidal incidents took place in a home, whereas in the assault file public places came to 50 %. (5) Women often sought male protection, which indicates that they did not disapprove of violence per se. It is concluded that women's violence, no less than women's abstention from violence, depended on a learning process. This is consistent with Elias' notion that in human emotions, learned ways have become dominant over unlearned ways. The women in question learned about the culture of violence through close contact with men participating in it. Yet, women did not step into the male world. Female violence was same-sex violence.
Les historiens ont établi que la violence féminine, et en particulier la violence grave, était inhabituelle. Néanmoins, l'inhabituel mérite d'être étudié pour lui-même. L'article, après avoir défini la violence, analyse la part des femmes dans la criminalité et montre que si, dans le passé, elles furent responsables d'une fraction considérable des atteintes aux biens, leur implication dans la violence a toujours été plutôt faible. On peut faire l'hypothèse que le niveau de violence féminine est fonction du rapport des pouvoirs entre les sexes. A la différence des manifestations publiques des femmes, ce rapport a été constamment inégal au cours des siècles. L'article discute ensuite les données relatives à la violence féminine à Amsterdam aux 17e et 18e siècles, à partir d'un échantillon de 25 cas de coups et blessures et de 12 homicides. L'analyse
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 30
initiale de deux incidents exemplaires permet de conclure que les tribunaux n'avaient pas l'habitude de traiter des cas sérieux d'agressivité féminine ; confrontés à des situations inhabituelles, les juges oscillaient d'un extrême à l'autre. Les autres cas sont ensuite analysés selon une grille thématique. Voici les principaux résultats : (1) une minorité importante de femmes usait du couteau, imitant dans une certaine mesure la violence masculine. (2) Quelques femmes furent jugées pour complicité et accusées d'avoir incité les hommes qui les accompagnaient. (3) Parmi les victimes, le ratio des femmes aux hommes était de 8/1, ce qui montre que les femmes tendaient à attaquer d'autres femmes plutôt que des hommes. (4) Homicides et coups et blessures différaient par le lieu de commission : tous les homicides (sauf un) furent commis au domicile, tandis que la moitié des coups et blessures survinrent dans des lieux publics. (5)Les femmes avaient souvent recours à la protection des hommes, montrant par là qu'elles ne refusaient pas la violence en elle-même. L'Auteur conclut que la violence ou la non-violence féminine résultait d'un processus d'apprentissage, ce qui corrobore la thèse de Norbert Elias selon laquelle, dans les émotions humaines, les réactions acquises ont pris le pas sur les réactions innées. Les femmes en question se sont imprégnées de la culture de la violence dans leurs contacts étroits avec des hommes qui la pratiquaient. Toutefois, elles n'ont pas pénétré dans le monde des hommes : la violence féminine est avant tout dirigée contre les autres femmes.
AUTHOR
PIETER SPIERENBURG Universitair Hoofddocent at the Department of History, Erasmus University, Rotterdam (Netherlands) ; secretary and cofounder (1978) of the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice ; research director of the program on Group Cultures of the N.W. Posthumus Institute. He is author of : The Spectacle of Suffering. Executions and the Evolution of Repression : From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1984) ; The Broken Spell. A Cultural and Anthropological History of Preindustrial Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers U.P. and London, Macmillan, 1991) ; The Prison Experience. Disciplinary Institutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, London, Rutgers University Press, 1991) ; « Long-Term Trends in Homicide. Theoretical Reflections and Dutch Evidence, Fifteenth to Twentieth Centuries », in Johnson (E. A.), Monkkonen (E. H.), (eds.), The Civilization of Crime. Violence in Town and Country since the Middle Ages (Urbana, Chicago, 1996, p. 63-105). He presently works on the history of violence and its socio-cultural context from a long term perspective.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 31
« Harmful tramps » Police professionalization and gypsies in Germany, 1700-19451
Leo Lucassen
Introduction
1 During the last decade the history of gypsies in Germany has reached a stage of maturity. Several studies have been published which give important insights into the way in which German authorities have dealt with people they categorize as 'Zigeuner'2. Despite this coming of age, there are three aspects which still demand further elaboration and deeper consideration. First of all, while some also cover the preceding Empire and Weimar era, most studies concentrate on the Nazi-period (1933-1945). For a full understanding of the anti-gypsy policy of German authorities in the twentieth century, a much longer time-span should be covered. Especially the decades preceding the German unification, about which the information we have is only very scanty3, should be analysed much more thoroughly.
2 A second shortcoming in the German historiography is its failure to problematize the way travelling people have been categorized and labelled throughout time by authorities, especially by the police. Instead, almost all authors start from the assumption that the people subsumed under this label form a homogeneous ethnic group. The labelling is thus supposed to conform to the self-definition of the people concerned. As I have argued elsewhere, this assumption does not hold water when put to the test. Not only in Germany, but also in the Netherlands4, the definition of who was to be considered a gypsy has shifted considerably over time, and at the same time, it is not at all clear whether the people thus labelled shared a common ethnic identity5.
3 A third and final weak spot is the isolated approach with which the gypsy theme has been explored by German historians. Especially the link with other fields, which are important to achieve a satisfactory explanation for the discrimination against and persecution of gypsies, are made only sporadically and not very systematically. As a
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 32
result gypsy studies have only rarely been incorporated into more general German history6.
4 This lack of a more general incorporation is thrown into especially sharp relief in the recently booming field of police history7. The link with this specialization is relevant, because it was the police who were primarily responsible for labelling travelling people gypsies. In this paper, I therefore want to elaborate on the problem of labelling in relation to the professionalization of the police.
5 Although police historians have focused on the same periods as their colleagues in the gypsy field8, I will not restrict myself only to the period from 1870 onwards. The reason being that there are many indications that the process of labelling by the police had already started in the eighteenth century. In this sense, this paper will also deal with what we could perhaps call the 'proto-history' of the police in the period preceding the unification of Germany. There are some studies about the activities of the political police and the burgeoning labour movement (1848 !)9, but these pay little attention to the more day-to-day police practices involved in the surveillance of 'dangerous' or 'suspicious' persons.
6 Among the barely used sources which shed a tremendous amount of light on this matter are the numerous police journals (Polizeiblätter) which were issued in most German states. These journals, which began to be widespread about 1830, were preceded by more or less private publications in the form of printed warrants (Steckbriefe) compiled by more highly placed policemen, who gained themselves a reputation as Kriminalisten, people specialized in the fight against organised crime.
7 Both sources contain numerous descriptions of persons who for various reasons were wanted by the police. The reasons vary from murder and robbery to not having the requisite licences to exercise itinerant professions, insulting civil servants or 'disorderly behaviour'. When these sources are analyzed three things strike the eye. First of all, most people are harried because of their apparently aimless itinerant lifestyle, characterized as Umherzieher. As Elaine Glovka Spencer justly noted about the Düsseldorf police around 1850 : Where industry had not yet made major inroads, vagabonds and beggars - anyone without a fixed residence and a readily identifiable source of income - remained the foremost focus of concern10.
8 Secondly, in the course of the nineteenth century, especially after 1840, there was a growing tendency to label some of them gypsies (Zigeuner). Finally, the very existence of warrants, police journals, and Kriminalisten from the eighteenth century draws our attention to the fact that even before the specialization of the police in Germany in the last decades of the nineteenth century, important developments had been taking place. In this respect I propose to broaden the concept of 'professionalization' somewhat and not restrict it to the process of 'academization', which is the way it is mostly interpreted in the German literature11. My aim is also to include those activities which were directed towards the improvement of police methods.
9 This approach enables us to get a better insight in the proto-history of the police and at the same time to trace the tradition of gypsy-labelling. More specifically, in this paper I will try to discover whether there is a connection between the activities of the Kriminalistenand the persecution and stigmatization of gypsies and other travellers by the nazis. This question is especially relevant, as there is a huge body of literature on this matter12, which - in my opinion - tends to overlook the long-enduring tradition of
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 33
police behaviour, not only towards gypsies, but also with respect to 'harmful tramps' in general. Finally, I will go into the question of to what extent the gypsy-identity was forged and stimulated by the long tradition of stigmatization and labelling.
The issuing of warrants and the first kriminalisten (1700-1830)
10 In the eighteenth century the police in the modern sense of the word was virtually non- existent. Only a few people were responsible for detecting criminals, the power of the state being curtailed by intermediary bodies such as the nobility, the church, and cities13. This does not imply that criminals and bands of robbers were left in peace. Through the interrogation of suspects and the exchange of information with other civil servants, the attempts of local officials seemed to have been more successful than is often assumed. An important method of laying a felon by his heels was the composition and distribution of warrants14 : list of names, professions, and descriptions of persons who were suspected of crimes, derived mostly from the interrogation of captured thieves, burglars, or vagrants.
11 The most remarkable aspect of these Steckbriefe, which differ enormously in quality, is the great number of petty thieves and con-men, beggars and vagrants. A mere itinerant lifestyle could be sufficient to be deemed dangerous and consequently to be considered a potential criminal. In Germany this broad category was labelled Gauner(bandits) or Vaganten(vagrants) and in some cases Zigeuner.
12 Although there are several examples of high quality lists containing warrants from the first half of the eighteenth century, after roughly 1750 the Steckbriefebecame more elaborate, systematic, and bulky15. This is also the period in which a number of civil servants charged with police-work tried to improve the tracing of criminals and pointedly stressed their identity as Kriminalisten. The initiator was the Württembergian Oberamtmann Georg Jakob Schäffer, characterized by Bader as « Monomanen der Jaunerbekämpfung »16 - who can be considered the first Kriminalist. In the service of the duke of Württemberg he was an outstanding example of the eighteenth century enlightened civil servant who wanted to escape the geographical and social boundaries fixed by the society of estates. Although in practice 'indirect rule' still dominated the administration of European states, his aims were to create a unitary police system that would cross the borders of his own principality and unite the efforts of judicial authorities in other South German and Swiss states as well.
13 Encouraged by his activities, the tracing of criminals by way of Steckbriefeand co- operation with colleagues in other states was greatly stimulated. Schäfffer's meticulous descriptions and the wide distribution of his lists were examples followed by others. One of his imitators was Franz Ludwig Schenk von Kastell, nicknamed Malefizschenk, who published the extensive OberdischingerListe in 1799. He made use of Schäffer's lists and produced some 1487 descriptions of the Jauner und Bettel Gesindel. Among other names which spring to mind is that of Friedrich August Roth from Baden who published an even longer list with 3147 names a year later17. The fourth dedicated Kriminalistwas Friedrich Freiherr von Hundbiss-Waltrams, who also hailed from Baden. He maintained close contact with the other criminalists and in 1804 gave an account of his detective work in a modest but qualitatively good Jaunerlist.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 34
14 The most important aspect of these lists was the professional co-operation between the compilers, which transcended the local or regional significance of previous Steckbriefe. All were influenced by the Enlightenment and the ideology of the central state, which was stimulated by the Reichsdeputationshauptschlußof 1803 (when dozens of small states, especially in the southern part of Germany disappeared)18. They tried to achieve a good insight into what they saw as the criminal underworld, with the ultimate aim of making its denizens useful citizens.
15 During the first decades of the nineteenth century, the initiative started by the first criminalists was taken over by others who published their results in so called Aktenmäßige Nachrichten. Written predominantly for (judicial) colleagues19. As we mentioned earlier, the activities of the criminalists have to be seen in the light of the process of state formation which gained momentum during the Napoleonic period and which was superseded by a direct form of government20. A more rational and effective « war on crime » fits in nicely in this general development. Many criminalists also saw a direct relationship between the fight against criminality and a thorough reform of the system of government21.
16 It has to be said, that the criminalists were ahead of their contemporaries. Quite a lot of water would flow under the bridge before the German states realized the consequences of the new approach. Schäffer, for example, had great trouble financing the publication of his lists and others had to sell their Aktenmäßige Nachrichtenin order to pay for the printing costs. Another hindrance was that, until the second half of the nineteenth century, there was virtually no police personnel to put the recommendations of the criminalists into practice.
The consequences of the « gypsy-labelling »
17 In what respect did this general development within the police force stimulate the labelling of travelling people as gypsies ? The answer in a nutshell is, not very much. In most Steckbriefe or Aktenmäßige Nachrichten gypsies did not play an important, let alone dominant, role. Far more widely used were labels Gauner, Jauner and Umherzieher, and in some cases « Jewish bandits ». The only exception to this rule was Schäffer, whose reputation was to a certain extent established by his Zigeunerlisteof 1787/1788. The main motive behind this was the trial of a gypsy bandit named Jakob Reinhardt, better known as Hannickel, but this stimulated the sensitivity towards « gypsies » only temporarily, so that after 1800 the interest in this group quickly waned22. The decline in the stigmatization of gypsies was probably closely linked to the ideology of the Enlightenment and the efforts made in various German states to integrate gypsies. An initial impulse can be found in Schäffer's 1788 list : Möchte doch, (dann das würde wohl das beste Hülfs-Mittel sein) jeder teutsche Reichsfürst in denen Ihme anvertrauten Staaten ein besonders vor Zigeuner, Jauner und Vaganten aller Art bestimmtes Arbeitshaus gnädigst errichten lassen, alles herumziehende Gesindel in dasselbe ohne Nachsicht verweisen [...] Gewis, sie würden den auch unter dem Tros der Menschheit oft noch verborgenen guten Funken wieder anblasen, sie zu bessern brauchbaren Gliedern der Menschen-Familie umbilden, und auf diese Weise Landes Ruhe und Sicherheit, und Menschen-Wohl um sich her verbreiten ! !23.
18 He repeated this call in his last Jaunerbeschreibungpublished in 1813, one year before his death, in which he referred to the popular and widely read book on gypsies by Grellmann24. Between 1820 and 1840 in Württemberg and Prussia (Friedrichslohra)
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 35
authorities did indeed establish « colonies » for gypsies and tried to allow them the opportunity to give up their itinerant way of life and settle down. Although for several reasons these efforts did not bear fruit, for the moment it seems that the civilization offensive launched by enlightened authorities had somewhat subdued the tendency to equate criminals or wandering people with « gypsies » and therefore the category was not used as a generic term for all sorts of unwanted wandering people. Instead there was a predominance of more general terms as Gaunerand Jauner, as was mentioned earlier.
Police journals and the growing obsession with « gypsies » (1830-1870)
19 The activities of the criminalists resulted in a more systematic description of wanted or « dangerous » people. More cogently for our topic, attention shifted from bandits to a much broader category of people without a fixed abode, the so-called gemeinschädliche Umhertreiber(harmful tramps). The police journals, which appeared on a regular basis after 1820, taking over the function of the ActenmäßigeNachrichten, continued this trend.
20 The publication of the police journals in various German states was an important step in the professionalization of the police. Although initially it was a private initiative taken by police officers, the state took control after 1840 and turned these journals into official organs. An overview is given in the following diagram :
Figure 1 : German Police Journals (1802-1920)
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 36
21 Figure 1: German Police Journals (1802-1920) Source : Lucassen (1996, p. 232)
22 The analysis of these journals shows that, as we have already remarked, in the first place the police was interested in what they called harmful tramps (gemeinschädliche Umhertreiber). Contrary to what might perhaps be assumed, this referred not so much to itinerant groups such as wandering beggars, musicians, conjurers, acrobats, tinkers, scissors-grinders and peddlers, as first and foremost to labourers, especially travelling journeymen25. With other workers, servants, and professions in what we nowadays call the service sector (waiters, hairdresser for instance) they make up three-quarters of all descriptions26. This picture contradicts the widely held image (among both contemporaries and present-day historians) that people with itinerant professions formed the prototype of the Gauner27.
23 Maybe even more important than the distribution of occupations are the reasons why these people were wanted by the police. First of all only 18 % was suspected of what was a more or less serious offence (several thefts and serious fraud). Apart from these « professionals », many people were wanted for petty theft and the like. More than 50 % is simply listed because of minor offences such as begging, vagrancy, no clear means of identity, and so forth.
24 In themselves these conclusions are not sensational. Other scholars have noted that in the nineteenth century the police was primarily concerned with the classes dangereuses and with what they called vagrants28. Likewise, the fact that thefts were common at this time of wide-spread poverty is not new either29. Nevertheless, it is useful, indeed necessary, to stress these insights again, because many researchers easily allow themselves to be carried away by the contemporary one-sided stereotyping of the
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 37
« criminal vagrant class »30. Another important point is that it is seldomly recognized that the police was very much preoccupied with checking identity and (closely connected) with the increasing control of migration31. Both phenomena gained importance in the course of the nineteenth century in the wake of state formation which required an increased monitoring of citizens. People without a clearly fixed abode and without - in the eyes of the police - sufficient means of support were easily criminalized as Gauner.
25 Especially people entirely without or in the possession of dubious passports or identity papers were thought to be highly suspect. From a criminalist point of view this is partly understandable, as many criminals of course wanted to conceal their real identity. But, pertinent thought as it is, it is not the only reason. One of the other reasons is linked to the legislation concerning the poor relief system. Most German states adhered to the principle that each citizen had the right to settle in a municipality or to return to it after a period of absence. This so-called Heimatrecht also accorded the right to some form of poor relief32. The municipal police therefore tried to turn away strangers without a claim to their Heimat, which was only possible to establish when they could show where they belonged. As many itinerants were dependent on ambulant professions, and as these kinds of professions were (partly unjustly)33 held in low esteem and considered to be a cloak of begging, many of these itinerants often concealed their identity. In such cases the police restricted themselves to taking them to the neighbouring municipality instead of sending them « home ». Even when the police knew where their real Heimat was, they often did not have the power to force them to return there.
Gypsy labelling
26 In contrast to the rise of the criminalists some fourty years earlier the police journals did affect the labelling of people as « gypsies » significantly. This is immediately apparent when we take a look at one of the first official journals, the Hannoversches Polizeiblatt, issued by the royal government, which is representative of other journals.
27 Notwithstanding the often heard opinion that before the unification of Germany there were virtually no gypsies in the region and that official policy towards this category only became relevant after 187034, a careful analysis of the hundreds of thousands descriptions between 1846 and 1870 offers quite a different picture. Long before 1870 the term Zigeuner had become dominant and the police started to use it to label all sorts of itinerant families who at an earlier stage had been invisible as such. From the start, 1846, Zigeuner was used as an important category to classify wandering people. The second issue already offered an extensive survey of the families Trollmann and Schwarz, who attracted attention because they were not Hanoverian citizens and were not equipped with the requisite permits to perform their itinerant professions35. This description formed the prelude to a much longer article on « gypsies » a year later36. The anonymous author claims that it is wrong to think that gypsies had disappeared from Germany. They had only split up their large companies and tried to conceal their true nature and identity. Therefore, so he goes on, it was of the utmost importance that the police draw up genealogical trees in order to discover their real Heimat and thus force them to adopt a sedentary lifestyle. This advice was taken to heart, because in 1847 such pedigrees were published for the « gypsy » families Brase, Weiss, Trollmann,
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 38
and Tewitz37 , completed in the years 1851-1853 by the families Hanstein, Steinbach, Bamberger, Wappler, and Mettbach38.
28 1857 marked a important step forward in the labelling process. Until then the Trollmanns, Steinbachs and other families were scattered about among other wanted people in the container category « harmful tramps ». In that year the editors decided to create a separate « gypsy » heading. At a glance the reader of the journal could now see who the gypsies were. The upshot was that the labelling was given greater priority and it became obvious to the readers (mainly lower-ranking policemen) that gypsies were an important category that had to be closely watched.
29 Why were some people labelled and others not ? Travelling with one's family and carrying out an itinerant trade was not enough to ensure that one was designated and treated as a gypsy. The remarks in the Hannoversches Polizeiblatt, but also by no means absent in the other police journals, made it perfectly clear that policemen also had an, albeit vague, ethnic image of gypsies. A dark skin colour (« a gypsy colour »), for example, is regularly mentioned. When we take a look at all the people who were labelled gypsies this feature is less obvious. There were also gypsies with fair skins and, conversely, dark itinerants who were not labelled. Criminal behaviour associated with gypsies, such as fraud and thefts, was not definitive either. Most gypsies found their way on to the lists because their identity was vague or simply because they followed a travelling way of life. So, although a particular ethnic gypsy image certainly existed, in practice the application of it proved to be complicated. What is important is that a number of families was traced, their pedigrees researched thus marking them as gypsies, and that this information was widely disseminated among German police circles. As we shall see in the last section of this paper, this growing genealogical « database » formed the basis for the persecution of gypsies in the twentieth century.
30 Another reason to be sceptical of a purely ethnological explanation for the labelling of certain families as gypsies can be linked to the causes for the sudden upsurge in the labelling process. Although at a first glance this seems to be connected with the immigration of strange-looking families from both the Alsace and Eastern Europe, in most descriptions this in fact played no role. Far important to the categorization was the wandering way of life, the lack of clarity about their Heimat, and last but not least the besetting fear gripping the local authorities that these people would lay claim to their poor relief. This in itself, is not enough to explain why the police were ever more willing to apply the gypsy label to mark such people. In order to understand the modification of the labelling around 1840, the factors mentioned should be supplemented by two other developments :
31 1)First of all, Willem's research has unequivocally shown that it is important to realize that the very influential book by Grellmann on « the gypsies », which offe- red the first detailed « ethnographic blueprint », laid the conceptual foundation for both the categorization of and the idea that there was such a thing as a gypsy race or people39. The conceptual change in the idea of gypsies can be considered to be a necessary, but was by no means sufficient condition for the stepping up of the labelling. Moreover, it was temporarily moderated by the ideology of the enlightenment by which Grellmann was strongly influenced40.
32 After the failure of various gypsy colonies in Germany the (enlightened) optimism about the possibility of turning gypsies into decent citizens was replaced by the conviction that the « gypsy race » was incorrigible and was afflicted by a hereditary
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 39
inclination to wander41. An idea that we also find recurring in the various articles on gypsies in the German police journals42.
33 2)Equally important in the pursuit of categorization seem to have been the general institutional changes within the police force itself and in its organisation. Especially the growing preoccupation of the police with wandering people and the proactive policy of distributing descriptions through police journals trigge- red off the « take-off » of the labelling from roughly about 1840. Within the broad category of « harmful tramps », these people with unclear family relations created a need for a separate labelling. Many descriptions refer to the inextricable rela- tionships between gypsies, deploring the many aliases and false identity papers they produced. Although it is not a simple matter to ascertain whether this phenomenon reared its head more frequently among « gypsies » than among others, a connection with an itinerant way of life is conceivable. As we mentioned earlier, many travellers had to use false papers to prevent being sent back to their Heimat. Were the authorities to notice this, they were arrested. The unravelling of the family relationships took so much time that they were left alone, simply being expelled from the municipality. My own strong impression is that especially these people who travelled with their families and posed grave identification problems to the police ran a fairly high risk of being labelled gypsies.
A strange intermezzo (1870-1890)
34 The administrative hunt for gypsies in which the police journals took the lead was not unilinear in the sense that as time went by progressively more and more people were thus labelled. In the 1860s especially the interest in gypsies waned somewhat. This can be linked up with the developments within the German police. Here we see a whimsical growth of personnel and means. The work of Spencer and Jessen, for example, shows that the growth of the police force in the Prussian Ruhr area stagnated in the 1860s and, measured against the number of policeman per 1,000 inhabitants shows several ups and downs. Only in the 1870s can a considerable and final increase be noticed43.
35 At the same time, after the unification we see a paradoxical development. On the one hand the stigmatization by state authorities (through discriminating circulars) increased in most states44, while their definition was temporarily restricted to foreigners, a category which from then on meant people coming in from outside the German empire. The growing interest in the « gypsy problem » by people other than police authorities and the equation of gypsies with foreigners probably had its roots in the intense contemporary nationalistic fever and the strong feelings this engendered about the rights attached to citizenship45. The importance of the distinction between citizens and aliens, at the foundation of which lay the legislation on citizenship and the right to settle and receive poor relief in the 1860s46, became more salient.
36 Above all people who came from abroad who might conceivably be expected to become a burden were considered undesirable. From 1865 when small family-groups of itinerant coppersmiths and bear-leaders from Hungary and Bosnia appeared47, in next to no time the central level in various states issued circulars to keep these « gypsies » out48. As these higher-ranking officials assumed that gypsies were per definition foreigners, they thought these measures were sufficient to meet their purpose.
37 This focus on foreigners adopted by the central authorities was not to last long, and by the early 1880s the indigenous definition which had been in the police journals since
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 40
1840 was already proving too strong an undercurrent. We are especially well-informed about the southern states. An 1880 letter from the Palatine district region to the district authorities illustrates the trouble that the rank-and-file police had with the restriction of the gypsy label to aliens : Eigentliche Zigeunerbanden, d.h. umherziehende Ausländer [...] wurden in lezter Zeit im diesseitigen Bezirke überhaupt nicht betreten [... J Dagegen wurden in letzter Zeit zigeunerartige Banden hieramts angezeigt, welche man, da deren Mitglieder preußische Staatsangehorige waren, auch nach Preußen transportieren ließ49.
38 Finally, the continuity in the labelling of indigenous travellers can be seen in the Bayerisches Central-Polizei-Blatt, which first appeared in Bavaria in 1866. Only a small proportion of the people labelled as gypsies came from non-German states50. The others had German names and had been born in Germany or adjoining French regions. In contrast to the Netherlands, the term « gypsy » was not reserved for the new immigrant groups from Eastern Europe. It was predominantly the group of indigenous travellers which were increasingly confronted with this label. This development can be traced to the labelling practice pursued in the police journals and, after 1885, it would lead to a strong focus on gypsies as an « internal problem ». Before we go deeper into that matter, let us once more return to the more general developments in the police force.
Specialization of the police force and the setting up of a gypsy registration (1890-1918)
39 The last decade of the nineteenth century marked an important phase in the development of the German police. More policemen were recruited, but what is even more relevant they were better trained and the police forces became more specialized51. At the same time, as the German historian Ralph Jessen has shown in a recent paper, especially between 1870 and the end of the nineteenth century, the Prussian police attracted more and more welfare tasks. As a result the power of the police to label all kind of behaviour as deviant and undesirable increased. This « full authority to act »52 showed itself among other manifestations in the social domain. Alcohol consumption, unhygienic housing, suspect mobility and other social ills were considered to be problems pertaining to the sphere of Ordnung und Sittlichkeit.
40 The « unlimited administrative definitory power »53of the police was the result of the mounting intervention of the state which had been growing since the 1870s. Although the police definition also had all kinds of positive effects, this certainly was not always so, as Jessen remarks : Problematischer ist sicherlich der Interventionsbereich, in dem sich die Zuständigkeit der Polizei nicht aus deren Wohlfahrtsaufgaben, sondern aus ihrem Ordnungsauftrag herleitete. In dieser kritischen Zone schlugen klassenspezifische Werte ziemlich ungefiltert auf die « erzieherische Mission » der Polizei durch. Der repressive Zugriff war hier nicht nur inadäquat, weil er die Ursachen der Probleme nicht erfaßte, sondern auch hochgradig parteilich, weil er bürgerliche Verhaltensmuster als allgemeinverbindlich festschrieb54.
41 This conclusion helps us to put the gypsy policy that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century into its proper context, for it remained entirely within the Sicherheitspolizeiliche domain, with the result that the definitory as well as the discretionary power of the police was scarcely subjected to any checks at all. Whereas after c. 1890 in many welfare domains the police grew more careful about offending
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 41
citizens too much and therefore not penalizing every offence, the gypsy policy went in the opposite direction. The police used every rule and regulation to make matters as difficult as possible for travelling groups, with all the criminalizing effects that were part and parcel of such a move.
42 The consequences of these general changes in the police organization of the gypsy policy can be best illustrated by the activities of the Munich police. In 1899 this force decided to create a « Gypsy Information Service » with the aim of gathering as much data as possible on gypsies (place and date of birth, profession, whereabouts, offenses and so forth), so that the acts and regulations directed against them could be carried out more efficiently. The local authorities, including the gendarmerie, were ordered to forward all relevant data, preferably by telephone or telegraph55.
43 Alfred Dillmann was appointed head of the Zigeunerzentrale(Gypsy station), as it was soon to be called. For some time he had already been engaged in collecting data from gypsy families in Bavaria56. In doing so, he made extensive use of the Bavarian police journal mentioned earlier. In 1905 he collected his data together in the Zigeunerbuch(Gypsy Booklet), which contained some 3350 names and 613 extensive descriptions of people whom he labelled gypsies. This book (7000 copies), which was meant for official use only, is especially interesting because the author explicitly addresses the question of definition. In the introduction he clearly states that he uses « gypsies » as a sociological category : everyone who travels around with his or her family, irrespective of ethnicity or nationality. Within this broad category he made a distinction between « gypsies » (440 persons) and « people who live like gypsies » (173 persons). When we analyse the 613 descriptions57, we find that persons whose personalia gave rise to some doubt had a bigger chance of being labelled a real gypsy than the others. In the tradition of the nineteenth century police journals, gypsies were primarily associated with people who tried to hide their real identity by giving false information about their names, place, and time of birth and the like. It is also striking that only a few foreign gypsies are listed and that ethnographic features, such as skin colour or language played a subordinate role.
44 These people drew the attention of the police predominantly because of minor offenses which were closely linked to the travelling way of life, such as the very broadly defined concept of vagrancy, or offenses which were the direct result of the criminalizing gypsy policy58. It was not so much criminality which caused concern as the « disorderly » way of life. The police viewed gypsies as an annoying travesty of the legal system. This might explain the sometimes utterly unrealistic proposals for putting an end to the supposed danger that gypsies posed to public safety and order. In this respect, the plan the policeman Franz Laufer proposed in the Polizeibeamtenblatt of 1912, for the creation of a special gypsy police force in order to enable a constant surveillance system to be introduced, is noteworthy59.
45 It was around about this same time, the Munich gypsy station tried to expand its activities over the rest of Germany. Other states reacted reluctantly to this proposal, especially Prussia, because of the costs it would involve. Further there were disagreements about the definition of gypsies. Many states opposed Dillmann's broad sociological definition because they feared that all kind of « decent » itinerant traders and artisans would also be hurt. In the end, agreement was reached on basis of Dillmann's ideas :
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 42
Zigeuner im polizeilichen Sinne sind sowohl die Zigeuner im Sinne der Rassen-kunde als auch die nach Zigeunerart umherziehenden Personen60.
46 Despite this, there was still a long way to go to reach an efficient mutual agreement. After World War I the Bavarian Gypsy Station tried with renewed vigour to achieve its purpose and monopolize the gathering of data on gypsies for the whole of Germany.
The Weimar Period (1918-1933)
47 The Weimar Period is of interest because then the police tried to put the distinction between « gypsies » and « people living like gypsies », the latter being labelled as Landfahrer (travellers), and honest itinerants into practice. The former had to be treated with the utmost severity, using such tactics as refusing them permits to travel and perform itinerant trades, whereas the second would be protected. This proved to be far from easy. The problem, and here we touch the very heart of the problem addressed in this paper, were the following assumptions :
48 1) It is possible to distinguish « real gypsies » from others on the basis of racist and ethnological criteria ;
49 2) Gypsies are per definition parasites and their occupations serve as a cloak for begging, vagrancy, and ultimately crime.
50 Not only were local authorities unable to see the difference between « real » gypsies and other caravan dwellers, the art of being able to distinguish honest from dishonest itinerants was far from clear cut. Therefore most acts and regulations geared towards a differentiated policy for all itinerant groups failed.
51 The insuperable contradictions that characterized the Bekämpfimg desZigeunerunwesenscan be best illustrated by the preparation of the Bavarian act against gypsies and the workshy of 192661. First of all, organizations of itinerant peddlers and showmen62, who supported the act in itself and thereby strengthened the assumptions mentioned above, complained about the deleterious effects, for it appeared that notwithstanding the protection that the act offered to « honest itine- rants » by means of a Schutzvermerk63, many of their members were lumped together with other itinerants and confronted by the same severe surveillance and controls. The problem was exacerbated as there were quite a few such members who did not have a fixed abode and therefore were unable to obtain a Schutzvermerk. The boundary between Landfahrerand Zigeuneron the one hand and « decent itinerants » on the other was not an ethnic one. The decisive factor was the way of life. Everyone with a fixed abode was excepted from the stipulations of the 1926 Act. Apparently it was assumed that gypsies could never meet these criteria.
52 In view of the foregoing, it is not surprising to discover that the central police station in Munich was dissatisfied with the Schutzvermerkpolicy. They thought that the authorities both local and regional were far too tolerant and flippant, because they forgot to contact it first in order to verify if an itinerant applicant was to be classified as a Zigeuner orLandfahrer. The 1926 Act was meant to put an end to these abuses, was the way the Munich police interpreted it. A distinction between gypsies and other tramps and honest itinerants was made, and what is more for the first time gypsies were defined in racial terms :
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 43
Das fahrende Volk der Zigeuner ist seit dem 15. Jahrhundert, in dem es zum ersten Mal in Deutschland aufgetreten ist, ein schädlicher Fremdkörper in der deutschen Kultur geblieben. Alle Versuche, die Zigeuner an die Scholle zu fesseln und an eine sesshafte Lebensweise zu gewöhnen, sind fehlgeschlagen. Auch drakonische Strafen konnten sie von ihrer unsteten Lebensführung und ihrem hange zu unrechtmässigen Vermögenserwerb nicht abbringen. Trotz vielfacher Vermischungen sind ihre Abkömlinge wieder Zigeuner geworden mit den gleichen Eigenschaften und Lebensgewohnheiten, die schon ihre Vorfahren besessen hatten. Zu diesen Rassezigeunern gesellten sich mit der Zeit noch die sogenannten Inlandszigeuner, das sind Inländer, die die Lebensweise der Zigeuner angenommen haben und dadurch in gleichem Masse wie diese lästig fallen64.
53 Apart from the « racial gypsies » the act referred to the people who lived like gypsies, and who were by definition even more destable. The provisions of the act made it possible to lock up these categories in workhouses solely on the basis of vague and subjective judgements. Thus, the Bavarian act against « gypsies and the workshy » preceded the nazi regulations a decade later.
54 It is perhaps superfluous to say that this act resolved neither the definitory nor the policy problems mentioned above. Again it was left to the discretion of the local authorities to make a distinction between the various categories. Moreover, the act - characterized by contemporaries as reactionary and reeking of a police state65- chopped of its nose to spite its face, because it failed to forbid the issuing of permits to Zigeuner and Landfahrer. Until far in the 1930s complaints could be heard about gypsies with licences and a Schutzvermerk. An effective policing as envisaged by the police was thus frustrated.
What's new about the Nazis ?66
55 In the years following the 1926 Act other German states followed the example of Bavaria. Thereby the foundation of the Nazi policy was firmly laid. We might therefore ask ourselves to what extent the Nazis added a new dimension to the policy adopted towards gypsies after 1933 and how important the weight of the police tradition was.
56 As we have seen the activities of the police journals in the mid nineteenth century for the first time transformed the category Zigeuner into a master status ; a (negative) category so dominant that it eclipsed all other features of a person who was thus labelled. This practice was intensified by the specialization of the Munich police, which continued the practice developed by the police journals half a century earlier. By this time the sensitivity towards the term had increased greatly and a growing number of people had been labelled as such. The 3350 personal files compiled by Dillmann in 1905, among which were those of many Zigeuner from other states, increased to 33524 in 1938, the moment that Munich was recognized as the national centre of intelligence67. This increase can be explained only partly by normal demographic causes or by the extension of the Bavarian registration practice over the rest of Germany. Another important cause of the rise in numbers was the application of the gypsy label to the Nach Zigeunerart umherziehende Personen (people living like gypsies)68.
57 Only after 1933, when the Nazi engulfed the constitutional state, were the police really given the chance to control the mobility of itinerant groups. Unhindered by democratic checks or constitutional objections, the Munich centre took the lead in dealing for good and all with the « gypsy problem », as it was called. The increased power given to the police, who worked hand in glove with other authorities, is uncompromisingly revealed
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 44
in the construction of guarded camps in a number of big cities69. At the same time, from 1933, the police locked up small numbers of gypsies, with other so-called anti-social people, in work-camps. From 1936 the concentrationcamps Dachau and Buchenwald were used for this very same purpose70.
58 As Zimmermann and others have shown71, during the Nazi era gypsies found themselves at the crossroad of deterministic ideas on anti-social behaviour and the racist doctrine. The police therefore was confronted with scholars and policy makers who began to take an interest in gypsies from these points of view.
59 This led to the question of whether gypsies were predominantly anti-social people, who had to be sterilized, or members of a separate race, who ultimately had to be killed. The answer, so it was thought, should not in the first instance come from the police, but from scholars specialized in hereditary problems. It is not surprising that a number of these academics seized their chance to dominate this new definitory terrain. In the case of gypsies the leading role was taken by the psychiatrist Robert Ritter72, who was appointed as head of the Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle73 of the Reichsgesundheitsamt in 1936. It was up to him to decide on a scientific basis who was a gypsy and who was not. Soon Ritter was appointed advisor to of the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt (RKPA), where the files of the Munich Gypsy Station were concentrated, because the head of the RKPA, Arthur Nebe, realized that although he had a highly detailed gypsy registration at his disposal, it had not been compiled primarily on racial grounds74.
60 Ritter's approach was not, as is often assumed, based on ethnological or anthropological methods75. No more than jews could be distinguished from « Aryans » on the basis of their hair, colour of their eyes, or shape of their noses, was there any clear phenetic line between gypsies and other Germans. This did not cause Ritter to reflect that perhaps his racial assumptions were flawed, on the contrary, he saw it as a proof for the far-reaching extent of mixing that had taken place in the past centuries. He tried to corroborate this idea by gathering as much genealogical data as possible, which formed the basis for the decision of who was classified as full-blood, mixed, or non-gypsy76.
61 How Ritter and his team operated is not entirely clear. The most probable scenario was that he based himself on the registration of gypsies by the police77 and then tried to trace these people back in time. Judging from the smallness of Ritter's staff and the number of gypsies (c. 25,000) that had to be « weighed », prudence cannot have been their watchword78. In the few short months between December 1938 and April 1939 some 3000 Gutachten(reports on individual gypsies) were expected to be delivered79. Pausing to consider how time-consuming thorough genealogical research is, especially with travelling people, our conclusions must be most Gutachtenwere made on very dubious grounds. Scepticism about the reliability of Ritter's work mounts, when we remember that his institute benefited financially from the making out of Gutachten. The German historian Riechert even argued that this played a crucial role in the financing of his Rassengygienische Forschungsstelle80.
Conclusion
62 The gypsy persecution under the Third Reich provides an answer to the main question posed by this paper : whether there is any connection between the activities of the
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 45
eighteenth century Kriminalistenand the persecution and stigmatization of gypsies and other travellers by the Nazis.
63 It is widely assumed that Ritter and his team were to blame for the mass murder of some 10,000 German gypsies in the concentration camps. He offered them as it were on a salver and, moreover, defined who was to be regarded as such. The « innovative » aspect of his racial-genealogical method would have included a new group of gypsies : those who had settled in houses and who were not gypsies in the traditional Dillmannian definition81. This view, ascribing a huge responsibility to Ritter and his team is in itself not unjustified, but it is unlikely that they played an initiating and innovative role, and - as Zimmermann writes - his institute : [...] im Laufe ihrer Suchtätigkeit mehr als 19.000 « Zigeuner » und « Zigeunermischlinge » und sonstige Landfahrer im « Altreich » entdeckte(myemphasis,LL)82.
64 If we take the activities of the Munich Gypsy Station, which in practice functioned as a national centre after 1931, into account we see that in 1938, when Ritter started his research, some 18,000 files had already been assembled, dealing with a total of 33,524 persons. Of them the Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung des Zigeunerunwesens labelled 18,138 Zigeuner and Zigeunermischlinge, 10,788 nach Zigeunerart umherziehend and 4,598 sonstige umherziehende oder auch seßhafte Wandergewerbetreibende83. Ritter's stock-taking two years later barely deviates from this categorization. Although we are not sure if Ritter had the same persons in mind, it is highly probable that he just took over the definition offered by the police registration and provided it with a « scientific » stamp. Even the genealogical method was already widely used by the police after 191384. Finally it would seem that the police also had started gathering data on sedentary gypsies before Ritter began his research.
65 This reconstruction shows that in many aspects the Nazi period just continued the traditional labelling of gypsies by the German police. The « only » significant change was the means it was offered by the dictatorial and terrorist regime and the extermination policy. The Munich Gypsy Station especially seemed to be much more important in deciding who was a gypsy than was Ritter's racial institute. As a matter of fact, the distinction made by Dillmann between Zigeuner and nach Zigeunerart umherziehende Personen was what laid the foundations for the racial classification used later. But not even Dillmann worked in a void. As we have seen his approach and methods lean heavily on the police practices which were developed at the end of the eighteenth and which were given extra impetus by publication of the police journals in the nineteenth century.
66 This brings us to the specific contribution of this paper to the history of the police in Germany. The most important of these is the light it sheds on the early beginnings of the professionalization of the police. In 1984 Siemann already pointed to the importance of the police journals85, stressing their preventive and proactive functions and their stimulating influence on a more structural co-operation by means of data exchange. This paper gives added support to his provisional suggestions and moreover shows that a systematic and proactive approach to the tracing of criminal or unwanted persons had already started in the eighteenth century with the issuing of Steckbriefe. The authors, the Kriminalisten, can be considered the link between indirect and direct rule, or - from a different angle - between reactive and proactive policing86.
67 The most striking aspect of the tracing is the continuity in the target groups and methods used. In the eighteenth as well as in the twentieth century policemen were
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 46
primarily interested in obtaining a better insight into the real and the potential criminals (broadly defined), and thus curbing the danger that these persons posed to the public. One of the consequences was the formation of certain categories, such as vagrants, gypsies, jews, journeymen, prostitutes, and during the Nazi period « anti- social enemies », who were thus problematized and then stigmatized.
68 Finally this paper has dealt with the labelling of gypsies. Notwithstanding the multitude of studies on the persecution of gypsies in Germany that have been undertaken in the last fifteen years, the problem of the labelling has barely been touched by most researchers. This oversight can be explained by the implicit assumption that historical sources pose no problem about the question of who is a gypsy. An assumption that is re-inforced by the use of the ethnic term Sinti und Roma instead of gypsies. This habit springs not such much from historical considerations, but is the fruit of the actual political (correct) struggle of interest groups from among and for gypsies.
69 From a scholarly point of view, the biggest disadvantage of the Sinti und Roma approach is that all kinds of contemporary racist as well as present-day ethnic categories are thus used. As this paper has tried to show, this easily leads to anachronistic and unjustified interpretations. Assuming that there ever was a clearly ethnically defined Sinti und Roma group in the past means that we in fact accept the point of departure (not the enforcement and consequences) of Ritter and his team, namely that it was possible to define who was a « real » gypsy.
70 In this respect it would be interesting to research the question of to what extent the atrocities committed against gypsies during the Nazi regime - but also in the period before - did stimulate the group formation and ethnicity. What was the relationship between labelling and ethnicity ? Did they always regard themselves as « Sinti » or « Rom » or was this feeling re-inforced or even initiated by a long period of intensive stigmatization and labelling87.
Epilogue
71 In 1945 the entire registration of the Munich Zentral was destroyed, it seems. In 1954 the Bavarian police took up the thread again and erected a Landfahrerzentrale, building up among other files a new registration system of travellers and gypsies, based on the Bavarian Act of 192688. Only in 1970 was this Sonderbehandlung closed after protests by pressure groups, although grave doubts may be cast on whether the police really changed their practice after that date89. The genealogical material gathered by Ritter and his team made a series of strange and mysterious detours, to end up only in part in the general archive of Koblenz. Since then several researchers have used it in order to continue Ritter's (he died in 1951) approach.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 47
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ayass, W. etal., Feinderklärung und Prävention. Kriminalbiologie, Zigeunerforschung und Asozialenpolitik, Berlin, 1988.
Bader, K. S., Kriminelles Vagantentum im Bodenseegebiet um 1800. Zu einer Jaunerliste des Reichenauer Obervogts Friedrich v. Hundbiss aus dem Jahre 1804, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Strafrecht, 1962, 78, p. 291-333.
Becker, P., Vom « Haltlosen » zur « Bestie ». Das polizeiliche Bild des « Verbrechers » im 19. Jahrhundert, in Lüdtke, A., (ed.), « Sicherheit » und « Wohlfahrt ». Polizei, Gesellschaft und Herrschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am Main, 1992, p. 97-132.
Blasius, D., Bürgerliche Gesellschaft und Kriminalität. Zur Sozialgeschichte Preußens im Vormärz, Göttingen, 1976.
Blum, P., Staatliche Armenfürsorge im Herzogtum Nassau 1806-1866, Wiesbaden, 1987.
Brubaker, R., Citizenship and nationhood in France and Germany, Cambridge, Mass./London, 1992
Burleigh, M., WippermannW., The Racial State. Germany 1933-1945, Cambridge, 1991.
Cottaar, A., Lucassen L., WillemsW., Justice or injustice ? A survey of the policy towards gypsies and caravan dwellers in Western Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, Immigrants and Minorities, 1992 (March), 11,1,42-66.
Danker, U., Räuberbanden im Alten Reich um 1700. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte von Herrschaft und Kriminalität in der frühen Neuzeit, Frankfurt am Main, 1988.
Diembach, T., Roth A., Die Disziplinierung der Polizei im Kaiserreich. Das Verhältais des Beamten zum Dienstherrn und zur Bevölkerung in einer Umbruchphase, Die Polizei, 1993,4, p. 92-98.
Dubler, A.-M., Armen- und Bettlerwesen in der gemeinen Herrschaft « Freie Ämter » (16. bis 18. Jahrhundert), Basel, 1970.
Eiber, L., (ed.), « Ich wußte, es wird schlimm. » Die Verfolgung der Sinti und Roma in München 1933-1945, München, 1993.
Egmond, F., Underworlds. Organized Crime in the Netherlands 1650-1800, Oxford, 1993.
Feuerhelm, W., Polizei und « Zigeuner ». Strategien, Handlungsmuster und Alltagstheorien im polizeilichen Umgang mit Sinti und Roma, Stuttgart, 1987.
Finzsch, N., Räuber und Gendarme im Rheinland : das Bandenwesen in den vier rheinischen Departements vor und während der Zeit der französischen Verwaltung (1794-1814), Francia, 1987, 15, p. 435-471.
Finzsch, N., Obrigkeit und Unterschichten. Zur Geschichte der rheinischen Unterschichten gegen Ende des 18. und zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart, 1990.
Fricke, T., Zwischen Erziehung und Ausgrenzung. Zur württembergischen Geschichte der Sinti und Roma im 19. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am Main, 1991.
Funk, A., Polizei und Rechtsstaat. Die Entwicklung des staatlichen Gewaltmonopols in Preußen 1848-1914, Frankfurt, 1986.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 48
Funk, A., Die Entstehung der modernen Polizei in Preussen, 1870-1890. Bezugspunkte einer historischen Polizeianalyse, in Reinke, H., (ed.), « ... nur für die Sicherheit da... ? ». Zur Geschichte der Polizei im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am M., 1993, p. 56-70.
Grellmann, H.M.G., Die Zigeuner. Ein historischer Versuch über die Lebensart und Verfassung, Sitten und Schicksale dieses Volks in Europa, nebst ihrem Ursprunge, Dessau/Leipzig, 1783, zweite Auflage 1787.
Günther, W., Die preußische Zigeunerpolitik seit 1871 im Widerspruch zwischen zentraler Planung und lokaler Durchführung, Hannover, 1985.
Hase-Mihalik, E. von, Kreuzkamp, D., Du kriegst auch einen schönen Wohnwagen. Zwangslager für Sinti und Roma während des Nationalsozialismus in Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, 1990.
Hehemann, R., Die « Bekämpfung des Zigeunerunwesens » im Wilhelminischen Deutschland und in der Weimarer Republik, 1871-1933, Frankfurt a. M., 1987.
Herbert, U., A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880-1980, Ann Arbor, 1990.
Hochstadt, S., Migration and industrialization in Germany, 1815-1977, Social Science History, 1981, 5,4, p. 445-468.
Höhne, W.-K., Die Vereinbarkeit der deutschen Zigeunergesetze und -Verordnungen mit dem Reichsrecht, insbesondere der Reichsverfassung, Heidelberg, 1929.
Hundbiss-Waltrams, Fr. Freiherr von, Jaunerliste [...], Reichenau, 1804.
Jessen, R., Polizei im Industrierevier. Modernisierung und Herrschaftspraxis im westfälischen Ruhrgebiet 1848-1914, Göttingen, 1991.
Jessen, R., Polizei, Wohlfahrt und die Anfänge des modernen Sozialstaats in Preußen während des Kaiserreichs, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 1994, 20, 2, p. 157-180.
Kastell, F. L. S. von, Oberdischinger Diebs-Liste [...], Tübingen, 1799.
Kraus, A., « Antizipierter Ehesegen » im 19. Jahrhundert. Zur Beurteilung der Illegitimität unter sozialgeschichtlichen Aspekten, Vierteljahresschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1979,66, 2, p.174-215.
Küther, C., Räuber und Gauner in Deutschland, Göttingen, 1976.
Lucassen, L., En men noemde hen zigeuners. De geschiedenis van Kaldarasch, Ursari, Lowara en Sinti in Nederland, 1750-1944, Amsterdam-Den Haag, 1990.
Lucassen, L., A blind spot : migratory and travelling groups in Western European historiography, International Review of Social History, 1993a, 2, p. 209-235.
Lucassen, L., Under the cloak of begging ? Gypsy-occupations in Western-Europe in the 19th and 20th century', in Ethnologia Europaea. Journal of European Ethnology, 1993b, 23, p. 75-94.
Lucassen, L., Zigeuner in Deutschland 1870-1945 : ein kritischer historiographischer Ansatz, 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, 1995, 10, 1, p. 82-100.
Lucassen, L., Willems, W., Wanderers or migrants ? The movements of gypsies from Eastern to Western Europe (1860-1940), in Cohen, R., (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, pp. 136-141, Cambridge, CUP, 1995.
Lucassen, L., Zigeuner. Die Geschichte eines polizeilichen Ordnungsbegriffes in Deutschland, 1700-1945, Köln-Wien, Böhlau Verlag, 1996.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 49
Lucassen, L., Eternal vagrants ? State formation, migration and travelling groups in Western- Europe, 1350-1914., in Lucassen, J. and Lucassen, L., (eds.), Migrations, Migration History, History : Old Paradigms and New Perspectives, Bern etc., 1997, p. 227-253.
Lüdtke, A., « Gemeinwohl », Polizei und « Festungspraxis ». Staatliche Gewaltsamkeit und innere Verwaltung in Preußen, 1815-1850, Göttingen, 1982.
Lüdtke, A., Police and State in Prussia, 1815-1850, Cambridge, Paris, 1989.
Merz (von), Der kriminalpolizeiliche Charakter der Maßnahmen zur Bekämpfung der Zigeunerplage, Kriminalistische Monatshefte. Zeitschrift für die gesamte kriminalistische Wissenschaft und Praxis, 1927,1, p. 3-7.
Moch, L. P., Moving Europeans. Migration in Western Europe since 1650, Bloomington, 1992.
Nitschke, P., Verbrechensbekämpfung und Verwaltung. Die Entstehung der Polizei in der Grafschaft Lippe, 1700-1814, Münster, 1990.
Pfeiffer, F.G., Stammtafeln mehrerer Gauner-Familien in der Provinz Niderhessen nebst einem Rundschreiben an die Kurfürstlichen Kreisräthe und die Fürstlichen Rothenburgischen Beamten, Cassel, 1828.
Regener, S., Verbrecherbilder. Fotoporträts der Polizei und Physiognomisierung des Kriminellen, Ethnologia Europaea, 1992,22, 1, p. 67-85.
Reinbeck, E., Die Zigeuner, Salzkotten/Leipzig, 1861.
Reinke, H., (ed.), « ... nur für die Sicherheit da... ? ». Zur Geschichte der Polizei im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am Main, 1993.
Reich, H., Das bayrische Zigeuner- und Arbeitsscheuengesetz vom 16. Juli 1926, München, 1927.
Riechert, H., Im Schatten von Auschwitz. Die nationalsozialistische Sterilisationspolitik gegenüber Sinti und Roma, Münster/New York, 1995.
Roth, A., Kriminalitätsbekämpfung in deutschen Großstädten 1850 bis 1914. Ein Beitrag zur Strafrechtsgeschichte anhand eines Vergleichs der Städte Berlin, Hamburg und Duisburg, Berlin, 1994.
Roth, F. A., General-Jauner-Liste [...], Karlsruhe, 1800.
Sachße, Chr., Tennstedt, F., Geschichte der Armenfürsorge in Deutschland vom Spätmittelalter bis zum 2. Weltkrieg, Stuttgart etc., 1980.
Schäffer, G. J. S., Zigeuner-Liste und genaue Beschreibung [...], Stuttgart, 1788.
Schäffer, G.J.s., Beschreibung derjenigen Jauner, etc., Tübingen, 1813.
Siemann, W., Polizei in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert. Institutionen, Operationsebenen, Wirkungsmöglichkeiten. Mit neuen Dokumenten, in Schönert, J., (ed.), Literatur und Kriminalität. Die gesellschaftliche Erfahrung von Verbrechen und Strafverfolgung als Gegenstand des Erzählens. Deutschland, England und Frankreich 1850-1880, Tübingen, 1983, p. 68-95.
Spencer, E. G., State power and local interests in Prussian cities : police in the Düsseldorf District, 1848-1914, Central European History, 1986,19, 3, p. 293-313.
Spencer, E. G., Police and the Social Order in German Cities. The Düsseldorf District, 1848-1914,Dekalb, 1992.
Strauss, E., Die Zigeunerverfolgung in Bayern 1885-1926, Hausarbeit zur Erlangung des Magistergrades an der Ludwig-Maximihans-Universität zu München, 1986.
Tilly, C, Coercion, Capital, and European States A.D. 990-1990, Oxford, 1990.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 50
Willems, W., Op zoek naar de ware zigeuner. Zigeuners als studieobject tijdens de Verlichting, de Romantiek en het Nazisme, Utrecht, 1995.
Willems, W., In Search of the True Gypsy. From Enlightenment to 'Final Solution', London, 1997.
Winter, M., Kontinuitäten in der deutschen Zigeunerforschung und Zigeunerpolitik, in Ayass, 1988, p. 135-152.
Zimmermann, M., Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet. Die nationalsozialistische
Vernichtungspolitik gegen Sinti und Roma, Essen, 1989.
Zimmermann, M., Ausgrenzung, Ermordung, Ausgrenzung. Normalität und Exzeß in der polizeilichen Zigeunerverfolgung in Deutschland 1870-1980, in Lüdtke, A., (ed.), Sicherheit und Wohlfahrt. Polizei, Gesellschaft und Herrschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt a/M, 1992, p. 344-370.
Zimmermann. M., Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die Nationalsozialistische « Lösung der Zigeunenfrage », Hamburg, 1996.
NOTES
1. This article is a revised version of the paper presented at the Annual Meeting and conference on Gypsy Studies (Leiden, May 29-31 1995). It is based mainly on my recent book (Lucassen, 1996). The research was made possible by a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 2. The most important studies are mentioned throughout this paper. I also refer to my historiographical overview (Lucassen, 1995). 3. A notable exception is Fricke (1991). 4. Lucassen (1990). 5. Lucassen (1995). 6. An exception is the work of Burleigh and Wippermann (1991) and to a certain extent Ayass i.a. (1988). 7. Lüdtke (1982) ; Funk (1986) ; Jessen (1991) ; Spencer (1992) ; Reinke (1993). 8. Exceptions are Nitschke (1990) and Lüdtke (1989). 9. Lüdtke (1982). 10. Spencer (1992, p. 62). 11. Jessen (1991). 12. For a critical overview see Lucassen (1995) and Willems (1995). 13. Nitschke (1990, p. 190-193). 14. Danker (1988, p. 444-445) : « Seit dem frühen 18. Jahrhundert institutionalisierten eifrige Kriminalisten diese gezielten, grenzübergreifenden Fahndungsansätze durch die Anfertigung von Gaunerlisten » (p. 445). See also Dubler (1970, p. 49-50). 15. See also Küther (1976). 16. Bader (1962, p. 303). 17. See also Bader (1962 p. 296). 18. To the benefit of Württemberg and Baden. 19. Danker (1988, p. 463). In Stuhlmüller's introduction (1823), he states that his book is meant only for the police and the courts and « not at all for the bookshops ». The only ones to explicitly adress « the public » were Pfister and Falkenberg. 20. Tilly (1990). 21. Finzsch (1987, p. 450).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 51
22. With an exception for Schäffer (1813) and Pfeiffer (1828). 23. Schäffer (1788, p. 13). 24. Schäffer (1813, p. 155). See for an extensive analysis of Grellmann's work, especially the influence of the Enlightenment, Willems (1995 and 1997). 25. Only the years 1835-1868 have been analyzed. 26. Based on a sample from the first half year of 1852 in the Allgemeiner Polizey Anzeiger. 27. See f.e. Egmond (1993). 28. I.a. Lüdtke (1982) ; and Lucassen (1997). 29. Blasius (1976). 30. Lucassen (1997). 31. Moch (1992) ; Hochstadt (1981). 32. Sachße & Tennstedt (1980, p. 196) ; Kraus (1979, p. 193) ; Blum (1987, p. 69) ; Brubaker (1992, p. 57) ; Fricke (1991, p. 59). 33. Lucassen (1993b). 34. See e.g. Reinbeck (1861, p. 2 and p. 39) ; and Hehemann (1987), Strauss (1986), Günther (1985). 35. Hannoversches Polizeiblatt (1846, nos 10 en 11, p. 12-13). The same holds true for the « big gypsy family » Wappler (no. 1922 from juni 1847). 36. Hannoversches Polizeiblatt(November 1847, no. 3087, p. 1176-1183). 37. Hannoversches Polizeiblatt (1848, no. 3516, 3848, no. 4275, and no. 4315). 38. Hannoversches Polizeiblatt (1851, no. 10294 ; 1852, nos 13133 and 14366 ; 1853, no. 15119). In 1856 the families Schwarzen (no. 27036) and Schmidt (no. 26394) followed. 39. Willems (1995, p. 288-291). 40. Willems (1995, p. 23 ff.). 41. Willems (1995). 42. See for example Der Wächter, nos 44-51, 54-59,64, 74, 87 and 90. 43. Jessen (1991, p. 63) ; and Spencer (1992, p. 50,52 and 166). 44. See Hehemann (1987). 45. This fear for the fragile national identity was primarily aimed at the Polish-speaking minority in the eastern part of the country (Herbert, 1990, p. 10-11). 46. In Baden in 1862, in Bavaria in 1868 (Hehemann, 1987, p. 278). See also Brubaker (1992). Prussia was the first state with its act in 1842. 47. See Lucassen and Willems (1995). 48. In Prussia 22-10-1870, in Saxony 17-12-1870, the North-German Bund12-12-1870, in Bavaria 12- 1-1871, in Hessen 15-5-1871 and in Baden 19-9-1872 (Hehemann, 1987, p. 245, 323, 277 ; Strauss, 1986, p. 33 ; Höhne, 1929, p. 187 ; and Fricke 1991, p. 90). 49. Strauss (1986, p. 33). 50. Sample from the years 1866,1870,1975,1880,1885 and 1890. From the 39 descriptions of groups of gypsies only 6 came from Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Croatia. 51. Becker (1992, p. 126-127) ; Spencer (1986 and 1992) ; Funk (1993) ; Regener (1992) ; Diembach and Roth (1993) ; and Roth (1994). 52. Jessen (1994, p. 161). 53. Jessen (1994, p. 167). 54. Jessen (1994, p. 178-179). 55. Personalia, identification papers, number of caravans and horses, origin and travel direction, offences, measures taken against them and, if relevant, the reason why no action had been brought against them (Reich, 1927, p. 41-42). 56. Strauss (1986, p. 44). 57. Lucassen (1996, p. 255-256). 58. Lucassen (1996, p. 255-256). 59. Hehemann (1987, p. 231-233).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 52
60. Strauss (1986, p. 68). 61. Reich (1927). 62. Among them being the Süddeutscher Verein reisender Schausteller und Handelsleute from Nürnberg and the Reichsverband ambulanter Gewerbetreibenden (Lucassen, 1996, chapter 5). 63. Their licence to perform an itinerant profession was amplified with a special Schutzvermerk(protec- tive notice). 64. Proposal for the 1926 Act : Bayerische Landtag, III Tagung 1925/26. Beilage 1970, Staatsminista- rium des Innern to the Präsidenten des bayerischen Landtags, 12-3-1926 (Hauptstaatsarchiv München, Mwi, 839). 65. D. Karanikas, cited by Strauss (1986, p. 84). 66. I will not treat this period in full, but select only those developments which are of direct relevance to my main question. For a more thorough overall analysis see : Ayass i.a. (1988) ; Zimmermann (1989, 1992, and 1996) ; Eiber (1993) ; Riechert (1995) ; and Willems (1995). 67. Eiber (1993, p. 51). Of these 33,524, 18,138 were classified as « gypsies », 10,788 as « people living like gypsies » and 4,598 « other travellers*. Note that the 3,350 persons published by Dillmann also consisted of these categories. 68. In 1905 the « people living like gypsies » made up 28 % of Dilmann's 613 full descriptions. In 1938 this has risen to some 38 % and if we include the « other travellers » in the equation its share increases to 43 %. 69. Zimmermann (1989, p. 18-22) ; and Von Hase-Mihalik and Kreuzkamp (1990, p. 47). 70. Von Hase-Mihalik and Kreuzkamp (1990, p. 85). 71. Zimmermann (1989, 1992,1996) ; Willems (1995) and Riechert (1995). 72. For an analysis of his work and activities see the innovative dissertation of Willems (1995, Chapter 5). 73. Also known as the Rassenhygienische und bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle(Zimmermann, 1989, p. 33). 74. Willems (1995, p. 257). 75. Willems (1995, p. 257-258). 76. See also Zimmermann (1989, p. 35). 77. In a letter d.d. 17-10-1939 from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to the Staatliche Kriminalpolizeithe local police and gendarmerie were ordered to make lists of all the « gypsies » and mixed-blood gyp- sies under their jurisdiction (Riechert, 1995, p. 105). 78. See also Willems (1995, p. 266-271). 79. Willems (1995, p. 265). 80. For every Gutachtenhe received 5 Marks. One of his employees, Würth- declared after the war : « Bündelweise habe er sie ohne hinzuschauen unterschrieben und räumt ein, daß sie sogar Gutachten über Tote fabriziert hätten » (Riechert, 1995, p. 17). 81. Eiber (1993, p. 99-111). 82. Zimmermann (1989, p. 36). 83. See also Willems (1995, p. 264) on the close connections between Ritter's institute and the national centre. 84. Von Merz (1927, p. 4). 85. Siemann (1983, p. 76). 86. For these concepts see Tilly (1990, p. 107). 87. See also Lucassen (1995). 88. Winter (1988, p. 145) ; Cottaar i.a. (1992, p. 54-55) ; Willems (1995, p. 276-285). 89. Feuerhelm (1987, p. 117) ; Zimmermann (1992, p. 364-370).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 53
ABSTRACTS
Why, and with what effects, have (travelling) people been labelled as « Gypsies » and what does this labelling process lear us about more general developments, such as the professionalisation of the police, the emergence of the national state, (im)migration controls and the granting of poor relief and welfare ? These are the questions that are dealt with in this article, which focuses mainly on Germany, but has wider relevance for other Western European countries as well. By using a long time-span (1700-1945), it tries to lay bare some fundamental mechanisms in the labelling process which are easily missed by studies on more restricted periods. Our reconstruction shows that in many aspects the Nazi period just continued the traditional labelling of Gypsies by the German police. The significant change was the means it was offered by the dictatorial and terrorist regime and the extermination policy. The specific contribution to the history of the police in Germany is that it sheds light on the early beginnings of the professionalisation of the police. The most striking aspect of the tracing is the continuity in the target-groups and methods used. In the eighteenth century as well as in the twentieth, policemen were primarily interested in obtaining a better insight in the real and the potential criminals (broadly defined) and thus curbing the danger these persons posed to the public. One of the consequences was the formation of certain categories, such as vagrants, Gypsies, Jews, journeymen, prostitutes, and during the Nazi period « anti-social enemies », who were thus problematized and stigmatized.
Pourquoi les migrants ont-ils été qualifiés de « tsiganes », quelles en ont été les conséquences et que nous révèle ce processus d'étiquetage sur des phénomènes plus généraux, tels que la professionnalisation de la police, l'émergence des États-nations, le contrôle des migrations et la mise en œuvre de l'assistance et de la bienfaisance ? Voici les questions que soulève cet article, surtout centré sur l'Allemagne mais qui concerne également les autres pays d'Europe occidentale. Se plaçant dans la longue durée (1700-1845), il s'efforce de mettre à nu certains des mécanismes fondamentaux du processus d'étiquetage que les études portant sur une période plus courte échouent souvent à repérer. Notre reconstruction montre qu'à beaucoup d'égards, le nazisme n'a fait que perpétuer l'étiquetage traditionnel des tsiganes par la police allemande. Le changement significatif réside dans les moyens que procurait le régime dictatorial et terroriste et sa politique d'extermination. La contribution particulière de cet article à l'historiographie de la police allemande consiste à attirer l'attention sur les prémisses de la professionnalisation policière. Le caractère le plus frappant de cette filiation est la continuité dans les groupes-cibles et les méthodes employées. Au 18e comme au 20e siècles, les policiers tenaient avant tout à mieux connaître les criminels réels ou potentiels (largement entendus) afin de réduire le risque que ces individus faisaient courir au public. Une des conséquences en fut l'élaboration de certaines catégories, jugées problématiques et en conséquence stigmatisées : vagabonds, tsiganes, juifs, chemineaux, prostituées, puis, durant le nazisme « ennemis anti-sociaux ».
AUTHOR
LEO LUCASSEN Universitair Docent at the History Department of Leiden University (Netherlands). His main publications include « A Blind Spot : Migratory and Travelling Groups in Western European Historiography », International Review of Social History, 1993, 38, p. 209-235 ; Zigeuner. Die Geschichte eines polizeilichen Ordnungsbegriffes in Deutschland 1700-1945(Cologne, Boehlau Verlag, 1996) ;
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 54
Migration, Migration History, History : Old Paradigms and New Perspectives(ed. with Jan Lucassen, Bern, Peter Lang Verlag, 1997). His current research deals with immigrants and the labour market in the Netherlands, 1900-2000.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 55
A decline in violence in Ireland ? Crime, policing and social relations, 1860-19141
Mark Finnane
Introduction - Violence in Ireland
1 Ireland, it was said in 1971, even at the outbreak of the Troubles, was a peaceful society, one of the most peaceful in Europe and ranking very low on international league tables of deaths by homicide2. In citing Ireland as a 'most favoured country' in a comparison of western crime rates, Ted Robert Gurr in 1979 speculated in passing that 'its relatively low volume of crime may be credited to its Gaelic culture, religious traditionalism, or simply its small urban population'3. The history of the north, and of increasing crime in Ireland generally since the 1960s reversed such an image, although clearly it might be repeated that this violence was specific to a particular time, place and political context.
2 In the meantime the bloodletting has provoked reflection and query. In some recent cultural commentary on Ireland violence emerges as the sore at the heart of a culture which must begin to take it seriously. Two films, based on the work of two of Ireland's best known contemporary writers, expose the costs of unrestrained and little understood violence. In Neil Jordan's Angel the initial, almost accidental, fall into violence of the film's anti-hero precipitates a bloody saga of seemingly uncon-tainable proportions, with a barely disguised metaphorical message on the politics of violence as a choice in modern Ireland. Roddy Doyle's script for a TV drama series, Family, confronts violence in a different domain. Here, in a thoroughly realist genre, it is a family facing the consequences of domestic violence, a violence which is pervasively documented in physical, mental and sexual abuse of a number of family members by the father. Admittedly, there is a level at which Doyle's writing in this series extends beyond a purely local culture - it is difficult not to imagine it serving as a tale of domestic violence and familial misery in any modern Western country.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 56
3 If these two powerful stories discourse on a truth about contemporary Ireland, they do no more, nor less, than continue a tradition of social criticism which has been associated with some of the country's most influential artists. James Joyce (of whom Brenda Maddox noted a particular aversion to physical violence) writes in Dubliners of Eveline, whose unsuccessful struggle to leave her stifling family and culture springs in part from her revulsion from the violence of her father4. The mundane realities of everyday life in Ireland, represented in these various cultural reflections, seem to encompass a violence which lies just beneath the surface, and is only partly evident in the culture's long tradition of political violence. That is, there is a violence which is noticed but largely evaded by a culture and polity which has been for long preoccupied with only one kind of violence, that associated with political disaffection or dissent. Perhaps there is more than this. Has there even been, as Joseph Lee suggests, a perversion of public moralities which allowed the preoccupation with sex to displace a concern with all other immoralities, such as the 'the morality of violence, the morality of perjury, the morality of deceit in commercial and legal transactions'5.
4 This prelude allows me to approach my theme in a particular way, that is as a question about social history which arises not simply out of a very contemporary concern with violence and its control. Rather I suggest that a history of violence in modern Ireland focuses attention on an aspect of the society's history which is already present in its cultural history, but in a way which is constantly subordinated to other themes. Elsewhere I have suggested that an examination of Irish criminal statistics in the second half of the nineteenth century is likely to show a society which was not so exceptional in its development, a society which experienced for example, a general decline in levels of violence after the middle of the nineteenth century, like many others in the western world at the same time6.
5 Such a historical experience was at odds with a widespread public perception of Ireland in the later nineteenth century as a country characterised by high levels of violence. The focus of policy attention was above all on the manifestations of violent resistance to the fundamental social order of a rural society in which disputes over the ownership and use of land were endemic, though no more so it has been argued than was characteristic of 'pre-modern' societies. Perhaps, Townshend suggests, the 'pre- modern' context was even relevant to understanding some of the elements of violence in Belfast in the later nineteenth century as survivals of carnivalesque release7. The tendency of the British government to rule Ireland by coercive measures through much of the century reflected the alarm at levels of violence which, whatever their roots in more localised social relations8, were taken to be evidence of a society in a state of anarchy. All the same, even in the context of conditions most conducive to political violence there appeared by the 1880s to be some striking evidence of the decline of 'crude personal violence' as an agrarian mode of assault on the landlord system.9 If this was the case it appears to be of a kind with other evidence discussed below which suggests a decline in other incidents of personal violence.
6 Such an observation was hinted at in official comment even in the midst of the worst outbreak of violence in the early 1880s. W. Neilson Hancock, the skilled and observant statistician whose reports on the judicial and criminal statistics spanned the years 1863-1881, noted in his last report that while the country has been shocked by some fearful crimes it affords hope in applying remedies to find that minor offences have on a large scale been successfully diminished at the very time that serious crime was increasing10.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 57
7 Hancock's predilection was for social explanations of the major shifts in crime, a phenomenon he considered sensitive to economic pressures and social provisions. One had to go back to 1864, he explained, to see a figure comparable to the serious crime rate of 1881 –and that had also been a year in which Ireland's rural economy had been placed under enormous pressure. The capacity of the nineteenth century state to address some of the causes of crime was elliptically addressed in Hancock's reference to even earlier crime waves in times when social organisation was very different : 'In 1846 the Poor Law was not so adequate, before 1838 there was no Poor Law, before 1835 there was a tithe question, and before 1830 less efficient police'11. The almost academic detachment of these observations at such a time were not however a symptom of the general governmental response to yet another outbreak of Irish crime– and in the 1880s the British government in Ireland again pursued coercion in a desparate attempt to bring the country back under control. The study of violence in Ireland must necessarily steer a careful course through a mass of data which threatens attempts to discover a secular trend running through the rises and falls of political disturbance.
8 In order to advance the study of this subject beyond the impressionistic stage of most existing research this article examines some of the official data about crimes of violence in the post-Famine period. It further explores the geographical and gender variations of this evidence, to raise some issues about differences within a culture. Finally it considers what kinds of evidence or data could help us to explain the patterns described. The violence involved is primarily that which came to the notice of the public authorities, especially the police and the coroners. The relevance of other forms of violence cannot be disputed - and it may also be that it is in reference to changing attitudes to the modes of behaviour which lay outside the domain of violence that we may discover the best clues to the changing patterns we are able to discern in the criminal statistics.
A decline in violence ?
9 As an index of violence, evidence of homicide warrants prior attention. Criminologists and crime historians incline to the view that homicide statistics are harder than other crime data –but even so there are different sources for the evidence of homicide in the past. Two kinds of data– police interventions and coronial inquiries –yield evidence for the period covered by this study. Graph 1 compares the record of both police arrests and the results of inquests into the cause of violent death, by grouping murder and manslaughter. While there are annual fluctuations across the period there is a marked falling off from the early 1890s. This followed what was undoubtedly one of the century's most violent decades, that of the 1880s, with peaks in 1880, 1882, 1887 and then finally 1891. The reasons for the peaks are not difficult to seek– they were clearly linked to the agrarian and political agitations of these decades. But beyond this it is evident that the other story of the statistics of violent death is that Ireland in the Edwardian period was very much a more peaceable society than Ireland of the mid- Victorian era. The evidence of both inquests and of police arrests trends in the same direction.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 58
Graph 1 : Homicide, Ireland 1864-1914
Source : Judicial Statistics (Ireland) for police arrest and charge ; Registrar-General's Annual Reports (Ireland), for cause of death at inquest. Incidents per million population.
10 Across the half-century from 1864 then, the picture of homicidal violence is one of secular decline, as it was for many other societies at this time12. Such an index might point to a more general decline in inter-personal violence. In fact when we look at comparative data from non-homicidal violence there is some strong evidence of a more general decline. The point is tellingly illustrated if we construct indices of police charges of homicide and compare those of serious assault, as in the accompanying graph. It is clear on the basis of this view of the official data that there was a very marked decline in the prosecution of indictable common assault prior to the 1880s.
11 But was this decline one which occurred only in more serious cases of assault ? A comparison of persons tried on assault in the summary courts with those tried before a jury suggests even more strikingly that there was a long term decline in the incidence of prosecution of assault of most kinds in the three decades leading to the first world war. I caution 'most kinds' because more detailed scrutiny of some categories will suggest a more complex picture.
Graph 2 : Violence in Ireland : polices charges 1863-1914.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland – police arrest and charge (as for all statistics in this paper unless otherwise indicated). Indictable assault includes shooting, common assault, assault on peace officer (indictable) and grievous bodily harm ; homicide includes murder, child murder and manslaoghter. Incidents per million population.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 59
12 In sum the preliminary evidence from the source (police arrests) which, in the absence of victim surveys, is regarded as most probably reflecting an incidence of certain kinds of social behaviour confirms a pattern which is recognisable in other jurisdictions. Throughout the later nineteenth century and down to the First World War there was a notable decline in the police prosecution of violent assaults of both a fatal and non- fatal kind. This was true also of the summary charge of common assault which may be read in some ways as an indicator of a disposition to deal inter-personally in a way which is marked by conflict, antagonism, or simply with a degree of aggravation. When we take another index, that of coronial inquiries into violent death, the evidence seems further confirmed. These are noteworthy observations of a society which was regarded by many observers for most of the long period of the Union down to 1921 as ungovernable.
Graph 3 : Assault in Ireland, 1863-1914.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland ; indictable assault includes charges as in previous graph ; common assault is summary charges of common assault. Incidents per million population.
13 Before exploring some data which might contribute to explaining these trends, it is worth noting that more detailed analysis of the homicide data, especially of its sex- differentiations, raises further matters for exploration. The coronial inquest data makes possible a differentiation by age and sex of the victims of alleged homicide. The data suggests, interestingly, a convergence of the numbers of male and female victims by the early 1900s. The crucial data which allows us to interpret this is age at death. Although I have not analysed this in detail yet, the data from the 1870s shows that most of the female cases were infanticide victims, with many fewer adult victims than was the case for males. If such a trend continued by the early 1900s what we would be looking at in this comparative data is the outcome of a process where infanticide was still relatively common.
14 The data on sex of offender (Graph 5) charged with homicide conforms with this data on victims, as there is a convergence between numbers of males and females charged by the 1900s (possibly replicating an earlier pattern before the 1870s). A greater readiness to prosecute infanticide where it was discovered would help explain such an outcome.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 60
Graph 4 : Homicide victims - inquests, Ireland, 1864-1914.
Source : Causes of Death, Annual Report of Registrar. General. Number of females/males who where victims of homicide, as found by coroner.
Policing a decline in violence ?
15 How important was policing to the changing pattern of violence prosecution ? In a striking phrase, Gatrell has characterised the later nineteenth century Victorian state in England as a 'policeman state'. That phrase conveys Gatrell's view that the police played a significant role in the organisation of social life, fostering conditions of good order (if not of social equality). Gatrell's earlier work on patterns of prosecution of crime in Victorian and Edwardian England had already pointed to the significance of a decline in prosecutions as an indicator of changing patterns of social relations in which the role of police as social control agents had a productive effect13.
Graph 5 : Charges of murder, Ireland, 1863-1914.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland – number of persons charged, including murder, manslaughter and infanticide
16 While a great deal more work is required before we can extend such judgments to Ireland (and even test them adequately in England), there is some point in considering just one piece of statistical evidence which we might regard as consistent with a productive role of police in effecting some change in the rates of public violent
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 61
offending in the later nineteenth century in Ireland. The ratio of police to population was certainly not declining in the six decades before the First World War. While there were fluctuations in this ratio, the figure at turn of century was still higher than it had been before the 1880s and remained higher than the pre-1880 level to the outbreak of war in 1914. In spite of some decline in total indictable prosecutions, police numbers were maintained at a time of declining population. Comparing the number of offences per police officer gives us some sense of how active or otherwise the police were. What the graph below suggests is that police, whose numbers were at high ratios relative to earlier in the century, continued to be active in pressing both indictable and summary charges, even at the same time as the society was becoming noticeably less violent.
17 Further scrutiny suggests that, in Ireland as elsewhere, much of this continued activity was of focussed on street cleaning activities, the prosecution of drunkenness being an obvious and influential factor in police work. The implications of these observations for the effect of policing on violence are quite indirect. It would take a larger leap of faith than could be justified to presume that police played the crucial role. Barring a very intensive saturation of the society with guardians of law and order, the capacity of police to exert a constant watching brief over public behaviour has been consistently questioned by empirical research.
Graph 6 : Number of offences per police officer, Ireland, 1864-1913.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland. The data is derived from the summary tables (of cases tried in assizes, quarter sessions and summary courts), published from 1895, with annual reports of comparable data for the period before 1876. The measure is of cases which were brought to court, not of those arrested, as with most of the other data in this paper.
18 What other research has also demonstrated however is the importance of police discretion in prosecution and the consequent sensitivity of policing statistics to changing priorities of police, whether or not these are directed by other environmental factors. By examining in greater detail the range of charges preferred against offenders in the domain of offences against the person we can start to qualify the conclusions we might draw from the gross figures of indictable and summary charges involving offences against the person, as discussed earlier. In the following discussion I scrutinise in some detail the trends of data on policing of a number of categories of offence which
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 62
might be theorised as relating to changes in social behaviour bearing on the incidence of violence. The offences examined below include various sub-categories of assault, of attempted suicide, of rape and attempts, and of cruelty to animals, the last an offence which might bear an interesting relation to changing modes of personal behaviour and social norms.
Assaults
19 Within the category of prosecuted violence there were of course numerous kinds of behaviour and legal definition. It is possible that changes in definition of offence were occurring which made the appearance of declining prosecution a chimera. There is some evidence for example that certain kinds of offence which brought prosecution during these six decades defied the trend of decline. A notable instance is the charge of aggravated assault. This charge, legislated in 1861 as a provision under which justices might award a harsher punishment for assault and battery of women and children, was the subject of increasing numbers of prosecution up to 1900.
Graph 7 : Aggravated assault, Ireland, 1863-1914.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland. Male and female offenders charged, per million.
20 As the table indicates it may be that a change in recording procedure after that date makes the subsequent history of this offence difficult to judge. But the accelerating numbers of arrests through the 1880s and 1890s, for both male and female offenders, suggests a changing attention to a category of violence which was the object of contending interests in the nineteenth century14.
21 The increase in charges of aggravated assault up to 1900 is capable of various interpretations. One may be the greater confidence or willingness of women to press charges of this kind - one of the few assault charges which became the subject of judicial interpretation involved just this offence, when in 1872 Isabela Rice charged Thomas Rice after he threatened her with a rifle and otherwise assaulted her15. Another instance making it to the law reports involved the daughter (of unstated age) of John Clarke of Aughnacloy, Co Tyrone, who had assaulted her in an attempt to get her to return home as, it was said in the appeal, 'she had been giving himself and his wife a great deal of trouble in staying away from home'16.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 63
22 An alternative, and of course not exclusive, interpretation is that police and magistrates were somewhat more willing to prosecute such cases by the late nineteenth century. Such an explanation presumes a policy direction ; or else a change in sensibility about domestic violence and the unacceptability of physical abuse of women and children. The latter might be presumed to be the stronger explanation since, on matters of policy, police were being explicitly instructed in nineteenth century police manuals to avoid too close an interference in domestic disputes. But there is another factor in this category of assault which requires more attention. The unpredictably high number of female defendants on this charge does suggest a readiness of police to intervene in circumstances which require detailed archival inquiry. Moreover this was a charge whose incidence, like so much in the Irish context, reflected the intensity of policing in the country's largest urban centre, Dublin. The graph below shows the much greater incidence of the charge in Dublin as compared even with Belfast, while a sample of almost any other region of Ireland would reflect much the same relatively low incidence as does our example of Galway.
Graph 8 : Aggravated assault, Ireland and selected regions, 1863-1914.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland- data for regions is three year average (eg at 1871, represents 1870-2).
23 Another category of assault which is commonly seen as related to the question of consent to policing is that of assault on police. Arrest on such a summary charge includes occasions of resisting or obstructing police in the course of their duty : since the burden of proof is effectively placed on the defendant to show that they did not assault police, in a context where the court is typically inclined to accept the word of police, the charge is an important index of police readiness to assert their authority. The extent to which such a charge carried with it a very high chance of conviction in the summary courts is indicated by comparing conviction rates for assault police and other assault categories, as in the following graph.
24 The evidence is consistent across four decades of data, that a charge of assault against police was almost invariably followed by conviction, making the charge one which police could deploy in confidence of being backed by magistrates. The incidence of assaults against police might therefore be seen as reflecting an incidence of tension between police and the policed.
25 If so then the following evidence of the incidence of charges suggests again an increasingly peaceable society.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 64
Graph 9 : Conviction rates, assault charges, Ireland.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland
Graph 10 :Assault on police (summary charge), Ireland, 1863-1914.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland
26 The sheer volume of this charge (running to thousands of cases each year) together with the high correlation of the pattern of charging of males and females (R2= 0.86) might be seen as providing convincing evidence of a police disposition of an increasingly quietist kind, one which might be consistent with a lessening of public, street-based conflict. Consistent with such a long-term change in policing dispositions is the argument of Lowe and Malcolm that the constabulary in Ireland was itself 'domesticated' in the later decades of the nineteenth century, being increasingly disarmed, and more a part of local communities, being used as they comment more as an agent of 'house-keeping' than of 'peace-keeping'17.
27 A pertinent issue in this regard is the intensity of patterns of policing in urban versus rural areas, as well as the varieties of conflict within those areas. As with so much of the evidence of policing in Ireland in these decades the incidence of charges shows significant difference between different areas of the country. This is notably the case with assaults on police, which in Dublin in the early 1860s are recorded at 5 times the rate in the closest other county or urban area. Viewed against other evidence of assault
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 65
(ie summary common assault) this is a striking differential, since there was nothing exceptional about the rate of charges of common assault in Dublin at this time.
28 This record of Dubliners' conflict with police evidently continued as the accompanying graph shows in relation to evidence from 1911. However by this time the Dublin experience was much less exceptional, with two rural counties exceeding the Dublin rate of charges of assault on police, and Belfast exhibiting much the same pattern as Dublin.
29 The complexity of the changing incidence of such charges suggests yet again the importance of a more detailed scrutiny of the available policing, court and newspaper records which will have to be the subject of further study. Other researchers however have noted the marked hostility between the police and people in both Dublin and Belfast. On the basis of a survey of press reports of assaults on police in Dublin from the 1830s to 1914 Brian Griffin concludes that there was nothing less than a 'long-running feud between the Dublin Metropolitan Police (which was a unique force in Ireland in any case) and the city's 'lower classes'18. The ferocity of sectarian dispute and labour troubles in Belfast from the 1880s also did little to improve the tempers on either side of the policing divide there19. If there was a domestication of policing relations as well as of police themselves in Ireland in this period its limits appear to have been reached in the conditions of urban life in the country's two major cities.
Suicide and other 'violent' death
30 For a study which is concerned to understand the relation between the policing of crime and violence on the one hand, and the social conditions of violent acts on the other, evidence relating to incidence of suicide and other violent death is indispensable. Roger Lane's study of violent death in Philadelphia focussed attention on the relevance of suicide and accidental death, but few have followed this lead in later studies of the incidence of violence which tend to focus on the evidence from the policing of murder and manslaughter20.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 66
Graph 11 : Assault, Irish counties, 1863-65.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland
31 In spite of a century and more of serious social science attention to the phenomena of suicide there has been very little study of it in Irish social history. The following discussion largely replicates the evidence of the only statistical study to date, published by Dermot Walsh in 197721. Walsh showed a steady increase in the recording of suicide verdicts in the reports of the Registrar General throughout the later nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Comparing such data with the record of admissions to lunatic asylums during the same period gives us a partial picture of what the Victorians called the moral state of the society22. Adding to this the data we have discussed above on the decline of assault and homicide produces a highly suggestive contrast, though one not unique to Ireland23.
32 It appears from this comparison that as incidents of inter-personal violence declined there was a simultaneous increase in violent acts against the self, as well as disorders in social relations and personal disposition leading to asylum admission. The question of a relation between these three measures of social action is one for further study in this social history.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 67
Graph 12 : Assault, Irish counties, 1910-12.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland
33 Another kind of value attaches to the study of suicide as an index of certain kinds of violence. This arises from the possible implications flowing from the comparison of the coronial verdicts on suicide with the evidence of policing of the offence of attempted suicide. Adjustment of the reported data in the Judicial Statistics to take account of the most likely features of the pre-1895 trend suggests a long term decline in the incidence of police arrest for the offence24. The obvious question is whether this also reflected a decline in the incidence of unsuccessful attempts, an unlikely explanation but one which we could perhaps test by noting any other evidence we have about accidental death, some of which might have also included suicide attempts.
Graph 13 : Suicide in Ireland, 1866-1912.
Note : 'Attempted suicide' tracks police charges of the indictable offence of attempted suicide (see discussion in fn. 24 for the calculation of this rate) ; sources include Registrar-General Reports, Judicial Statistics, and data from Finnane, 1981.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 68
Graph 14 : Violent death in Ireland, 1864-1914.
Source : Registrar-General's Reports. Note : missing data for 1870, 1873, 1857, 1877 for total accident and suicide ; values for murder for these years are average of the two adjacent years.
34 As it happens the evidence suggests a trend upwards in total accidental death especially from the 1890s, as with suicide. But the breakdown of cause of death in the Registrar-General's Reports suggests that there were differential trends within this total : drowning (conventionally the cause of death most readily contributing to an underestimate of suicide deaths)25 trending down, while fractures trended upwards (for the period of recorded data) as did burns and scalds (a category in which women consistently recorded higher rates of death than men). While the figures for drowning prompt a note of caution, it seems unlikely on the whole that there was a secular decline in total number of incidents of attempted suicide, when the completed suicide as well as the total accident rate trended upwards. Accordingly it might be suggested that other reasons to do with policing priorities or practices may be implicated in a decreasing incidence of arrest for attempted suicide. Notably as the asylum became an institution of ready resort and easy access from the 1860s the tendency to direct attempted suicides straight to the asylum may have contributed to this changing incidence in the policing figures26.
Rape and attempts
35 There has been little research on the history of rape in Ireland - a recent extensive bibliography in the special 1995 issue of Journal of Women's History on 'Irish Women' contains no item appearing to deal with the subject historically. More recently however the most substantial research to date touching on the subject has concluded that 'sexual assaults were relatively rarely reported in Ireland', but that they were dealt with more severely than in England. The author of this study, Carolyn Conley, avoids using the official statistics in favour of the more specific detail of the 'Outrage Reports' of the Royal Irish Constabulary, giving her a much finer grained source of evidence than the Judicial Statistics, but one which perhaps underestimates the incidence of police charges27. In the absence of systematic comparison of the two sources the conclusions we might draw about the significance of the policing statistics are but a starting point. In terms of our general concern here, however, that of seeking to identify the components of a general decline in the policing and perhaps incidence of
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 69
violence in the later nineteenth century, the comparative data below is of some interest.
36 Combining the recorded data of police arrests for rape and attempted rape and comparing this with the general trend for the count of indictable assault indicates that the policing of rape by no means showed a general decline. Rather it displayed fluctuations over a longer time period with some decline only in the early 1880s and in the first decade of this century, though this was reversed by the end of the period, resulting overall in a constant rate across the period. The relevance of such evidence to the types and incidence of violence will require detailed attention - the impact of policing priorities as well as the interactions of police arrest with the subsequent fate of these charges in the courts are likely to tell us a good deal more about the specific features of this offence and its relation to gender violence during this era.
Graph 15 : Rape and indictable assault, Ireland, 1865-1912.
Source : Judicial Statistics, Ireland. The data has been smoothed by a 5 year moving average.
Cruelty to animals
37 Finally it seems relevant to take some notice of data relating to a change in nineteenth century attitudes to abusive behaviour more generally, not just in relation to other persons. The summary offence of cruelty to animals was a statutory one in Ireland, legislated in a number of acts from 1849. As a comparison of police charges against both male and female defendants shows, although the rate of charging was about ten males to one female, the rise across the period was consistent for both sexes (R2 = 0.94). This suggests a very strong trend in policing of a behaviour which is perhaps less likely to have increased in real terms than to have become more and more the object of surveillance and intervention.
38 Preliminary comparison of the regional rates suggests that the great bulk of these cases were urban in origin as might be expected. As an index of the capacity of the nineteenth century state to moralise the population at large the significance of this trend in prosecutions leaves us to speculate on the long term effects of such interventions as a mode of reforming popular conduct, as much as a reflection of changing sensibilities.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 70
Summary
39 In the light of the data about the policing of sub-categories of violence we have to develop a rather more sophisticated set of questions for historical inquiry. What seems unambiguously to be evidence of a significant decline of violence in Ireland during this period looks on closer examination to be the distillation of a multitude of different trends in data. There seems little doubt that there was a decline in fatal violence of an inter-personal kind –but not of violence directed against the self which showed a strong increase in completed suicide during the half century after 1860. The policing of violent inter-personal acts showed some striking variation during these years– with evidence of significant interventions around the category of 'aggravated assault', and a relatively constant trend in the policing of rape and attempted sexual violence. The vigilant state, probably acting in response to the prompting of non-state agencies, showed in the increasing prosecution of offences of cruelty against animals that its police were not simply retiring to the barracks during these decades of mostly increasing peaceableness in public order. Of particular interest in some of the data which has been analysed is the consistency of measurement of sex-specific arrests for various categories of offence - as with the examples cited of assaults against police and cruelty to animals. As elsewhere women were much less likely to be implicated in criminal acts than men, but this data also suggests a relatively constant offending population whose risks of arrest varied only according to police priorities from time to time.
Graph 16 : Cruelty to animals, Ireland, 1863-1914
Sources : Judicial Statistics. Data is rates per 100,000 population, of police charges in the summary courts.
Conclusion
40 The study of violence in history has been dominated in recent years by issues in the history of policing and criminal justice. Establishing measures of the incidence of violence inevitably turns attention to the crucial data available through the modern institutions of criminal justice. The study of which this article is a part does not seek to displace such concern but rather to provide a level of scrutiny of the official data which has been absent from many studies. This scrutiny can be characterised in two ways :
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 71
first, as one which looks at the data in a comparative context and, second, one which examines the relation between various indices of violence, including some which have been little regarded by other studies. Starting from the general conclusions of an earlier paper that the data in a comparative study of four countries exhibited a decline in inter-personal violence consistent with other international studies of the same period, this paper has focussed on the second level of scrutiny of the official data.
41 In doing so, we have seen how the strong evidence of decline in violence in the gross indices (homicide, assault) is modulated by a more detailed inspection of different kinds of policed offences. Notably such inspection has illustrated the value of examining categories such as sexual offences, domestic violence and assaults on children, and cruelty to animals. The policing data for such categories suggests interesting counterpoints to the overall picture of decline in the total record of offences of inter-personal violence. If we add to this data some measures of violence against the self, and asylum committals, the meanings of a 'decline in violence' are yet further complicated.
42 Further research in this project will be concerned to multiply the sources of data beyond official statistics. It will also be focussed on the appraisal of various explanations which might be (and have been) used in assessing the reasons for a long term decline in violence in western societies –administrative changes (policing and official statistics), biosocial (nutrition and so on), and cultural/governmental (including changing norms of social behaviour and governance of the self)28– Having spent some time in this article on unpicking the tapestry of policing evidence it might be worth concluding on a note which focuses on the role of policing in the general decline in incidence of violence during this era.
43 Policing (through the activities of public or state police) was a mode of governing which combined a capacity for general surveillance with a high level of discretion in responding to local conditions. Such conditions might include political pressures from official government and from pressure groups and the media, as much in the nineteenth century as today. Given the general decline in recorded violence (evidently confirmed by the decline in homicide as a cause of death, with its implication of a declining propensity for violence) the Irish policing data on rape, aggravated assault and cruelty to animals was arguably a response to expectations or pressures that sought to bring these additional categories of violent acts to account. Where this policing priority was most effective in terms of increasing prosecutions (cruelty to animals notably, but aggravated assault as well for some part of this period) was in areas which were most likely to be subject public visibility and reporting - rape and attempts being a category most difficult to prosecute in the context of independent public witnesses. Such observations might serve as hypotheses for further investigation in the next stages of this study. They also presume a positive agency for police and policing as a crucial element in the later nineteenth century decline of inter-personal violence, another hypothesis for continuing investigation.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 72
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, O., Suicide in Victorian and Edwardian England, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987.
Bridgeman, I., Policing Rural Ireland, PhD thesis, The Open University, 1993.
Clark, S., and Donnelly, J. (eds.), Irish Peasants : Violence and Political Unrest, 1780-1914, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983.
Conley, C.A., The Unwritten Law, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991.
Conley, C.A., No pedestals : women and violence in nineteenth-century Ireland, Journal of Social History, 1995, 28, 4, p. 801-818.
Dawson, W.R., The Presidential Address on the Relation between the Geographical Distribution of Insanity and that of Certain Social and other Conditions in Ireland, The Journal of Mental Science, 1911, LVII, 239, (n.s. 203), p.571-597.
Finnane, M., Insanity and the Insane in post-Famine Ireland, 1981.
Finnane, M., Stevenson S., The decline of inter-personal violence 1860-1930 : a cross-cultural comparison in four common-law systems, Social History Society of the UK Conference, Luton, January 1994.
Finnane, M., Irish crime without the outrage, in Osborough N. and Vaughan W., (eds.), The Administration of Criminal Justice in Nineteenth Century Ireland, Irish Legal History Society (forthcoming).
Fitzpatrick, D., Class, Family and Rural Unrest in Nineteenth Century Ireland, in Drudy, P.J., (ed.), Ireland : Land Politics and People, Cambridge, 1982.
Fitzpatrick, D., Unrest in rural Ireland, Irish Economic and Social History, 1985, XII, p. 98-105.
Gatrell, V.A.C., The Decline of Theft and Violence in Victorian and Edwardian England, in Gatrell, V.A.C., Lenman, B., Parker, G., (eds.), Crime and the Law. The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500. London : Europa Publications, 1980, Ch. IX.
Gatrell, V.A.C., The Policeman State, in Thompson F. M. L., (ed.) The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950, III, Cambridge University Press : 1991.
Griffin, B., The Irish police, 1836-1914 : A social history, PhD thesis, Loyola University of Chicago, 1991.
Gurr, T. R., On the history of violent crime in Europe and America, in Gurr T. R., (ed.) Violence in America : Historical and Comparative Perspectives, Beverly Hills, Sage, 1979.
Johnson, E.A., Urbanization and Crime : Germany 1871-1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Joyce, J., Dubliners, in Levin H., (ed.), The Essential James Joyce, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1963, p. 374-5.
Lane, R., Violent Death in the City : Suicide, Accident and Murder in Nineteenth Century Philadelphia, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1979.
Lee, J., Ireland 1912-1985, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Lowe, W., Malcolm, E., The domestication of the Royal Irish Constabulary, 1836-1922, Irish Economic and Social Review, 1992, XIX, p. 27-48.
Maddox, B., Nora : a biography of Nora Joyce, London, Minerva, 1988.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 73
Monkkonen, E., New York City homicides : a research note, Social Science History, 1994,19, 2, p. 201-203.
Rose, R., Governing without Consensus : an Irish Perspective, Boston, Beacon Press, 1971.
Stevenson, S., An international decline of violence 1860-1930 : if there was one, did it come from a new masculinity ?, SSHA Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 14 October 1994.
Townshend, C, Political Violence in Ireland, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983.
Vaughan, E.E., Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994,
Walsh, D., A Century of Suicide in Ireland, Journal of the Irish Medical Association, 1976, 69, 6 (March 27) p. 144-151.
NOTES
1. Presented at the American Society of Criminology Conference, Boston, November 14-17, 1995. This paper is part of a larger project on the decline of inter-personal violence, 1860-1930, in conjunction with Simon Stevenson of Griffith University, and funded by an Australian Research Committee Large Grant (1995-1997) - see Finnane and Stevenson (1994) ; and Stevenson (1994). 2. Rose (1971, p. 424-425, 429-430. 3. See Gurr (1979, p. 363). 4. Maddox (1988) ; see 'Eveline' in Dubliners (Levin, 1963, p. 374-375). 5. Lee (1989, p. 645). 6. See Finnane (forthcoming). See also Vaughan (1994), p. 140, 163. 7. Townshend (1983, p. 45-48). The relevance of modernization to understanding the extent of violence in peasant Ireland is emphasised in the Conclusion to Clark and Donnelly (1983). 8. A dimension explored especially by Fitzpatrick (1982, 1985). 9. Townshend (1983, p. 150). 10. Criminal and Judicial Statistics 1881, Ireland, p. 16, British Parliamentary Papers, 1882. 11. Ibid., p. 15. 12. See Monkkonen (1994, p. 201-203) for a recent summary of comparative evidence. There remain contradictory examples however. Howard Zehr's earlier study of crime and modernization in Germany and France which argued for a decline in violence in the course of industrialisation during the nineteenth century has recently been questioned by Eric A. Johnson's more detailed examination of the German data (1995, esp. ch.3). 13. Gatrell (1991 and 1980). 14. Conley (1991, p. 74-75) commenting on the situation in England. In a recent article on women and violence in Ireland, Conley has presented much evidence suggesting a more sympathetic attitude on the part of the Irish judiciary (as compared with England) to women as offenders and victims, though her article covers mainly indictable crime and does not address charges of aggravated assault : see Conley (1995). 15. In re Rice, (1873-1874) Ir. Reports, VII, 74. 16. Ex parte Clarke, (1890-1891) ILR, XXVI, 3. 17. Lowe and Malcolm (1992). 18. Griffin (1991, p. 793 and ch. ix passim). See also Bridgeman (1993, p. 256) on the excessive levels of assault in Dublin. 19. Griffin (1991, p. 697-706). 20. Lane (1979). 21. Walsh (1976).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 74
22. Dawson (1911) is one of the rare and interesting contemporary attempts to provide such an analysis of the condition of Ireland. 23. E.g. Lane (1979) for a discussion of these contrasts in externalised and internalised violence especially in relation to race and class. 24. In the graph the data before 1895 has been adjusted to take account of an apparent change in the reporting of official data at that date to include all charges of attempted suicide regardless of their disposition. Prior to 1895 it appears that the Judicial Statistics include only those arrests which police processed through to indictable stage, about one fifth of all arrests for the offence if we take the data for 1895-6 as a guide. Cf. Anderson (1987, p. 299) who comments on the high rate of use of summary procedure to resolve the charge in London. 25. Anderson (1987, p. 43-44). 26. Finnane (1981, p. 151-155) ; Anderson (1987, p. 387-388). 27. Conley (1995, p. 811) reports an average of 74 sexual assault charges per annum between 1865 and 1892. Sexual assault is not defined but appears to cover rape alone, which the figures in the Judicial Statistics suggest covered less than half of all prosecutions for sexual assault in these years. 28. As examined in Finnane and Stevenson (1994) and Stevenson (1994) ; see above, fn. 5.
ABSTRACTS
The image of Ireland as a place of violence in the 19th and early 20th century draws much substance from the phenomena of agrarian and political conflict. A study of Irish crime statistics in the later 19th century (1860-1914) suggests however that Ireland like many other societies at the time enjoyed a secular decline in interpersonal violence.The study examines trends in police charges for a number of offences as well as data relating to suicide and mental illness before suggesting further lines of enquiry into the history of crime in Ireland.
La représentation de l'Irlande comme un espace violent au 19e et au début du 20e siècles découle en grande partie des conflits agraires et politiques. L'étude des statistiques pénales irlandaises à la fin du 19e siècle (1860-1914) donne cependant à penser que l'Irlande, tout comme beaucoup d'autres sociétés, a connu à l'époque un déclin séculaire de la violence interpersonnelle. Cette recherche étudie l'évolution des mises en accusation par la police pour diverses catégories d'infractions, ainsi que les données relatives au suicide et à la maladie mentale, avant de proposer d'autres pistes de recherche concernant l'histoire de la criminalité en Irlande.
AUTHOR
MARK FINNANE Professor of History in the Faculty of Humanities at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. His books include Insanity and the Insane in Post-Famine Ireland(1981), Police and Government : Histories of Policing in Australia(1994), and After the Convicts : Prisons and Punishment in Australian History (forthcoming, 1997). His current research includes an international comparative study of the decline of violence in the later 19th century and the history of police unions in Australia.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 75
Les villageois dans et hors du village. Gestion des conflits et contrôle social des travailleurs migrants originaires des montagnes françaises (fin XVIIe siècle-milieu du XIXe siècle)
Laurence Fontaine
1 Envisager les éléments de contrôle social est pour l'historien une tâche difficile puisqu'aucune source d'archive n'a été construite afin de restituer la part informelle de cet encadrement. En outre, que ce soit la famille, la communauté ou les formes d'organisation du travail, chacune de ces institutions, au sens large, n'agit pas de la même manière selon les situations et les positions sociales des individus. Etudier ces questions à partir des travailleurs migrants permet, en outre, de faire ressortir le rôle de l'espace et du temps dans les formes de la délinquance et dans celles de son contrôle. L'analyse partira des divergences de comportements telle que la délinquance –et la manière dont elle est gérée– au haut et au bas pays les dévoile. L'étude des différences de comportements, dans la mesure où on peut les percevoir, devrait permettre d'approcher ces changements dans les formes d'encadrement, selon les temps de la vie villageoise, selon que les hommes sont au village, en route, ou au loin, et selon les positions sociales respectives des migrants et des sédentaires.
Le village en migration
2 Que disent, en négatif, les formes de la délinquance dans les terres de migration et au village d'origine ? L'on sait que les statistiques judiciaires sont difficiles à établir et à manier et que les sentences renseignent moins sur le volume des délits effectivement commis que sur la perception que les juges ont du péril social1. S'agissant des migrants,
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 76
elles sont d'autant plus suspectes que la société utilise volontiers les étrangers comme bouc-émissaire des tensions sociales. Colporteurs, maçons ou hommes de peine forains, sont des suspects faciles, immédiatement soupçonnés dès qu'il y a vol, incendie ou grossesse illégitime et forment des coupables commodes en matière d'émeute et de violence. D'ailleurs, au XVIIIe siècle, les traités de la police enseignent au commissaire une nomenclature toute faite des classes dangereuses à surveiller avec, en tête, « les marchands forains, colporteurs, revendeurs... »2. Cette utilisation des migrants par la société sédentaire entretient leur étrangeté et leur mauvaise réputation en même temps qu'elle rassure les populations sur elles-mêmes. C'est dire qu'il ne faut pas attendre trop des statistiques dressées à partir des condamnations judiciaires pour trouver une spécificité à la délinquance des migrants.
3 Porphyre Petrovitch, dans ses travaux sur la criminalité à Paris, relève l'importance relative des originaires de montagnes pauvres –Massif Central, Jura français et suisse, Alpes françaises et savoyardes– sans toutefois noter de différences dans la nature des délits ni des sanctions. Marie-Annie Moulin propose, elle, dans ses travaux sur les maçons des conclusions plus nuancées. Dépouillant les agendas de la garde et les registres des arrestations de la prévôté d'Ile-de-France, elle montre que les délits commis dans la proche banlieue –qui sont alors lieux de loisirs des dimanches et jours de fête– sont proportionnellement peu marqués par la délinquance des maçons de la Marche et du Limousin, tout comme les dossiers du petit criminel qui concernent la délinquance parisienne3. L'analyse des délits indique toutefois deux particularités : peu comparaissent pour des vols d'outils et encore moins pour des vols d'aliments (Ariette Farge note aussi la faible part des ouvriers du bâtiment parmi les voleurs d'aliments au XVIIIe siècle (13 sur 145) 4. Peu arrêtés pour vol, les maçons de ces contrées sont, en revanche, très présents dans les délits liés à la violence brutale sous toutes ses formes. De fait, les Marchois représentent plus de la moitié des maçons violents saisis par la garde et presque la moitié de ceux qui comparaissent devant le petit criminel. Cette violence s'exerce sur le chantier, au cabaret ou dans la rue. Il s'agit de groupes violents qui se manifestent dans le temps des loisirs : le dimanche et à la sortie des cabarets. Mais ces bandes violentes ne sont pas composées uniquement de Limousins et de Marchois : Berrichons ou Auvergnats s'y trouvent souvent associés5. D'autres groupes de migrants professionnels, comme les scieurs de long, présentent cette même délinquance liée à la violence6.
4 Une connaissance des diverses mobilités villageoises permet un premier éclairage de ces quelques données en montrant la diversité des conditions de vie qui poussent les migrants au départ. En effet, les villages montagnards produisent trois formes de mobilité. Des migrations individuelles et définitives, qui touchent et les plus riches et les plus pauvres. Celles des plus riches sont la véritable clef de voûte de la société villageoise : elles construisent des réseaux qui utilisent la force de travail des hommes des villages d'origine. Celles des plus pauvres concernent ceux qui n'ont plus ni terres, ni force de travail à offrir en échange de leurs besoins : les vieux, les veuves sans ressources, les orphelins des familles pauvres7.
5 Ensuite, des migrations temporaires qui sont liées à la migration des élites. Les maçons, les chaudronniers, tous les rémouleurs, colporteurs, porte-balles et merciers qui se répandent dans les campagnes et les marchés des bourgs, leur sont liés par une double relation de dépendance : ils sont leurs débiteurs au « pays », leurs obligés dans le commerce ou l'embauche. Les spécialisations professionnelles de ces réseaux de
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 77
migrants sont très diverses et toutes ne correspondent pas à des métiers « honnêtes ». Ceux qui appartiennent aux échelons inférieurs de ces organisations de migrants vivent tous autant de travail que de grivèlerie.
6 Enfin, des migrations en masse des plus pauvres qui, lors des crises, abandonnent le village. Dans les Alpes comme dans le Massif Central, on rencontre, dès le Moyen Age, ces départs en nombre qui envoient sur les routes autant des individus isolés que des familles entières8.
7 Ainsi, les migrants d'un même village ne sont pas tous partie prenante de migrations organisées et l'on comprend alors mieux la variété des configurations de la migration et de la délinquance que les archives judiciaires laissent percevoir. Trois cas de figure peuvent être globalement repérés.
8 1) Une délinquance indissociable du métier de la migration qui concerne les migrants bien insérés dans des réseaux professionnels comme les maçons. Ces hommes qui sont rarement accusés de vol et de délits sexuels, développent, en revanche, toutes les formes de violence et d'exhibition de la force physique. Cette violence s'exerce communément en bande contre les groupes potentiellement rivaux sur le marché du travail et comme forme privilégiée, avec le cabaret, d'occupation du temps libre9. D'autre part, nombre de réseaux de migrants travaillent partiellement, sinon totalement, dans l'illicite comme les réseaux colporteurs, chiffonniers ou ferrailleurs dont une part des matières premières est illégalement acquise. D'autres formes, tels les ramoneurs qui emploient des enfants, les obligent à mêler travail et mendicité10. Enfin, les maillons les plus pauvres de tous ces groupes de travailleurs migrants sont toujours encouragés à trouver leur nourriture et leurs vêtements par eux-mêmes11.
9 2) Une délinquance individuelle. Elle a trois figures. Celle de migrants qui volent leurs compatriotes dans les chambrées. Ces affaires qui débouchent rarement sur une arrestation –la colonie règle ces problèmes en son sein– signent l'exclusion du délinquant et son rejet vers le vagabondage12. Celle de migrants qui volent dans l'exercice de leur profession et, là encore, la colonie s'occupe de régler l'affaire hors des justices avant de la répercuter au village13. Celle, enfin, des exclus du groupe –où de ceux qui n'ont pu y entrer– et qui, hors des réseaux de solidarités, n'ont d'autres possibilités pour vivre que la mendicité, le vagabondage et le menu vol. Mais l'exclusion n'est pas seulement le fruit d'une sanction née du non respect des règles du groupe, elle peut être aussi la conséquence d'une maladie trop longue ou d'un accident du travail : les contrats d'embauche et d'apprentissage précisent toujours le délai –entre quinze jours et deux mois– pendant lequel le travailleur migrant sera à la charge de son employeur. Tous ces hommes échappent alors au contrôle social qui encadre la vie des autres migrants et leur délinquance est celle de tous les laissés-pour-compte. De là, la présence des migrants dans le spectre entier de la délinquance citadine.
10 Si l'on concentre l'attention sur les migrations de métier, les liaisons entre le village sédentaire et le village en migration sont constantes et manifestes dès le départ. Toutes les études concernant les migrants montagnards attestent que l'aventure de la migration est familiale et reproduit les dépendances et les hiérarchies villageoises14. Dans ces migrations, les équipes de travail –qu'elles soient maçonnantes ou marchandes– sont formées au village. En Limousin, certains maîtres maçons ne viennent au pays que pour recruter la main-d'œuvre, quand ils ne chargent pas un parent resté au pays d'organiser le recrutement et le voyage. Les colporteurs savent, eux-aussi, dès le départ où et avec qui ils vont travailler et les plus riches organisent la
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 78
migration des plus pauvres15. Le travail est encadré : le compagnon-maçon fait équipe avec son goujat16, comme le colporteur de quelque envergure voyage avec ses domestiques. La cascade de liens personnels qui préside à l'embauche est une garantie forte pour les employeurs extérieurs au réseau. L'endogamie renforce le contrôle puisqu'elle permet de surveiller et d'agir sur la famille restée au pays et de garantir avec plus de sûreté les associations financières17. Au XVIIIe siècle, chez les marchands Auvergnats migrants vers l'Espagne, le mariage mixte signifie l'exclusion18.
11 Entre les deux sites, diverses formes de liens maintiennent la circulation des nouvelles et l'échange de renseignements. Au plat pays, les marchands se retrouvent dans des assemblées professionnelles ou dans des confréries qui sont le double lointain des réunions villageoises. Habitat, chantiers et distractions multiplient les occasions de rencontre. Enfin, entre haut et bas pays, les correspondances échangées maintiennent les contacts19.
12 A côté de cet encadrement visible au quotidien, la dette est un lien invisible qui renforce les solidarités obligées. Les maîtres compagnons, qui assurent eux-mêmes l'embauche des ouvriers du chantier qu'ils dirigent pour les maîtres maçons, s'assurent de leur fidélité et de leur docilité en les logeant dans des garnis improvisés à leur domicile et en leur consentant des avances. Ces crédits, pratique courante dans le bâtiment, sont le moyen de retenir les ouvriers sur le chantier. Pris dans l'engrenage des loyers et des avances accumulés, ceux-ci se trouvent alors réduits à un état de dépendance presque totale dont ils ne se soustraient que dans la fuite20. Le crédit court dans les deux sites et commence au village : l'argent gagné sert d'abord à payer les intérêts des dettes et à rembourser les créances21.
13 Ces chaînes de crédit produisent des solidarités obligées –l'association, le cautionnement et le parrainage– qui sont de puissants instruments de contrôle social puisqu'elles lient le sort des uns à celui des autres. Ainsi, si ces liens obligent à la solidarité, ils induisent aussi la délation : qu'un travailleur migrant tente d'échapper à ses créanciers, et les cautions, les parrains ou les associés, menacés dans leur existence, s'attachent à le retrouver et à l'obliger à honorer ses engagements. Là est la grande ambiguïté de ces solidarités qui secrètent l'élimination des brebis galeuses. Cette morale, imposée au groupe, est étayée par les stratégies des élites villageoises qui surveillent chaque modification du patrimoine et épient tout revers de fortune22.
14 Dans ces jeux de la dette, les parents des créanciers, les notables et, en particulier, les notaires servent de relais pour défendre les intérêts des créanciers émigrés et surveiller les familles ainsi assujetties. Certains notaires auvergnats sont connus pour jouer ce rôle d'intermédiaire entre les émigrants sédentarisés en Espagne et les habitants de leur village d'origine : ils règlent les successions pendantes et défendent les intérêts de leurs clients23 ; même mécanisme avec les colporteurs Normands24 ou Alpins25. Une troisième voie fait le détour par d'autres marchands du village montagnard, reproduisant à une échelle plus grande les transferts de créances que font communément entre elles les plus puissantes familles pour se constituer des clientèles bien délimitées et contrôlables. Les marchands se donnent ainsi procuration pour récupérer les prêts consentis aux colporteurs. Pour les négociants citadins, l'organisation très hiérarchisée de la migration villageoise, son ancrage sur les « élites » du colportage qui jouent à la fois le rôle d'entrepreneur de travail et celui de relais privilégié entre eux et les modestes marchands ambulants, donne le maximum de garanties et explique son durable succès.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 79
15 Si les colporteurs sont plus que les autres migrants prisonniers des liens de la dette, les travailleurs attachés à une ville vivent sous le regard les uns des autres pendant presque toute la durée de la migration. Les migrants auvergnats suivent les mêmes routes, s'arrêtent aux mêmes étapes et se retrouvent aux mêmes adresses parisiennes ; groupés dans quelques rues, ils recréent une cellule aussi close que celle du hameau dans lequel ils naquirent26. Si l'habitat des maçons de la Haute Marche, comme celui des Normands, est moins structuré que celui des Auvergnats, il reste malgré tout très localisé dans les mêmes quartiers et autour des mêmes rues27. Ainsi, au moins 44 % des Marchois et des Limousins habitent chez un logeur - qui est souvent une logeuse. Beaucoup sont femmes de professionnels du bâtiment, maîtres compagnons ou appareilleurs, ce qui rend la distinction entre logeur plus ou moins officiels et employeurs qui logent leurs ouvriers particulièrement difficile à établir28. Les colporteurs font souvent route ensemble et halte chez des parents ou des « pays » quand ils ne se retrouvent pas dans des auberges attitrées où ils se font envoyer lettres et marchandises. Les temps de repos sont, eux aussi, encadrés et vécus dans la communauté. Les loisirs, qui interdisent le jeu d'argent, sont organisés en bande autour du cabaret et de l'alcool29.
16 Ainsi, la hiérarchisation des migrations et l'encadrement produisent un contrôle social fort. Les conflits se règlent entre soi, hors des justices légales. De fait, les cas sont rares où les marchands migrants se font ouvertement la guerre entre eux, appelant les autorités légales à l'aide : on préfère régler les difficultés devant un tribunal informel, formé de marchands du pays30. La déviance est affaire de tous puisque les écarts d'un individu rejaillissent sur le groupe en son entier comme l'histoire de l'apprenti qui avait chapardé une montre et que son maître a réparée et restituée en est un bon exemple31.
Le village sédentaire
17 Au village, l'enquête est tout aussi difficile à mener parce que les archives judiciaires enregistrent trop peu d'affaires. Ce constat, généralisable à nombre de campagnes françaises, traduit la faiblesse des recours aux justices seigneuriales et royales : on cherche en vain trace de procès ordinaires dans les archives du juge d'Oisans et l'échelon supérieur du bailliage ne conserve que des affaires de tutelles et de transmission des patrimoines. Quant aux cours souveraines, peu d'affaires y sont évoquées en regard de la population et, dans l'ensemble, les affaires qui y sont instruites traduisent des délits commis par des étrangers aux villages. Le faible recours à la justice seigneuriale n'est pas un particularisme du haut Dauphiné : Yves Castan et Marie-Annie Moulin posent le même diagnostic pour le Languedoc et le Limousin à la fin du XVIIIe siècle32.
18 Seconde caractéristique partagée : les quelques procès instruits dans les archives seigneuriales sont toujours l'occasion pour les témoins de rapporter un grand nombre d'autres délits dont la justice n'avait jamais été saisie. A la fin du XVIIe siècle, un conflit familial porté devant la justice révèle que le représentant du châtelain (le capitaine- châtelain), Laurent Giraud, aurait quelques années auparavant attenté à la vie d'un homme et déshonoré une jeune fille33 ; un siècle plus tard, en mars 1792, chacun des douze témoins au procès de Jean Arnaud de Besse a un vol à narrer à la justice, qui n'est
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 80
pas celui pour lequel le prévenu a été arrêté34. Encore au XIXe siècle, les procès attestent ce même phénomène de sous-utilisation de la justice royale35.
19 Une analyse attentive des quelques affaires évoquées devant les cours royales ou seigneuriales, ainsi que le dépouillement systématique des actes notariés permettent d'entrer dans la manière dont la justice s'exerce au village.
20 Ordinairement, les coups, les vols et les injures se règlent sans laisser de traces écrites36. Certaines affaires de plus de conséquence, sinon par les faits, du moins par les personnes mises en cause, donnent, elles, lieu à des actes rédigés devant notaire. Les « transactions », les « compromis », les « sentences arbitrales », les « traités » qui se rédigent devant notaire37 concernent essentiellement des injures proférées 38, des arrangements financiers pour les enfants à naître qui ne seront pas légitimés, des délits et des conflits financiers, mais très peu d'affaires de vol39. La lecture de ces actes montre que les « traités » ne sont pas tous notariés, car il est parfois fait référence à « un traité de main privée »40 ou à « une convention de main privée »41. De fait, outre que les familles n'ont pas besoin, dans de nombreux cas, de cette légitimation, le « traité » ou « l'arbitrage » coûtent. Certains compromis précisent que celui qui voudra faire appel devra en payer les frais42.
21 L'arbitrage est très utilisé pour résoudre les conflits entre marchands et ceux qui divisent les familles au sujet des héritages43 ou des tutelles 44 ; c'est la forme la plus répandue pour régler les différents entre « élites ». Certaines « transactions », qui se règlent dans des villes du plat pays, sont ensuite officialisées au village au retour des migrants45. Dans tous les cas, les plaignants choisissent eux-mêmes les arbitres et mêlent souvent des avocats aux discussions46. S'il est possible de faire appel de la sentence arbitrale, le second arrangement est normalement sans recours et l'acte final précise que les parties « transigent, conviennent et accordent de tous leurs différends » après avoir été averties « de la force des transactions contre lesquelles tout recours est exclu, hors le dol personnel, qui m'ont dit le bien savoir et entendre n'y avoir aucun recours »47. La justice royale est dans toutes ces affaires utilisée comme une menace ; menace qui peut aller jusqu'à engager un procès qu'un arbitrage vient clore promptement. Ce va-et-vient entre justice et arbitrage est très fréquent et fait partie des négociations entre les familles48. De ce fait, on ne peut envisager les différentes formes de justice (familiales, villageoises, étatiques) comme un jeu d'emboîtement qui irait du plus privé au plus public : elles existent comme un tout, simultanément ; mais les acteurs sociaux ont plus ou moins capacité à jouer des unes et des autres.
22 Le même type de conventions se retrouve dans les délits sexuels : elles détaillent les compensations financières pour couvrir les frais d'accouchement et d'entretien de l'enfant49. Jusqu'en 1771, ces délits font toujours l'objet de traités après la déclaration de grossesse que la femme est tenue de faire devant le lieutenant du châtelain. Mais, après cette date, les déclarations de grossesse notariées ne portent plus trace de compensations financières50.
23 Les affaires de vol sont plus complexes. Premièrement, jusqu'au XLXe siècle, la justice ne semble pas tant utilisée pour confondre des coupables, puisque les personnes volées retrouvent elles-mêmes leurs voleurs et n'engagent aucune poursuite une fois les objets du larcin retrouvés. Deuxièmement, une distinction nette apparaît entre les délinquants originaires du village et ceux qui viennent d'ailleurs : les affaires de vol dénoncées à la justice mettent très rarement en cause les premiers. Seuls, un refus de restitution ou des blessures d'amour-propre entraînent le délinquant en justice. Il s'agit
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 81
de punir l'insolence plus que la conduite délictueuse51. Je reviendrai sur les affaires de vol parce qu'elles permettent de saisir les procédures utilisées par les villages face à la délinquance ordinaire.
24 C'est ainsi que la justice royale, finalement rarement sollicitée pour régler les conflits, est, en revanche, une arme de choix dans les luttes que se livrent les plus puissantes familles villageoises. Dans ces cas, une dette minable de quelques livres sera prétexte à d'interminables procès, plus destinés à ruiner l'adversaire qu'à recouvrer la modeste créance52. Volonté de nuire ou désir de vengeance apparaissent comme les premiers mobiles de l'appel aux juges royaux.
25 Ainsi, la délinquance au village n'offre guère de spécificité par rapport aux autres campagnes françaises. Il reste que le contrôle social des migrants s'inscrit dans trois sites qui sont en interaction constante : le village d'origine, le pays de la migration et les zones intermédiaires des trajets. A ces modes de contrôle spécifiques aux migrants s'ajoutent ceux qui viennent de l'inscription de ces mêmes hommes dans les hiérarchies villageoises. Ils reposent sur la parenté et le clientélisme.
26 Aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, dans les procès, chaque témoin jure de dire la vérité et de préciser « qu'il n'est ni parent, allié, créancier, débiteur, serviteur, ni domestique d'aucune des parties »53. Cette formulation administrative dessine les différentes formes d'encadrement des migrants dans leur appartenance villageoise : les liens familiaux, ceux de la dette et de l'embauche. Au XIXe siècle, la référence aux liens de la dette a disparu : en septembre 1815, les témoins au procès de Jacques Dode de Besse jurent toujours de dire la vérité et d'indiquer s'ils sont parents ou alliés de l'accusé et à quel degré et s'ils sont attachés à son service54. Cette évolution des formules administratives, qui traduit peut-être l'affaiblissement général des relations personnelles de crédit n'est pas encore achevée pour les sociétés de migrants : trois ou quatre décennies seront encore nécessaires pour que ces liens perdent de leur importance.
27 Dans ce contexte, où les travailleurs migrants sont, au plat pays, surveillés et encadrés par un mode de vie contraignant et, au village, enserrés dans des liens sociaux qui les surveillent et les contraignent, comment le village gère-t-il la délinquance des « petits » ?
28 Le récit, en mars 1792, des douze témoins au procès de Jean Arnaud de Besse55, un domestique accusé d'avoir volé des vêtements, des provisions de bouche, du tissu et une tabatière dans l'écurie où il dormait en compagnie de deux ouvriers agricoles et d'un tailleur, ainsi que cinq moutons à son patron et divers objets dans les villages voisins permet de répondre en partie à cette question. Disons d'emblée que Jean Arnaud a été traduit devant la justice royale parce qu'il a commis ses vols dans une commune dont il n'est pas originaire et que son « casier judiciaire », sa réputation, écrite dans la rumeur et la mémoire de sa commune d'origine, est déjà lourdement chargée.
29 Premier acte : constitution de la rumeur et perquisition dans les maisons suspectes. Le patron d'Arnaud écrit immédiatement à un de ses amis à Besse, village d'origine du domestique soupçonné, en demandant que l'on perquisitionne chez sa mère. La lettre est transmise aux officiers de Besse qui effectuent sans succès la perquisition demandée. A partir de là, la nouvelle du vol circule dans tous les villages et s'ajoute à celle qui accuse Jean Arnaud de différents vols anciens et le fait soupçonner d'être l'auteur d'autres vols récents (des couvertures qui séchaient au soleil dans le village
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 82
d'Oulles). Suivant la même séquence, la famille à laquelle les couvertures ont été volées se plaint aux officiers du lieu et ces derniers perquisitionnent dans « les » maisons suspectes, sans succès. Ainsi, les habitants des vallées font circuler largement les rumeurs qu'ils entendent (dès le vol accompli, dit un autre procès, la victime « l'avait immédiatement et à deux fois de suite fait crier dans tous les hameaux et villages »56) et les autorités municipales, souvent de leur propre chef, fouillent les maisons des familles dont les antécédents ont établi la mauvaise réputation.
30 Deuxième acte : poursuites, incarcération de proches et chantage. Devant l'ubiquité des vols, plusieurs villages se lancent dans ces perquisitions. Les couvertures volées sont alors retrouvées dans la maison des Arnaud mais Jacques, frère de Jean, s'est enfui lors de la perquisition. La municipalité, qui parvient à le retrouver, l'emprisonne au village. Or, il n'y a aucune prison officielle dans ces villages. Après quarante-huit heures de détention, Jacques accuse son frère des divers vols et leur mère promet de retrouver les couvertures d'ici huit jours en échange de la libération de son fils Jacques.
31 Parallèlement, les trois hommes volés dans la grange, aidés d'autres journaliers du même village, partent à la recherche d'Arnaud. Il leur faudra trois jours pour le retrouver caché dans le village voisin de Livet.
32 Troisième acte : l'affaire est close pour Jacques Arnaud et sa mère ; pour Jean, le procès commence. En effet, l'accord proposé est conclu entre la mère et les notables. Les couvertures sont rendues au jour dit, et le fils libéré. La municipalité dresse procès- verbal des aveux, de la promesse et de la restitution. L'affaire n'a pas de suites judiciaires. Dans ces affaires résolues à l'intérieur de la communauté, on devine la violence des villageois à l'égard du délinquant et, parfois, la violence punitive transparaît dans les archives. Tel mendiant soupçonné du vol d'un cheval est ainsi décrit : « ce dernier jouit d'une mauvaise réputation, il doit avoir le bras en écharpe à la suite des mauvais traitements par lui essuyés de la part de quelques personnes qui avaient à se plaindre de ses vols »57. Mais les archives sont généralement discrètes sur cette violence punitive pour n'insister que sur la mémoire du délit, sur la réputation58.
33 Dans le cas du vol commis par Jean Arnaud, il est intéressant de noter le rôle de délateur des enfants mendiants qui parcourent les villages. En effet, quelques jours après le vol du pied de table dans un moulin, « trois enfants mendiants » demandèrent l'hospitalité au meunier et lui racontèrent avoir assisté à la vente de l'objet. Le meunier habite Oulles et n'utilise son moulin que pour le travail. Les enfants ne connaissent pas Arnaud mais le décrivent ce qui permet de l'identifier selon son nom dans les vallées : c'est « joue rouge ».
34 Parmi les douze témoins cités à comparaître, seul le notaire –qui est aussi officier municipal– n'est pas directement impliqué dans les vols ou la recherche d'Arnaud, mais il connaît Jean et sa famille et il sait que Jean fut garde des fermes pendant quelques années et qu'il en fut renvoyé. Un aubergiste, chez lequel Jean a travaillé deux mois en 1788, témoigne qu'en partant, Arnaud a volé la veste d'un domestique. Ce vol était resté affaire privée. L'aubergiste reste toutefois dans son rôle de médiateur à la fois informé et prudent : il ne sait rien ; il a juste ouï dire que « ledit Arnaud a commis différents vols à Besse, Bourg d'Oisans et autres lieux ».
35 L'analyse des quelques procès retrouvés et menés à leur terme montrent combien l'organisation sociale de la société se reflète dans le choix des procédures de règlement des conflits. Elles varient selon la position sociale de chacun, c'est-à-dire leur appartenance familiale, et selon l'état des luttes entre les familles qui dominent la
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 83
communauté ; celles-ci jouant toujours un rôle majeur59. Les officiers municipaux s'arrogent le droit de rendre la justice : ils perquisitionnent, emprisonnent, passent des traités, libèrent. De ce fait, le contrôle social opéré par le village est suffisamment efficace, s'agissant du vol, pour que les habitants, dans le haut Dauphiné, n'éprouvent pas le besoin de fermer leurs maisons60 : pour voler, Jean Arnaud entre par les portes ordinaires qui sont ouvertes car, dit-il, à La Paute, « la plupart des habitations n'étant pas fermées ». A Clavans, la chambre, qui renferme les denrées et les biens précieux, est une construction séparée de la maison d'habitation ; les « élites » craignent alors plus le feu que le vol. En revanche, au XIXe siècle, elles ferment plus fréquemment leurs logis, tout comme leurs coffres et leurs armoires61.
36 Si les communautés montrent, dans ces affaires, qu'elles apprennent à vivre avec leurs délinquants, elles constituent toutefois à chacun, au fil des années, « un casier judiciaire » : leur réputation. C'est à partir de la réputation, qui est entretenue de bouche à oreille, et confortée aussi de « traités » ou de procès-verbaux écrits que le village constitue la liste des « maisons suspectes », visitées à chaque nouvelle rumeur. Au XIXe siècle, où les procès sont plus nombreux, les mêmes caractéristiques persistent : le village règle ses affaires de vol, de coups, d'injures, au besoin avec la menace de faire appel à la justice royale62, mais la réputation se construit toujours dans la rumeur et la mémoire villageoise comme aux siècles précédents.
37 La réputation est alors un marqueur essentiel des individus que les juges cherchent systématiquement à connaître63. Mais celle-ci ne résulte pas seulement de l'inventaire des comportements, elle reflète aussi les appartenances sociales : la bonne –ou la mauvaise– réputation se définit autant en termes de famille que d'absence de rumeur. Elle est donc une qualité qui est délivrée par les notables et qui est sujette à manipulation en fonction des conflits et des solidarités entre les familles dirigeantes. Ainsi, Jean Pierre Arnol est accusé d'homicide au Mont-de-Lans. Le maire délivre un certificat : « que le nommé Arnol Pierre est d'une très honnête famille [...] et que ledit Arnol, selon notre connaissance, a suivi les traces de ses parents. Une vingtaine d'habitants du village ajoutent leur caution à ce certificat : « Nous habitants et propriétaires de la commune [...] certifions que le nommé Arnol [...] s'est toujours comporté en honnête homme, jouissant d'une bonne réputation et appartenant à une famille exempte de tout reproche et que jamais il n'y a rien eu à dire sur son compte ». Et pourtant, plusieurs personnes viennent témoigner des sévices dont ils ont jadis été victimes de la part du prévenu...64.
38 La rumeur est ainsi ambiguë ; elle est une pièce du contrôle social et un élément du jeu social : le village sait et son savoir est une arme utilisable à tout moment pour des causes tant publiques que privées. Mais c'est une arme grandement tributaire des rapports de force et les « petits » ne pourront l'utiliser que lorsque les « élites » se trouveront en position de faiblesse, devant la justice royale par exemple. A ce moment, les humiliations et les exactions des plus socialement démunis ressortent65.
Le retour comme lieu d'interaction des espaces villageois
39 L'analyse de la délinquance dans les deux sites montre une différence entre le village et les lieux de la migration. Au village, la délinquance n'a aucune spécificité par rapport à celle de l'ensemble des campagnes françaises alors que dans les villes de la migration, la
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 84
violence sous toutes ses formes distingue les travailleurs migrants. Cette différenciation exprime les différents modes d'inclusion de l'individu au groupe dans les deux sites où se déroule la vie villageoise ; elle reflète deux moments de la vie de la même société et deux organisations sociales différentes de cette même communauté avec toutefois un entre-eux, le voyage, qui est lui-même changeant selon qu'il s'agit de l'aller ou du retour.
40 Dans la communauté d'origine, l'individu est certes tributaire de ses appartenances familiales et clientélaires mais, à l'intérieur de ces dépendances, sa marge de manœuvre est comparable à celle de tout autre villageois. Seuls des épisodes de lutte aiguë entre les clientèles réduit cet espace en le mettant au service des intérêts de son patron.
41 En revanche, au plat pays, l'individu ne vit que dans et par le groupe villageois en migration. Les conduites violentes exercées en bande traduisent alors une double nécessité : celle de maintenir, entretenir et montrer sa force et sa cohésion face aux autres groupes similaires et rivaux et celle de jouer le rôle de rituel d'intégration66. La violence exhibée libère les tensions personnelles et soude les migrants dans une convivialité partagée. Examiner cette violence d'un peu plus près traduit bien ces deux temps : d'un côté, le loisir associé au cabaret et à l'alcool qui permet une libération des tensions dans l'imaginaire : on fait du tapage, on injurie qui passe à portée de voix ; de l'autre le chantier où l'on s'en prend aux autres organisations migrantes : c'est la bataille rangée contre d'autres soi-même qui réaffirme la force du groupe et protège la conquête des emplois et des marchés. Mais quelle que soit sa forme, cette violence vise à brider l'autonomie et l'individualité de chacun. On pourrait comparer les communautés villageoises de migrants dans leurs deux modes d'existence à une nation qui vivrait le passage de la guerre à la paix : au temps où les appartenances plurielles de chacun et les désirs personnels sont muselés, succède celui du retour au village qui signe l'abandon des contraintes et de la cohésion obligée du groupe.
42 S'attacher aux comportements des migrants lors du passage d'un état de la communauté à l'autre montre comment progressivement s'intériorisent ces deux états dans la vie du migrant. L'aller est marqué par les rixes au cabaret et sur la route entre groupes de migrants d'origine différentes ; il est le prélude à l'enfouissement futur des individualités dans la vie du chantier et du garni. Au retour, ces batailles entre migrants de diverses origines, ou même de villages proches, continuent à l'occasion, en particulier, tant que la troupe du retour reste suffisamment nombreuse, mais elle est moins ritualisée.
43 Mais surtout, au fur et à mesure que le groupe se délite dans les chemins de traverse, la marge d'autonomie individuelle s'accroît et, avec elle, la délinquance change de forme. En effet, plus l'arrivée au village se précise, et plus l'heure du bilan individuel approche : il faudra faire bonne figure, montrer qu'on a bien travaillé à la famille et aux créanciers. Les inscriptions sociales habituelles refont alors progressivement surface : les appartenances familiales et les luttes internes à la communauté à nouveau se déploient. C'est dans cet entre-deux, dans le temps du retour, que les vols entre migrants réapparaissent67 car le contrôle du groupe, qui a si fortement encadré le migrant au plat pays, s'efface au profit des enjeux familiaux qui ont fabriqué le migrant. La violence ritualisée disparaît alors au profit du vol individuel.
44 Côté village, un autre antagonisme se profile qui oppose ceux qui sont restés à ceux qui, jalousés et enviés, sont partis et s'apprêtent à capter à nouveau l'attention avec les
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 85
récits du lointain et la réussite affichée ou feinte. Certains sédentaires font alors de l'assassinat de compatriotes migrants une sorte de spécialité68.
45 L'exemple de la diversité du contrôle social auquel la même population est soumise en fonction de ses formes d'activité souligne combien dans le couple délinquance/contrôle social, la forme de la société et la nécessité variable de cohésion selon les moments dans lesquels elle vit sont des éléments importants. Le village face à lui-même, ou face aux autres, ne développe alors ni les mêmes dispositifs de contrôle social, ni les mêmes formes de délinquance.
BIBLIOGRAPHIE
Albera, D., Dossetti, M., Ottonelli, S., Società ed emigrazioni nell'alta valle Varaita in et à moderna, Bollettino storico-bibliografico subalpino, LXXXVI, 1988, 1, p. 117-169.
Alletz, Traité de la police moderne, Paris, 1823.
Augel, J., Italienische Einwanderung und Wirtschaftstätigkeit in rheinischen Städten des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Bonn, 1971.
Castan, Y., Mentalités rurales et urbaines à la fin de l'Ancien Régime dans le ressort du Parlement de Toulouse d'après les sacs à procès criminels 1730-1790, in Abbiateci A., et al., Crimes et criminalité en France 17e- 18e siècles (Cahiers des Annales, n°33), Paris, Armand Colin, 1971, p. 109-186.
Cobb, R., La protestation populaire en France (1789-1820), Paris, 1975.
Coll., Col bastone e la bisaccia per le strade d'Europa. Migrazioni stagionali di mestiere dall'arco alpino nei secoli XVI°-XVIII°, Bellinzona, 1991.
Coll., Le migrazioni in Europa sec. XIII°-XVIII°, Atti della « Venticinquesima settimana di Studi » : Istituto internazionale di storia economica « F. Datini » Prato, Florence, Le Monnier, 1994.
Duroux, R., Les Auvergnats de Castille. Renaissance et mort d'une migration au XIXe siècle, Publications de la faculté des Lettres et Sciences humaines de l'Université Blaise-Pascal, Nouvelle série, fasc. 38, 1992.
Farge, A., Le vol d'aliment, Paris, 1974.
Fontaine, L., Histoire du colportage en Europe (XVe-XIXe siècles), Paris, Albin-Michel, 1993.
Fontaine, L., Gli studi sulla mobilità in Europa nell'età moderna : problemi e prospettive di ricerca, Quaderni Storici, 93, 3, 1996, p. 739-756.
Fontaine, L., Solidarités familiales et logiques migratoires en pays de montagne à l'époque moderne, Annales ESC, 1990, 6, p. 1433-1450.
Gothein, E., Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Schwarzwaldes und der angrenzenden Landschaften, Strasbourg, 1892, p. 849.
Kaplow, J., La population flottante de Paris à la fin de l'Ancien Régime, Annales historiques de la révolution française, 1967, p. 1-14.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 86
Lucassen, J., Migrant Labour in Europe 1600-1900. The Drift to the North Sea, Beckenham, Croom Helm, 1987.
Luria, K.P., Territories of Grace. Cultural Change in the Seventeenth-Century Diocese of Grenoble, University of California Press, 1991.
Mellot, J-D., Rouen et les « libraires forains » à la fin du XVIIIe siècle : la veuve Machuel et ses correspondants (1768-1773), Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des chartes, 1989, 147, p. 503-538.
Moulin, M.-A., Les maçons de la Haute-Marche au XVIIIe siècle, Clermont-Ferrand, Publication de l'Institut d'Etudes du Massif Central, fasc. XXIX, Faculté des Lettres et sciences humaines de l'université de Clermont-Ferrand 1986.
Nadaud, M., Mémoires de Léonard, ancien garçon maçon, (1ère édition 1895), Paris, Hachette, 1976 (avec une présentation de M. Agulhon) et Maspéro, 1976 (avec une présentation de J.-P. Rioux).
Petrovitch, P., Recherches sur la criminalité à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, in Abbiateci, A., et al., Crimes et criminalité en France 17e-18e siècles (Cahiers des Annales, n° 33), Paris, Armand Colin, 1971, p. 187-261.
Poitrineau, A., Remues d'hommes. Les migrations montagnardes en France 17e-18e siècles, Paris, Aubier, 1983.
Poitrineau, A., Les « Espagnols » de l'Auvergne et du Limousin du XVIIe au XIXe siècle, Aurillac, Mazel- Malroux, 1985.
Raison-Jourde, F, La colonie auvergnate de Paris au XIXe siècle, Paris, Commission des travaux historiques de la Ville de Paris XIV, 1976.
Sabean, D. W, La conscience et la peur : qui a tué le pasteur ?, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 1984, 51, p.41-53.
Schulte, R., Les incendiaires, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 1984, 51, p. 54-66.
Vovelle, M., Le prolétariat flottant à Marseille sous la révolution française », Annales de démographie historique, 1968, p. 111-138.
NOTES
1. Petrovitch (1971, p. 212). L'auteur montre, par exemple, qu'en 1775, année de la guerre des farines, la justice est accaparée à juger les émeutiers et néglige les simples voleurs. Voir aussi les travaux d'Alfred Soman. 2. Alletz (1823), cité par R. Cobb (1975, p. 36 et l'ensemble du chapitre 1 sur les pratiques de la police). 3. En 1764-1773, sur les 172 ouvriers de la maçonnerie arrêtés aux abords de la capitale, 27 seulement viennent de la Marche ou du Limousin. Ces abords de la ville sont les lieux privilégiés d'errance des mendiants et des vagabonds. Interrogeant ensuite les dossiers du petit criminel, elle remarque que seuls 30 Marchois sont identifiables parmi les 106 prisonniers ayant exercé un métier dans le bâtiment (Moulin, 1986, p. 229). 4. Farge (1974, p. 121). 5. Moulin (1986, p. 227-237), voir aussi p. 494-495, où une carte montre la spécificité de la délinquance des maçons migrants. 6. Poitrineau (1985, p. 100-104). Toutefois, il est difficile de conclure que les migrants sont plus violents que les autres groupes citadins. Ces arrestations révèlent peut-être les ambiguïtés des perceptions de la violence : celle des « étrangers », des autres fait plus peur.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 87
7. Dans le Val Varaita, les mendiants attestés au XIXe sont des enfants, des veuves et des vieux, (Albera, Dossetti, Ottonelli, 1988, p. 126). 8. Pour un état de la discussion sur les migrations montagnardes, voir : Poitrineau (1983) ; Lucassen (1987) ; Coll. (1991) ; Migraciones internas. 1ère conférence européenne de la commission internationale de démographie historique, Saint Jacques de Compostelle, 22-25 septembre 1993 ; Coll. (1994). Les conclusions que je propose ici sont plus amplement développées dans Fontaine (1990 et 1996). 9. Cinq personnes, qui habitent autour de la place Maubert, se plaignent au commissaire le 21 avril 1765 : « Journellement, disent-elles, des Limousins ou Auvergnats qui logent dans le quartier [...] s'attroupent dans la rue Galande [...] et insultent les passants et les frappent [...] que d'ailleurs la garde à cheval les a poursuivis plusieurs fois sans pouvoir les arrêter. » Le guet a finalement réussi à attraper sept porteurs d'eau auvergnats (Moulin, 1986, p. 227-237). 10. Fontaine (1993, chap. 1). 11. Marie-Annie Moulin (1986, p. 211) parle des maçons encouragés à voler des habits le long des quais sur les étendages des blanchisseuses et à voler leur nourriture. 12. Duroux (1992, p. 340). 13. En 1781, un jeune aide de 15 ans vole et détériore une montre chez un maître de poste où son maître l'a conduit pour travailler. Ce dernier « paya cinquante et quelques sols pour le raccommodage de la montre » et la mère de l'enfant a remboursé le maître à son retour au pays (Moulin, 1986, p. 75). 14. Raison-Jourde (1976, p. 175), Poitrineau (1983), Duroux (1992), Moulin (1986), Fontaine (1993). 15. Duroux (1992, p.333). 16. Moulin (1986, p. 73) ; le goujat est un manœuvre. 17. Fontaine (1993). 18. Duroux (1992, p. 346). 19. Lorsqu'Angelvy, prolongeant inconsidérément son séjour en Auvergne, laisse sa boutique aller à vau-l'eau, même son concurrent direct essaie de le faire revenir ou de prendre des dispositions. Il écrit à son frère resté en Auvergne qu'« Angelvy, à ce qu'il paraît, ne revient pas, ni n'envoie personne pour le représenter [...]. Si tu avais l'occasion de le voir, tu pourrais lui dire à quoi il pense, qu'ici ses affaires vont très mal et qu'il laisse un bien mauvaise idée de lui dans un pays où, jusqu'à ce jour, on le croyait honnête homme. Mais aujourd'hui, Français et Espagnols, tous qualifient sa conduite de « canaille ». Lettre de Théodore Laparra à son frère Alexandre, Carabana, 8 oct 1856 ; cité par Duroux (1992, p. 336). 20. Moulin (1986, p. 238). 21. Fontaine (1993, chap 5) ; voir aussi Duroux (1992, p. 337-339) et Moulin (1986, p. 254). 22. Pour une étude détaillée de ces mécanismes voir Fontaine (1993, chap. 5). 23. Dame Elisabeth Mathé, veuve de feu Jean-Baptiste Legay, « vivant négociant à Denia au royaume de Valence », donne, par exemple, pouvoir, en 1788, à M. Parieu fils, avocat à Aurillac, pour recouvrer les 376 livres 15 sols que Pierre et Jean Buc avaient pris en marchandises à crédit dans la boutique de son mari, des mains de Pierre Buc, de Saint-Santin (Poitrineau, 1983, p. 143 et 146). 24. La veuve Machuel de Rouen s'en remet, de même, à Maître Roux, premier huissier au présidial de Coutances, pour qu'il l'informe sur la solvabilité de ses débiteurs (Mellot, 1989, p. 511). 25. Fontaine (1993). 26. Raison-Jourde (1976, p. 96-97) ; Kaplow (1967, p. 1-14) ; Vovelle (1968, p. 111-138) ; Poitrineau (1983, p. 149-152). 27. Moulin (1986, p. 114-120). 28. Moulin (1986, p. 203).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 88
29. Moulin (1986, p. 213-215). En Espagne, la colonie est elle aussi structurée autour des marchands de vin et des aubergistes (Duroux, 1992, p. 335) ; pour la Forêt Noire, Gothein (1892, p. 849). 30. Augel (1971, p. 199). 31. Moulin (1986, p. 75). 32. « Les archives de la justice de La Farge, à laquelle sont soumis la plupart des villages, se sont avérées décevantes. Elles ne renferment que fort peu d'interrogatoires. Les affaires y sont résumées en quelques lignes, après l'identité des parties en présence. Elles sont suivies par l'énoncé du jugement rendu. Elles concernent des conflits d'intérêts, en particulier les réclamations en matière de non- paiement des dettes, ou des désignations de tuteurs en cas de décès des parents » (Moulin, 1986, p. 295, pour les années 1771-1790). 33. Archives départementales de l'Isère (ADI), B 627. 34. ADI, L 1693. 35. Lors du procès de Ginel, incarcéré à la suite d'un Charivari qui a mal tourné, presque tous les témoins ont un grief à raconter dont certains remontent à plus de dix ans, ADI, 11U, 24 avril 1836. Yves Castan (1971, 133) qui relève des pratiques identiques en Languedoc, explique ainsi pourquoi les accusés ont l'habitude de l'impunité et de la non intervention de la puissance publique : « Un personnage violent se manifeste-t-il dans un village, on s'habitue à ses méfaits progressifs dès sa jeunesse, on passe par crainte et par accoutumance sur des vols ou même des tentatives de meurtre et il faut que mort s'ensuive pour que la plainte éclate pour que des témoins osent s'exprimer ». 36. Ce qui rend impossible à la fois une analyse en détail de la violence au village et une comparaison avec celle qui est, au contraire, largement épinglée en ville, s'agissant des migrants, mais, de la même manière, laissée dans l'ombre en ce qui regarde les citadins de longue date. Cette sélectivité des sources souligne la frontière qui passe entre les étrangers et les gens connus dans la perception et la gestion de la violence. 37. Dans les délits et conflits financiers, deux actes notariés généralement s'enchaînent : le « compromis » qui est suivi d'un « traité ». 38. ADI 3E 5408 registre du notaire Louis Pierre d'Auris convention en réparation d'injures 5 octobre 1750. 39. La seule exception que nous ayons trouvé concerne un vol de grande envergure commis par un père et un fils du Mont-de-Lans à rencontre d'un des grands marchands du village du Freney où « ils ont enlevé quantité de meubles tant de bouche que autres ». Le marchand volé demande au juge d'Oisans l'autorisation de faire des perquisitions dans les maisons du voisinage en compagnie des consuls et des notables du lieu. Les perquisitions effectuées permettent de retrouver chez Barthélémy Dusser la plupart des effets volés. Paul Guillet porte plainte pour montrer sa détermination mais accepte aussi- tôt après un arrangement : les effets volés lui seront restitués et Dusser paiera 180 £ « pour frais et intérêts ». Et l'affaire n'a plus de suite. 40. ADI 3E 846, registre du notaire Bard, 2 novembre 1684. 41. ADI 3E 846, registre du notaire Bard, 17 novembre 1684. 42. ADI 3E 846, registre du notaire Bard, 20 octobre 1684. 43. ADI 3E 846, registre du notaire Bard, 17 novembre 1684 ; 3 décembre 1684 ; 4 janvier 1985 ; 5 mars 1685 ; 10 mai 1685. 44. ADI 3E 846, registre du notaire Bard, 15 décembre 1684. 45. ADI 3E 846, registre du notaire Bard, 27 juillet 1685 dans le différend entre Etienne Roux et Jean Dode, une transaction a eu lieu et Etienne Roux la signe chez un notaire grenoblois et Dode au village et tous deux ratifient l'accord quand ils se retrouvent l'été au pays. 46. Avant la Révocation de l'Edit de Nantes, il était commun de choisir comme arbitre un notable protestant et un notable catholique, tous deux étrangers aux villages des parties. ADI 3E 846, registre du notaire Bard, 6 juillet 1684 : deux marchands de Besse choisissent un marchand
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 89
d'Auris et un de La Garde et le notaire protestant de Clavans. Voir aussi ADI 3E 846, registre du notaire Bard, 20 août 1684 ; idem 11 octobre 84 est signé le compromis et la transaction le 14 octobre. 47. ADI 1E 48 39 maître Simon Sartre, notaire au Villard d'Arène. Le 18 mai 1684, lors d'un conflit entre frères et sœurs au sujet de la succession de leurs parents et de leur frère et à propos de la tutelle, une sentence arbitrale est rendue par Maître Jean Rome, notaire royal à La Grave, Antoine Girard et Maître Simon Sartre notaire et commissaire du Villard d'Arène. Les héritiers font immédiatement appel de cette sentence arbitrale en prenant conseil auprès de Maître Claude Berthieu, avocat, et André Albert feu Marc. 48. ADI, 1E 48 39 maître Simon Sartre, notaire au Villard d'Arène, 24 août 1684. Les parties « s'opiniâtraient » par l'intermédiaire des enfants après la mort des premiers plaignants et finalement « par l'entremise de leurs amis communs devant les frais faits et à faire [...] se sont « résolus à traiter, accorder, convenir, transiger dans lesdits différends ». Même séquence le 7 mars 1690 pour terminer un différent entre marchands : le procès est vite arrêté par une sentence arbitrale puis repris et finalement terminé par une sentence du vibailly. Chaque fois, les parties sont averties « de la force des transactions contre lesquelles tout recours est exclus hors dol personnel » ADI 1E 48 39 maître Simon Sartre, notaire au Villard d'Arène, 7 mars 1690. 49. ADI, 3E 846, registre du notaire Bard de Besse, 18 avril 1684. Le 18 avril 1684, Moïse Dussert s'engage à payer 3 £ 10 s par mois pour l'entretien de l'enfant qu'il a fait à Isabeau Combe ainsi qu'à lui donner 30 £ pour l'accouchement. ADI, 3E 5408 registre du notaire Louis Pierre d'Auris 1750-51, 28 janvier 1751. Durant l'hiver 1750, François Ojard viole sur le chemin Jeanne-Marie Oddoux. Tous deux passent un traité chez le notaire, François Ojard demandant à Jeanne-Marie Oddoux de surseoir le taux des ordonnances, ils s'entendent sur le dédommagement suivant : Ojard versera 30 £, un setier de blé estimé 5 £ et une pièce de terre de 3 quatellées estimées 48 £ en échange de quoi la jeune femme s'engage à baptiser et à nourrir et entretenir l'enfant. Autre exemple dans ADI 3E 4188 registre du notaire André Faure de Besse. Le 29 mai 1770 Anne Combe est enceinte de Jacques Michel. Les pères des parties conviennent que Laurent Michel s'acquittera de 144 £ qui seront réduits de moitié si l'enfant ne survit pas ainsi que des frais d'accouchement et qu'il entretiendra l'enfant jusqu'à douze ans. 50. ADI, 3E 4188 registre du notaire André Faure de Besse ; idem 3E 972 registre du notaire André Retourna de Besse entre 1787 et 1791. 51. « Le nommé Garden adjoint de la commune de Saint Christophe, dit l'ancien maire de 65 ans Pierre Paquet, est acharné à la perte de Guillaume Clot et principalement sur le motif que ce dernier l'avait insulté lors de la perquisition qui fut faite chez Clot à la suite de l'enlèvement de la récolte de la famille Turc ». ADI, 11U 250. 52. Luria (1991, p. 181-183). 53. ADI, L 1693. 54. ADI, 4U 58. 55. ADI, L 1693. 56. ADI, 4U 170 procès de François Carlin. 57. ADI, 4U 56, octobre 1814. 58. ADI, 4U 170 François Carlin, un mendiant âgé de 16 ans demeurant à Vaulnavey, s'introduit par effraction dans une maison le 25 juillet 1828, y vole quelques francs et une montre. Joseph Arlot retrouve le voleur, se fait restituer la montre (l'argent ayant été dépensé) et laisse partir le voleur. 59. Yves Castan (1971, p. 153-154) relève également pour le Languedoc le rôle des édiles ou des consuls dont certains « font à neuf heures du soir la tournée des maisons pour assurer le couvre- feu, organisent une garde bourgeoise exceptionnelle et secrète pour mettre fin à des vols, acceptant ou refusant, selon des critères arbitraires, de se mêler d'une enquête ou de patronner une pignoration du bétail ».
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 90
60. ADI, L 1693. 61. Voir par exemple : ADI, 11U 250 ou 4 U 170. 62. ADI, 11U 250, procès de Guillaume Clot pour faux en écriture privée. Durant le procès, tous les témoins égrènent la litanie des plaintes adressées au maire, les rixes, les violences et les injures ; les vols de chevreaux, de bois, de récoltes, de nourritures, d'argent et de papiers privés (promesses) ; les coups sur diverses adolescentes, les menaces de mort envers son oncle et déjà l'imitation de signatures etc. Chaque fois, le village diffuse la nouvelle du forfait et dès que le coupable est connu, la menace de le dénoncer suffit à lui faire rendre les vols ; le reste s'accumule en rancœurs. 63. ADI, 11U 250, procès de Guillaume Clot pour faux en écriture privée. « De quelle réputation Clot jouit-il au pays ? demandent les juges. Il est très mal famé depuis plusieurs années, il s'est livré à divers actes qui ne lui font point honneur ». 64. ADI, 4U 47 mars 1813. Voir, en pays germaniques, l'utilisation et les distinctions entre commérages, bruits, ragots et rumeurs dans Sabean (1984, 42-44) ; dans le même numéro, Schulte 1984, p. 54-66). 65. Il convient aussi de garder à l'esprit que l'utilisation de l'expression « la voix publique l'accuse de divers vols » évite, selon Yves Castan (1971), de se poser en dénonciateur public avec le risque d'avoir à payer les frais de prison de l'accusé si celui-ci n'en a pas les moyens. 66. Les autobiographies d'ancien migrants maçons racontent ces rituels de la violence entre troupes de migrants de diverses origines. Voir, par exemple, Nadaud (1976). 67. Duroux (1992, p. 339-340) ; Poitrineau (1983, p. 91). 68. Moulin (1986, p. 253).
RÉSUMÉS
L'article propose d'analyser les différentes formes que prend le contrôle social sur les populations de travailleurs migrants selon que les hommes sont au village, en route, ou dans les lieux de la migration, en portant attention aux positions sociales respectives des migrants et des sédentaires. L'analyse part des divergences de comportement telles que les dévoile la délinquance — et la façon dont elle est gérée — au haut et au bas pays et utilise les quelques affaires évoquées devant les cours royales ou seigneuriales, ainsi que le dépouillement systématique des actes notariés pour entrer dans la manière dont la justice s'exerce au village et saisir comment la famille, la communauté et les formes d'organisation du travail agissent, selon les situations, sur les individus.
The article analyses the different forms of social control practiced on populations of migrant workers according to whether the men are in the village, in transit or at migration sites ; it also takes into consideration the respective social positions of migrants and settled inhabitants. The author begins by identifying and analyzing discrepancies in behaviors between mountain and valley, which are revealed by delinquency and how it is managed, and uses the few matters brought before royal or seignioral courts, as well as a systematic inventory of acts drawn up by notaries, to penetrate the way in which justice was exercized in the village and to grasp how the family, the community and the organization of work impinge, according to the situation, on individuals.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 91
AUTEUR
LAURENCE FONTAINE Professeur à l'Institut universitaire européen de Florence (Italie). Elle a notamment publié : Histoire du colportage en Europe (Paris, Albin Michel, 1993), traduit en anglais sous le titre History of Pedlars in Europe (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1996) ; « Espaces, usages et dynamiques de la dette dans les hautes vallées dauphinoises (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles) », Annales, Histoire, Sciences sociales, 1994, 6, p. 1375-1391 ; « Ceux qui partent et ceux qui restent. Les pratiques successorales dans l'Oisans », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 1994, 105, p. 29-36 ; « Gli studi sulla mobilità in Europa nell'età moderna : problemi e prospettive di ricerca », Quaderni Storici, 1996, 3, p. 703-720. Ses recherches actuelles portent sur les liens de la dette et l'institutionnalisation du crédit en Europe (XVIe-XIXe siècles).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 92
Forum
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 93
Crime, Justice and Society in Medieval and Early Modern Times : Thirty Years of Crime and Criminal Justice History A tribute to Herman Diederiks1
Xavier Rousseaux Translation : Kevin Dwyer
Historians are part of the existing world and in their intellectual endeavour they bring forward questions for past times that are derived from their present situation2.
The historiography of crime and criminal justice : new wine in old flasks
1 The historiography of the variety of subjects which are grouped under the generic term « History of Crime and Criminal Justice » is not easy to unravel. As a relatively new area of history, this sub-discipline does not have any long-established tradition, nor any institutional points of reference, nor any specialised research implements at its disposal.
2 The first organised study group to appear in the area was the Nederlandse Werkgroep Strafrechtgeschiedenis, founded in 1973 notably by Herman Diederiks. The group organised two international meetings in 1977 in Amsterdam and Leiden devoted to the history of crime3, and another at the Economic and Social History Conference in Edinburgh in 19784. Following on from these, the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice was established as became the first regular meeting point of researchers who until then had been dispersed in various branches of history - as well as combining institutional and legal, economic and social, political,
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 94
anthropological and cultural, with the practices of other researchers in the social sciences (jurists, criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists). Between 1978 and 1995, the association organised a number of « intercontinental » conferences and about twenty thematic colloquia, which mainly took place, most appropriately, at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris. They also began publishing a Newsletter in 1972, subsequently called the Bulletin5.
3 In a short time, signs of maturity in this new research domain have multiplied, extending from the creation of national networks of Crime and Criminal Justice historians as in Germany6, to international networks created within associations such as the Social Science History Association to specialised sessions at international meetings such as the recent International Congress of Historical Sciences7 or the newly- created European Social Science History Conference, and, finally, to specialised journals and reviews.
4 Nevertheless, many specialists in the social sciences still consider crime as a marginal or temporary subject of research, and this has sometimes impeded growth in the area. A good indication of this problem is the current low number of scientific studies, as recently pointed out by L. Knafla8. On a national level England is exceptional, with the respective volumes of J. Sharpe and C. Emsley, which might serve as models for future work. As for international efforts, the oft-cited work of Weisser remains inadequate9. Moreover, the history of crime has not yet achieved full integration within general history.
5 If comprehensive analyses have been slow to appear, this is doubtless linked to the number of theses devoted to the subject. In many countries, university courses exploring the history of crime are on the increase ; but doctorates are far less numerous, thus delaying the emergence of solidly-documented and intellectually sound studies and handicapping the institutionalisation of research in this area in universities and other scientific institutions. These limitations are the direct consequence of both the intellectual openness and the high quality of research carried out so far in this field. The history of crime and criminal justice can in fact be credited to a number of different « fathers » : crime history is not only directly related to institutional and legal history, but also to economic and social history, to anthropological and cultural history, and to political history.
Institutional and Legal History : Looking for the State
6 Studies in institutional history have often been limited to statistical and genealogical research, focusing on the origins of institutions and their competences. The history of law, on the other hand, has mainly concentrated on pre-19th century periods and has followed the same pattern : national readings with research into the original character of « popular » law. Jurists conceived such histories with the matrix of contemporary law in mind, guided by the presumption of the uniformity of state law and the primacy of norms over practices, and of legal forms over strategies. This resulted in a history of law that was difficult to integrate into general history because it was too close to a widely-held triumphalist view of the law and legality. It is precisely such views that have been brought to question in the past thirty years. For any jurist with critical acumen, doubt has become the norm. Crises in state law, the multiplicity of norms and sources when it comes to law, and the realisation of the ponderousness of legal
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 95
practices and the hypocrisy of procedures and strategies have pounded gaping holes in the very foundations of law. Young jurists, especially those oriented towards the social sciences such as criminologists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and legal historians, have all settled down to the task of reexamining legal phenomena as they are rooted in social systems. This new breed of legal historian has particularly found expression in the history of Medieval and Early Modern penal law. As a result, in the course of the 1970s they became more frequently associated with economic and social historians10.
Economic and Social History : The Quest for Social Production
7 The prodigious development of economic and social history in the 1960s focused particularly on modern history –extending from the development of commercial capitalism in the 16th century to the emergence of industrial capitalism in the mid– 19th century. Many schools of thought on the continent were essentially founded on the premises of urban economic history11, to which Herman Diederiks was a significant contributor, but there was also important research on the structure of rural societies, and a number French doctorates in this outstanding domain12. Here we can find the undeniable traces of the original Annales project –a total history founded on the notion of using statistics as expressions of rationality– based on the tension resulting from a necessarily rational distribution of wealth and the circulation of profits solely among capitalist entrepreneurs. Within this demographic and economic paradigm of a social history of poverty13, researchers came across rewarding sources in judicial archives revealing the fascinating existence of the mass of delinquents who were habitually rounded up in the event of major or minor infractions14. Researchers began to contemplate a quantitative history of crime that gives privileged access to the study of those who had been omitted from most other histories15. But in the England of the Welfare State, the direction taken was rather different. Under the impulse of more overtly leftist trends in social history, researchers not only became interested in the living conditions of the masses, but also in the Common Law tradition that was increasingly in the hands of political parties and in the manipulation of the law and justice systems by the ruling classes. A history thus arose that was more social than economic, attentive not only to conflicts between ruling and « popular » classes, but also to conflicts within social groups. French research, in constrast, was more oriented towards a history shaped by the relationship between populations and economic pressure, and focused on the phenomenon of social exclusion (i.e., the poor and marginal classes).
Political History : Looking for the Roots of Power
8 Traditional political history, considered as too preoccupied by the outward appearance of things, was discredited in France by the Annales programme, which itself was more concerned with Braudelian approaches to history, with emphasis on socio-economic structures and mental archeo-structures16. Although political history has become caricaturised, much like the histories of battles and royal weddings, it has nonetheless continued to exist, evolving towards a careful examination of the mechanisms of domination. The current crisis of state-based models of government in the West has enlarged the problematic of political analysis, focussed for too long on electoral or
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 96
revolutionary phenomena, and has permitted a re-examination of the multiple forms of domination in complex societies. From Weber to Foucault, 20th century researchers have furrowed their brows over the myriad aspects of power -from the village to the court, in the city and the state. Following Charles Tilly, in the tradition of research on the mechanisms of domination, Medieval and Early Modern political history has focused on two key problematics of the state : the genesis of states, and the durability of state mechanisms through periods of political crisis (e.g. revolutions and dictatorships). These two issues required the use of long-term analysis. Crime and criminal justice seemed to play a fundamental role, although still far underestimated alongside military and economic factors17.
Anthropological and Cultural History : Looking for People
9 Final, more recent approach is deeply influenced by traditional anthropological examinations of the functioning of human societies in their ways of cooking, loving, dying, fighting or stealing. This is a history in which behaviour and mental reconstructions unveil the elementary structures of human activity. It was first assembled out of a corpus of literary and artistic expression, for example in the work of Huizinga, Elias or Aries. The mass of documentation on daily life found, notably, in judicial archives provided the primary material that enabled an elaboration of history inspired by the great anthropological work of Malinkowski and Lévi-Strauss. Studies of witchcraft comprise the most striking example of this form of anthropological history18. Combining the micro-histories of witch-burnings at village - or town-level with the macro-chronology of witch-hunts at the level of Western society during the 16th and 17th centuries, researchers arrived at a series of interpretations that called on various disciplines : anthropological research on witchcraft and myth in colonised or « archaic » societies, ethno-methodological or psycho-sociological work on inter-group relations, studies on collective representations (stereotypes, identities), and analyses of small-scale power.
10 Out of the convergence of these four broad historiographical traditions the first work that could be labelled as « Crime History » was born. First developed by French Early Modern historians (Le Roy Ladurie, Chaunu, Bercé, Yves & Nicole Castan) and Anglo- Saxon social historians (Hobsbawm, Rudé, Thompson, Tilly), this new field made a great impression on a whole generation of young European historians who met at the I.A.H.C.C.J.. The programme outlined in 1977 by H. Diederiks and S. Faber already contained the seeds of the main offshoots of the work of future generations : pluridisciplinarity, attention to problems of the definition of deviant behaviour, the concrete forms of « criminality » and the place of violence, the variety of punishments and the multiple forms of conflict resolution19. An initial assessment of the progress of research was made in 1990 on the occasion of the retirement of one of the founding fathers of the association, Y. Castan. The appraisal focussed on four areas in which the history of crime has served as a beacon : social relationships, mentalities, politics and law20. Six years later the publication of a series of national and regional assessments allowed us to compare the association's original programme with the actual achievements in the history of crime and criminal justice and these are discussed below under four separate headings21.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 97
11 Very rapidly, young crime historians expressed themselves in the analytical framework forged by social and economic history, a history which relied mainly on serial sources. It will therefore first be necessary to say a few words in Part I about the specific sources of crime history and, naturally, about the new quantitative as well as qualitative methods these sources inspired. After rapidly reviewing these methods, Part II will examine some precise areas of criminal history and describe their major contributions to the field. From these partial results, Parts III and IV will attempt to analyse some of the links between the history of crime and the history of pre-industrial societies. Following on a suggestion made by J. Sharpe, this will take two directions. Firstly, in Part HI, I will try to define the specificities of the influence of social history on criminal history in order to evaluate what the history of pre-industrial societies has contributed to the history of crime and criminal justice. Then, in Part TV, I will reverser the question and ask what crime history can bring to the history of pre-industrial societies, i.e., what exactly is the influence of crime history on social history22.
12 The combination of new sources, new methods and renewed problematics has fostered a fruitful exchange between empirical research and theoretical debate. In my conclusion I will address the wider issue of the contribution of crime history's link to the history of societies to relations between the Social Sciences and the Humanities.
I. - Sources and methods
13 The discovery of masses of judicial archives, whose serial nature remained unexplored for a long time, has given impetus to research which had otherwise been very impressionistic and which relied essentially on normative documents.
a) Judicial Archives : New and Serial Sources
14 Judicial archives have revealed a relatively unknown world, in which norms were observed and practised. The trials and sentences contained in the written archives of largely illiterate societies, where laws were for the most part local and practical, tarnish the clear and elegant image of ancient law as outlined in the scholarly work of jurists and legal historians.
15 The repetitive nature of both urban court and village notary records has encouraged a very different approach from that used by jurists. Instead of looking for the singularity of a procedure or technical solution, it has proved more revealing to examine the recurring structures of norms employed on a day-to-day basis. Tabulating the number of crimes, delinquents, sentences and court sessions soon became an everyday activity for historians, fascinated by the quality and density of so much information contained in various criminal archives23.
16 Although as of yet barely tapped, these archives have also revealed their limitation for historians who harboured a certain conception of state monopoly in matters of criminal justice. As they are from societies characterised by division and competition between different judicial institutions, these archives present a variety of prisms and partial views of the functioning of a given society. In some cases the analysis of various sources is not an insurmountable obstacle and it contributes positively to an understanding of both constructed nature of crime and the diversity of social
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 98
viewpoints regarding crime. Furthermore, it was rapidly observed that many forms of behaviour slipped through the cracks of the justice system, which was often just one means among many to resolve conflicts. Outside of the justice system there existed multiple non-procedural methods of settling scores (such as private transactions or arbitration), many ways of cutting short court proceedings (appeasement, negotiating a settlement with court officers), or post-trial resolutions (such as royal clemency or pardon). Theses possibilities limited the potential of data based solely on judicial sources to provide a complete understanding of attitudes and responses to crime. In cases where practices have left written traces, such new sources have allowed for a more thorough study of the historical criticism of legal sources24.
17 Some of the limitations in the sources could be compensated by an analytical reorientation. By parting with the notion of crime in favour of the notion of repression, the problematic falls more in line with available sources, which all primarily evoke practices of institutional control rather than the reality of the behaviour that was being controled. This means that, once methodological and critical conclusions are drawn from this institutional analysis, one still must use prudence when investigating the behaviour that these sources reveal.
b) Methodology : From Juridical Analysis to Cliometrics
18 The methods of analysing these sources have greatly evolved over the years. A review of the literature reveals a number of possible approaches.
19 Focusing on the analysis of normative texts in order to find general rules that may be articulated around a coherent system, the classical juridical method has gained a lot from the exploitation of records of legal practices25. However, recourse to such records is still often regarded mainly as a matter of jurisprudence, as they are seen as providing solutions for problems that written law could not quite resolve. Certain legal historians have broken with this very literary approach and base their juridical assertions on quantitatively established data26. In this area, alongside crimes and criminals, juridical realities such as the number of cases dropped, judgement rates, the ratio of individuals prosecuted per case, the length of procedures, acquittal rates or the analysis of different judicial channels have all contributed to our knowledge of the mechanisms by which the law was applied.
20 Anthropological and sociological methods are currently renewing the study of these texts. As far as justice systems are concerned, the genealogical method favours the questioning of both normative documents as well as records of events (such as trials and judgements), which together constitute a multi-layered corpus that creates a broad view of society as regulated by groups with diverging interests. It also became necessary to place the production of the archival documents themselves in their specific socio-political contexts. Such methods also seek to reconstitute the social networks (families, dependents) that come to the surface in trials and to examine the mental worlds of those involved, especially the accused27. The current fashion is to fabricate social micro-histories from the records of disputes or court proceedings28.
21 Moreover, these methods can be applied to the study of the material traces left behind by the social activity of conflict regulation. Iconology of justice and judicial archeology have contributed to two and three dimensional analyses of justice systems29.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 99
22 Quantitative methods have also played a significant role in crime history over the past thirty years. The 1960s and 1970s saw the reign of frequency tables, time series and histograms. Following the model set by economic and demographic history, historians tried to reconstruct both the structures (which explains the use of frequency tables producing raw figures and percentages) and the conjuncture (from which splendid chronological curves were drawn) of criminality. The stated objective was to combine these data with other socio-economic data, e.g. infanticide rates with infant mortality rates, theft of foodstuffs with grain prices, and the level of violence with demographic crises. The illusion of criminality as unique and uniform, the difficulty involved in combining data clearly constructed from autonomous representations with realities that depended on economic conjunctures, and the irritating under-representation of recorded data all quickly revealed the epistemological limitations of such methods. Unfortunately, despite solidly constructed studies such as Beattie's and the remarkable methodological work of Gatrell30, much research has continued to produce tables that are far from explicit, along with tautological ruminations on the « dark figure », which doubtless conceals many black holes.
23 Crime and criminal justice history have contributed to the development of new methods that are particularly oriented towards the internal analysis of regulatory systems. These have involved comparing prosecutions and actual sentences passed, distinguishing between different bell curves according to institutional practices and measuring the links between cases, individuals and sanctions. In short, this has meant studying the production of the conditions of social control, the police offices, the courts and the prisons, using methods that are similar to those used to study production in a factory. Economists currently use such methods, notably to assess of analysing the efficiency of public services or even the cost of crime ; unfortunately, they do not always draw the same methodological and critical conclusions as crime historians. Among these methods, the techniques used in multi-varied analysis have been favoured. This technique allows one to draw up spreadsheets that can combine, for example, a series of « criminal » variables with a series of contextual and « social » variables31. These methods, perfected in crime statistics produced for the 19th and 20th centuries, of which the most famous example is the « Compte général de l'administration de la justice criminelle française (1825-1981) », are applicable to research data based on the systematic investigation of serial archives32.
24 Finally, serial analysis methods have been thoroughly renewed since the late 1980s by economists, especially in the area of long series. These methods can be particularly useful to historians interested in long-term analysis33.
c) From Quantitative to Qualitative : The Return of the Repressed
25 Empirical research in this area generally tries to combine qualitative and quantitative analyses, thus giving an allaround view of the data under observation34. The validity of any quantitative undertaking must be based on the proper use of qualitative material, especially when dealing with problems of data definition and the choice of counting units, two areas that criminologists have found particularly difficult when it comes to crimes and sentences35. The researcher must justify the composition of his data (i.e., whether it is exhaustive or a sample) and the scope of both his chronology and methodology. Historians must also reinsert the figures either within the density of
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 100
particular conflictual situations, through a very astute analysis of the social relationships at play in the conflict, or within more general interpretations based on the observation of empirical results36.
26 Bringing a number of methodologies into play, as long as they are coherent with the sources, the problematic in question and the complete context, allows the researcher to avoid the dead-end of an impressionistic analysis of figures that in themselves are not critical enough. The first attempts to trace the individual or social causes of crime ended in failure due to a lack of sufficient attention paid to the constructed nature of the data under examination. On the other hand, researchers who have tried, as faithfully as possible, to reconstruct the activities involved in crime control have provided a solid base for the exploration of links between factors of crime control and other social factors.
II. - Major contributions : from crime to criminal policy
27 The first contributions were inherited from quantitative history. This initially involved a rather naive rediscovery of crime and criminal « tables. » Paying hardly any attention to the status of information such as the designations of different offences and their authors, these tables aimed to evaluate crimes and offenders, much in the same way that prices, salaries, births, marriages and deaths have been tabulated. As a result the structure of criminality and the characteristics of criminals were the first objects of study, while the structures of repression were left in the shadows for a long time.
a) Patterns of Crime
28 The global structures of crime are relatively well-established. From the outset, the small quantity of data and imprecise dates led more often than not to tables arranged by crime classification (violent crimes, theft, crimes against moral, religious or political order) and in chronological divisions of a few years. Numerous case studies for both the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period gave primacy of place to violent crimes in pre-industrial societies. The link between crimes against people and crimes against property is highly noticeable in descriptions of crime structure as of the 18th century. These two important factors gave birth to the famous violence-to-theft theory37.
Violence
29 The presence of physical violence in cities and the countryside led to debates about the meaning of violence and its evolution. The issue of homicide has been the subject of much debate. Was there really such a high rate of homicide in the Middle Ages ? Was there indeed a decline in homicide from the 17th to the 19th centuries ? Were Western societies more violent then than they are today ? Is a decline in homicide a sign of a moral civilising process ? The debate was particularly lively among American researchers, as well as among anthropologists of Southern hemisphere countries who were struck by the differing positions of homicide in American, Mediterranean and Continental societies38.
30 Other more banal forms of violence such as assault and insult were extremely notable in archives of pre-industrial societies without necessarily being part of the same
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 101
debate. Research such as that carried out by Robert Muchembled on Early Modern Artois and Claude Gauvard on 14th century France has nonetheless endeavoured to situate all forms of violence in any given society on a continuum in order to measure violence as a symbolic expression of social relationships39.
Theft
31 Although not negligible, theft in the Middle Ages has been relatively little studied. On the other hand, it has been the object of much research on the 18th and early 19th centuries40. Analysed either from a Marxist perspective, based on the famous study by Karl Marx on legislation concerning wood theft in Rhineland41, or from the perspective of changing sensibilities, theft is currently the subject of important studies being carried out in the context of the industrial revolution42. The interest in petty theft, already evoked by Michel Foucault with the term « illegalisms », has been revived by interest in the role and symbolic import of uncivil behaviour in industrial societies in crisis43.
Moral and Religious Crimes
32 The history of crime has greatly renewed perspectives on crimes against religious and moral order by inserting them within a larger context. For the medieval period, the documents that have been preserved mainly involve heresy. The few trial records that exist today have made extraordinary contributions to our knowledge of local societies, as has been revealed by the media success of the Le Roy Ladurie study of Montaillou44. For the 16th and 17th centuries the religious question seemed inextricably linked to the question of moral authority. The schism within in Christianity after 1520 led to an increase in crimes of divine lese-majesty in both secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, especially where Inquisitions were present. Witchcraft and sorcery now form well- known chapters of modern history. The facts are substantial and the chronology of the witch-hunt that ravaged Western Europe from 1530 to 1650 is well-established. Interpretations are many and various characterising repression as a means of disciplining traditional rural practices by the dominant intellectual culture, as an outlet for economic crises and social tensions, as an instrument for the construction of newly-formed lay and religious powers, or as a means of re-articulating the relationship between religion and power. All of these analyses have progressively contributed to explaining the outbreak, the rhythms, the loci and the decline of this vast entreprise of social purification45.
33 Sexual conduct has often been included among offences against religious order. Judicial archives are interesting in that they document not only the repression of sexual behaviour, but also, inversely, the tolerance exhibited toward certain practices46. Judging by the lightness of fines and the frequency of cases recorded, the records of ecclesiastical jurisdictions and rural court pleas offer a new vision of clerical attitudes towards chastity and the wrong-doings of their married parishioners47.
34 The toughening of repression is appreciable in the Modern era. Records of ecclesiastical courts, reformed or Calvinist consistory courts, as well as Royal officers in France and the Netherlands, all confirm the greater attention paid by authorities to sexual « deviance. » The massive persecution of sodomites in 1731 served as a demonstration of the limits of traditional tolerance in the United Provinces and marks the beginning
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 102
of this trend48. These tougher measures have been viewed in light of attempts by the bourgeois elite to civilise moral behaviour or to repress popular cultures49.
Political Crime
35 As for the generally vague category of political crime, it has especially been studied in relation to forms of power in times of crisis. The attention of researchers has especially been attracted to riots and sedition in medieval city-states, treason against a prince or lèse-majesty, and opposition by political groups during great revolutionary waves. Opposition to city authorities and the frequent exile of those defeated in political battles, the symbolic role of regicide and the horror of the punishment inflicted, excessively emphasised in Foucault's interpretation of modern justice systems, the practice of exceptional and revolutionary jurisdictions at a time when legislation was trying to make everyone equal before the law and the courts and to extirpate the political from the judicial - all have been studied essentially in relation to political structures and, to a far lesser extent, in relation to criminal structures.
36 As a general rule, studies that privilege the analysis of crime first led to the formulation of a simple paradigm of psycho-sociological causes for individuals or groups who resort to acts of crime and then to the elaboration of more complex links between phenomena of deviance and issues of social control (the uniformisation of morals, the repression of popular behaviour patterns, and changes in mentalities (e.g., an increase in sensitivity toward violence), as well as the political transformations of social relationships (e.g., the depersonalisation and abstraction of power, the seizure of the state by the bourgeoisie)50.
b) Patterns of Criminals
37 As far as the sociology of deviants is concerned, certain social characteristics have been highlighted repeatedly as explanations for individual resorting to crime. These include what might be called gender conditioning, age groups, and the labelling and identification of prosecuted « delinquents ».
Men and Women
38 Most work has been concerned with the respective places of men and women in relation to criminality in the perspective of gender history. The under-representation of women among those prosecuted in different jurisdictions seems is partly compensated by their relative over-representation in specific types of offence such as prostitution, infanticide, witchcraft, adultery and poisoning ; but they were also participants in grain riots. A number of studies have drawn attention to the stereotypical character of this behaviour, which is not as statistically frequent in archives as it is in literary sources or in the mental reconstructions of our contemporaries. On the other hand, particular attention must be paid to the position of women in a social environment in which conduct such as taking sides with men in their quarrels, committing minor misdemeanours or domestic theft, especially of food, could lead to the intervention of the justice system. Their position as the preferred victims in certain cases (e.g., sexual aggressions or rape) sheds light on their social position and is
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 103
linked to their general exclusion from the personnel of the institutions that maintain social order.
Youths and Age Groups
39 Analysis in terms of age poses methodological problems of another nature. Apart from the fact that the age of offenders is not always mentioned in records, it is difficult to appreciate the significance of age for periods preceding the 18th century.
40 Nevertheless, the analysis of criminal behaviour relating specifically to youths such as infanticide, sexual violence, and juvenile delinquency has contributed to thinking on the progressive emergence, via laws, practices and public opinion, of the very notions of youth, childhood and adolescence51. Furthermore, the important role of unmarried youths in the life of local communities has been underlined for the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period (especially in regards to prostitution, collective rape, marriage policies and political protest)52. A link has thus been established between traditional forms of youth associations and the emergence of political groups in revolutionary periods53.
Inhabitants, Marginals and the Poor
41 Societal integration and exclusion form yet another determining social element. The very different positions within the web of justice systems of long-standing inhabitants, newly-arrived inhabitants, migrants, and outcasts (such as vagrants and the unemployed) have been mainly studied as urban phenomena. In many instances it does not seem that their behavior differed much from that of the criminal stereotypes to which they would give rise : the vagrant, the thief, the travelling salesman, the female thief, the witch, and the prostitute. Here once again there has been an evolution from a relatively simple view of the psycho-social mechanisms commonly believed to explain the behaviour of marginals or deviants, to the multiple associations at interpersonal and collective levels revealed by the traumatic event labelled as « crime »54 ; Judicial archives have allowed researchers to refine the history of social groups, their inter- relations and the construction of the mechanisms that identify them.
c) Patterns of Repression
42 The study of repression has been recently renewed. In the 1960s some researchers, fascinated with crime, largely ignored the measures of its repression. Contemporary studies now distinguish between prosecuted delinquents and those who have effectively received punishment following judicial proceedings. This history of repression, which a recent session of the International Congress of Historical Sciences summarised55, allows researchers to depart from historiographical notions that were too influenced by general stereotypes of the barbarism of punishments before the 19th century. The typology established by Rushe and Kirchheimer could be followed in order to distinguish three types of punishment that were successively used according to three social configurations of repressive societies56.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 104
Fines
43 Interest in fines and financial penalties, which have often been neglected in research, has been rekindled by the important role they played in the regulation of medieval conflicts. Other more original penalties, such as redeemable judicial pilgrimages, have allowed some to venture the notion of a penal fiscal economy, notably in medieval cities. This research has been of interest to those modern penologists who are concerned about both efficiently applying financial sanctions in legal cases in which money is the motive (such as financial lawsuits, the repression of clandestine traffic and economic delinquency), and about the proper integration of penalties in the broader social system.
Corporal punishment
44 Corporal punishment and penalties involving the loss of civil rights have often been linked to each other and now seem to have been integrated into the justice system at the end of the Middle Ages. The dramatic expansion of the Theatre of Horrors in the cities of northern Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and its decline in the 18th century, has been particularly well researched57.
Imprisonment
45 As for prison, its origins date back to the 16th century and its integration into state penal systems at the end of the 18th century has been the object of ground-breaking research58 ; P. Spierenburg's synthesis explicitly links the evolution of corporal punishment and the emergence of imprisonment. This is a promising avenue because it integrates the analysis of punishment with analysis of societies and underscores the existence of a penal economy that privileges the standardisation of penalties for specific types of social problems. The disappearance of one standard penalty in favour of another illuminates societal mutations59.
46 In a very original manner, crime history integrates new dimensions of research with classical juridical studies. On the one hand, long-term analysis allows the researcher to retrace unexpected correlations (from the judicial pilgrimage to banishment, from expulsion to prison). On the other hand, from the study of punishment as a whole, one can measure interactions between alternative penalties (such as imprisonment instead of banishment). The distinction between judgements and the actual execution of sentences, notably, for example, in the use of pardons, recalls the gap between discourse and practice. Social contextualisation integrates penal rituals with social rituals (such as auto dafé or public executions) that together form the cement of social order.
d) Patterns of Order
47 One of the first achievements of crime history was to draw out and analyse the role of repression in conflict resolution. Beyond considering repression as an isolated model, historians are now interested in the role of punishment within the complex, fluctuating and polymorphous processes of social control. The aims of social control and the means
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 105
employed for its maintenance expose it mainly as a set of cultural conceptions in pre- industrial societies.
Pacification
48 The maintenance of peace was a major concern in medieval societies. Over a period of centuries marked by feudal strife, the church was often the only stable authority and it introduced peace, truces and an entire series of practices aimed at channelling violence60.
49 Cities also sought to free themselves from the brutality and incertitude of feudal forms of justice. Among the bourgeois classes amicitia and coniuratio initiated systems of control among peers in which self-denunciation, negotiation with the injured party, financial and religious sanctions and reconciliation were mutually accepted and valued practices. Princes and sovereigns, for their part, tried to gain a monopoly of keeping the peace notably by ordering their offices to protect the roads and countryside safe. As for rural communities, they developed sophisticated systems of maintaining social cohesion, and calling on the formal justice system to settle disputes was a last resort61.
Stigmatisation
50 In the framework of these general tendencies, the restoration of order during periods troubled by either religious strife or civil war was frequently accomplished through the stigmatisation of certain social categories or certain types of behaviour. The beginning of the modern period was typical of such an obsessive preoccupation with justice. In order to uphold order against both external and internal threats, heretics, witches, vagrants, suspected dissenters (as in revolutionary France), Jews, free masons, homosexuals and immigrants have all at one time or other become victims of stigmatisation. Also, in this context the activities of less conciliatory justice systems that abused public prosecution, investigatory procedures notorious for their secrecy, the use of torture to obtain confessions, corporal punishment and public executions stand out. At the same time these justice systems were often subject to strong social pressures particularly from victims among the local population, demanding justice.
Forced Labour
51 Resocialisation through work was another expedient deployed by justice systems in times of economic crisis62. This was particularly apparent perceptible in the context of the 16th century labour crisis, which witnessed the creation of workhouses. During the industrial revolution, this model experienced significant developments : forced labour was integrated with the predominant form of punishment, i.e. imprisonment. From this moment the penal system appear to have focussed on the repression of offences against property, employing more mass prosecutions and the near-monopoly of prison sentences.
52 * * *
53 Thirty years of crime and criminal justice history have seen the accumulation of new evidence and interpretation that, in turn, have enriched our knowledge of societies. Furthermore, historiographic debate has constantly brought us beyond the limits
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 106
encountered in the definition of concepts, the reliability of sources, the methodologies used and the interpretation of quantitative data. Now much better acquainted with patterns of criminals and their crimes, penal history is interested not only in the motives of criminal activity, but also in the social reactions to crime. From analyses based solely on one type of social reaction, i.e. repression, researchers are now discovering and exploring the numerous forms of non-repressive reactions (such as surveillance, pacification and negotiation). Their contributions link the statistics of crime and punishment statistics with larger social structures, which has helped to measure the impact of social relationships and structures in the regulation of conflicts.
54 Empirical monographs have given birth to a new discipline : the history of criminal justice, in which criminality, criminals, institutions of control and repressive policies are all now indissociable. Let us now look at how the history of pre-industrial societies has influenced the history of criminal justice and how, inversely, the history of criminal justice progressively influences our knowledge of pre-industrial societies.
III – A social reading of criminal history
55 It is impossible to present all of the contributions made by a discipline that is still in development. This discussion will focus on criminal justice, which lies at the core of the ensemble of agents responsible for conflict regulation. From the 12th to the 19th centuries, the judicial function was prominent in the most significant methods of dealing with « deviant » behaviour. Four factors seem to be particularly linked (though not necessarily in terms of causality) with the development of criminal justice : the construction of territories, forms of power, social relations and mental representations.
a) Social Control, Criminal Justice and Space
56 The link between conflict regulation and territory may at first appear odd. However, numerous analyses have demonstrated the central role of the exercise of criminal justice in the definition of autonomously administered territories, as well as the variability of the means of conflict resolution according to the nature of the territorial space in question. In their well-known 1980 article, Lenman and Parker compared two forms of socio-political territories : communities and states63.
Rural and Urban Communities : Spaces of Cohesion and Extension
57 The development of medieval cities frequently involved a struggle for judicial autonomy, which eventually manifested itself through the participation, if not the seizure, by the bourgeois classes of the implements of regulation. The imposition of fines and judicial pilgrimages, as well as the use of mediators, comprised original forms of conflict regulation that were born in these face-to-face societies.
58 Furthermore, judicial space in rural societies was often partitioned. For example, feudal manors, villages and seigniories were more concentrated zones for the expression of power than more expansive territories. Studies carried out on seigniorial justice systems illustrate particular problems arose according to the size of the territory administered and there were particular problems linked to the handling of productive spaces, such as minor infractions on, and the maintenance of, rural and forest
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 107
property. Practices that originated in communities include 'franches vérités' and pleas that brought whole villages together. Similarly the role played by priests or guilds in urban areas or pastors in consistories of reformed communities, can only be explained by the relatively small size of the communities and confirm the penetration of social ties in justice systems.
Expanding Spaces : States
59 The community model of towns and villages fell progressively under the control of a specific form of government, namely, the state. Whether from a centralised point or via the attribution of particular competences, the state successfully imposed its influence over categories of ever-increasing numbers of people. It is difficult to comprehend the success of the state without looking at the impact of its various implements. Royal pardon, inquisitions and patrolling constables provide a few examples of the judicial, institutional or military implements that allowed sovereign powers to accustom people to their role in local life. These means contributed to the progressive creation of a coherent space, much more vast than urban communities or villages alone. However, states should not be equated simply with monarchies or nations. States developed in such a way so as to function in a city, in a region or in a confederation. Nevertheless, the state seems to have followed the example of the monarchy in its development of the repressive justice systems that helped to give birth to greater and greater territorial expanses, as the example of the expansion of the English and French monarchies shows64.
b) Social Control, Criminal Justice and Power
60 If the regulation of conflicts is often limited to a precise territory, it is always part of a particular configuration of domination. Often, the link between justice and power has been either neglected in juridical studies, or caricatured in politically-oriented examinations ones. Nonetheless the precise analysis of the real functioning of justice systems reveals the intimate links between power structures and the forms and practices of justice. Whether in the hands of urban oligarchies, rural aristocracies, provincial bourgeois, or officers of the monarchy, all courts favoured specific models when dealing with crime.
61 Romanised cities, English feudal manors, as well as ecclesiastical immunities have all left behind traces from before the 13th century of centres where concentrated forms of power persisted65. Domain justice seemed to be the most highly developed, or at least the most well-known form of justice. In emerging cities justice systems were organised largely according to bourgeois interests. It is apparent seen that demands for internal security (such as the struggle against clan violence) as well as exterior security (protection against feudal powers and mistrust of sovereigns) frequently influenced consular and municipal judges regarding conflicts and their resolutions.
62 In rural areas local lords commonly put pressure on the peasants until a sovereign succeeded in imposing his forms and ideas of justice upon all his "subjects". The « deterritorialisation » of power brought on by the development of a network of officers of the sovereign disrupted rural areas, which were used to settling their problems at community level under the aegis of « local authorities » such as nobles and local oligarchies.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 108
63 The steady increase of the sovereign's influence brought about progressive centralisation in matters of justice, as was the case in France, or at the very least the modernisation and rationalisation of its functions, as was the case in England, the Netherlands and Spain. The development of different branches of recourse to justice allowed central powers (sovereigns) or regional powers (parliaments, councils and superior courts) progressively to accustom populations to new forms of state organisms and ways of handling crime. Recent criminal history research also reveals the important synergy between the development and the transformation of judicial regulations and the growing pressure of the state as form of modernised, rationalised and bureaucratised power over local populations66.
c) Social Control, Criminal Justice and Social Relations
64 Criminal justice and the criminality it records also play a considerable role in social relations, both as indicators of the tensions experienced by people and as vectors of the policies concerning the resolution of major social problems.
Making Communities Peaceful
65 The problem for the majority of medieval cities was the regulation of physical violence among their residents. This is why urban authorities became very quickly interested in setting up structures to fight violence. Normative measures not only regulated the right to bear arms, but also forbade them within city limits. Administrative practices from Florence to Utrecht repressed the activities of clan chiefs who were considered violent67. Finally, most cities developed specific institutions to combat endemic violence, and such peacemakers operated in north-western cities, often up until the end of the Ancien Régime.
66 Rural communities were not spared such endemic and often fatal violence. Rural notables were not always able to maintain peace between families whose conflicts might extend to private acts of vengeance. In this context certain sovereigns (in France, Burgundy, Spain and Portugal, for example), intervened to allow offenders to escape from local justice. The extraordinary development of pardons, especially in regards to homicide, reveals how, between the end of the 15th and the 17th centuries, a major local problem could be brought under the control of the sovereign, thus reinforcing the sovereign's prestige, authority and power among his subjects68.
Keeping Undesirables Away
67 Another problem revealed in the judicial archives is that of the social relationships between stable residents and marginals or transients. The surge of uprooted peasants and jobless workers into the cities weighed heavily on social climates, especially during periods of crisis. At the end of the 15th century, in the middle of the 16th century, during the 17th century wars that devastated central and Northwest Europe, and in even greater numbers in the 18th century, the presence of vagrants and transients became pressing juridical and political as well as social, problems for cities, monarchs and states69. Initially medieval cities employed collective administrative expulsion, with hardly any recognition that this could only be a temporary solution. The recurrence of this phenomenon and the organisation of these excluded masses into groups that were
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 109
perceived as dangerous quickly showed these measures to be ineffective. During the great economic and social crisis of the 16th century, other solutions emerged that were oriented toward placing inactive people into forced labour. The models of workhouses, galleys and the hôpital généralwere implemented with varying degrees of success. In a more repressive mode, sentencing to galleys or deportation overseas supplanted these models in the context of the military or demographic expansion of the major colonising nations70.
68 Nevertheless, many jurisdictions remained troubled with these banished and/or vagrant populations, especially in periods of war. In cities, theses populations certainly felt the severity of repressive measures more than inhabitants. More likely to be suspected, they could be tortured largely because of the way they looked, and they often received the most severe forms of corporal punishment. In the countryside, provosts and marshals pursued them relentlessly, arresting them, judging them and executing them, sometimes without any form of trial. The short-sightedness of such social responses, and well illustrated by the branding of vagrants with an hot iron, served only to drive them to even more marginal activities, and contributed to the development of collective criminal activity which, in turn, forstered organised banditry in frontier zones, especially towards the end of the Ancien Régimein both northern and southern Europe71.
Containing the Poor
69 The problem of the endemic poverty of a very large fringe of residents could be included alongside the problem of vagrancy. In both cities and the countryside, bourgeois-controlled justice systems were obsessed by theft and by the extensive damage caused to woods and fields by the practice of gleaning, carried out by women, children and the elderly72. At the end of the 18th century, seigniorial entrepreneurs keen for the rational exploitation of their property reduced community land use rights and criminalised some activities regarded as customs. Justice thus became class justice, a means for the ruling classes to impose their social priorities and economic objectives on the popular classes73.
70 In this context the emergence of prison as a response to illegality appears clear. The sentence of imprisonment can be included with that of forced labour, the galleys, or deportation, as replacing corporal punishment (notably branding, whipping and expulsion) which was increasingly deemed an inefficient regulator of wandering and impoverished populations. The development of diverse forms of penal incarceration came on very much like a revolution at the end of the Ancien Régime, when bourgeois classes everywhere in Europe were acquiring political power74.
d) Social Control, Criminal Justice and Mental Constructions
71 The history of crime and criminal justice has also been a history of the cultural representations of crime. Numerous researchers initially believed in the unvarying nature of « crime » and « deviance », beliefs which can still be found a few contemporary studies. The work of historians of criminality has shown the great variability of the concepts of crime and criminals in space as well as in time. Moreover, to paraphrase the psychoanalytic maxim, one could say that « the only crimes are those that we call crimes », i.e., those described as such by regulatory and governing
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 110
authorities. The « dark figure » is not simply a missing proportion, but it can also include behaviour which, consciously or not, has not been labelled as crime. We still have to define the structures of these collective representations of crime according to the social classes that perpetuate them. Here we come across a problematic where interest in the long term (deep Braudelian time) seeks out a difficult association with the deeply-rooted discourses, images and practices of criminal justice.
Representations of Crime
72 Behaviour and different individual actions have been qualified very differently. One level of discourse comes from the sources of law, particularly from judicial norms and doctrines (primary criminalisation). By making homicide the most horrible of crimes against the state, Josse de Damhoudere, a 16th century jurist from Bruges, whose Praxis Criminalium circulated throughout Europe, expressed the « dramatised » conception of an intellectual milieu faced with a crisis in Christianity and identity-sealing social representations. Furthermore, in a period of a crisis of power in place of the cities, this doctrinal discourse betrayed the urban magistrate's shifting preference for monarchical power, shifted over time from divine power. By criminalising theft, homicide and then certain sexual acts, the parliaments of 19th century bourgeois societies, via their environment and their electorate, also revealed the evolution in representations of crime. Similarly, by decriminalising acts committed in privacy, but by criminalising post-war political, commercial or economic acts, are not post-Cold War societies transposing the social disruption between the small group of dominant classes and the mass of people in social stagnation ?
73 A second level of discourse comes from the effectiveness of the prosecution and repression of crimes and their social signification (secondary criminalisation). The focus by a number of jurists on witchcraft from the 15th to the 17th centuries prompted a witch hunt : and this seems to have stopped when the chain of denunciations started to reach those upper classes who started the witch hunts in the first place. In certain regions of Spain, the Inquisition was concerned less with pursuing heretics than those who committed acts deemed as deviant by local populations75. In the 19th century, abortion was frequently prosecuted in bourgeois societies even though it rarely led to actual convictions.
Representations of Repression
74 The study of socially valorised forms of repression has fascinated researchers for a long time. The emergence of corporal punishment and its progressive replacement by imprisonment, as well as the role of forced labour have all been the object of much theorising and research. These is the well-known analysis of Michel Foucault on the re- orientation of the focus of repression from the body to the soul of the delinquent, and else the parallels drawn by Rusche and Kirchheimer between labour crises and the recourse to forced labour and imprisonment, or the use of fines and monetary crises.
75 Moreover, popular representations of punishment have been particularly studied within the framework of public execution rituals. The rise of the « Theatre of Horrors » in the application of justice in north-western cities goes hand-in-hand with the fascination/repulsion of populations for bloody executions and executioners76. What remains to be measured is the significance of the apparently paradoxical evolution in
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 111
the 18th and 19th centuries from death sentences pronounced in « private » followed by public executions, to death sentences pronounced in public, but executed behind the secrecy of prison walls77.
Representations of Procedure
76 The social representations of judicial procedures are less well-known. Here we enter the domain of hypothesis, precisely because research on the history of regulation is rare. Western history has presented only typical models of conflict regulation. First there were violent resolutions such as private vengeance, then peacekeeping methods through mutual forgiveness and the re-inforcement of social links between quarrelling parties. These were followed by measures of repression through stigmatisation and exclusion, with focus on specific scapegoats or certain acts (witches, vagabonds, sodomites, businessmen, politicians), and pardon appeared as a sign of favour of a powerful sovereign towards his weaker subjects. However, there were also informal means of conflict regulation. The increasing complexity of social relations seems to correspond to an increasing complexity of the means of conflict regulation and its offshoots.
Representations of Law, Justice and Regulation
77 Finally, the entirety of representations of crime from punishment to regulation has contributed to the construction of a social image of law and justice as the modes for regulating the tensions inherent in collective living. The study of these representations is a challenging yet promising domain and combines the analysis of both theoretical and practical texts with figurative representations of justice, based on judicial iconography and archeology. The image of justice, the representations of judges and the act of judging, models of judicial space (from the church to the court house), and religious references to the act of judgement are so many areas where themes important to anthropologists and law historians encounter the preoccupations of philosophers and sociologists78. From a historian's point of view, these studies can only have meaning if closely linked with the analysis of the rituals and practices of justice systems as they are revealed in archives.
IV. – A criminal reading of social history
78 No study has yet been formulated that could serve as a model for this second approach. Some research in this direction seems to be taking shape in long term analyses. Penal factors play an important role at a number of levels in the construction of societies : in the control of communities, the modernisation of means of government, the construction of states, and in identity formation.
The Civilising of Social Relations
79 Influenced by the work of Norbert Elias, researchers have used archives to discover the outlets and the behaviour of populations coping with social tensions. Immediate physical and verbal aggression, as well as the absence of both social stigmatisation and moralisation around certain acts (such as homicide) before the 15th century greatly
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 112
surprised Western researchers conditioned by a very « civilised » view of social relations. As a result, criminal justice not only seemed to disclose « a world we have lost »79, but also served as an instrument of moral pacification and progressive acculturation of the popular culture to elite culture, which was mainly religious in the Middle Ages and increasingly more lay and urban from the 15th century80.
80 This pressure of the high on the low is not univocal. Rural populations resisted this intrusion, but also revised it and used it in turn to serve their own interests, as is revealed in studies on the strategies of litigation, which existed not only for elites in higher jurisdictions81 but also for local peasants before consistory courts or local magistrates82.
The Modernisation of Administration
81 Criminality is not the only reality to be found about injudicial archives. Due to the methodological statements of authorities on the selection of cases to be heard in court, the role of judicial administration in social regulation rapidly became of interest to researchers. Sharing many of the concerns of the new history of institutions, historians have revealed the diversity of administrative clusters and the highly organised responses to the problem of crime in Medieval and Early Modern towns and villages in the West. Beyond this diversity, the steady growth of the administrative side of justice, best symbolised by the generalisation, on the Continent, of the romanocanonic criminal trial83, is indicative of the increasing modernisation of justice systems in Europe and the increasingly monopolistic role of judicial courts in the regulation of conflicts. With modernisation, events were recorded, procedures were rationalised and the exercise of justice was bureaucratised.
82 Nevertheless, traditional modes of regulation put up a degree of resistance. Autonomous cities held on to their institutions until their full integration into nation states. Local practices survived in communities and recourse to official justice systems is but one indication that local social conflict resolution efforts had failed to maintain order. Nevertheless, the ponderous practices of administrations were settling in. Throughout the diversity of traditions (English or Continental, northern or Mediterranean), judicial administrations tended to be organised and structured into a hierarchy following the monarchical model. The political revolutions that put an end to the Ancien Régime progressively introduced the administrative branches that would be responsible for different social functions : surveillance and prosecution (police), judgement (justice) and punishment (penitential administration).
The Formation of the State
83 Modernisation is part of and contributes to the process of the formation of the state as a particular system of societal control and administration, structurally independent of the people or their relations in the dominant positions. The genesis of the modern state is an area of research that has had enormous success in the past few years in Europe84. Nevertheless, much research on the history of crime has revealed that the role of justice, and in particular criminal justice, has hardly been integrated into different studies of the origins of the modern state. One of the seminars in which Herman Diederiks participated in the last few years tried to develop this aspect on the basis of empirical research, regional analyses and further theoretical readings85. It seems that
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 113
what is at stake in the stronghold of institutional and judicial functions is mainly symbolic, territorial and political. It is symbolic in that the control of the power to punish or pardon is more than a means for a local or central power figure to profit from economic surplus. It serves to make the population aware of the existence of a power far superior to local powers, i.e. the one who holds claim to sovereignty. It is territorial because the command of the systems of social control (justice, police) is a means of extending the implantation of the state to frontier or rebellious zones. It is political because, in the end, alongside the control of taxes and war, control of the justice system constitutes a monopoly over legitimate violence which in turn legitimises the state, the successor to the city and the monarch as the sole recourse to social peace.
The Constitution of Social Identities
84 A last domain to which crime and criminal justice history can make significant contributions is that of the formation of identities and collective representations. Who defines crime ? Who is defined as a criminal ? What are the links between offirial definitions and the representations of social groups or classes of victims, witnesses or offenders involved in acts committed ? How do the punishment, the crime and modes of regulation contribute to the construction and the deconstruction of identities, collective psyches and social mythologies ?
Crime and justice : elements of social history
85 Thirty years of the history of crime and criminality, which have been encompassed by thirty years of the research of Herman Diederiks, have resulted in the integration into social history of a research domain that has for much too long been limited to the work of legal historians or to anecdotal approaches. Through its diversity and complementarity, the work of crime historians without any doubt offers important material for the study of social regulation. Nevertheless, the study of formal justice as both an indicator and a producer of mechanisms of exclusion and social integration within a vast ensemble of functional social procedures and processes is a construction site on which building has to continue alongside political, economic, juridical and cultural histories.
86 Until now, the construction site upon which crime and criminal justice history has been built has empirically innovative by combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, macro- and micro-social approaches, and juridical and anthropological approaches. It is also a theoretically important site in the way that it gives shape to concepts dictated by social history. Finally, it is a multidisciplinary site in its privileging of true dialogue between historians and contemporary specialists of crime (jurists, criminologists, sociologists, political scientists) ; it can contribute to a better integration of sociological literature in long-term research, and create more explicit links between the past and the present, and between the social sciences and history86.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 114
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agulhon, M., La République au village : les populations du War de la Révolution à la 2e République, Paris, 1970a.
Agulhon, M., La vie sociale en Provence intérieure au lendemain de la Révolution, Paris, 1970b.
Ankarloo, B., Henningsen, G., (eds.), Early Modern European Witchcraft. Centres and Peripheries, Oxford, 1990.
Aubusson de Cavarlay, B., Can Criminal Statistics Still Be of Scientific Use ? The French Criminal Justice System, 1831-1980, Historical Methods, 1993, 26-2, p. 69-84.
Aubusson de Cavarlay, B., Baré V., Dupont-Bouchat, M.S., Rousseaux, X., Teirlynck, A.M., Vael, C, La pratique des juridictions criminelles du département de Sambre-et-Meuse à l'époque française (1796-1815) : une analyse quantitative, in Rousseaux, X., Dupont-Bouchat, M.S., Vael, G, (eds.), Révolutions et Justice pénale en Europe (1780-1830). Modèles français et traditions nationales / Revolution and Criminal Justice in Europe, 1780-1830 French Models and National Traditions, Paris, (forthcoming).
Bader, K., Aufgaben, Methoden und Grenzen einer historischen Kriminologie, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Strafrecht,1956, 71, p. 17-31.
Bailey, V., Reato, giustizia penale e autorità in Inghilterra. Un decennio di studi storici, 1969-1979, Quaderni Storici, 1979, 44, p. 581-603.
Bailey, V., Bibliographical essay : crime, criminal justice and authority in England, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 1980, 40, p. 36-46.
Battenberg, F., Ranieri, F. (eds.), Geschichte der Zentraljustiz in Mitteleuropa, Weimar-Cologne-Wien, 1994.
Beattie, J.-M., Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800, Oxford, 1986.
Beier, A.L., Masterless Men ; The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640, London, 1985.
Bercé, Y.M., Castan, Y. (eds.), Les archives du délit, empreintes de société, Toulouse, 1990.
Bercé, Y.-M., Soman, A., La justice royale et le parlement de Paris (XIVe-XVIIe siècle), Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 1995, 153, p. 251-437.
Berents, D.A., Misdaad in de middeleeuwen. Een onderzoek naar de criminaliteit in het laat-middeleeuwse Utrecht, Utrecht, 1976.
Berents, D.A., Het werk van de vos. Samenleving en criminaliteit in de late middeleeuwen, Zutphen, 1988.
Billacois, F., Pour une enquête sur la criminalité dans la France d'Ancien Régime, Annales E.S.C., 1967, 22, p. 340-349.
Billacois, F., Criminalistes, pénalistes et historiens, Annales E.S.C., 1969, 24, p. 911-914.
Billacois, F., Neveux H. (eds.), Porter plainte. Stratégies villageoises et justice en Ile-de-France, Droit et Culture, 1990, 19, p. 5-148.
Blasius, D., Eigentum und Strafe. Probleme der preussischen Kriminalitäts- und Strafrechtsentwicklung im Vormärz, Historische Zeitschrift, 1975, 220, p. 79-129.
Blasius, D., Kriminalität und Alltag. Zur Konfliktgeschichte des Alltagslebens im 19. Jahrhundert, Göttingen, 1978.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 115
Blasius D., Geschichte der politischen Kriminalität in Deutschland 1800-1980. Eine Studie zu Justiz und Staatsbverbrechen, Frankfurt/Main, 1983.
Blauert A., Schwerhoff G., (eds.), Mit den Waffen der Justiz. Zur Kriminalitätsgeschichte des späten Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, Frankfurt/Main, 1993.
Blok, A., The Mafia of a Sicilian Village 1860-1960. A Study of Violent Peasant Entrepreneurs, Oxford, 1974.
Blok, A., The Bokkerijders. Roversbenden en geheime genootschappen in de Landen van Overmaas, 1730-1774, Amsterdam, 1991.
Bois, P., Paysans de l'Ouest. Des structures économiques et sociales aux options politiques depuis l'époque révolutionnaire, Paris-The Hague, 1960.
Brackett, J., Criminal Justice in Late Renaissance Florence, 1537-1609, Cambridge, 1992.
Braudel, F., La Mediterranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, Paris, 1949 (1st ed.).
Castan, N., Justice et répression en Languedoc à l'époque des Lumières, Paris, 1980a.
Castan, N., Les criminels de Languedoc, 1750-1790, Toulouse, 1980b.
Castan, N., Assesment of the Contribution of Historical Research to the Understanding of Crime and Criminal Justice, in Council of Europe, Historical research on crime and criminal research. Reports presented to the Sixth Criminological colloquium, Strasbourg, 1984.
Castan, Y., Honnêteté et relations sociales en Languedoc, 1715-1780, Paris, 1974.
Castan, Y, Magie et sorcellerie à l'époque moderne, Paris, 1979.
Chaunu, H., Chaunu, P., Séville et l'Atlantique (1504-1650), 12 vol., Paris, 1955-1960.
Chaunu, P., Déviance et intégration sociale : la longue durée, Marginalité, Déviance et Pauvreté en France, XIVe-XIe s. Cahiers des Annales de Normandie, 1981, 13, p. 5-16.
Cobb, R., The Police and the People : French Popular Protest 1789-1820, Oxford, 1970.
Cohen, S., Scull A., Social Control and the State. Historical and Comparative Essays, Oxford, 1986 (2nded.).
Coll., Twelve years of research on the history of crime and criminal justice (1978/1990), I.A.H.C.C.J. Bulletin, 1991, 14.
Coll., La giustizia nell'alto medioevo (secoli V°-VII°), 2 vol., Spoleto, 1995.
Corbin, A., Le village des cannibales, Paris, 1990.
Corvol, A., L'homme et l'arbre sous l'Ancien Régime, Paris, 1984.
Coutau-Bégarie, H., Le phénomène « Nouvelle Histoire ». Stratégie et idéologie des nouveaux historiens, Paris, 1989 (2nd ed.).
Criminal Justice History, An International Annual, 1980, I - 1996, XIV.
Curtis, T., Explaining Crime in Early Modern England, Criminal Justice History, 1980, 2, p. 117-137. de la Croix, D., Rousseaux, X., Urbain, J.P., To Fine or To Punish in the Late Middle Ages. A Time Series Analysis of Justice Administration in Nivelles, 1424-1536, Applied Economics, 1996, 28, p. 1213-1224.
Davis, N.Z., Fiction in the Archives : Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth Century France, Stanford, 1987.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 116
Dedieu, J.P., L'Administration de la foi : l'inquisition de Tolède, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles, Madrid, 1989.
De Win P., (ed.), Rechtsarcheologie en Rechticonografie. Een kennismaking/Rechtsarchäo-logie und Rechtsikonographie. Eine Annäherung, Brussels, 1992.
Deyon, P., Le temps des prisons, essai sur l'histoire de la délinquance et les origines du système pénitentiaire, Lille, 1975.
Diederiks, H., Strafrecht en criminaliteit in de 18e eeuw, Holland Regionaal-historisch tijdschrift, 1976, 8, 3.
Diederiks, H., Patterns of Criminality and Law Enforcement during the Ancien Regime ; the Dutch Case, Criminal Justice History, 1980, 1, p. 157-174.
Diederiks, H., « Punishment during the Ancien Regime : the case of the 18th century Dutch Republic », in Knafla, L.A.(ed.), Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe and Canada, Waterloo (Ont.), 1981, p. 273-296.
Diederiks, H. (ed.), Different Systems of Criminal Law : Confrontation or Assimilation, I.A.H.C.C.J.- Newsletter, 1985, 9, p. 35-82.
Diederiks, H., In een land van justitie : criminaliteit van vrouwen, Soldaten en ambtenaren in de achttiende-eeuwse Republiek, Hilversum, 1992a.
Diederiks, H., Forced Labour in the Penal System, in the Poor Relief System and in the Dutch Colonies Since the 18th Century, I.A.H.C.C.J.-Bulletin, 1992b, 16, p. 34-40.
Diederiks, H., De sociale geschiedenis van criminaliteit, strafrecht en strafrechtspraktijk, Panopticon, 1993, 14, 6, p. 505-515.
Diederiks, H., Norbert Elias and the Development of Criminality : An Introduction, I.A.H.C.C.J.- Bulletin, 1995, 20, p. 15-16.
Diederiks, H., Faber, S., Misdaad en straf : verleden tijd ?, Tijdschrift voor Criminologie, 1978, p. 105-112.
Diederiks, H., Huussen, A.-H., Crime and Punishment in the Dutch Republic (XVIII-XIX centuries) in La Peine. Punishment, 3ndpart : Europe Since the 18th Century, Brussels, 1989, p. 133-159.
Diederiks, H., Roodenburg H.W., (eds.), Misdaad, zoen en straf : aspekten van de midde-leeuwse strafrechtsgeschiedenis in de Nederlanden, Hilversum, 1991.
Dufresne, J.L., Les comportements amoureux d'après le registre de l'officianté de Cerisy, Bulletin philologique et historique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1976, p. 131-156.
Dupont-Bouchat, M.S., (ed.), La sorcellerie dans les Pays-Bas d'Ancien Régime. Aspects juridiques, institutionnels et sociaux- De hekserij in de Nederlanden onder het Ancien Régime. Juridische, institutionele en sociale aspecten, Kortrijk-Heule, 1987.
Dupont-Bouchat M.S., Rousseaux, X., Le prix du sang. Sang et justice du XIVe au XVIIIe s., Mentalités, 1989, 1, p. 43-72.
Egmond, F., Banditisme in de Franse Tijd. Profiel van de Grote Nederlandse Bende, 1790-1799, s. l., 1986.
Egmond, F., Underworlds. Organized Crime in the Netherlands, 1650-1800, Cambridge, 1993a.
Egmond, F., Children in Court : Children and Criminal Justice in the Dutch Republic, Social & Legal Studies, 1993b, 2, p. 73-90.
Eibach, J., Neue Historische Literatur. Kriminalitätsgeschichte zwischen Sozialgeschichte und Historischer Kulturforschung, Historische Zeitschrift, 1996, 263, p. 681-715.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 117
Ekirch, A.R., Bound for America. The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775, Oxford, 1987.
Elias, N., Über den Prozess der Zivilisation : sozio genetische und psycho genetische Untersuchungen, 2 vol., Bern, 1969, 2nd ed.
Elton, G., Introduction : Crime and the Historian, in Cockburn, J.S.(ed.), Crime in England, 1550-1800, London, 1977, p. 1-14.
Emsley, C, Crime and Society in England 1750-1900, London-New-York, 1987.
Emsley, C., Knafla, L., (eds.), Crime History and Histories of Crime. Studies in the Historiography of Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern History, Westport (Conn.), 1996.
Evans R., The Fabrication of Virtue. English Prison Architecture, 1750-1840, Cambridge, 1982.
Evans, R.J., Öffentlichkeit und Autorität. Zur Geschichte der Hinrichtungen in Deutschland vom Allgemeinen Landrecht bis zum Dritten Reich, in Reiff, H., (ed.), Räuber, Volk und Obrigkeit. Studien zur Geschichte der Kriminalität in Deutschland seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am M., 1984, p. 185-258.
Evans, R.J., (ed.), The German Underworld. Deviants and Outcasts in German History, London/New York, 1988.
Faber S., Monumenta of chips ? Strafrechtshistorisch onderzoek en het uitgeven van bronnen, Verslagen en mededelingen van de Stichting tot uitgaaf der bronnen van het oudvaderlandse recht, 1980, 2, p. 101-106.
Faber, S., Strafrechtspleging en criminaliteit te Amsterdam (1680-1811). De nieuwe menslie-venheid, Arnhem, 1983.
Faber, S. et al. (eds.), Tien jaar werkgroep strafrechtsgeschiedenis, 1973-1983, Leiden-Amsterdam, 1983.
Farge, A., Le vol d'aliments à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1974.
Farge, A., La vie fragile : violence, pouvoirs et solidarités à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1986.
Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish : the Birth of the Prison, Harmondsworth, 1979. [English translation of the original version Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison, Paris, 1975.]
Franke, H., The Rise and Decline of Solitary Confinement : Socio-Historical Explanations of Long- Term Penal Changes, British Journal of Criminology, 1992, 32-2, p. 125-143.
Garnot, B., Une illusion historiographique : justice et criminalité au XVIIIe siècle, Revue Historique, 1989, 570, p. 362-379.
Garnot, B. (ed.), Histoire et Criminalité de l'Antiquité au XXe siècle. Nouvelles approches, Dijon, 1992.
Garnot, B., (ed.), Ordre moral et délinquance de l'Antiquité au XXe siècle, Dijon, 1994.
Garnot, B. (ed.), L'infrajudiciaire du Moyen Age à l'époque contemporaine, Dijon, 1996.
Gaskill, M, Meldrum T., « Crime, the Law, and the State » : University of Essex/Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, Naples, Comparative History Summer School, 6-10 July 1992, Social History, 1993, 18-1, p. 87-91.
Gatrell, V.-A.-C., Lenman, B., Parker, G., (eds.), Crime and the Law. The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500, London, 1980.
Gatrell, V.-A.-C., The Hanging Tree Execution and the English People, 1770-1868, Oxford, 1994.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 118
Gauvard, C., « De grace especial ». Crime, État et Société en France à la fin du Moyen Age, 2 vols., Paris, 1991.
Gauvard, C., Violence citadine et réseaux de solidarité. L'exemple français aux XIVe et XVe siècles, Annales E.S.C., 1993, p. 1113-1126.
Gégot, J.C., Storia della criminalità : le ricerche in Francia, Quaderni Storici, 1981, 46, p. 192-211.
Genet, J.P., L'État moderne : genèse. Bilans et perspectives, Paris, 1990.
Geremek, B., Criminalité, vagabondage, paupérisme : La marginalité à l'aube des temps modernes, Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 1974, 21, p. 337-375.
Geremek, B., Inutiles au monde. Truands et misérables dans l'Europe moderne (1350-1600), Paris, 1980.
Geremek, B., La potence ou la pitié. L'Europe et les pauvres du Moyen Age à nos jours, Paris, 1987.
Ginzburg, C, The Cheese and the Worms : The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, London, 1980.
Ginzburg, C, The Night Battles : Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Baltimore & London, 1983 [Orig. ed. : IBenandanti : Stregoneria e culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento,Turin, 1973, 2nd ed.].
Gonthier, N., Cris de haine et rites d'unité. La violence dans les villes (XIIIe-XVIe siècles), Turnhout, 1992.
Goubert, P., Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730, contribution à l'histoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1960.
Hanawalt, B., Observe of the Civilizing Process in Medieval England, IAHCCJ Bulletin,1995, 20, p. 49-60.
Hay, D., Crime and Justice in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England, Crime & Justice. An Annual Review of Research,1980, 2, p. 45-84.
Hay, D., The criminal prosecution in England and its historians, The Modern Law Review, 1984, 47, 1-29.
Hobsbawm, E.J., Primitive Rebels, Manchester, 1959.
Hobsbawm, E.J., Bandits, New York, 1981 (Rev. edn.).
Hoffer, P.C., Counting crime in premodern England and America. A review essay, Historical Methods, 1981, 14-4, p. 187-193.
Hook, J.A, Justice, Authority and the Creation of the Ancien Régime in Italy, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1984, 34, p. 71-89.
Hufton, O., Crime in Pre-Industrial Europe, I.A.H.C.C.J.-Newsletter, 1981, 4, p. 8-35.
Huussen, A.-H., Strafrechtspraktijk en criminaliteit in het verleden, een tekening in het grensgebied tussen realistische en sociale geschiedenis, Groniek, 1976, p. 23-29.
Huussen A.H., Veroordeeld in Friesland. Criminaliteitsbestrijding in de eeuw der Verlichting, Leeuwarden, 1994.
I.A.H.C.C.J., Newsletter, 1979, 1 -1990, 13 ; then I.A.H.C.C.J.-Bulletin, 1991, 14 -1997, 21.
Ignatieff, M., A Just Measure of Pain. The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution (1750-1850), New York, 1978.
Innes, J., Styles, J., The Crime Wave : Recent Writing on Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth- Century England, Journal of British Studies, 1986, 25, 4, p. 380-435.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 119
Jacob, R., Images de la justice. Essai sur l'iconographie judiciaire du Moyen Age à l'âge classique, Paris, 1994.
Jacob, R., Marchai, N., Jalons pour une histoire de l'architecture judiciaire, in La justice en ses Temples. Regards sur l'architecture judiciaire en France, Paris-Poitiers, 1992, p. 23-68.
Johansen, J.C.V., Stevnsborg, H., Hasard ou myopie ? Réflexions autour de deux théories de l'histoire du droit, Annales E.S.C., 1986, 41, 3, p. 601-624.
Johnson, E.A. (ed.), Quantification and Criminal Justice History in International Perspective, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, Special Issue, 1990, 15, 4.
Kaeuper, R.W., War, Justice and Public Order. England and France in the Later Middle Ages, Oxford, 1988.
Killias, M., Rehbinder, M. (eds.), Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtssociologie, Berlin, 1985.
Kitsuse, J.I., Cicourel, A.V., A Note on the Use of Official Statistics, Social Problems,1963, 12, p. 131-139.
Knafla, L. (ed.), Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe and Canada, Waterloo (Ont.) 1981.
Knafla, L.A., Structure, Conjuncture, and Event in the Historiography of Modern Criminal Justice History, in Emsley, Knafla, 1996, p. 33-44.
Lagrange, H., La civilité à l'épreuve. Crime et sentiment d'insécurité, Paris, 1995.
Langbein, J., Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance. England, Germany, France, Cambridge (Mass.), 1974.
Langbein, J. Torture and the Law of Proof. Europe and England in the Ancien Régime, Chicago, 1977.
Lascoumes, P., Zander, H., Marx : du « vol de bois » à la critique du droit. Karl Marx à la « Gazette Rhénane », naissance d'une méthode, Paris, 1984.
Laslett, P., The World we Have Lost, London, 1965.
Lenman, B., Parker, G., The State, the Community and the Criminal Law in Early Modern Europe, in Gatrell, V.A.C., Lenman, B., Parker, G, (eds.), Crime and the Law : The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500, London, 1980, p. 11-48.
Le Roy Ladurie, E., Les Paysans de Languedoc, Paris, 1966.
Le Roy Ladurie E., La décroissance du crime au XVIIIe siècle, bilan d'historiens, Contrepoint, 1973, 9, p. 227-233.
Le Roy Ladurie, E., Montaillou village occitan, Paris, 1975 [Montaillou : Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324, London, 1978.].
Lepetit, B., (ed.), Les formes de l'expérience. Une autre histoire sociale, Paris, 1995.
Lévy, R., Robert, Ph., Le sociologue et l'histoire pénale, Annales E.S.C., 1984, 39, 2, p. 400-422.
Lévy, R., Rousseaux, X., États, justice pénale et histoire : bilan et perspectives, Droit et Société, 1992, 20-21, p. 249-279.
Macfarlane, A., Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England : A Regional and Comparative Study, London, 1970.
Mc Mullan, J.L., Crime, Law and Order in Early Modern England, British Journal of Criminology, 1987, 27, 3, p. 252-274.
Meer (van der) T., « De wesentlijcke sonde van sodomie en andere vuyligheden ». Sodomietenvervolgingen in Amsterdam, 1730-1811, Amsterdam, 1984.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 120
Melossi, D., Paravini, M., The Prison and the Factory : The Origins of the Penitentiary System, London, 1981.
Mollat, M., (ed.), Études sur l'histoire de la pauvreté, 2 vol., Paris, 1974.
Monkonnen, E., Systematic Criminal Justice History : some Suggestions, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1979, 9, p. 451-464.
Monkonnen, E., The History of Crime and Criminal Justice after Twenty-Five Years, Criminal Justice History, 1984, 5, p. 161-169.
Monter, W., The new Social History and the Spanish Inquisition, Journal of Social History,1984, 17, p. 705-713.
Moore, R.I, The Formation of a Prosecuting Society. Power and Deviance in Western Europe (950-1250), Oxford, 1987.
Moorman van Kappen, О., Die sogenannte neue Forschungrichtung zur Kriminalitätsgeschichte in den Niederlanden und Belgien, Zeitschrift für neuere Rechtsgeschichte,1984, 6, p. 153-162.
Mooser, J. « Furcht bewahrt das Holz ». Holzdiebstahl und sozialer Konflikt in der ländlichen Gesellschaft 1800-1850 an westfälischen Beispielen, in Reif, H., (ed.), Studien zur Geschichte der Kriminalität in Deutschland seit dem 18. Jahrundert, Frankfurt am Main, 1984, p. 43-99.
Muchembled, R., Culture populaire et culture des élites dans la France moderne (XVe-XVIIIe siècles), Paris, 1978.
Muchembled, R., Anthropologie de la violence dans la France moderne (XVe-XVIIIe siècles), Revue de Synthèse, 1987, 108, p. 31-55.
Muchembled, R., L'invention de l'homme moderne. Sensibilités, mœurs et comportements collectifs sous l'Ancien Régime, Paris, 1988.
Muchembled, R., Le temps des supplices. De l'obéissance sous les Rois absolus. XVe-XVIIIe siècles, Paris, 1992.
Muchembled, R., (ed.), Magie et sorcellerie en Europe, Paris, 1994.
Nye, R.A., Crime in Modern Societies : Some Research Strategies for Historians, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1978, 11, p. 491-507.
O' Brien, P., Crime and Punishment as Historical Problem, Journal of Social History,1978, 11, p. 508-520.
Ortalli, G, (ed.), Bande annate, banditi, banditismo e repressione di giustizia negli stati europei di antico regime, Rome, 1986.
Otis, L.L., Prostitution in Medieval Society. The History of an Urbain Institution in Languedoc, Chicago/ London, 1985.
Parker, G., Crime and the Early Modem Historian. A Review Article, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 1981, 94, p. 595-601.
Petit, J., Ces peines obscures. La prison pénale en France 1780-1875, Paris, 1990.
Pihlajamäky, H., (ed.), Theatres of Power. Social Control and Criminality in Historical Perspective, s. l., 1991.
Platelle, H., La violence et ses remèdes en Flandre au XIe siècle, Sacris Erudiri, 1971, 20, p. 101-173.
Post, J.B., Crime in Later Medieval England : some Historiographical Limitations, Continuity and Change, 1987, 2, 2, p. 211-224.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 121
Powell, E., Social Research and the Use of Medieval Criminal Records, Michigan Law Review,1981, 79, p. 967-978.
Pugh, R.B., Some Reflections on a Medieval Criminologist, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1973, 59, p. 83-104.
Ramsey, M.-N., L'évolution du concept de crime. L'étude d'un tournant : l'Angleterre de la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Déviance et Société, 1979, 3, 2, p. 131-147.
Robert, Ph., Emsley, G, (eds.), Geschichte und Sociologie des Verbrechens. History and Sociology of Crime. Histoire et sociologie du crime, Pfaffenweiler, 1991.
Robert, Ph., Lévy, R., Histoire et question pénale, Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 1985, 27, p. 481-526.
Robert, Ph., Lévy, R., A Changing Penal Economy in French Society : In Search of a Historical View, Historical Social Research, 1986, 37, p. 17-39
Romer, H., Historische Kriminologie - zum Forschungsstand in der deutschsprachigen Literatur der letzte zwanzig Jahre, Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte, 1992, 14, p. 227-242.
Root, H., La construction de l'État moderne en Europe. La France et l'Angleterre, Paris, 1994.
Rossiaud, J., La prostitution médiévale, Paris, 1988.
Roth, R., Histoire pénale, histoire sociale : même débat ?, Déviance et Société, 1981, 5, p. 187-203.
Roth, R., Evaluation of the contribution of historical research to crime policy and the forecasting of trends in crime policy, taking into account the changes in the social and economic context, in Council of Europe, Historical research on crime and criminal research. Reports presented to the Sixth Criminological colloquium, Strasbourg, 1984.
Rousseaux, X., L'incrimination du vagabondage en Brabant (14e-18e siècles). Langages du droit et réalités de la pratique, in van Dievoet, G., Godding, P, van den Auweele, D., (eds.), Langage et droit à travers l'histoire. Réalités et fictions, Louvain-Paris, 1989, p. 147-183.
Rousseaux, X., Criminality and Criminal Justice In Europe 1250-1850. A Select Bibliography, Criminal Justice History, An International Annual, 1993, 14, p. 159-181.
Rousseaux, X., Partir ou payer ? Le pèlerinage judiciaire à Nivelles (15e-17e siècles), in Dauchy, S., Sueur, P., La Route. Actes des Journées internationales tenues à Enghien-les-Bains du 13 au 15 mai 1994, Lille, 1995a, p. 105-140.
Rousseaux, X., La répression de l'homicide en Europe occidentale (Moyen Age et temps modernes), Genèses, 1995b, 19, p. 122-147.
Rousseaux, X., From Medieval Cities to National States. Historiography on Crime and Criminal Justice In Europe 1350-1850 in Europe, in Emsley C., Knafla L., 1996, p. 3-32.
Rousseaux, X., Emsley, C., Châtiment, justice, prison, à travers l'histoire/Punishments, Penalties and Prisons in Historical Perspective, in XVIIIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques/18th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Actes / Proceedings, Montréal, 1995, p. 335-353.
Rousseaux, X., Lévy, R. (eds.), Le pénal dans tous ses États. Justice, États et société en Europe (XIIe-XXe siècles) et le pénal, Bruxelles, 1997, forthcoming.
Rusche, G, Kirchheimer, O., Punishment and Social Structure, New-York, 1939. (reed. New York, 1968) [German translation : Sozialstruktur und Strafvollzug, Frankfurt am Main, 2nd ed. 1981 ; Italian transl. Pena e Struttura sociale, Bologne, 1978 ; French transl. : Peine et structure sociale. Histoire et théorie critique du régime pénal, Paris, 1994].
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 122
Sack, F., Kriminalität, Gesellschaft und Geschichte : Berührungsängste der deutschen Kriminologie, Kriminologisches Journal, 1987, 19, 4, p. 241-268.
Saurer, E., Dieci anni di studi austriaci di storia della criminalità e del diritto penale, Quaderni Storici, 1982, 49, p. 217-225.
Sbriccoli, M., Fonti giudiziarie e fonti giuridiche. Riflessioni sulla fase attuale degli studi di storia del crimine et della giustizia criminale, Studi Storici, 1988, 2, p. 491-501.
Schnapper, B., Voies nouvelles en histoire du droit. La justice, la famille, la répression pénale (XVIe-XXe siècles), Poitiers, 1991.
Schwerhoff, G., Devianz in der alteuropäischen gesellschaft. Umrisse einer historischen Kriminalitätsforschung, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 1992, 19, 4, p. 385-414.
Sharpe, J.A., Report on the conference organized by the Dutch Group for the Study of the History of Crime and the Criminal Law, 16-18 May 1977, Social History, 1978, 3, 1, p. 83-87.
Sharpe, J.A., The History of Crime in Late Medieval and Early Modern England : a Review of the Field, Social History, 1982, 7-2, p. 187-203.
Sharpe, J.A., Crime in Early Modern England 1550-1750, London-New-York, 1984.
Sharpe, J.A, The History of Crime in England, c. 1300-1914. An Overview of Recent Publications, British Journal of Criminology, 1988, 28, 2, p. 124-137.
Sharpe J.A., Judicial Punishment in England, London-Boston, 1990.
Shoemaker, R., Prosecution and punishment : Ppetty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middelsex, c. 1660-1725, Cambridge, 1991.
Smaus, G., Kriminologie und geschichte. Eine Einführung, Kriminologisches Journal, 1987, 19, l, p. 3-15.
Söderberg, J., Civilisering, marknad och vald i Sverige 1750-1870 ; En regional analys, Stockholm, 1993. [The Civilizing Process, Markets, and Violence in Sweden 1750-1870 : a Regional Analysis]
Soman, A., Deviance and Criminal Justice in Western Europe, 1300-1800 : an Essay in Structure, Criminal Justice History, 1980, 1, p. 1-28.
Soman, A., Sorcellerie et justice criminelle : le Parlement de Paris (16e-18e siècles), Aldershot, 1992.
Spierenburg, P., Criminele geschiedenis. Een literatuuroverzieht, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis, 1981, 23, p. 251-264.
Spierenburg, P., (ed.), The Emergence of Carcerai Institutions : Prisons, Galleys and Lunatic asylums 1550-1900, Rotterdam, 1984a.
Spierenburg, P., The Spectacle of Suffering. Executions and the Evolution of Repression : from a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience, Cambridge, 1984b.
Spierenburg, P., Evaluation of the Conditions and Main Problems Relating to the Contribution of Historical Research to the Understanding of Crime and Criminal Justice- Report, in Council of Europe, Historical Research on Crime and Criminal Research. Reports presented to the Sixth Criminological colloquium, Strasbourg, 1985, p. 49-95.
Spierenburg, P., Deviance and Repression in the Netherlands. Historical Evidence and Contemporary Problems, Historical Social Research, 1986, 37, p. 4-16.
Spierenburg, P., The Prison Experience. Disciplinary Institutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 1991.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 123
Spierenburg, P., Elias and the History of Crime and Criminal Justice : a Brief Evaluation, I.A.H.C.C.J.-Bulletin, 1995, 20, p. 17-30.
Strayer, J.R., On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, Princeton, 1970.
Sundin, J., Current Trends in the History of Crime and Criminal Justice : Some Conclusions, with Special Reference to the Swedish Experience, Historical Social Research, 1990, 56, p. 184-196.
Thome, H., Gesellschafliche Modernisierung und Kriminalität. Zum Stand der sozialhistorischen Kriminalitätsforschung, Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 1992, 21, p. 212-228.
Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working-Class, London, 1963.
Thompson, E.P., Whigs and Hunters : the Origins of the Black Act, London, 1975.
Van der Wee, H., The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries), 3 vols., Paris-Louvain-The Hague, 1963.
Van Dülmen, R., Theatre of Horror. Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany, Cambridge, 1990. [Translated from : Theater des Schreckens. Gerichtspraxis und Strafrituale der frühen Neuzeit, Munich, 1985.].
Van Dülmen, R., Verbrechen, Strafen und soziale Kontrolle, Frankfurt am Main, 1990.
Vanhemelryck, F., De beul van Brussel en zijn werk, (XIVe-XIXe eeuw), in Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffenden de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 1964-1965, 19, p. 181-216.
Vanhemelryck, F., De Studie van de criminaliteit in het Ancien Régime, Stand van het onder-zoek en methode, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis, 1973, 56, p. 209-242.
Vanhemelryck, F., Misdaad en straf. Recent onderzoek naar de geschiedenis der criminaliteit, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 1978, 93, 2, p. 177-206.
Vries de, J., The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age 1500-1700, New Haven (Conn.), 1974.
Weisser, M.-R., Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe, Brighton, 1982 (2nd ed.).
Wijffels, A., L'histoire de la justice : les cours supérieures dans les Anciens Pays-Bas (15e-18e siècles), Tijdschrift voor Rechts geschiedenis-Legal History Review, 61-3 (1993), p. 387-400.
Wilson, S., Feuding, Conflict and Banditry in Nineteenth-Century Corsica, Cambridge, 1988.
Wirtz, R., Aspetti della storiografia tedesca sulla criminalità, Quaderni Storici, 1981, 46, p. 212-224.
Zorzi, A., Aspetti e problemi dell'amministrazione della giustizia penale nelle Repubblica fiorentina, Archivio storico italiano, 1987, 533, 145, p. 391-453 ; 1987, 534, p. 527-578.
Zorzi, A., Giustizia criminale e criminalità nell'Italia del tardo medioevo : Studi e prospettive di ricerca, Società e Storia, 1989, 46, p. 923-965.
Zorzi, A., Aspects de la justice criminelle dans les villes italiennes du bas moyen âge, Déviance et Société, 1991a, 15, 4, p. 439-454.
Zorzi, A., Tradizioni storiografiche e studi recenti sulla giustizia nell'Italia del Rinascimento, Cheiron, 1991b, 8, 16, p. 27-78.
Zorzi, A., Ordine pubblico e amministrazione della giustizia nelle formazioni politiche toscane tra Tre e Quattrocento, Italia 1350-1450 : tra crisi, trasformazione, sviluppo, Pistoia, 1993, p. 419-474.
Zorzi, A., The Judicial System in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, in Dean T., Lowe K.J.P., (eds.), Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, Cambridge, 1994, p. 40-58.
Zysberg, A., Les galériens. Vies et destins de 60000 forçats sur les galères de France, 1680-1748, Paris, 1987.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 124
NOTES
1. A shorter version of this article was presented at the First European Social Science History Conference at Noordwijkerhout, the 11th may 1996, during the Herman Diederiks Memorial Session. 2. Diederiks (1995, p. 16). 3. Diederiks, Faber (1978, p. 105). 4. Criminal Justice History, 1980,1. 5. IAHCCJ-Newsletter, IAHCCJ-Bulletin. 6. Sack (1987) ; Smaus (1987) ; Romer (1992) ; Schwerhoff (1992) ; Thome (1992) ; Blauert, Schwerhoff (1993) ; Eibach (1996). 7. Rousseaux, Emsley (1995). 8. Knafla (1996, p. 33). 9. Weisser (1982). 10. Faber (1983) ; Schnapper (1991). 11. Chaunu (1959) ; van der Wee (1963) ; De Vries (1974). 12. Goubert (1960) ; Bois (1960) ; Le Roy Ladurie (1966). 13. Mollat(1974). 14. Bercé, Castan (1990). 15. Le Roy Ladurie (1973) ; Chaunu (1981). 16. Braudel (1949). 17. Levy, Rousseaux (1992). 18. Macfarlane (1970), Ginzburg (1973) ; Muchembled (1994). 19. Diederiks, Faber (1978). 20. Coll. (1991). 21. Emsley,Knafla(1996). 22. Sharpe in Coll. (1991). 23. Bercé, Castan (1990) ; Bercé, Soman (1995). 24. Castan (1984) ; Spierenburg (1985). 25. Wijffels (1993). 26. Faber(1980). 27. Ginzburg (1980). 28. Macfarlane (1970) ; Corbin (1990). 29. De Win (1992). 30. Gatrell (1980) ; Beattie (1986). 31. Aubusson de Cavarlay et alii (forthcoming). 32. Aubusson de Cavarlay (1993). 33. Thome (1992) ; de la Croix, Rousseaux, Urbain (1996). 34. Beattie (1986) ; Shoemaker (1991). 35. Kitsuse, Cicourel (1963) ; Johnson (1990). 36. Thome (1992). 37. Rousseaux (1996). 38. Blok (1974) ; Wilson (1988). 39. Y.Castan (1974) ; Muchembled (1978) ; Dupont-Bouchat, Rousseaux (1989) ; Gauvard (1993). See also for Germany, Rummel in Blauert, Schwerhoff (1993, p. 86-136). 40. Farge (1974) ; Blasius (1975), Shoemaker (1991). 41. Lascoumes, Zander (1984), Mooser (1984). 42. Thompson (1975) ; Chaunu (1981). 43. Foucault (1975) ; Lagrange (1995). 44. Le Roy Ladurie (1975) ; Moore (1987).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 125
45. Dupont-Bouchat (1987), Castan (1979), Ankarloo-Henningsen (1990) ; Soman (1992), Muchembled (1994). 46. Schuster in Blauert, Schwerhoff (1993, p. 17-31). 47. Dufresne (1976). 48. Meer (van der) (1984). 49. Muchembled (1987). 50. Blasius (1983) ; Spierenburg (1995) ; Diederiks (1995). 51. Egmond (1993b). 52. Otis (1985) ; Rossiaud (1988). 53. Agulhon(1970a,b). 54. Hanawalt (1995). 55. Rousseaux, Emsley (1995). 56. Rusche, Kirchheimer, (1939). 57. Spierenburg (1984b) ; Van Dülmen (1990), Schwerhoff in Blauert, Schwerhoff (1993, p. 158-188). 58. Ignatieff (1978) ; Melossi, Pavarini (1981) ; Spierenburg (1984a) ; Petit (1990) ; Spierenburg (1991). 59. Rousseaux (1995 a). 60. Platelle (1971). 61. Lenman, Parker (1980). 62. Diederiks (1992b). 63. Lenman, Parker (1980). 64. Strayer (1970) ; Kaeuper (1988). 65. Coll. (1995). 66. Hook (1984) ; Kaeuper (1988) ; Gauvard (1991). 67. Zorzi (1987) ; Berents (1976, 1988). 68. Davis (1987). 69. Schnapper (1991), Beier (1985), Rousseaux (1989). 70. Zysberg (1987), Ekirch (1987). 71. Hobsbawm (1959, 1981) ; Ortalli (1986) ; Egmond (1993a). 72. Farge (1974) ; Corvol (1984) ; Shoemaker (1991) ; Root (1994). 73. Thompson (1975). 74. Ignatieff (1978) ; Petit (1990) ; Spierenburg (1991). 75. Dedieu (1989). 76. Vanhemelryck (1964-1965) ; Spierenburg (1984b) ; Van Dülmen (1990). 77. Evans (1984) ; Gatrell (1994) ; Huussen (1994). 78. Evans (1982) ; Jacob (1994) ; Jacob, Marchai (1992), De Win (1992). 79. Laslett (1965). 80. Muchembled (1978). 81. Johansen, Stevnsborg (1986). 82. Billacois, Neveux (1990) ; Bercé, Soman (1995). 83. Langbein (1974, 1977). 84. Genet (1990). 85. Rousseaux, Lévy (1997). 86. Lepetit (1995).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 126
ABSTRACTS
This article, prepared as a tribute to H.A. Diederiks, sketches a panorama of the research and writing of the history of crime in Europe since the 1960s. It begins by tackling the historiographical roots of this new area before moving on to discuss the kinds of sources which have been used and the ways in which they have been exploited. The principal results of thirty years of research into the profile of crime and criminals, of penal repression and the maintenance of order are traced.. Finally, a comparative reading of the contribution of the history of crime and criminal justice to social history, and of social history to the history of crime and justice urges a closer integration of penal history with social history.
En hommage à H.A.Diederiks, cofondateur de l'IAHCCJ, l'article brosse un panorama des tendances de l'histoire de la criminalité en Europe depuis les années soixante. Il aborde en premier les racines historiographiques de ce nouveau courant avant d'évoquer les sources analysées et des méthodes d'exploitation. Ensuite, il propose un parcours des principaux résultats de trente années de recherche dans le domaine des profils du crime, des criminels, de la répression et de l'ordre social. Il tente alors une lecture croisée des apports de l'histoire de la criminalité et de la justice criminelle à l'histoire sociale et de l'histoire sociale à l'histoire du crime et de la justice en plaidant pour l'intégration de l'histoire pénale dans l'histoire sociale.
AUTHORS
XAVIER ROUSSEAUX Chercheur qualifié du Fonds National belge de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) et chargé de cours invité à l'Université catholique de Louvain à Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgique). Il a récemment publié : « Pour une histoire de la justice pénale en Belgique (XIIIe-XXe siècles) », in Histoire et Justice, 1995-1996, 8-9, p. 113-147 ; « From Medieval Cities to National States 1350-1850. The Historiography of Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe », in C. Emsley, L. Knafla, (Eds.), Crime History and Histories of Crime. Studies in the Historiography of Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern History, Westport (Conn.), Greenwood Press, 1996, p. 3-32. Il travaille actuellement sur la place de la justice pénale dans le développement de l'Etat et la naissance des statistiques judiciaires en Europe.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 127
Forum
Compte rendu / Review
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 128
Schreiner (Klaus) & Schwerhoff (Gerd), (Eds.), Verletzte Ehre. Ehrkonflikte in Gesellschaften des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit Köln, Böhlau Verlag, 1995 (ISBN : 3-412-09095-6)
Pieter Spierenburg
REFERENCES
Schreiner (Klaus) & Schwerhoff (Gerd), (Eds.), Verletzte Ehre. Ehrkonflikte in Gesellschaften des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Köln, Böhlau Verlag, 1995 (ISBN : 3-412-09095-6).
1 Honor has recently become a hot topic among historians. Medievalists, of course, have been familiar with the subject for long, as a recurrent theme in the history of knightly behavior and chivalry. Increasingly, it is recognized that notions of honor were not restricted to the elites. Honor was equally important to persons from lower echelons of society. Court records were an important source in this respect and research in judicial archives has stimulated historians' interest in lower-class honor. In court cases, both offenders and plaintiffs may be motivated by honor : while some crimes were experienced by the victim as an encroachment upon his or her honor, other crimes were a way in which the defendant had sought to vindicate his or her honor. When we read carefully, often between the lines, in such cases, we can learn a lot about the mentality and world view of the actors involved. Among the pioneers of this approach are North American historians dealing with Europe (Natalie Davis, James Farr, Elizabeth and Thomas Cohen) and French historians like Robert Muchembled and Claude Gauvard. In Germany, representatives of the older tradition of gerechtliche Volkskunde (judicial folklore studies) already paid attention to popular conceptions of honor. German historians are now catching up ; scholars like Martin Dinges and Gerd Schwerhoff, both present in the volume reviewed here, already made important
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 129
contributions. In the Netherlands, finally, the interest in matters of honor is also on the rise, reflected by Hans de Waardt's presence in this volume.
2 The editors of this collection of essays explicitly criticize those approaches and theories -which they consider especially characteristic for sociologists- which fail to recognize that ordinary people have conceptions of honor. This does not mean that the collection focuses on ordinary people alone : aristocrats, even princes, get their due share of attention. Not every essay is based on court records. Especially for the articles dealing with the middle ages, familiar sources like chronicles, charters and courtly literature are still the most appropriate ones. For the remaining essays, judicial records were important in one way or another. The collection results from a conference held in 1993. Frank Henderson Stewart's book on the theory of honor appeared a year later, probably too late for the editors to take account of it. On the other hand, they do seem to be focused a little bit too much on German literature. When the editors discuss masculinity, I miss a reference to Robert Nye's work on France ; when they discuss the guilds and infamous occupations, I miss a reference to a work which, though published in 1971, still is an invaluable source of ideas : Mack Walker's German Home Towns. Both the editors and Dinges, finally, stress the novelty of rendering Bourdieu's concept of the capital of honor as Vermögen rather than Kapital. However, it is the Dutch sociologist Cees Schmidt who first translated Bourdieu's categories as vermogen (Om de Eer van de Familie, 1986).
3 The usual method employed by historians dealing with honor is that of interpretation. The author takes a particular incident, an exchange of words between two people in the street for example, and relates the events as far as the sources disclose them. Then the author proceeds to explain to the reader what everything means. The interpretation focuses on the ritual significance of words and gestures and the symbolic layers they touch upon. Certainly, this method has increased our understanding of the way in which men and women from various social groups in different societies experienced their world. So does this volume. Although the method in question carries the danger of over-interpretation, most contributions do not indulge in it. I, for one, have learned a lot from the authors.
4 Sometimes the interpretation extends to a sequence of events, as in Jörg Rogge's contribution on honor as a factor in political conflict in late medieval cities. Thus, a citizen of Stralsund from artisanal background became burgomaster in the late fourteenth century because of bis successful expedition against a group of pirates. His military success brought him honor, but this was resented by the old ruling families, whose honor was based on their patrician lineage. In Braunschweig, a century later, it was again a man from humble descent who penetrated the political elite, with a particular district of the town as his power base. His opponents drew on a rich repertoire of dishonorable symbols in an effort to damage his reputation and hence his position. Rogge's study of the cultural repertoire of honor is especially insightful, because it is firmly embedded in an analysis of social relations.
5 Other remarkable contributions include Robert Jütte's article on notions of honor in Jewish communities in the German-speaking world. This is a subject not much investigated yet. Jütte concludes, among other things, that among Jews honor was less tied to a person's status position and more to his reputation and his religious qualities. Valentin Groebner's contribution is valuable because it touches on female honor. He relates how, in Nürnberg around 1500, unchaste women stood the risk of having their
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 130
nose injured, in a few cases even cut off. Usually, this was done by a woman to another woman who had an affair with her husband. As an explicitly physical act of defamation, this is a telling example of honor's - also female honor's - association with the body. Schwerhoff shows how a 'honorific' interpretation can put a traditional subject in a new light. Blasphemy, he argues, was considered by contemporaries primarily as an encroachment upon God's honor. Since God never showed up to demand satisfaction from the person insulting him, earthly judges acted as his stand-in. Punishment for blasphemy, then, was seen as the ultimate act of honorific violence : God's revenge upon his defamator. Not every contribution, to be sure, strikes me as novel. Burghartz's article on female honor, for example, is based on the marital court of Basel, already studied by Safley (Let No Man Put Asunder, 1984). Burghartz's data do not seem to add much to Safley's study.
6 My only other point of criticism concerns the relative lack of an analysis of long-term historical change. In their introduction, the editors reject a simple theory of modernization, in which the market takes the place of honor as the focus of orientation for modern people's behavior. I agree. But what about long-term changes in conceptions of honor ? De Waardt's contribution, one of the few with a mostly theoretical character, highlights the difficulties stemming from an approach based on a static and closed anthropological universe. His problem is straightforward : why is it that an insult to honor must be revenged by violence ? To answer that question, in my opinion, the historical-anthropological analysis of Anton Blok (which De Waardt mentions just in passing, to criticize a point of detail) cannot be ignored. Instead, he tries his luck with Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, in particular their well- known concept of liminality. Turner's theory, De Waardt says, has had an ever- increasing success. Indeed, I would say, its success paradoxically implies its failure : every group, event, place, etc. can easily be described as liminal ; everything can be liminal, so the concept is worthless. De Waardt's conclusion, that an injury to a person's honor and an injury to his bodily integrity are both liminal acts, does not have much explanatory value. The essentially static theory of 'liminality' cannot account for changes in notions of honor ; it fails to acknowledge that the ties between violence and honor may become loosened in particular societies.
7 Despite these points of criticism, this is an important book. The editors have done a good job in putting together a set of coherent essays (the subdivision of themes may have been invented at the last moment, because it is only to be found in the table of contents, not in the text). Although a bibliography is lacking, this is compensated by the fact that abbreviated citations in footnotes always refer the reader to the note giving the full citation. I recommend the book to everyone interested in socio-cultural history.
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 131
AUTHORS
PIETER SPIERENBURG Universitair Hoofddocent at the Department of History, Erasmus University, Rotterdam (Netherlands) ; secretary and cofounder (1978) of the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice ; research director of the program on Group Cultures of the N.W. Posthumus Institute. He is author of : The Spectacle of Suffering. Executions and the Evolution of Repression : From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1984) ; The Broken Spell. A Cultural and Anthropological History of Preindustrial Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers U.P. and London, Macmillan, 1991) ; The Prison Experience. Disciplinary Institutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, London, Rutgers University Press, 1991) ; « Long-Term Trends in Homicide. Theoretical Reflections and Dutch Evidence, Fifteenth to Twentieth Centuries », in Johnson (E. A.), Monkkonen (E. H.), (eds.), The Civilization of Crime. Violence in Town and Country since the Middle Ages (Urbana, Chicago, 1996, p. 63-105). He presently works on the history of violence and its socio-cultural context from a long term perspective.Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherland
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 132
Informations
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 133
Livres reçus / Books received
50 Jahre Justiz in NRW, Juristische Zeitgeschichte, 1996, 5, 224 p. (Justizministerium des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen). Association Française pour l'Histoire de la Justice, L'épuration de la magistrature, de la Révolution à la Libération, (Histoire de la Justice, n° 6), Paris, Éditions Loysel, 1993, 168 p. (ISBN 2-907679-22-B). Berlière (Jean-Marc), Le monde des polices en France XIXe-XXe siècles, Bruxelles, Complexe, 1996, 275 p. (ISBN 2-87027-641-9). Cartuyvels (Yves), D'où vient le code pénal ? Une approche généalogique des premiers codes pénaux absolutistes au XVIIIe siècle, Paris-Bruxelles, De Boeck Université, Les Presses de l'U. de Montréal/Les Presses de l'U.d'Ottawa, 1996, 404 pp. (ISBN 2-8041-2360-X/ 2-7606-1686-9/2-7603-0432-X). Chauvaud (Frédéric), avec la collaboration de Yvorel (Jacques), Le juge, le tribun et le comptable. Histoire de l'organisation judiciaire entre les pouvoirs, les savoirs et les discours (1789-1930), Paris, Anthropos, 1995, 413 p. (ISBN 2 7178 2902 4). Conflictividad y represión en la sociedad moderna, Estudis, Revista de historia moderna, 1996, 22, 318 p. (ISSN 0210-9093). Courtwright (David T.), Violent Land. Single men and social disorder from the frontier to the inner city, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard U.P., 1996, 357 p. (ISBN 0-674-27870-4). Dupont-Bouchat (Marie-Sylvie), coll. Alexandre (Fabienne), Strimelle (Véronique), De la prison à l'école. Les pénitenciers pour enfants en Belgique au XIXe siècle (1840-1914), Heule (Belgique), UGA, 1996 (Anciens pays et assemblées d'états XCLX),350 p. (ISBN 90-6768-210-1). Farcy (Jean-Claude), Deux siècles d'histoire de la justice en France. Notices bibliographiques, Paris, CNRS Editions, 1996 (CD-ROM, ISBN 2 271 05304 8). Farcy (Jean-Claude), Les camps de concentration français de la Première Guerre mondiale (1914-1920), Paris, Anthropos, 1995 (ISBN 2 7178 2788 9). Faugeron (Claude), Chauvenet (Antoinette), Combessie (Philippe), (Dir.), Approches de la prison, Paris-Bruxelles, De Boeck Université, Les Presses de l'U. de Montréal/Les Presses de l'U. d'Ottawa, 1996, 368 p. (ISBN 2-8041-2430-4/ 2-7606-1694-0/ 2-7603-0438-8).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997 134
Franke (Herman), The Emancipation of Prisoners. A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Dutch Prison Experience, Edinburgh, Edinburgh U.P. (ISBN 0-7486-0614-9), 1995, 365 p. . Garnot (Benoît), (Dir.), L'infrajudiciaire du Moyen Age à l'époque contemporaine, Dijon, Publications de l'Université de Bourgogne LXXXI, Éditions Universitaires de Dijon, 1996, 477 p. (ISBN 2-905965-09-6). Gatrell (V.A.C.), The Hanging Tree. Execution and the English People, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. Gilman Srebnick (Amy), The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers. Sex and Culture in Nineteenth- century New York, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995, ix-218 p. (ISBN 0 19 506237 X). Kingston (Rebecca), Montesquieu and the Parlement of Bordeaux, Genève, Droz, 1996, 336 p. (ISBN 2 600 00161 1). Laberge (Danielle), Marginaux et marginalité. Les États-Unis aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, Paris, L'Harmattan (Logiques sociales/Déviance & Société), 1997, 279 p. (ISBN 2 7384 5087 3). Lenoir (Rémi), Tsikounas (Myriam), Yvorel (Jean-Jacques), (Dir.), Michel Foucault, « Surveiller et punir » : la prison vingt ans après, Sociétés & Représentations (CRED-HESS, 1996, 3, 444 p. Lorgnier (Jacques), Martinage (Renée), Royer (Jean-Pierre), (Dir.), Justice & République(s), Hellemes (France), Ester-L'espace juridique, s.d. (ISBN 2 908510 12 X). Lüdtke (Alf), (Dir.), Histoire du quotidien, Paris, Ed. de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1994, xii-341 p. (ISBN 2 7351 0459 1). Monjardet (Dominique), Ce que fait la police. Sociologie de la force publique, Paris, La Découverte, 1996, 316 p. (ISBN 2 7071 2552 0). NS-Verbrechen und Justiz, Juristische Zeitgeschichte, 1996, 4, 278 p. (Justizrmnisterium des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen). Petit (Jacques-Guy), Marec (Yannick), (Dir.), Le social dans la ville en France et en Europe 1750-1914, Paris, Les éditions de l'Atelier, 1996, 351 p. (ISBN 2 7082 3210 X). Porret (Michel), (Dir.), Beccaria et la culture juridique des Lumières, Genève, Droz (Travaux d'histoire éthico-politique LVI), 1997, 316 p. (ISBN 2-600-00176-X).
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 1, n°1 | 1997