Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies

Vol. 14, n°2 | 2010 Varia

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chs/1181 DOI : 10.4000/chs.1181 ISSN : 1663-4837

Éditeur Librairie Droz

Édition imprimée Date de publication : 1 décembre 2010 ISBN : 978-2-600-01470-0 ISSN : 1422-0857

Référence électronique Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 14, n°2 | 2010 [En ligne], mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2013, consulté le 28 septembre 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chs/1181 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/chs.1181

Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 28 septembre 2020.

© Droz 1

SOMMAIRE

Articles

Urban Heroes versus Folk Devils: Civilian Self-Defence in London (1880-1914) Emelyne Godfrey

The ‘Non-Criminal’ Class: Wife-beating in Scotland (c. 1800-1949) Annmarie Hughes

“But we Will Always Have to Individualise”. Police Supervision of Released Prisoners, its ‘Crisis’ and Reform in Prussia (1880-1914) Philipp Müller

The Life of an Unknown Assassin: Leon Czolgosz and the Death of William McKinley Cary Federman

Dreaming about the prison: Édouard Ducpétiaux and Prison Reform in Belgium (1830-1848) Bert Vanhulle

Comptes rendus / Reviews

Jäger (Jens), Verfolgung durch Verwaltung: Internationales Verbrechen und internationale Polizeikooperation 1880-1933 Konstanz, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006, 424 pp., ISBN 3-89669-568-1 Anja Johansen

Kidambi (Prashant), The Making of an Indian Metropolis. Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890-1920 Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007, 268 pp., ISBN 978-0-7546-5612-8 Emmanuel Blanchard

Critchley (David), The Origin of Organized Crime in America. The New York City Mafia (1891-1931) New York, London, Routledge, 2009, 347 pp., ISBN 9780415 990301 Laurence Montel

Bergère (Marc), Le Bihan (Jean), Fonctionnaires dans la tourmente. Épurations administratives et transitions politiques à l’époque contemporaine Genève, Georg, 2009, 299 pp., ISBN 978 2 8257 0976 4 Jonas Campion

McRorie Higgins (Peter), Punish or Treat ? Medical Care in English Prisons 1770-1850 Oxford, Trafford Publishing, 2007, 283 pp. , 32 illustrations, ISBN 4251 01534 Michel Porret

Chauvaud (Frédéric), Justice et déviance l’époque contemporaine. L’imaginaire, l’enquête et le scandale Rennes, PUR, « Histoire », 2007, 392 pp. Dominique Kalifa

Rafter (Nicole), The Origins of Criminology. A Reader Edited by Nicole Rafter, Oxon, New York, Routledge, 2009, 348 pp., avec quelques illustrations, ISBN 980415 451123 Michel Porret

Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 14, n°2 | 2010 2

Nootens (Thierry), Fous, prodigues et ivrognes. Familles et déviance à Montréal au XIXe siècle Montréal et Kingston, London, Ithaca, McGill-Quenn’s University Press, 2007, 308 pp. , 12 tableaux statistiques, ISBN 9780773 531840 Michel Porret

Cicchini (Marco) et Porret (Michel), Les sphères du pénal avec Michel Foucault. Histoire et sociologie du droit de punir Lausanne, Antipodes, 2007, 303 pp., ISBN 9782940 146864 David Niget

Fijnaut (Cyrille), A history of the Dutch police Amsterdam, Boom Publishers, 2009, 203 pp. , ISBN 9 789085 064565 Jonas Campion

Gauvard (Claude), Violence et ordre public au Moyen Âge (Les médiévistes français, 5) Paris, Picard, 2005, 288 pp., ISBN 27084 07392 Philippe Genequand

Rigakos (George S.), McMullan (John L.), Johnson (Joshua), Ozcan (Gulden) (eds), A General Police System: Political Economy and Security in the Age of the Enlightenment Ottawa, Red Quill Books, 2009, 302 pp., ISBN 978 0 9812807 0 7 Clive Emsley

« Norbert Elias et le XXe siècle. Le processus de civilisation à l’épreuve » Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 2010, n° 106, avril-juin Emmanuel Blanchard

Bethencourt (Francisco), The Inquisition. A Global History, 1478-1834 translated by Jean Birrell, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009, Xii+491pp., including 40 b&w Plates, ISBN 978-0-521-74823-0 (pb) Christopher F. Black

Becker (Peter) and Wetzell (Richard F.), Criminals and their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 492 pp., ISBN 0-521-81012-4 (PB); 978-0-521-81012-8 (HB) Anja Johansen

Informations diverses

Livres reçus

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Articles

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Urban Heroes versus Folk Devils: Civilian Self-Defence in London (1880-1914)

Emelyne Godfrey

Introduction

1 The publication of Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903; hereafter AEH) coincided with the increasing movement against the use of offensive weapons and the development of martial arts in Britain. In ‘AEH’, Doyle not only recounts Sherlock Holmes’s resurrection from his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls, but also describes his defeat of Professor Moriarty’s bastardly associate, Colonel Moran. Martin Wiener has promoted the use of literature alongside other sources for the purpose of studying nineteenth-century crime, arguing that ‘the cultural imagination of great crimes offers historians rich texts for interpretation’2. The Sherlock Holmes canon and AEH in particular is not only inspired by and reflects contemporary crimes and methods of detection but was also directly influenced by trends in urban self-defence and, together with textual and material sources, is pertinent to an analysis of the shift in attitudes to the limits of violence and what constituted acceptable methods of self-defence.

2 This article responds to Martin Wiener’s important study, Men of Blood, and seeks to build on his work on the ‘civilizing offensive’ as it related to attitudes towards personal protection. There is much to say on the proliferation of women’s self-defence during the 1900s; however, due to space constraints, I have focussed on exploring the masculine response to street violence. As Wiener demonstrates, throughout the nineteenth century property crimes were treated more leniently than previously while acts of violence, particularly those committed by men, were increasingly harshly punished. The growing interest in personal protection from the late-Victorian era onwards coincided curiously with what Clive Emsley has observed as a downturn in the reported cases of violence and theft, most notably homicide, from the 1850s until well

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into the twentieth century3. However, an apprehension of violence, committed by the inhabitants of what Dr Watson terms the ‘dark jungle of criminal London’4 remained. At the same time, concerns over and interest in the tension between civilisation and aggression were manifested in a growing cultural obsession at the fin de siècle with the figure of the gentleman-villain. R. L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1885) is one of the most famous examples of novels and plays in which the respectable man with a dark side played a dominant role. The gentleman-villain also featured in bestsellers such as the Holmes adventures, Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan (1895), and The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) by Anthony Hope. This fascination with the darker side of the civilized exterior was likely informed by shifts in attitudes towards crime and criminals so that the focus shifted from linking whole classes to particular crimes to studying individual cases5.

3 Wiener has classified nineteenth-century manliness in terms of the ‘man of blood’, who could be the gentleman-villain of melodrama or the violent criminal, and the violence- averse ‘reasonable man’, who was resolved on ‘exercising greater restraint and settling more disputes non-violently’6. This dichotomy is useful in interpreting attitudes that informed the public imagination. However, Wiener’s dichotomy does not take into account other masculinities and a study of attitudes towards self-defence tells us that there was a third type, which I will call the ‘assertive’ model. As this article will demonstrate, this model of middle-class masculinity was restrained by the ethos of the civilizing offensive but at the same time informed by turn-of-the-century interpretations of traditional forms of male gallantry. Furthermore, this new culture of self-defence offered a way of negotiating the tension between self-restraint and violence.

Crime and the city

4 The way in which the rapidly expanding city was imagined influenced perceptions of the self, and informed attitudes towards physical threat. At the turn of the century, over 1 million pedestrians, including employers, employees (both female and male) and visitors, entered the City of London on a daily basis7, forcing commuters into packed spaces. As Georg Simmel observed in Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), for the city-goer, emotions must be switched off in order to comprehend the hectic surroundings, forcing an ‘intellectualism of existence’. Amid the jostle, the pedestrian shrinks into himself and there is no room for individuality, only reserve. However, behind the eyes of the commuter lies the emotional need for self-differentiation, to stand out from the crowd. At the same time, Simmel argues that the façade of indifference masked anxiety: ‘The inner side of this external reserve is not only indifference but more frequently than we believe, it is a slight aversion, a mutual strangeness and repulsion which, in a close contact which has arisen any way whatever, can break out into hatred and conflict’8. The daily commute was represented as a potentially perilous journey in which ‘all the murderers, forgers, embezzlers, and assaulters whose crimes escape[d] detection altogether…[elbowed respectable passers-by] about in the streets of this and other towns every day of [their] lives’9. The British garotting panics of the 1850s and early 1860s10 had predominantly been the culmination of fears over personal security in an urban context and were expressed in the manufacture of fanciful street weaponry as well as the toughening of punishments for crimes with robbery with strangulation.

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Richard Sennett has argued that the fear of violence was woven into the structure of the modern city, in the building of walls, roads and safe havens11. Yet, various late- Victorian crime panics showed that these boundaries could be traversed by criminals. Spates of armed burglaries during this decade suggested that suburban householders were not safe from the dangers of the criminal classes while the further dynamite attacks of the 1880s gave force to the idea of an ever-present physical danger, which literally ripped through the walls of Victoria Station and Scotland Yard.

5 Charles Booth’s investigation into the social composition of the metropolis and the striking visual maps which resulted from his findings had shown that there were pockets of poverty in even the wealthiest areas of London; however, the imaginary boundary drawn between East and West in the popular consciousness persisted. As Jack London learnt to his surprise, the tour company Thomas Cook’s could take him to Africa or the Far East, but the East End remained a mystery12. During the Whitechapel Murders of autumn 1888, residents of West London were concerned about catching the omnibus – there were easy connections from Kensington to Whitechapel which broke down that ‘wall’ that divided London – in case they found themselves in Whitechapel13. The ghastly nature of the murders was accented by the fact that murder rates were falling and Britain was perceived to be becoming more civilized: ‘It cannot but be a deep humiliation to every Londoner who has heretofore taken a just pride in the many evidences of a high civilisation abounding in the English capital to recognise the terrible fact that murder after murder can be perpetrated in our very midst, so to speak, undetected and unpunished’14. There were limits as to how quickly the police could respond to violent crime in the streets. Forced to run to destinations and without the use of a siren, police response was in general slow, and, as with the garotting panics, officers arrived on the scene long after the offence had already been committed. In response, the Star issued a call to civilians: ‘Up, citizens, then, and do your own police work!’15 The murders inspired the formation of local watch patrols such as that run by Toynbee Hall volunteers in the East End, with the purpose of protecting residents and catching the killer.

Firearms at the fin de siècle

6 For Sennett, ‘the fear of exposure’ (which he defines as a horror of injury) leads to ‘a militarized conception of everyday experience as though attack-and-defense is as apt a model of subjective life as it is of warfare’16. Sennett’s ‘attack-and-defense’ dynamic was readily discernible in the design of what I argue constituted nineteenth-century ‘body armour’, used during the garotting panics discussed below. When the city and its facilities were perceived to be insufficient, weapons psychologically walled in civilians, protecting them from violent attackers. A wave of burglaries in the 1880s contributed to weapons, particularly firearms, becoming fashion accessories. Indeed, according to The Times, civilians17 of all classes were now carrying firearms and a veritable fashion was set with the result that ‘a revolver [became] as necessary a companion as an umbrella’18. It is not known how many guns were kept in Britain, but by the second half of the Victorian era, guns ‘were reasonably accessible to everybody’19. According to a Parliamentary debate, firearms injuries ‘were to be counted by hundreds’20. One image of the Black Museum which appeared in the Illustrated London News at the turn of the

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century shows an array of firearms of varying sizes, suggesting that there was an abundance of such weapons21.

7 The Sherlock Holmes canon is replete with a plethora of weapons, either everyday objects adapted for defence and attack or purpose-built articles such as knuckledusters and cudgels. As weapons historian, Lewis Winant, commented in 1955: ‘Knife pistols and cane guns belong to our fathers’ and grandfathers’ days’22. Weapons included the combination six-shot revolver, knife and knuckleduster from 1890, manufactured by the Belgian firm, Dolne23 and purchased by wealthier middle-class customers, often whilst abroad in the two major manufacturing countries of combination weapons, France and Belgium24. Other bizarre devices available in Britain included the Frankenau combination pocket book and revolver and the knife pistol by a successful British knife company, Unwin and Rodgers25. Catherine Dike’s lavishly illustrated history of novelty, multifunctional walking-sticks, Cane Curiosa: From Gun to Gadget (1983), shows that gun- canes as well as swordsticks were in abundance in the late-Victorian era. These items could be purchased at James Smith, the New Oxford Street emporium, which has retained its original frontage, advertising ‘sword sticks’ and ‘dagger canes’, constituting a marker of the attitudes towards urban danger taken by past inhabitants of London.

8 Firearms historians concur that firearms were ‘plentifully available’ and that attempts to restrict the age of ownership and size of weapons met with limited success26. True control did not begin until the Firearms Act of 1920, passed in the wake of the First World War in which more weapons had become available to ex-soldiers. As Malcolm has argued in her oft-quoted book: ‘The nineteenth century ended with firearms plentifully available while rates of armed crime had been declining and were to reach a record low. Even those prone to magnify crime were struck throughout the century by the low level of violence’27. Malcolm quotes a nineteenth-century lawyer, James Paterson, who argued that ‘the right of each to carry arms […] and these the best and the sharpest […] for his own protection in case of extremity, is a right of nature indelible and irrepressible, and the more it is sought to be repressed, the more it will recur’28. The case law in this area is summarised in the R v Rose29 of 1884 when Lopes J stated that ‘homicide is excusable if a person takes away the life of another in defending himself, if the fatal blow which takes away life is necessary for his preservation … [or] for the preservation of life [of another]’. However, the perpetrator can only avail of this defence if he ‘acted without vindictive feeling’ and at the time honestly believed (and had reasonable grounds for such belief), that life was in imminent peril’ and the act was ‘absolutely necessary for the preservation… [of] life’. R v Rose involved patricide, where the young male defendant was held to have committed excusable homicide on the ground of self-defence, when he shot his father who was attacking his mother. However, before coming to the conclusion that the law readily supported the use of firearms, it should be noted that in R v Rose the victim was described by his employer as ‘the strongest man he had ever seen’ and the defendant was relatively weak, which may well have influenced the conclusion that the use of firearms was justifiable.

9 It is not the aim of this article to dispute whether or not gun ownership led to lower levels of violent crime but rather to emphasize the way in which, despite the legality of owning firearms, pro-gun stances were strongly countered. For example, while she uses Paterson’s legal text, Malcolm does not include his later protest against the ‘right’ of civilians to be armed, his plea for ‘an end to the barbaric habit’ of carrying ‘daggers and

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loaded arms’ and his vision of a future society in which ‘each individual, inspired with his confidence, ceases thereafter to think of anything beyond more peaceful weapons’30. The 1895 Pistols Bill aimed to bestow on the police powers of searching individuals suspected of possessing firearms and to restrict the purchase of cheap pistols by imposing a licence fee. Malcolm suggests that despite vociferous objections, the Bill was submitted to the House of Lords where it floundered. As Malcolm concludes: ‘Even those prone to magnify crime were struck throughout the century by the low level of violence’31. Yet, this merely downplays the important and growing movement against the use of offensive weapons. In 1885, an editorial in The Times announced that: ‘An epidemic of revolvers and the violences attendant on the habit of carrying them has been ravaging the United Kingdom.’ The Times editorial offers a strong critique of this cultural climate, written during a time when, as Wiener has argued, displays of masculine violence were increasingly condemned. As the editorial in The Times states, negative effects of the ‘monstrous fashion’ of carrying guns was the risk to children as well as the possibility of accidental injury to the owner. Rash individuals could precipitate violent outbreaks with the effect that ‘a slight panic might produce a fusillade in the quietest street’32. Furthermore, the private member, the Marquess of Carmarthen, was influenced by press cuttings he had collected on firearms injuries and was moved to introduce the Pistols Bill in 1895 and told the House that judges, coroners and juries were sympathetic to his cause33.

10 Firearms were directly linked to acts of terrorism and burglary. An article in The Times lists the components of an unexploded device, believed to have been deposited by Fenian bombers in a portmanteau at Ludgate-hill Station: ‘A tin box containing an American clock, with a pistol attached to the back of the clock, a cake and three- quarters of Atlas powder; ten detonators were stuck into the cakes which were in the tin, and one in front of the muzzle of the pistol’34. In a set of features on the weapons kept in Scotland Yard, the Strand included a photograph of a similar clockwork machine which failed to detonate at Paddington Station35 (Figure 1). The pistol which formed part of the device is clearly visible and implies that while firearms could kill individuals, when wired into a particular contraption they could injure or maim countless numbers of commuters and pedestrians. As Wilkinson says, ‘it may well be that the growth of violence engendered by the actions of Irish terrorists, the Dynamiters and Fenians, created a stronger impression of fear’ and ‘may have caused those in power to view the ownership of arms by the public as a potential threat’36, and consequently give bad press to firearms. The Strand also featured an article on the firearms used in burglaries, referring to specific crimes in which pistols and other weapons were used in the 1880s.37 Having seen the ‘interesting collection of burglars’ weapons’ at Scotland Yard, the Undersecretary for the Home Department, George Russell, was convinced that ‘the use of pistols by that class of criminals was largely on the increase’38.

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Figure 1: Anonymous, Dynamiters (1894, p. 126).

11 Debates ensued over whether police officers should be armed with handguns. According to Wilkinson: ‘When armed crime apparently flared in the 1880s there were indications that the public would prefer to see the police armed rather than trying to stop people acquiring firearms’39. Punch displayed many cartoons of policemen insufficiently equipped to deal with violence. ‘An Unequal Match’ depicts a housebreaker pointing a revolver at the policeman who is armed only with a truncheon40. In 1889, Mr Punch lectures three police officers: ‘Now, my fine fellows, this is how I should like to see you, armed, hunting in threes; you’ll be even with the rascals, and then a taste of this will finish the scare as it did Garrotting’41. Officers on night beats in London’s suburbs – where burglary appears to have been more likely – were equipped with firearms42 although support for their use was contested within the force. Despite the persuasions of Mr Punch’s satire, only fifty percent of officers based in the outskirts of London voted to be equipped with firearms43. Senior policemen discouraged the junior ranks from applying for guns and while some officers did train, only two thirds of these went on to bear arms on their beats. Even those who did, were often disinclined to use them and, in any case, they were only permitted to use them for self-defence44.

12 In the Holmes stories published prior to ‘AEH’, Holmes does carry and use firearms. Peter Hitchens has argued that ‘Sherlock Holmes frequently set out on his private missions with a revolver, as did his colleague, Dr Watson’ and concludes that ‘it is quite clear from the stories that the author expects his readers to think this is entirely normal and legal’45. Holmes would have possessed a regulation firearm, the widely favoured Webley Metro-Police46. However, his use of firearms is infrequent and never disproportionate to the threat except when challenged by dart-wielding Tonga in ‘The Sign of Four’ (1890), a criminal with a life-preserver in ‘The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet’ (1892) and Moriarty in ‘The Adventure of the Final Problem’ (1893). In ‘The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual’ (1893; hereafter AMR) the gun is used as a declaration of Holmes’s support for his Queen and country. Watson describes how ‘with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges’ Holmes decorated the wall ‘with a patriotic V.R. done in bullet-pocks’47. The scene in AMR is less a support for firearms

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than an indictment of regicide in which Holmes marks out his support for the Queen by employing a weapon often used to target the monarch. During the Boer War, Doyle expressed support for the creation of a rifle corps to defend British interests abroad although ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ (1901-02) warns against the use of firearms for individual self-defence. When Watson chases a man across the moor who he believes is a convict, he desists from using his pistol: ‘I had brought it only to defend myself if attacked, and not to shoot an unarmed man who was running away’48. Here, Watson measures manliness by his awareness of appropriate self-defence. In addition, this scene emphasizes the perils of using firearms as the fleeing man was indeed a convict but could have been Holmes who was also exploring the moor.

13 The incursion of street dangers in the domestic milieu is emphasized in AEH when Ronald Adair is killed in his home by a bullet which was mysteriously fired into his room. The murder scene is reminiscent of the killing of Mary Kelly, the last of the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper. Adair’s face is badly mutilated by a weapon of which there is no trace: His head had been horribly mutilated by an expanding revolver bullet, but no weapon of any sort was to be found in the room […]. No one had heard a shot. And yet there was the dead man, and there the revolver bullet, which had mushroomed out, as soft-nosed bullets will, and so inflicted a wound which must have caused instantaneous death49. Adair’s killer, Colonel Moran, formerly of Her Majesty’s Indian Army, also targets 221B Baker Street, shooting what he believes is Holmes but which is, in fact, a wax effigy, left by the detective to fool Moran. Adair’s grisly death reminds the reader what might have happened to Holmes in his domestic sanctum; however, Holmes has his revenge. Unknown to Moran, Holmes and Watson creep up behind him while he waits at the window of the empty house opposite 221B, preparing to aim. After grappling with Moran, Holmes and Watson hand the colonel over to the police.

14 As Holmes learns, the weapon Moran uses to murder Adair is an airgun, a weapon of stealth, cunningly adapted by a malevolent German scientist, employed by Holmes’s nemesis, the arch-criminal, Professor Moriarty, to contain the controversial soft-nosed ‘dum-dum’ bullet. These projectiles explode inside the body, leaving a ghastly exit wound. They were outlawed at the Hague Convention in 1899, although the British delegation, together with the representatives of the United States and Portugal (which abstained), did not sign Declaration VI, which related to the forbearance of the use of such expanding bullets50. Doyle was appalled by the use of these bullets by the British army against ‘white races’ during the Boer War51. He was possibly expressing the gravity of this offence to the general public when he had Holmes, who was practically a national hero, stalked by a killer armed with dum-dums. Moran embodies what Wiener has termed the violent ‘empire man’, the imperial equivalent of the man of blood. By contrast, Holmes represents the assertive home Englishman who is nevertheless ready to fight using his body and intellect against homeward-bound criminals. Moran’s sentinel, Parker, is a ‘garroter by trade’52. What permeated these widely held comments was a nightmarish vision of exiled masculinities returning with a vengeance. In a poignant manner, Holmes’s victory over his imperial rival and his lowly garotter- associate is signalled by the relegation of Moran’s airgun to Scotland Yard’s Black Museum, thereby transforming what was formerly a threat to the nation into a mere museum curiosity.

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Hooligans and urban gladiators

15 The fascination with self-defence using the body and everyday items was not new to the 1890s. For instance, during the London Monster panic of the 1790s, the press lampooned women’s attempts at personal protection from the Monster’s knife by wearing copper bottoms53. In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, the prominent boxing journalist, Pierce Egan, wrote extensively on combat and self-defence. As John Strachan has recently shown, he shared a passion with his contemporaries, Lord Byron, J.H. Reynolds and Thomas Moore, for writing poetry inspired by the boxing ring54. What distinguishes the 1890s to the pre-war years is the rapid growth of interest in and increased availability of British and ‘exotic’ methods of responding to interpersonal violence using the minimum of force. Despite the title, Wiener’s Men of Blood is more concerned with masculine restraint, emphasizing the legal and social consequences that followed expressions of passionate anger. This section argues that concerns over urban crime, ‘hooliganism’, stimulated a vibrant culture of self-defence which not only aimed to tackle the problem of street violence from ground-level but also negotiated the gap between the ‘man of blood’ and the ‘reasonable man’. The figure of the flâneur features often in studies on city life and gender in the long nineteenth century and defined as an impartial spectator of urban life. However, the vast collection of literature on self-defence which was produced during this time shows how the city was not only observed but also experienced in a multi-sensory level and also raises the question as to how it is really possible to feel distanced from one’s environment with the attendant risk of crime and physical danger.

16 Bartitsu’s appearance was timely, following the 1898 August Bank Holiday in which the ‘hooligan’ was identified as a public threat. According to PMG: ‘The chief objects of the promoters [of Bartitsu] […] is to provide a means whereby the higher classes of society may protect themselves from the attacks of Hooligans and their like all over the world’ 55. As Geoffrey Pearson shows, these urban gangs were a new form of folk devil, descendants of the mid-Victorian garotter. While the hooligan may have been armed with clubs, knuckles, iron bars and leather belts, Pearson doubts that he carried firearms56 although the press did represent him as a threatening presence: ‘When he attacks a man he frequently does so for the mere sake of injuring him. The police, of course are too often the victims of these desperados’57. As Wood says, ‘savagery brought clarity to the civilized identity’58 and it is likely that the Hooligan scares promoted the expression of English gentlemanliness in response to violence of the lower classes. These scares also supported the growth of a burgeoning culture of ‘British’ self-defence which avoided the aggressive and increasingly unmanly action of using a firearm against an opponent equipped only with basic weapons, an approach which offered readers a method of asserting themselves in the face of the rascally violence against which the police officer might have struggled.

17 The culture of self-defence represented sheer masculine physical energy during a time of growing concern over the decline of the British Empire and the deleterious effects of civilization on the nation’s health, a fear realised when the shocking physical condition of Boer War recruits was made apparent. The eminent Surgeon-Commandant of the Volunteer Medical Staff Corps, James Cantlie, warned his audience in 1885 that degeneration occurs when ‘luxury in families or nations begets sloth in the unwise, and exercise of all kinds becomes to be considered vulgar’59. He was concerned about the

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state of city dwellers, particularly Londoners, due to the poor air quality in the metropolis. This problem was compounded by the over-reliance on modern machinery for labour and travel: ‘Muscle now-a-days is at a discount; brain power is what is sought for […] but as it requires a healthy heart to give forth a normal sound, so it requires a healthy brain to beget wise thoughts’60. Cantlie looked to Rome and to Spain, arguing that decadent lifestyles had resulted in the demise of these once great international leaders. Concerns over the proliferation of ‘effeminate’, domesticated masculinity were, as Julie English Early has argued, reflected in contemporary novels, most notably those by George Gissing61. A few years later, in ‘Zoological Retrogression’, Gissing’s friend, H. G. Wells, argued that the British Empire, let alone the human race, could not be complacent about being on an upward path. Wells argued that when the ‘respectable citizen of the professional classes’ becomes domesticated and tamed, his ambitions ‘atrophy’ and he ‘lives an almost vegetative excrescence on the side of the street’62. Wells’s bleak conclusion was famously articulated in the futuristic dystopia presented in The Time Machine (1895) in which human society has been split so that the feeble, idle Eloi are haunted by the carnivorous Morlocks that prowl beneath their feet and occasionally come to the surface to claim a victim63. For Wells, a healthy individual also needed imagination and flair, a point which he expressed in The War of the Worlds, when he refers derisively to ‘all those damn little clerks’, wife-fearing, flabby workers, without ‘spirit’ who ‘skedaddle’ obediently to their workplaces in the metropolis64. Thus, despite being white, male and middle-class, the city worker, particularly the clerk, is too harassed and henpecked to be the top of the hegemonic masculine hierarchical order. While urban living offered opportunities, it could sap vital energy and, as Wells advises, the modern man should guard against such dangers.

18 Tom Brown’s Schooldays is generally considered to represent popular notions of middle- class physical capability, promoting the idea that the English gentleman was expected to be able to defend himself with his fists if called on to do so, to ‘speak up, and strike out if necessary for whatsoever is true and manly, and lovely, and of good report’65. As Dennis W. Allen argues, it is the middle-class body in the novel that symbolizes Englishness66. Quite possibly, Hughes attempted to redress the problem that, as Anthony Simpson has observed of the 1840s, ‘instantaneous heroism’ was not readily associated with the middle class67. Yet, concerns persisted over the middling man’s ability to defend himself, a worry which was apparent in the sheer number of sensational press depictions during the garotting panics of mainly middle-class victims68. As the discussions on degeneration above illustrate, this fear had not abated by the end of the century. Furthermore, in his helpful survey of late-Victorian boxing, Stan Shipley has observed that while many boxing managers were middle-class, university graduates and army officers were not national champions and that the middle class did not appear to ‘shine as exemplars of physical courage and endurance’ 69.

19 As Wood tells us, bourgeois culture was based on self-restraint and passion ‘was often linked directly to violence’70. However, this does not consider the presence of masculinities based on the articulation of emotion. E. Anthony Rotundo has shown how American writers returned to nature in order to test modern physical manliness. Rotundo posits three models of middle-class manliness: the Masculine Achiever, the Masculine Gentleman and the Masculine Primitive. The last category ‘asserted its power in the private writings of the middle class’ in the 1860s and was a response to sedentary, bourgeois white-collar professional life. The rugged Wild West provided the

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inspiration for the formulation of such ‘Primitive’ masculinities based on physical strength and the capacity to survive. As Rotundo points out: ‘Suddenly passions and impulses had become a valued part of a man’s character’71. In the late-Victorian era, the press recast encounters with urban criminals as a tussle between the educated, courageous man and a wild beast, the battle between the ‘civilized’ and the ‘savage’. Such imagery was not unique to the turn of the century. By way of illustration, garotters in the 1850s and 1860s had often been likened to tigers, ‘specimens of the true Bengal breed72. Yet, the turn of the century, readers were offered a dizzying array of gladiatorial fantasies of gentleman versus criminal. Most famously, Holmes physically tackles his nemesis Moriarty who is often likened to a snake. Possibly influenced by lugubrious presentiments regarding the degeneration of the middle class, the popular periodicals, Sandow’s Magazine and Health and Strength (HS) were founded in the late 1890s and were consumed by readers of wealthy and more modest incomes respectively. They boasted fantastical images from the Roman amphitheatre, depicting male wrestlers using raw masculine energy to tackle wild animals. Frederick Lord Leighton’s sculpture ‘Athlete Wrestling with a Python’ (1877) was copiously reprinted at the turn of the century, also appearing in the Strand shortly before AEH. The photograph of Leighton’s statue visually encapsulates Holmes and Moriarty’s struggle at the Reichenbach Falls as they become ‘locked in each other’s arms’73. If the metropolis was a ‘jungle’, then Holmes’s struggle with snake-like, round-shouldered Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls was representative of the national fight that was raging against moral and physical atavism, against the destructive heart of darkness and the innate aggression of man. Like Leighton’s serpent, Moriarty wraps his ‘long arms’74 around Holmes, but it is Holmes who, through his knowledge of the latest gentlemanly martial art, Bartitsu, is victorious.

20 In AEH, Holmes tells Watson that he defeated Moriarty and save himself by employing ‘baritsu’ (sic), which he refers to as ‘the Japanese system of wrestling’, a sport which he had already used on numerous occasions75. Baritsu has been the subject of much speculation among Holmes specialists. In 1997, Richard Bowen (1926-2005), the late President of the London Judo Budokwai, confirmed the mysterious sport as ‘Bartitsu’, an influential and real-life martial art founded by an Anglo-Scottish engineer, Edward William Barton-Wright (1860-1951)76. It is highly likely that the misspelling of Bartitsu, which appears as ‘baritsu’ in AEH, originated from an article from The Times of 1901 which describes the Japanese assistants who were ‘engaged to act as instructors at Mr Barton-Wright’s school of physical culture in Shaftesbury Avenue, where the “Baritsu” system of self-defence [was] taught’77. That Doyle, an amateur sportsman and boxer, included the martial art in his adventure is a testament to Doyle’s view that the martial art be better known by the general public. As the earlier Holmes adventures reflect the current trends in street weaponry, the stories also demonstrate what other means were popular at the time. The Bartitsu Club left a rich legacy, but its own fame was short- lived. By the time AEH appeared in the Strand in 1903, the club had already closed. Barton-Wright allegedly charged exorbitant fees and had no head for the minutiae of running a business, venturing into precarious waters by experimenting in electrotherapy which resulted in costly law suits from patients. As a result, the club was closed before ‘baritsu’ appeared in ‘AEH’. The inventor of Bartitsu then found himself on hard times. In 1951, he was given a pauper’s funeral and his name slid into insignificance.

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21 Today, Barton-Wright is receiving renewed attention from martial arts historians, most notably, the world-renowned theatrical fight director, Tony Wolf, the recognised world expert on Bartitsu. The Royal Armouries, Leeds, has in recent years included Bartitsu demonstrations in its public performances and in 2009, the 150th anniversary of Doyle’s birth, Guy Ritchie’s martial-arts-based interpretation of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, included Bartitsu-inspired fight choreography. Barton-Wright spearheaded the development of martial arts in Britain by attracting international experts to his London school. He had learnt jujitsu whilst on business in Japan in the 1880s, one of his instructors being Jigoro Kano who founded Kodokan judo in the same decade. The British public knew very little about Japanese martial arts at this time and, detecting a gap in the market, Barton-Wright travelled back to London and set up the Bartitsu Club in 1898.

22 Bartitsu was an amalgamation of jujitsu and English boxing. It was based on the principle of jujitsu, that is, of using the opponent’s weight and size through the manipulation of pressure points. The first known promotion of Bartitsu appeared in 1899 in the form of two lengthy and generously illustrated articles, ‘The New Art of Self Defence: How a Man may Defend Himself against every Form of Attack’78, in Pearson’s Magazine (hereafter PM), a periodical which wasmodelled on the Strand and was financially accessible to the middle classes on both sides of the Atlantic. PM boasted articles on adventure, features on sport and remarkable fiction; it had just recently serialised H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1897). Here, Barton-Wright offered the readers of PM the opportunity to imagine their own responses in swashbuckling fantasy scenarios which, although statistically unlikely, could nevertheless occur in everyday life. The urban professional could claim his place at the top of the hierarchical chain by demonstrating physical and mental prowess and self-sufficiency, qualities which Tosh and Connell argue generally display betoken status in the hegemonic order79.

23 Barton-Wright presented his martial art as a form of self-defence to harmonise with the ‘British’ fight ethic. It was frequently asserted that the ‘Britisher […] is handy with his fists in an emergency’ while the ‘Italian, Greek, Portuguese, or South American give preference to the knife’80. For Barton-Wright, British boxers ‘scorn taking advantages of another man when he is down’ but a foreigner might ‘use a chair, or a beer bottle, or a knife’ or, ‘when a weapon is available’ he might employ ‘underhanded means’81. As Wiener points out, ‘the use of knives was frequently to be described as not only unfair, but un-English (despite the ubiquity of knives, and the commonness of knife assaults)’ 82. One self-defence manual argued that Britons ‘live in a country where knife and revolver are not much in evidence’83. The historical value in this statement perhaps lies in it being an attempt to extol the ‘British’ virtues of boxing and a concomitant repugnance towards the use of weaponry. Therefore, while it was legal to carry weapons, for a growing number of critics, the most desirable condition was that in which citizens could traverse the streets minimally armed or completely unarmed. Furthermore, the views of Barton-Wright and his contemporaries that English Bartitsukas and martial artists alike are principled men is reflected in the Holmes canon, where Holmes never uses a knife although his enemies, whether foreign or British, do so at times. In 1895, Charles Hopwood, MP for Middleton, framed his objection to the Pistols Bill with a rhetorical question which suggests that even those who objected to anti-gun legislation had misgivings about the use of offensive weapons: ‘If the use of dangerous weapons were to be prohibited, why not have an investigation

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in regard to knives? Why should a man be allowed to carry a dagger or stiletto, and not a revolver?’84 Instead, Barton-Wright suggested manoeuvres for self-defence with overcoats, hats and sticks. [Figures 2 and 3]. By advocating minimal force using non- weapons, Barton-Wright positioned himself within the confines of the civilizing offensive.

24 Barton-Wright cultivated his image as a British fighter of crime and athletic artist through his sartorial choices and his appearance. If the late-Victorian scuttlers of Manchester donned bell-bottomed trousers, peaked caps and clogs to signal their group allegiance85, the Bartitsuka wore the uniform of the mat indoors; outdoors he donned only the sober clothing and items which gentlemen carried, although he used these to creative effect. Barton-Wright’s ‘new art’ harmonised with the ideals of New Chivalry, a concept to which Doyle subscribed, in which homosocial activities played an important role. Recent research has emphasized men’s involvement in matters regarding the domestic milieu86; however, Bartitsu symbolized the late-Victorian ‘flight from domesticity’87. While Bartitsu was ideal for smaller individuals and by inference, women – indeed, he is sometimes credited with bringing women’s self-defence classes to Britain – it was overwhelmingly styled as a suave martial art for men. In an interview, Barton-Wright revealed that ‘he found ladies a little – just a little – tiresome’ as they ‘expect to be taught for less because they are ladies’ and ‘think they will know things when they don’t’88. According to the interviewer, Barton-Wright taught ‘an endless number’ of ladies but it is likely that the price of the classes and the focus on teaching men may in reality have discouraged female students from applying. The presentational style of his martial art does reflect the preoccupation with the internal masculine self. At a time when self-help and industry were highly praised, Bartitsu represented an efficient use of leisure time. Barton-Wright took up jujitsu in Japan as a way of staving off lethargy: ‘Men drink and lie about on club verandahs a great deal in the East, he didn’t happen to find amusement in that’89. Bartitsu was more than a hobby: it represented masculine vigour. Indeed, Barton-Wright was clearly a showman and described manoeuvres for men of average strength including how to lift a chair carrying four men and how to maintain one’s balance standing on one foot and whilst being pushed by an opponent90. Barton-Wright’s articles feature men fighting either in twos or in groups and are devoid of photographs of women. When Barton-Wright is depicted demonstrating manoeuvres with fellow Englishmen, he always wears white and plays the part of the gallant Bartitsuka while the attacker is attired in darker clothing. The contrast between black and white was most likely fostered so that readers could more readily distinguish between the hero and the attacker, but such a choice is suggestive of the black-clad gentleman-villain in stage melodrama, a tactic employed by Doyle in AEH in which Moran is the malevolent, ‘swarthy’ gentleman-assassin. Thus, many of Barton-Wright’s photographs constitute pictorial representations of conflict between the man of blood and the assertive, physically flamboyant practitioner of the defensive arts. At the same time, Barton-Wright pejoratively refers to his assistants as ‘little Japs’ as Connell says, ‘the interplay of gender and other structures such as class and race creates further relationships between masculinities’91. Barton-Wright’s choice of language and presentational style thus emphasizes his perceived placing in the masculine hierarchy.

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Figures 2 and 3: Barton-Wright (1899b, p. 296).

25 Bartitsu was not completely non-violent and permitted expression of masculine strength, even legitimating acts of punishment, albeit along acceptable lines. Barton- Wright emphasizes that his sport gives the Bartitsu practitioner, otherwise known as a ‘Bartitsuka’, the power to injure. Barton-Wright says that ‘if a policeman is holding a prisoner in a certain position, it is not necessary to break the man’s arm to show his power […]. So in these methods of self-defence when your opponent is once at your mercy he will cry “Hold!” long before you could seriously injure him’92. Moreover, once an assailant has been defeated, he is ‘then at the mercy of the man he has attacked, who can choose any part of his body on which to administer punishment’93. However, as Wolf points out, some form of physical retaliation is necessary to keep the assailant from attacking anew94. Therefore, the attraction of Bartitsu is the exhilarating feeling of self-confidence and power over the attacker, the power to do injury but the ‘manly’ self-control to prevent committing such an action. Barton-Wright frames his martial art within the confines of what is culturally endorsed as constituting appropriate masculine assertiveness: ‘We will suppose that you have to pass through a locality late at night where there is a likelihood of such an attack, and you do not wish to run the risk of bringing yourself within the law by relying upon a revolver’95. Indeed, in a manoeuvre to counter a knife attack, Barton-Wright recommends the use of a mere coat to stun the assailant96. The body itself could be a shield: ‘A trained exponent, through practice, makes his throat so strong that it is quite impossible to throttle him, and he is, therefore, quite safe against garrotting’97. As regards Richard Sennett’s conception of the urban ‘attack-and-defense’ response, methods devised by Barton- Wright set up walls between the attacker and the civilian using the minimum amount of force.

The influence of Bartitsu

26 Bartitsu’s appearance in the Holmes canon was part of a growing obsession with Japan, a development which was manifest in a plethora of printed material including magazines, most notably, the Strand, which boasted a large collection of articles on the supposed strangeness and majesty of Japanese culture. The idea of a smaller contender, Japan, succeeding against larger forces in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 captured the public imagination: ‘Every Jap is an athlete of a high order […] the Japs, in addition to their superior physical condition, are possessed of a weapon, that in hand-to-hand struggle, would give them an enormous advantage over Europeans’98. Against this backdrop, jujitsu enjoyed popularity and Barton-Wright’s assistants, Yukio Tani and

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Sadakazu Uyenishi, who had toured with Barton-Wright across Britain, became influential instructors. Uyenishi taught Emily Watts, the first female jujitsuka, whose manual, The Fine Art of Jujutsu (1906) is the first known women’s self-defence book in English, written by a woman. In this manner, Barton-Wright and his protégé, Uyenishi, directly influenced the development of women’s self-defence training in Britain.

27 While Barton-Wright’s promotional articles in PM constituted self-help monographs, Uyenishi brought the opportunities of learning jujitsu to a larger market and promoted a link between British and Japanese cultures. After the closure of the Bartitsu Club, Uyenishi set up the School of Japanese Self-Defence at Piccadilly Circus, London. In print until 1956, The Text-Book of Ju Jutsu as Practised in Japan (1906) is addressed to the British amateur who is told that jujitsu is a ‘developer of strength and muscle of the right quality’; a ‘magnificent sport, game, or exercise’ which promotes ‘mental, moral, and physical qualities’99. Uyenishi expresses an interest in British supremacy, arguing that jujitsu is ‘a matter of supreme and even National Importance’ for Britain, presumably in the defence of the nation as well as the individual, reiterating the point that ‘some knowledge’ of Japanese culture could be vital to Britain’s survival100. To demonstrate, Uyenishi uses a sequence of photographs, inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s technique in which a set of stills represented the actions of the human body in various stages through motion. Moreover, by aligning his self-presentation with Muybridge’s style, Uyenishi emphasizes the physical dynamism of jujitsu: martial arts were not merely a response to a demand for tackling crime; they were a mode of self-articulation. As Tosh points out, ‘hegemony invites challenge and contestation, as those whom it oppresses seek to topple it and to replace it with a differently ordered hegemony’101. Here, Uyenishi is no longer Barton-Wright’s sidekick. His photographs are sensual, highlighting his taut musculature, demonstrating his own vision of masculinity through his virility and physical energy (also ‘hegemonic’ traits). [Figure 4].

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Figure 4: Uyenishi (1906).

28 In 1906, Uyenishi convincingly maintained that: ‘All Britishers have at least heard of Ju- jutsu, while a vast and rapidly increasing number take a larger or smaller interest in the subject’102. Uyenishi and Tani’s schools also appear frequently in HS’s advertisements alongside features on mixed martial arts contests in which boxing and jujitsu were enthusiastically compared. Numerous articles showed how martial arts could be used to combat villains, from hooligans and rapacious robbers to ‘the revolver fiend’103. Respected book titles included a work by the featherweight wrestling champion and jujitsuka, Percy Longhurst, entitled Jiu-Jitsu and Other Methods of Self- Defence (1906); W. H. Collingridge’s Tricks of Self-Defence (1914) and Ju-Jitsu: What It Really Is (1904) by magazine editor and music hall wrestler, William Bankier. Jujitsu even appeared in Robert Baden-Powell’s seminal text-book on the making of British manliness, Scouting for Boys (1908), demonstrating how non-hegemonic and ‘foreign’ masculinity was used as a reference point in the creation of British masculinity.

29 Britain was not the only European country to foster an interest in martial arts, although London was the world-centre, especially as experts from across the globe were drawn to the Bartitsu Club. Aaron Freundschuh has recently shown that there was a vibrant culture of self-defence in Paris of the Belle Époque. While he links the proliferation of the martial arts industry to the changing needs of a growing city, he has focused almost exclusively on primary and secondary sources relating to France and, in the process, has omitted not only scholarship on Barton-Wright but also secondary works on crime and aggression. Consequently, Freundschuh does not consider the links between self-defence and changing attitudes towards interpersonal violence.

30 A prolific writer of self-defence manuals, Émile André had introduced L’art de se défendre dans la rue (1899) to Paris in the same year that Bartitsu appeared in PM. Like

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Barton-Wright, André created his own brand of martial art. In 100 Façons de se défendre dans la rue sans armes (1905) André remarks that unlike English boxing, his interpretation of French kickboxing embraces the punching techniques of English boxing and the kicking styles of la savate. The illustrations in André’s 100 façons de se défendre dans la rue sans armes imply that it was not the Frenchman per se who was violent but rather, the ‘Apache’. Indeed, André’s illustrations depict the middle-class Parisian being assaulted by ruffians and at other times defending himself with vigour against a knife attack. Therefore, the topic of a street mugging offered an opportunity to exhibit class and French national identity [Figure 5].

Figure 5: André (1905, p. 145).

31 Mirroring Doyle’s use of Bartitsu, Maurice Leblanc’s celebrated criminal, Arsène Lupin, operates on the side of the law and maintains moral values using martial arts. In ‘The Mysterious Passenger’ (1907; hereafter ‘TMP’), Lupin defends himself against a revolver- and knife-wielding murderer using a strike called the ‘carotid hook’104. Leblanc promotes the heroism of jujitsu to the French civilian by showing that the police were being trained in the art in Paris. The Prefecture of Police commenced ju- jitsu training in 1905105 and some evidence suggests that the Metropolitan Police were taught ju-jitsu during this time106. When his nemesis, Inspector Ganimard, attempts to throttle him, Lupin retaliates confidently with jujitsu: The struggle was short. Arsène Lupin hardly made a movement in defence and Ganimard let go as promptly as he had attacked. His right arm hung numbed and lifeless by his side… “If they taught you jiu-jitsu at the Quai des Orfèvres”, said Lupin, “you would know that they call this movement udi-shi-ghi in Japanese”. […] “Another second and I should have broken your arm…”107 If London was the home of Bartitsu, then Leblanc nevertheless placed Paris on the martial arts map.

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Self-defence: reconfiguring the spatial order

32 The newly fashionable, minimally aggressive forms of self-defence of the 1900s opened urban spaces and created avenues for the possibility of masculine self-expression along accepted cultural lines. Michel de Certeau relates urban walking to speech, arguing that the act of strolling is dictated by the structure of the city, and, as with language, boundaries can be negotiated resulting in shifts in meaning, changes in direction. He writes: ‘Charlie Chaplin multiplies the possibilities of his cane; he does other things with the same thing and he goes beyond the limits that the determinants of the object set on its utilization’108. So too, did Barton-Wright.

33 Judith Walkowitz refers briefly to Barton-Wright’s two articles, ‘Self-Defence with a Walking-Stick’, dismissing them as examples of the types of extraordinary subjects, designed both to ‘amuse’ and ‘instruct’, in which PM specialized 109. However, the articles are rich sources, emphasizing the link between masculine athleticism, material consumption and the vanquishing of cultural fears. Barton-Wright’s walking-stick art (known as ‘la canne’) combined the attributes of utility, elegance and the visual performance of chivalry infused with romantic notions of duelling. As Donna T. Andrew shows, The Prisoner of Zenda was a twentieth-century fantasy of duelling and charts the middle-classes aversion to the sport110. Yet, the novel itself participated in a cultural fascination with an illegal way of settling honour disputes which had only a few decades earlier been eradicated. In The Sorrows of Satan the Devil, disguised as a foreign count, laments the demise of the sword duel: “There is no real use in this flimsy blade […]. In old times, if a man insulted you, or insulted a woman you admired, out flashed a shining point of tempered Toledo steel that could lunge – so!” and he threw himself into a fencing attitude of incomparable grace and ease […] But now […] men [rely] no more on themselves for protection, but content to go about yelling ‘Police! Police!’ at the least threat of injury to their worthless persons.”111

34 He searches the metropolis for an individual to spurn him so that he may go to Heaven. The count tempts the narrator with traditional means of upholding honour which, as Wiener says, ‘were no longer considered manly by either state authorities or a growingly “respectable” public’112. However, the narrator is impressed by the count’s performance.

35 The ordinary walking-stick could not be handled in the same way as a fencing sword or single-stick as it lacked a hilt so the stick had to be held in a different manner. A single- stick ‘expert’ such as Sherlock Holmes could have learnt the art although a complete beginner could easily acquire the skills113. A modern performance of Bartitsu given to the author by Tony Wolf and the Interpretation Department at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, confirms the impression that Barton-Wright’s self-defence with the walking- stick is a controlled yet dynamic form of physical exposition114. It was claimed that Bartitsu promoted muscular flexibility. According to Barton-Wright, la canne was not only a ‘useful and practical accomplishment’ but also ‘a most exhilarating and graceful exercise’115. The result conveys a sense of physical brilliance on the would-be Bartitsuka. As Phillip Mason argues, ‘[according to] the ethics of the public school […] it was not the thing to try too hard. There was admiration for brilliance if it seemed to be effortless’116. Therefore, the self-defence scenario inspired the ability to improvise in an

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unscripted and perilous situation and also evoked a physical reaction that looked visually striking and ‘effortless’.

Figures 6 and 7: Barton-Wright (1901, p. 11).

36 Barton-Wright credits the dashing Swiss maître d’armes, Pierre Vigny, as the inventor of la canne. He had founded his own method of hand-to-hand combat and opened a martial arts school in London in 1903117. Vigny explored the urban labyrinth and he was a self-confessed man about town, ‘fantastic of dress, with exaggerated mannerisms, full of emotion, a brilliant winner, but a poor loser’118. Just as he flaunted himself he also flouted the spatial order of the city, cutting and thrusting, breaking with his switch (a synonym for cane) across divisions, such as those between London’s East and West. It is interesting to note the contradiction whereby in contrast to the man of blood, the ‘reasonable man’ learns Bartitsu as a non-violent means of self-defence but then seeks confrontation in order to exhibit his skills. As one journalist wrote of la canne: ‘One serious drawback there is to all these attainments, and that is the desire, when one becomes proficient, to stroll down into the Hooligan quarters’119. Vigny’s ‘nightly excursions into the roughest of the rough quarters of Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Naples, Genoa’ offered him ‘ample opportunities of pitting himself against men who robbed for a livelihood’, who ‘would commit a brutal assault for five francs, and a murder for twenty’120. Engaging in his own epic quests, Vigny tested his art of walking-stick self- defence in ‘gambling hell[s]’ and ‘drinking den[s]’ against ‘hostile mobs’ and ‘Hooligans’ 121. Barton-Wright himself had to decline a performance requested by Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, due to a hand injury which he allegedly incurred whilst fighting street ruffians. Such pursuits certainly go beyond the need for self-defence; however, they can be interpreted as endeavours to articulate independence (from the need for police protection) and to extend the art of flâneuring into the realm of the physical. Like Chaplin, Barton-Wright reinterpreted the existing sartorial language of manliness

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– the suit, hat and cane. This is also implicit in Barton-Wright’s choice of language. Building on the relationship between walking and language, the term ‘switch’, as it relates to walking, signifies a change in direction. Thus, when Barton-Wright and Vigny warded off ‘savage’ criminals on their urban adventures, they also etched a new idea of middle-class heroism with a sleight of hand.

Conclusion

37 Perceptions of threat in the late-nineteenth century were predicted on concerns over interpersonal violence but were also permeated by a multiplicity of apprehensions regarding the British male body. This examination of literary and cultural sources has demonstrated that the right to self-defence was indeed influenced by the disapproval of interpersonal violence. These last years of the nineteenth century were characterised by sharpening visions of imperial decline and were accompanied by an ever tightening control over the potentially destructive impulses of masculinity. Social explorers and writers alike located crime geographically, in the metropolis, but also found its roots in the mind and linked it to physical as well as moral degeneration. In this climate, self-defence signified more than an attempt to secure purse and person; it became a national duty to learn to how to defend oneself, albeit in the appropriate manner in order to keep both desperados and degeneration at bay. Although it was statistically unlikely that the ordinary city-dweller could become a victim of violent street crime, the encounter with violent criminals was nevertheless a legitimate danger. The tools employed by criminals were displayed for the public eye in museums but by contrast, the accoutrements of self-defence were employed stylishly by the assertive Bartitsuka and jujitsuka and were legitimate consumer items, markers of the owner’s social standing. The Bartitsuka’s use of these simple items defined him against the man of blood and as far as Barton-Wright and his many fashionable contemporaries were concerned, by the turn of the century the pistol should not only not be condoned but rendered passé. Bartitsu constituted an exotic mélange of fighting styles, fortified with ‘traditional’ British virtues. Barton-Wright’s creation could be adapted to fit in with the mere act of strolling, with the anticipation of or encounter with crime. Martial arts were not only designed for use against physical threat, they prompted an imaginative response to the quotidian, an emotional and personalised engagement with the landscape of the city.

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Barton-Wright, E. W., Self-Defence with a Walking-Stick: The Different Methods of Defending Oneself with a Walking-Stick or Umbrella when Attacked under Unequal Conditions [Part 2], Pearson’s Magazine, 1901b, 11, pp. 130-139.

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Davies, A., Youth Gangs, Masculinity and Violence in Late Victorian Manchester and Salford, Journal of Social History, 1998, 32, pp. 349-369.

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Leblanc, M., Arsène Lupin: Gentleman Cambrioleur, Paris, Pierre Lafitte and Co., 1907.

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Sennett, R., The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities, London, Faber and Faber, 1991.

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Simmel, G., The Metropolis and Mental Life, in Levine, D. N., On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings of Georg Simmel, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 324-339.

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Tindal, M., Self Protection on a Cycle, Pearson’s Magazine, 1901, 11, pp. 425-431.

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Tosh, J., A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England, Yale University Press, 1999.

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Tosh, J., Hegemonic Masculinity and the History of Gender, in Dudink, S., Hagemann, K., Tosh J., Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History,Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 41-60.

Trollope, A., Phineas Redux, 1874; repr. Oxford, Oxford World’s Classics, 2000, 2 vols (2).

Uyenishi, S. K., The Text-Book of Ju-Jitsu As Practised in Japan, London, Health and Strength, 1906.

Walkowitz, J., City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, London, Virago, 1992.

Walkowitz, J., The Indian Woman, the Flower Girl, and the Jew: Photojournalism in Edwardian London, Victorian Studies, 1998/1999, 42, pp. 3-36.

Wells, H. G., ‘Zoological Retrogression’, 1891. Reprinted in Ledger, S., Luckhurst, R., The fin de siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, 1880-1900, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 5-12.

Wells, H. G., The War of the Worlds, 1898; repr. London, Everyman, 1993.

White, J., London in the Twentieth Century: A City and its People, London, Vintage, 2008.

Wiener, M., New Women Vs. Old Men? Sexual Danger and ‘Social Narratives’ in Later-Victorian England, Journal of Victorian culture, 1997, 2, pp. 302-309.

Wiener, M., Alice Arden to Bill Sikes: Changing Nightmares of Intimate Violence in England, 1558-1869, Journal of British studies, 2001, 40, pp. 184-213.

Wiener, M., Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Wilkinson, F., Those Entrusted With Arms: A History of the Police, Post, Customs and Private Use of Weapons in Britain,Leeds, Royal Armouries/Greenhill Books, 2002.

Winant, L., Firearms Curiosa, New York, Greenberg, 1955.

Wolf, ‘Masters of Antagonistics’ The Bartitsu Compendium: Volume 1: History and Canonical Syllabus, Tony Wolf (Ed.), United States, Lulu.com, 2005, pp. 105-111.

Wood, J. C., ‘A Useful Savagery’: The Invention of Violence in Nineteenth-Century England’ Journal of Victorian Culture, 2004, 9, 1, pp. 22-42.

Wood, J. C., Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England: The Shadow of Our Refinement, London, Routledge, 2004.

Wood, J. C., Self-Policing and the Policing of the Self: Violence, Protection and the Civilising Bargain in Britain, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History and Societies, 2003, 7, 1, pp. 109-128.

NOTES

2. Wiener (2001, p. 2). 3. Emsley (2005, p. 32). 4. Doyle (AEH, p. 488). 5. Emsley (2005, p. 76). 6. Wiener (2004, p. 289). 7. White (2008, p. 16). 8. Simmel (1903, p. 331). 9. Gilbert (1871).

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10. The American garotting panics merit further research. See diary entry on the New York garotting panic, dated 1 February 1857 in Taylor (2000, p. 73). ‘Since the garrotte epidemic broke out, we have heard a good many reports of remarkable cases of that special amusement of the New York scoundrels’, New York Times, 11 February 1857, p. 4. 11. Sennett (1991, p. xii). 12. Dennis on London (2008, p. 43). 13. Walkowitz (1992, p. 221). 14. Daily Telegraph, 1 October 1888. 15. Star, 8 September 1888. 16. Sennett (1991,p. xii). 17. Civilian men – women also carried firearms (Royal Armouries, Leeds). 18. The Times, 26 January 1885. 19. Wilkinson (2002, p. 235). 20. Hansard, ‘Pistols Bill’, Parliamentary Papers, 27 February 1895, column 1658. 21. Wilkinson (2002, p. 168). 22. Winant (1955, p. 122). 23. These weapons are kept at the Royal Armouries, Leeds. 24. I am indebted to Mark Murray-Flutter of the Royal Armouries, Leeds, for this information. 25. Winant (1955, p. 157). 26. Wilkinson (2002, p. 235), Malcolm (2002, pp. 115-132). 27. Malcolm (2002, p. 130). 28. Paterson (1877, p. 132). 29. R v Rose (1884) 15 Cox CC 540 (Assizes). 30. Paterson (1877, p. 442). Paterson aimed to make English law accessible to larger numbers of educated readers. 31. Malcolm (2002, p. 130). 32. The Times, 26 January 1885. 33. Hansard, ‘Pistols Bill’, Parliamentary Papers, 27 February 1895, column 1657. 34. The Times, 10 March 1885. Manufactured in America, Atlas Powder was a modified and less volatile form of dynamite: ‘Atlas Powder […] has a rather unenviable reputation in England, due to its having been the explosive used in the outrages which were committed in London a few years ago by the so-called dynamiters.’ Eissler (1890, p. 45). I thank Stuart Ivinson and Richard Jones of the Royal Armouries, Leeds, for their helpful suggestions. 35. Anonymous, Dynamiters (1894, p. 126). Figure 1. 36. Wilkinson (2002, p. 235). 37. Anonymous, Burgling (1894, pp. 279-280). 38. Hansard, ‘Pistols Bill’, Parliamentary Papers, 27 February 1895, column 1667. 39. Wilkinson (2002, p. 233). 40. Punch, 8 October 1881. 41. Punch, 19 January, 1889. 42. Emsley (2005, p. 129). 43. Wilkinson (2002, p. 168). 44. Emsley (1985, pp. 125-149). 45. Hitchens (2003, p. 149). 46. Torrese (1992, p. 156). 47. Doyle, AMR, p. 386. 48. Doyle, THB, p. 725. 49. Doyle, AEH, p. 484. 50. Eyffinger (1999, p. 426). 51. Dr Conan Doyle on his Defence, Daily News, 31 January 1902, in Gibson, Green (1986, p. 84).

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52. Doyle, AEH, p. 490. 53. Bondeson (2002). 54. Strachan (2009, pp. 17-23). 55. Pall Mall Gazette, 23 October 1900. 56. Pearson (1983, p. 102). 57. Newcastle Weekly Courant, 22 July 1899. 58. Wood (2004, p. 33). 59. Cantlie (1885, p. 4). 60. Cantlie (1885, p. 3). 61. Cantlie (1885, p. 3). 62. Wells (1891) in Ledger, Luckhurst (2000, p. 9). 63. Wells (1891) in Ledger, Luckhurst (2000, p. 12). 64. Wells (1898, p. 148). 65. Hughes (1857), in Gay (1994, p. 105). 66. Allen (1994, pp. 114-132). 67. Simpson (1988, p. 108). 68. Godfrey (2008, pp. 61-63). 69. Shipley (1983, p. 43). 70. Wood (2004, p. 32). 71. Rotundo (1987, p. 40). 72. All the Year Round, 6 December 1862, 8, p. 296. 73. Doyle, AFP, p. 480. 74. Doyle, AEH, p. 486. 75. Doyle, AEH, p. 486. 76. Bowen (1997, pp. 22-26). 77. The Times, 23 August 1901. 78. This article was also adapted for the Chicago Daily Tribune, 2 April 1899. 79. Tosh in Connell (2004, pp. 41-60). 80. Newton (1910, p. 14) and Jewell (1904, p. 173). 81. Barton-Wright (1899b, p. 269). 82. Wiener (2004, p. 57). 83. Collingridge (1914, p. 9). 84. Hansard, ‘Pistols Bill’, Parliamentary Papers, 27 February 1895, column 1662. 85. Davies (1998, p. 353). 86. The 2008/9 Geffrye Museum exhibition, ‘Choosing the Chintz’, explored on men’s involvement in the home since 1850. 87. Tosh (1999). 88. Nugent (1901, p. 338). 89. Nugent (1901, p. 338). 90. Barton-Wright (1899a, p. 59-61). 91. Connell (2006, p. 80). 92. Barton-Wright (1899b, p. 270). 93. Barton-Wright (1901b, p. 132). 94. Tony Wolf, Interview, 13 June 2007. 95. Barton-Wright (1899b, p. 269). 96. Ibidem. 97. The Era, 20 October 1900. 98. Fry (1904, p. 199). 99. Uyenishi (1906, p. 14). 100. Uyenishi (1906, p. 7).

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101. Tosh (2004, p. 45). 102. Uyenishi (1906, p. 8). 103. Anonymous (1909b, p. 127). 104. Leblanc (1907, p. 192). 105. Freundschuh (2006, p. 429). 106. In conversation with Clive Emsley. See Collingridge (1914, title page); Anonymous (1909a) and Sylvia Pankhurst: “We have not yet made ourselves a match for the police, and we have got to do it. The police know jiu-jitsu. […] Women should practice (sic) it as well as the men”, New York Times, 20 August 1913. 107. Leblanc (1909, p. 156). 108. de Certeau (2002, p. 387). 109. Walkowitz (1998, p. 5, figure 5). 110. Andrew (1980, p. 409). 111. Corelli (1898, p. 188). 112. Wiener (2004, p. 41). 113. Barton-Wright (1901a, p. 11). 114. Godfrey (2005, p. 73). Figures 6 and 7. 115. Barton-Wright (1901b, p. 139). 116. Mason (1982, p. 142). 117. Wolf (2005, p. 110). 118. Jewell (1904, p. 174). 119. Pall Mall Gazette, 23 Oct. 1900. 120. Jewell (1904, p. 174). 121. Jewell (1904, pp. 174-177).

ABSTRACTS

This article considers the response to the problem of street violence in London in the late- nineteenth century and prior to 1914, not from the usual viewpoint of law enforcers or the police, but from that of the middle-class male pedestrian. It will be argued that while street weapons were carried by civilians, their use was neither universal nor unchallenged, especially as displays of violent masculinity were increasingly condemned. An examination of cultural sources indicates that minimally aggressive responses to interpersonal violence were actively promoted. The measured responses taken by a growing number of enterprising individuals in the middling classes towards violent crime on the streets also show how the theme of physical threat offered a site for the expression of urban, middle-class heroism at the turn of the century. Furthermore, the flourishing martial arts scene not only bolstered traditional ‘British’ masculinity but opened the way for the articulation and acceptance of alternative identities.

Cet article examine les réponses au problème de la violence des rues à Londres à la fin du XIXe siècle et jusqu’en 1914, non du point de vue habituel des représentants de la loi ou des policiers, mais de celui du piéton masculin appartenant à la classe moyenne. Mon argument est que si les civils étaient bien munis d’armes «de ville», leur usage n’était pas universel ni incontesté, dès lors que l’exhibition de la violence masculine faisait l’objet de condamnations croissantes. L’examen des productions culturelles montre que l’on encourageait plutôt une riposte la moins

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agressive possible face à la violence interpersonnelle. Les réponses mesurées vis-à-vis de la criminalité de rue violente, adoptées par un nombre croissant de membres dynamiques des classes moyennes urbaines, montre également que le thème de la menace physique fournissait une occasion d’exprimer une forme d’héroïsme qui leur était propre, au tournant du siècle. En outre, l’expansion du monde des arts martiaux avait pour effet non seulement de conforter la masculinité «britannique» traditionnelle, mais aussi d’ouvrir la voie à la formulation et à l’acceptation d’identités alternatives.

AUTHOR

EMELYNE GODFREY Emelyne Godfrey completed her doctoral thesis at Birkbeck College, London in 2008, entitled: The Self-Defence Scenario and Middle-Class Physical Prowess in English Literature, 1851-1914. She works as an independent researcher and some of her most recent publications include entries on sports for The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism (British Library/Academia Press, 2009); a news piece entitled ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Baritsu’ (May, 2009) and a feature on the garotting panics, ‘Stranglehold on Victorian Society’ (July, 2009) both published in History Today. A biography which she recently co-wrote with John Jackson, Chairman of History Today, entitled The Diaries of Alphabet Harrison is forthcoming in 2010. Emelyne Godfrey is also the Publicity Officer for the H.G. Wells Society.

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The ‘Non-Criminal’ Class: Wife- beating in Scotland (c. 1800-1949)

Annmarie Hughes

1 The Victorian era is associated with the dissemination and practice of a more chivalric form of masculinity that required men to exercise moral rather than physical control over their wives. Within these shifting terms of patriarchy, violence against wives came under considerable criticism and women were identified as ‘victims’ as the judiciary increasingly identified all forms of marital violence as unacceptable, even against the most ‘recalcitrant’ of wives. Indeed the penetration of the discourse that involved demonstrations of a more ordered, rational and non-violent masculinity ensured that men who failed to comply and acted violently towards women could expect harsh consequences within the justice system as well as the condemnation of the British press. Consequently, although there was considerable resistance to the attack on customary conceptions of masculinity, by the end of the Victorian era a ‘reasonable non-violent male’ had emerged in all strata of society2. Although there is some evidence of change within the Scottish judicial system, Scottish sources suggest that these changes did not extend north of the border to the same extent as they did in England. Violence against wives continued to be superficially dealt in Scottish courts and the press continued to identify wives as the source of provocation throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Moreover, a consideration of the Scottish Summary courts, which dealt with ‘everyday’ marital violence, as well as the High Court, suggests that competing definitions of masculinity remained more prevalent throughout the period under review.

2 In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Scottish attitudes to marital violence may have hardened as reflected in changes in the law, but this was not always replicated in public discourse or in the practices of the judiciary. Time, money and language are regarded as measurements of the ‘civilizing process’; they are ‘symbols’ which ‘transmit messages by which individual’s structure and develop self and social regulation’3. These social symbols are intrinsically linked to the regulation of crime. Language, time and money were, and are, used to classify and signify the level of severity and condemnation attached to particular criminal activities. This takes the

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form of judicial discourse, the establishment of laws, the duration of prison sentences and the monetary imposition of fines. Wood also argues that the ‘civilising process’ and ‘the individual psyche are developed through socialisation, education and social pressure’ and that violent conduct results from a ‘mental calculus’ dependant on ‘the interaction with an individual’s environment in specific social contexts’. Violence is also undertaken in response to is ‘perceived legitimacy’ and with a ‘consideration of the social costs’ - that is the potential punishment, discursive and punitive4. Drawing on Scottish judicial sources and media reports on wife-beating this article will highlight how, the ‘civilising process’ as it relates to violence against Scottish wives was moderated by the discursive messages wife-beaters received from the Scotland’s judiciary and the press in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries5. Indeed, the relative legitimisation of wife-beating was evident in the minimal risk of punishment for wife-beating and in continuities in older practices of masculinity. It is also apparent in the Scottish press and the judiciary’s discourses and in their backlash against feminists who demanded greater protection for wives. Violent men were identified as ‘non-criminals’ who were victims of the women they assaulted. By the late nineteenth century the discursive and legal framework was also influenced by the judiciary’s concern to reconcile wives with their violent husbands, or what has been identified as ‘marriage mending’ and this was further facilitated by the introduction and extension of welfare sanctions, in particular the probation services. Probation provided the judiciary with the means of dealing with wife-beaters without criminalizing them and of promoting reconciliation between violent men and their wives rather than punishing men for their violent conduct. The lack of condemnation attached to wife- beating in the Scottish courts and media indicates the continuation of older attitudes to wife-beating both discursively and in legal practice rather than significant change.

The law in theory and the law in practice in Scotland

3 In the first half of the nineteenth century Scotland appears to have followed the British pattern in relation to responses to crime. This was a period of sporadic anxiety amongst the propertied class in the context of the French revolution, revolutions across Europe in the 1840s, the rise of Chartism, and the social, economic and political effects of industrialisation and urbanisation6. The judicial system echoed this temperament through the utilization of harsh punishments for crime including the death sentence, corporal punishment, transportation overseas and heavy penal servitude sentences for a range of crimes which would come to be deemed ‘petty’ as the century progressed7. Although attitudes towards crime were a product of the anxieties of elites in a changing world, sensitivity towards the perceived causes of crime were emerging which would lead to a general reduction of the perceived severity of many offences and a lessening in punishments. In 1821 the Scotsman protested against a proposal for the establishment of a Society for the Protection of Property on the grounds that it would be expensive. However it was also suggested that if ‘we were to recommend any change it would be to lessen not increase the number of prosecutions’ because ‘crimes arise from misery and bad passions’, neither of which was expected to be ‘alleviated by prosecution and punishment’. Instead prevention, kindness and the ‘establishment of prosperity’ were advocated to reduce the level of crime8.

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4 Public opinion was also hardening against the death sentence, transportation and harsh prison sentences and the people charged with various crimes were gradually being identified ‘as unfortunate victims of industrialisation and urbanisation’9. According to Lord Allison, the Lord Advocate of Scotland and Sheriff of Lanarkshire, this was due to ‘altered tempers and increased humanity’10. Over time these discursive changes were reflected in Scottish law. For example, Scottish juries were often reluctant to return a guilty verdict in cases where severe punishments would ensue, particularly the death sentence. Thus juries were apt to return Scotland’s unique ‘not proven verdict’ especially in homicide trails. To overcome this, the lesser crime of culpable homicide was introduced and firmly established in Scottish law by the 1840s.

5 Although public opinion hardened against severe punishments, Wiener highlights how, as the nineteenth century progressed, the judiciary began to shift its attention from crimes against property to inter-personal violence, especially violence that was directed at wives. Although property crime continued to constitute the largest number of prosecutions, the severity of punishments for such crimes declined whilst those for crimes against the person increased11. Donnachie argues that between 1800 and 1850 there was a ‘notable rise in prosecutions’ in the High Court in Scotland, and that the rise was largely in prosecutions for crimes against property, especially theft. The precognitions of the High Court show that by 1810 over 50% of charges were for crimes against property and that this rose to around 75% by 1830 and almost 80% by 1850. Moreover, crimes against private property were frowned upon and ‘pursued with diligence’12. Although the rise in the number of prosecutions involving crimes against property need not be inconsistent with less tolerance of inter-personal violence and severer punishments for crimes against the person as the graph below indicates, the picture in Scotland was more complex in the later nineteenth century. Crimes that involved violence and property, namely robbery with violence, were harshly punished, but other property crime including theft and housebreaking were being less severely punished. Nonetheless, sentences for assault, which when tried in the High Court denoted serious assault involving the effusion of blood, the use of weapons and previous convictions, continued to merit the least severe punishments throughout the period 1840 to 1880. Indeed the number of individuals receiving penal servitude actually declined between 1870 and 1880. Yet, in 1870 when 88% of all serious assault convictions resulted in prison sentences of six months or less, 52% of those convicted of housebreaking were sentenced to more than six months in prison13. This suggests that there continued to be considerable concern over property crime in relation to inter- personal violence as well as the determination to ‘pursue’ crimes against property with ‘diligence’ in the later nineteenth century.

6 Furthermore, crimes against property came to be defined as premeditated and were therefore harshly penalised. By contrast, crimes against the person, especially where they did not threaten the state or the propertied classes, were identified with spontaneity, with the heat of passion, and with provocation. Alongside the perceptions of working-class men as less capable of exercising control, the discourse on the influences of crimes helps explain why when working-class men were convicted of spousal murder they received relatively light sentences in nineteenth-century Scotland14.

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Graph 1: Scottish High Court sentences for assault and selected crimes against property, 1840-1880

Sentence and year of conviction Source: House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Report on Judicial Statistics of Scotland, 1870 and 1880.

7 Moreover, by the second half of the nineteenth century wife-beating became ‘more privatised’ due to changes in the structure of the family, working practices and society more generally and this led to adjustments in the classification of assault in Scottish courts. The courts came to regard wife-beating as ‘outside of the domain of legal sanction and reproach’, unless the assault was ‘extremely vicious and unwarranted’ and that definition would prove extremely fluid15. Scottish rules of evidence also reduced the risk of prosecution and punishment for wife-beating, especially as this crime became more confined to the private sphere. English law required that a crime be corroborated or witnessed but for the entire period under review, Scottish rules of evidence dictated that every essential fact had to be proven by evidence from at least two sources. Only then was proof that a crime had been committed accepted and a prosecution could then take place16. Thus when Thomas McFarlane’s wife approached a policeman after her husband had smashed her face with an iron grate, fracturing her jaw, she was asked if she had any witnesses. Because she did have witnesses the policemen refused to arrest her husband17. In addition to the problems caused by the rules of evidence in prosecuting wife-beaters, until the end of the century, as was the case in England, a Scottish wife was not regarded as a competent or ‘credible’ witness, one considered by the judiciary as being ‘trustworthy’ enough to corroborate a crime. Even after the1898 Criminal Evidence Act [Scotland] which allowed wives to bear witness against their husbands they were not compelled to do so.

8 The rules of evidence also created difficulties for the prosecutor fiscal who had to decide which court to prosecute a case in because the crown did not reimburse the costs when there was not a successful conviction. Scotland’s ‘not proven’ verdict made the situation more problematic. Thus many cases were discharged pre-trial or

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prosecuted in the summary courts to avoid the cost incurred by a not guilty or not proven verdict18. However, unlike their English counterparts, Scottish medical professionals could offer a professional opinion on the probable causes of death or injury and this was accepted as evidence in courts, but this was not always to the benefit of abused women19. For example, Robert Reid, ’a kind husband’, attacked his wife with an axe while in a drunken rage, killing her. He confessed to the crime, but retracted his confession and offered ‘extenuating’ circumstances in mitigation which were supported by the court’s medical witness. Seemingly his wife would not have died from her injuries had she not sustained a prior spinal injury. On this evidence the case was found not proven20. Foyster also highlights how in England by the 1830s women could command greater protection marital violence because they could call on the new police, the clergy and the medical profession to provide witness of their abuse, but she also acknowledges how the economic power of the breadwinner meant that the police could be bribed and doctors were dependant on the household heads for payment of services thereby limiting women’s protection21.

9 Demographic pressure on the Scottish High Courts also contributed to a shift in prosecution of crimes from higher to lower courts with a subsequent reduction in the level of punishment. Farmer argues that it was cheaper, faster and easier to gain a conviction in the summary courts because efficiency and economy were gained through the application of procedure rather than the consideration of the nature of the crime22. Shore also agues that from the eighteenth century the British judiciary sought out secondary punishments including the use of fines and short prison sentences to deal with crime23. Additionally, the fine system acted as a means of paying for the prosecution services, alleviating the populace of this rateable ‘burden’. By the 1850s the Sheriff, Burgh and Police Courts in Scotland were prosecuting a greater number of cases including wife-beating. Not only were these courts were restricted in the penalties that they could impose, but they could also defer sentences, mete out cautions to be of good behaviour, have individuals bound over to keep the peace or admonish them24. Throughout the period under review Scottish magistrates, justices and Sheriffs showed considerable mercy towards wife-beaters even for the most vicious attacks on wives through the use of non-custodial sentences, albeit this was often driven by the acknowledgement that these men were responsible for the economic well-being of the family unit. Nevertheless, the extension of summary justice guaranteed that violent men could find themselves shielded from the harsher sanctions the High Court could enforce which might have transmitted social messages to discourage marital violence and encourage self-regulation.

10 However, there was some movement towards discursive condemnation of domestic violenceamongst members of the Scottish judiciary. In 1856 it was reported that the Scottish “law is at its wits’ end to devise a suitable punishment” for wife-beating and that ‘there is no want of will on the part of the legislature to put an end to this horrible evil’25. Yet, the Aggravated Assaults Act for the Prevention and Punishment of Assaults on Wives and Children [1857], which is seen as symbolically significant of changing conceptions of masculinity, was not adopted into statute in Scotland as it was in England. It was not until the 1862 Police and Improvement Act [Scotland] that assault charges were codified. At this time the Police Act stipulated thatmagistrates could not prosecute an assault charge where the assault was to the danger of life; or where a limb has been fractured; or where a knife or lethal weapon was used to the effusion of blood;

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or where the assault was aggravated by three previous convictions for this crime. Moreover, If it appeared during the investigation or in the opinion of the magistrate that the crime merited a greater punishment at any stage of the trial, the prosecutor fiscal was to be informed and the defendant committed to prison until disposed according to law26. Yet in the wake of this act William Gerrie appeared before the Justice of the Peace for having assaulted his wife and beating her with metal tongs, a charge aggravated by eight previous convictions for wife-beating. He was sentenced to thirty days in prison. In Dundee, Thomas Milne beat his wife with a poker and smashed her head through a window. The magistrate fined him £3.

11 John Lawrie appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court for assaulting his wife and baby to the effusion of blood. He had eight previous convictions for wife-beating and was sentenced to six months in prison. However, the Sheriff clearly took a dimmer view of wife- beating. According to the Sheriff, the Fiscal should have reported this case to the Crown and had it tried in the Circuit Court27. Sheriff Hallard also demonstrated that he too could be intolerant of wife-beaters. In 1860, William White, a confectioner, came before Hallard at Glasgow Sheriff Court for ‘brutally assaulting his wife to the effusion of blood by striking her with an earthenware basin severely cutting her head’. He then beat her over the head, face and arms with a piece of wood and was subsequently charged with ‘assault’ aggravated by previous convictions for wife-beating. He was sentenced to six months in prison. In summing up, Sheriff Hallard stated that if the Police Act had allowed it, he would have imposed a term of imprisonment six times as long28.

12 Hallard’s discourse does suggest a hardened approach towards violent men, but his subsequent behaviour, and that of other members of the judiciary, also indicates the diversity of competing discourses which shaped experience. In 1874 Mr Taylor, a seaman, appeared before Sheriff Hallard charged with striking his wife with a wooden stool, trampling on her, and beating her repeatedly with his work boot. Hallard decided to show leniency because he determined that ‘the wife’s injuries were not too severe’ and because Taylor, an ex-navy man, had discharge papers to show that ‘he was of very good character’. He was sent to prison for thirty days29. Archer maintains that although in ‘specific historical situations prevailing gender identities will privilege one particular way of “being a man” as “natural”, other forms of masculinity will have recognition as alternative ways of being a man’. Violence was deeply ‘embedded in beliefs, attitudes and values’ about manliness, thus acts of violence that did not undermine the state were regarded with some sympathy and identified as ’occasional lapses’ often associated with alcohol consumption30. This discursive construction of manliness and responses to it are also evident in Scotland and continued throughout the period under review. For example in 1884 a man who appeared before Glasgow Sheriff Court for beating his wife’s ‘face to a pulp and inflicted a head injury’ was sentenced to four months in prison because he was of ‘good character’31. The definition of what constituted a ‘violent man’ and the relationship between violence and masculinity were problematic, flexible and mutable.

13 This situation was aggravated by women’s economic dependence on men which ensconce the potential to offer leniency to wife-beaters because the imposition of a prison sentence on the breadwinner meant families could suffer destitution. Alleviating destitution would impose costs on middle-class rate-payers. Thus the courts came to

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accept ideas about a ‘self-sacrificing wife’ allowing women to plead for mercy for their abusers32. Duncan Davidson received a one-month prison sentence for stabbing his wife when his wife claimed that it was accidental. However, the fact that the Sheriff imposed a punishment at all indicates that he was well aware that it was not an accident33. Dependency on male earnings also ensured that many wives dropped the charges against their husbands or failed to give evidence in court. Because of this many wife- beaters were charged with drunk and disorderly conduct or the more elastic charge of Breach of the Peace which carried less severe punishment than assault but were easier to prosecute. Henry Harley was accused of being drunk and disorderly even though he was arrested whilst in the process of beating his wife34.

14 Until changes in the law in 1949, Police Courts, Justice of the Peace Courts and the Sheriff Courts continued to have limited powers to impose harsh sentences. However, they were increasingly responsible for dealing with crimes which earlier in the century had been deemed ‘serious’ criminal offences, and in many cases under Scottish law, should have continued to have been classified as such under the Police Act Scotland [1862]. The High Court also continued to show considerable leniency towards violent men, especially if by the time the case came to trial the victim’s health was restored or in the case of death it could be shown that some ailment may have contributed or that the victim had not died immediately after an attack. This contradicted Scots law which in theory was based on the conduct of the accused rather than the consequence of action and therefore reveals a great deal about the judiciary’s attitudes to the crime of marital violence.

Class, Drunkenness, ‘Diminished Responsibility’ and ‘Provocation’

15 In the nineteenth century violence against wives was seen as a product of working- class behaviour, identified as the ‘animality of the poor’ in both England and in Scotland. Violence was associated with the ‘bad passions’ of the working-classes, frequently attributed to drunkenness – a perception disseminated by social reformers and by the ‘influence of the natural sciences and biologically determined explanations’ about crime35. Working-class male drunkenness was also considered normal and when it led to violence this was deemed to be ‘unfortunate’ but also predictable36. In 1838 the Lord Advocate of Scotland expressed his opinion on the relationship between crime, violence and alcohol consumption. He stressed that ‘people must be taken as they are placed before the judgement of the Courts with all their imperfections and some allowance should be made for the habit of a life’37. However, as the nineteenth century progressed drunkenness was less likely to be accepted as mitigation in domestic homicide cases in either Scotland or England, although in Scotland by 1867 the legal definition of insanity could draw on the effects of alcohol consumption as a factor limiting legal responsibility38. Drunkenness and the effects of alcohol consumption as a form of diminished responsibility also permeated domestic assault cases throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. For example, Bailie Young summed up a case of wife assault in 1857 stating, ‘as usual in such cases the prisoner returned home the worse for liquor’39. In 1872 John Tarbet, ‘in a state of intoxication’, attacked his wife with a poker and, after having been released from the police station, he assaulted her a second time. Bailie Howden sentenced him to thirty days in prison in

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the hope that ‘the sentence would keep him’ – not from attacking his wife – but from the ‘whiskey bottle’40. Sheriff Guthrie was of the same opinion: in 1887 Alex McLagan dragged his wife by the hair, jumped on her repeatedly and attacked her with a poker splitting her head open because she refused to give him more money to spend on alcohol. Guthrie summed up the case by stating, ‘it is one of those melancholy cases that frequently come before juries due to the drinking habits of part of the population. One could not help having the impression that those who supply drink should also be placed in the dock’41.

16 In Scotland the belief that drunkenness led to violence resulted in intoxication being accepted by the judiciary and juries as a form of diminished responsibility defined, as ‘unconscious by reason of alcohol automatism’. Farmer highlights how as the nineteenth century progressed there was a shift towards seeing action as evidence of a state of mind42. This permeated the entire judicial system. For example, when Dennis Hickey, who had previous convictions for wife-beating, appeared at the magistrate’s court after he had attacked his wife and threw a kettle of boiling water over her it was accepted in his defence that, ‘when I’m drunk I don’t know what I’m doing’. He received a two-month prison sentence43. Thomas Hughes appeared in the High Court after he attacked his wife with his fists and a brush. He threw her to the ground, trampled on her, kicked her repeatedly and fractured six of her ribs – an assault amounting to her ‘severe injury’. The medical evidence showed the woman had ‘received a severe thrashing’. On being found guilty, Lord Young imposed a prison sentence of one year and stated that the ‘accused would not have done this had he been sober’. The sentence therefore would ‘put him out of the way of temptation of liquor’, not wife-beating44.

17 Members of the Scottish judiciary were also reluctant to use the penalties at their disposal. Sheriff Lees ‘who had tried a great many cases of wife-beating’ found the most effective sentence was ‘to order the prisoner to find security for their good behaviour in the future’. He claimed that out of nearly 100 cases only three individuals had forfeited money lodged with the court, although he added that he was ‘sorry to say that several’ of the men ‘appeared before him immediately after the period of caution expired’45. This is unsurprising because a wife was unlikely to call for police protection when she could lose, not only the caution lodged with the court, but also the breadwinner’s income if he was imprisoned for breaching the terms of his bond. Some members of the judiciary felt that the system of fining was inadequate in dealing with wife-beating. In a letter to the Scotsman from a Sheriff-substitute the writer stated, ‘I am of the opinion that much of the wife-beating that goes on in Scotland is due to the system of fining rather than prison sentences which are “dreaded” whereas fines are little regarded and raised by a man’s friends very much with the idea that “It’s you today, it may be me tomorrow”’46. It was not only friends who supported wife-beaters. A plumber appeared in court because, while he was ‘intoxicated’, he had attacked his wife for which he was fined of twenty-one shillings. The plumber’s employer, either out of sympathy, empathy, self-interest or a combination of these factors, immediately paid the fine47. Although there was some condemnation of wife-beating, evidently there was also considerable public sympathy towards a man’s right to ‘chastise’ his wife.

18 Provocation was also used as a defence in Scotland more frequently than has been identified by Wiener for England, where seemingly aggravation by word or manner or poor housekeeping skills was not accepted as a defence for assault48. Provocation by a ‘shrew’ by word or manner and the lack of women’s domestic skills continued to be

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offered in Scottish courts in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as ‘extenuating circumstances’ in wife-beating cases49. Conley demonstrates that between 1867-1892 ‘no man in Scotland was convicted of murdering a wife who had been drunk or had provoked him’, instead they were accused of the lesser charge of culpable homicide50.

19 The Scottish press’ response to cases of wife murder and wife-beating also highlights that they were not at the vanguard of condemnation influencing public opinion as Weiner suggests was the case in England. The press embarked on a process of educating and advising victims in ways to reform men and thereby avoid abuse rather than disseminating ideas to men about moral authority and self-restraint. Victims were blamed for the violence they endured because of their perceived inability to demonstrate the dominant conception of femininity and this provided acceptable provocations for the press to justify male violence. The Scotsman reported on the case of Daniel Briant who beat his wife to ‘within an inch of her life’, and asked, ‘has the wife anything to do with it? There can be no doubt that in many cases if the women managed better they would not fare so badly’51. Abused wives were demonised as ‘slatterns, stupid, permanent vixens and intermittent viragos’. Men who beat their spouses were identified as ‘victims’ who were ‘neglected, defied or domineered’ by a person ‘who ought in duty and fairness to behave very differently’. Violence towards wives was thus identified as an ‘unavailing series of efforts to assert... leadership and superiority’, and, ‘what does the law do, it steps in to prevent the forcible establishment of Home Rule’ and the ‘Taming of the Shrew’52. In a letter to the Aberdeen Weekly Journal signed ‘Pity the Poor Husbands’ it was claimed that, ‘Unless wives hold their tongues and tempers and their conduct they will continue to be beaten and some might say deservedly so’53.

20 Wiener accepts that there was considerable resistance to attacks on customary notions of masculinity and these are clearly evident in Scotland54. Although there is some evidence of growing intolerance to wife-assault, the law in practice and the law in theory diverged significantly, while the discursive practices of the judiciary and the media continued to favour female provocation rather than contributing to a discourse that promoted the adoption of a reasonable non-violent masculine identity55. The dissemination of a discourse promoting non-violent masculinity wasfurtherimpeded from the 1860s when feminists began to challenge men’s sexual and violent behaviour towards women in Scotland.

Challenges to customary masculinity and male responses to feminism

21 From the 1860s discussions about wife-beating were stimulated by reactions to the ways in which feminists questioned male sexual behaviour and male violence towards women across Britain. Feminists demanded the vote for women so that they might effect legislative change that would offer women greater protection within marriage and from marital violence56. In response, middle-class men intensified the dissemination of the discourse that identified wife-beating with working-class men. Not only did this discourse absolve middle-class men from complicity and condemnation, but it also helped to silence middle-class victims because wife-beating was associated with the ‘animality’ of the poor and the shame of inadequate feminine skills. Moreover, the discourse also helped shore up the political hegemony of middle-class men by

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moderating challenges from feminists and additionally it offset threats to the ‘legitimacy of the law’ as it related to wife-beating. Furthermore, feminists were compelled to accept the preface that wife-beating was a working-class problem in return for male support for their demands for legislative changes to improve the position of women within marriage57.

22 In addition to these factors, feminist condemnation of wife assault and responses to this were important in cementing older conceptions of masculinity in Scotland. In 1860 the Scotsman responded to feminist demands to have the lash used on men who beat their wives bydemonising the wives rather than the wife beaters. They reported that, Every poor man’s wife is not an angel. Many are cursed with drunken shrews whose reckless waste, rough tongue and ever-ready arm provoke him to strike. These are the loving ladies who will shelter behind the lash. Such sluts would be ready enough to avail themselves of the proposed amendment58. In 1871 the Glasgow Herald discussed John Stuart Mill’s mandate for a reversal of the unequal marriage laws and his demand for votes for women. The report maintained that enfranchising women would not deter a ‘brutal husband’ or the ‘provoking tongues of women’, and in reply to condemnation that theft was punished more severely in Scotland than wife-beating the report also claimed that wife-beating was not a premeditated crime, but conducted in the ‘heat of the moment and under great provocation’. Thus the penalties incurred by those found guilty ‘were not unreasonable’59. Indeed, the Reverend Alexander Webster was unusual when he argued that wife-beating was caused by the under-valuation of women, that it was not confined to one class, and that drunkenness was no excuse, but he too identified women’s ‘nagging and bad tempers’ as a causal factor in wife-beating60. At this time feminist renewed demands for the vote to redress wife-abuse through protective legislation and for the use of the lash against violent husbands. In 1872 the Scotsman acknowledged that society is entitled to use ‘shame and disgrace as well as terror for its own protection’ but argued that ‘this should be used for notoriously degraded offenders’ not wife-beaters who are ‘apt to suffer provocation from wives’61.

23 After the publication of an article by Frances Power Cobbe, ‘Wife Torture in England’, there was a significant backlash from the press and the Scottish public including a correspondent signed ‘Benedict’ who was aroused by the way that she made out that ‘women are angels, men devils’. The writer argued that ‘bad wives trouble many good men’62. The Scotsman also responded to the publication and her suggestion that magistrate’s courts should be empowered to grant separation and maintenance orders to wives whose husbands had been convicted of physical violence by arguing that the law did not need to be amended. The Scotsman also claimed that Cobbe’s article, (‘Wife Torture’), was sensational. The report claimed that it was ludicrous to suggest that granting women the vote or flogging wife-beaters would alleviate this offence and reminded readers that there ‘was such a thing as bad wives who make homes places of torture’. Female drunkenness, the report maintained, ‘is too often the cause’ of provocation and although the ‘stronger party, a man cannot rid himself of his torment so that he too turns to drink and in a moment of sudden exasperation beats her and ends up in police custody’. The article continues, ‘Anyone who knows anything about Criminal Courts from the ‘Police Magistrates to the Assizes courts’ is ‘well aware that such cases are not uncommon. It may be right to show no mercy, but as evidenced by the proceedings both of judges and juries this is not the general opinion’63.

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24 At this time magistrates and municipal representatives from Scottish Local Councils began to consider the use of the lash against men convicted of robbery with violence, knife crimes, theft and wife-beaters. In 1874 Glasgow City Council voted to memorialise the Government to grant Scotland the power to use the lash for these purposes, suggesting that there was a hardened approach to inter-personal violence. However, the only category of crime which was deemed to require previous convictions before the lash would be used, in this case three previous convictions, was wife-beating64. What is also significant is that when Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh and Aberdeen City Councils debated the use of the lash the only disagreement over its use was on whether it should be used against men convicted of wife-beating at all65. The actions of the Councils also caused considerable controversy amongst the public, the press and members of the judiciary. A Sheriff wrote to express the view that the lash would provide ‘shrews’ with a weapon and that, No man who is a man becomes the ruffianly husband and father at once... Nor does he become a beastly drunkard as soon as he is married... We have the holy writ for authority as to the terrors of a foolish woman’s tongue... the ducking stool. The correspondent continued, ‘Let us then take the “male victim” who marries in hope of a happy home and gets a slatternly unthrifty scold’, what can he do? The answer was that all that such a husband could do was ‘escape to the public house’. The writer then demonised abused wives as drunken women before detailing the recent case where a jury, who to the ‘applause of a sympathetic audience’, found a man who killed his drunken wife not guilty of murder or of culpable homicide. A postscript was added, It would be interesting to ascertain whether the practice of wife-beating is on the increase and if it is whether conjugal discussions as to the ‘rights of women’ have had any share in developing the argument, especially if the discussion takes the shape of ‘remonstrance’ on the part of the wife66. In 1875 according to the Scotsman, Lord Aberdare, the Chief law officer of the crown in Scotland effectively killed demands for the use of the lash on wife-beaters when he stated that justices were against any further extension of punishment by flogging because they knew that ‘wives had tongues which justly irritated their husbands’67. There was evidence of considerable opposition to new conceptions of masculinity from within the ranks of the Scottish press, members of the judiciary and the press’ readership as well as individuals who sat on juries and the judiciary. Indeed a Sheriff- substitute wrote to the Scotsman expressing the view that the class with which the legislation would deal with, that is to say the working-class, was a ‘non-criminal class’ and if the lash ‘were to be used it should not be awarded to Police Court magistrates for use in usual or ordinary cases of wife-beating’68. However he failed to define ‘usual or ordinary’ and in the Scottish context at least this could include extremely vicious attacks.

25 Although there were sporadic discussions about the use of flogging for wife-beaters, by 1875 the Scotsman had adopted a satirising approach to the issue of wife-beating. The newspaper suggested that they might dedicate a column to wife-beaters entitled ‘Manly Exercises’. They also indicated that wife-beating was generally engaged in whilst men were ‘rendered hilarious by alcohol’ and on a ‘more serious note’ they questioned whether the ‘beaten wife may not have something to do in bringing about the condition of her Lord and beater’. This article continued, a man, ‘on his way home from a public house has any number of individuals to fight with’, from those who left the public house with him through to passers-by and his neighbours, so why then, the Scotsman asked, was it the wife who was beaten. Rhetorically the answer was that it is ‘our

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suspicion that she has a great deal to do with it’ because rather than waiting until her husband is sober, she provokes him by nagging him while he is intoxicated. In addition abused wives were accused of being unable to make a comfortable refuge for their husbands and of having the ‘cooking skills of a chimpanzee’. Seemingly victims also brought on the wrath of their spouses because they ‘avoided soap and combs’ and ignored the adage that ‘a stitch in time saves nine’. The home of a wife-beater was identified as ‘a little piggery’ because his wife spent her day with ‘other like women gossiping at the mouth of tenements’69. Thus advice was again provided for victims; they were told that they ‘could do a great deal to diminish this evil. Nearly all wife- beaters drink and if managed a little better’ they would not embark on violence. Women were asked ‘not to fly at his throat when he comes home drunk’ or to aggravate him by ‘looks, words or acts’ because by doing so you ‘virtually begin the attack. Nine out of ten cases could be avoided if wives exercised skill and patience. The principle occupation of a woman is to be a good wife’. Wives were also advised that they should persuade their husbands not to consume alcohol70. This particular discourse indicates that there were some attempts to disseminate the middle-class construction of gender identities but that the discourse which circulated reflected earlier Victorian conduct literature aimed at women on how to reform a husband rather than at men on how to reform their own behaviour71.

26 After the Matrimonial Causes Act [1878] was passed which allowed magistrates to grant a writ of separation to wives whose husbands had been convicted of aggravated assault, feminist demands for the protection of victims of marital violence are seen to have been directed into other causes72. However, the perceived provocation by the shrew, slattern, or drunken wife who drove her spouse to drink prevailed in Scotland and was made worse by the psychology which identified male drunkenness with a form of diminished responsibility ensuring that in a considerable number of assault cases it was alcohol or the victim that was blamed rather than the perpetrator. In 1902 it was reported that the vast majority of crime in Scotland was due to drink and in 1909 it was estimated that 80% of all prosecutions for culpable homicide and murder crimes were caused by drunkenness73. While the statistics are questionable, clearly there existed a widespread belief that the problem of violent behaviour was alcohol consumption and these perceptions influenced judicial discourse and the penalties violent men received. James McDonald pled guilty to culpable homicide when charged with the murder of his wife and his plea was accepted because the judge identified his ‘dissipated habits’ as the ‘cause of the death of his wife’ rather then condemning him for attacking his wife with a weapon74. James Monaghen stood trial for assaulting his wife with a sweeping brush causing her death. However, Monaghen was convicted of assault because he had ‘suffered great provocation’. Although his wife was sober on the day she was killed it was claimed that she was of drunken habits. This was sufficient evidence for the medical examiner to argue that the victim’s careless treatment of her head wound had caused her death. In other words had she not been a ‘drunkard’ she would not have dressed the wound herself and would have instead sought medical treatment. As the medical examiner explained to the jury, ‘he had seen people with worse wounds survive’. Based on this evidence the judge decided that the culpability lay with the deceased women not the accused. Monaghan was sentenced to nine months in prison75. However, had the women sought medical treatment then under Scottish law the doctor would have been required to notify the police that an assault had taken place and her husband would have been charged, something, other than her ‘drunkenness that may

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have determined her actions. In 1915 at the High Court, Lord Salvesen presided over the case of a man who was found guilty of beating his wife to death in a sustained all- night attack. His defence was provocation and diminished responsibility due to drunkenness. The defendant maintained that he had attacked his wife because he had found her drunk. The accused also admitted to being drunk and when a seventy-eight- year-old woman remonstrated him for ill-treating his wife he attacked her breaking her breast bone. In Lord Salvesen’s view this was a ‘sordidtragedy’ that was due to alcohol as evidenced by the perpetrator’s previous good character; thus Salvesen accepted a plea of culpable homicide and assault and imposed a sentence of three years penal servitude76. Indeed by the early twentieth century assault cases that did not involve the defence of alcohol consumption were identified as ‘extraordinary’77. Defences of drunkenness and a wife’s provocations were used significantly and accepted widely, particularly but not exclusively in the summary courts, as mitigating factors in the behaviour of violent men in Scotland’s courts. This suggests the Scottish judiciary did not promote the more ordered, rational and non-violent masculinity by their reluctance to accept provocation and drunkenness as mitigating in the crime of wife-beating.

Sentencing for ‘an assault by a husband on a wife’ in Scotland

27 The 1898 Criminal Evidence Act (Scotland) that determined that a wife could be regarded as a credible witness resulted in the establishment of a new category of crime, ‘assaults by husbands on wives’ which was tabulated separately in the criminal statistics from those of assault, sexual assault and police assault for the years 1889 until the First World War which disrupted the collection of statistics. Between 1914 and 1920 the annual reports of the Prison Commissioners provide statistics on the number of men sent to prison having been convicted of wife assault but thereafter cutbacks due to the post-war recession resulted in all assaults been grouped into one category. Nevertheless the separation of assault cases provides a window of opportunity to evaluate how ‘harshly’ Scottish men who were convicted of beating their wives were sentenced, particularly in relation to other forms of assault.

28 The charge of an assault by a husband on a wife included actual assault, Breach of the Peace and Drunk and Disorderly Behaviour when these were directed at a wife. Breach of the Peace and Drunk and Disorderly Behaviour were used as alternatives to assault charges because it was easier to obtain a conviction and this possibility was extended after the Summary Jurisdiction Act 1908 (Scotland). The Act consolidated and codified common law and extended a Sheriff’s summary powers to prosecute defendants without a jury. It also gave Sheriffs greater powers of mitigation including the right to allow persons found guilty of crimes to be dismissed or admonished. Regardless of changes in the law the graph below indicates that the level of prosecution for wife- beating remained relatively stable and that changes in the law had a more profound effect on the rate of prosecution of men who assaulted individuals other than their spouse.

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Graph 2: Percentage of the total number of individuals imprisoned after conviction for assault and assault on wives by husbands at the Scottish Summary Courts, 1898-1914

Source: Parliamentary Papers, Report on Judicial Statistics of Scotland, 1898-1914.

29 Consistently, around two-thirds of all men convicted in Scotland’s summary courts of assaulting their wives did not receive prison sentences. Moreover, prosecutions for wife-beating also differ significantly from the pattern of prosecutions for male assaults on individuals other than their wives. Although generally men who assaulted individuals other than their wives were dealt with more severely the pattern is more variable. A range of factors may explain this including the influence economic factors, the possibility of responses to media panics, especially over youth in the wake of the Boer War as well as concerns over public rather private violence as wife-beating had increasingly become.

30 Men who assaulted their wives were less likely to receive prison sentences, and when prison sentences were imposed between 60 to 80 percent were for the duration of less than one month. By 1913 of all assaults on wives by husbands known to the police only 4% of the total resulted in convictions with prison sentences. This occurred at all levels of the court system. In the years 1900, 1910 and 1914, a total of seventy-seven men were convicted for wife assault in the Scottish High Courts, 68% received sentences of six months or less, many others were admonished, cautioned or fined. In 1914 18% of all convictions for wife assault resulted in non-custodial sentences.78 Thus it would seem that the Scottish judiciary was not using harsh penalties as a means of expressing condemnation of wife-beating or of promoting a more ordered and rational non-violent masculinity.

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Graph 3: Percentage of individuals convicted and sentenced to 30 days in prison or less for assault and assault by husbands on wives at the Scottish Summary Courts, 1889-1914

Source: Parliamentary Papers, Report on Judicial Statistics of Scotland, 1889-1914.

Marriage mending and the development of welfare sanctions

31 By the twentieth century wife-beating was penalised less harshly through due to the introduction of payment of fines by instalment, the use of probation and the extension of the probation services. For example, to address the rising number of men in prisons for beating their wives between 1910 and 1914 because they had failed to pay the fine imposed the Scottish Prison Commissioners suggested that probation sentences should be used more and that there should be an extension in the use of the ‘payment by instalment system for fines’79. This was extended in the 1920s and 1930s at a time the Scottish press identified an increase in extreme violence directed at wives. In 1930 the Govan Press discussed how ‘more serious cases’ of wife-beating were taking place and the increasingly use of open razors by wife-beaters as well as more severe beatings80. Yet, as Lambertz shows, by the early twentieth century, men of the working-classes had become part of the political nation with voting power. Corresponding with the rise of the labour movement and the return of war veterans this ensured a new discursive approach to class emerged which mediated representations of the working-class ‘brute’ who beat his wife81. This discursive change moderated what little condemnation there had been of wife-beating, that which had been embedded in ideas about working-class ‘animality’. Concern about wife-beating in the inter-war years was also displaced because of media panics about youth and in particular ‘gang’ culture in Scotland and judicial responses to this82.

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32 Of equal importance, from the late nineteenth century there was also a greater emphasis placed on marriage. Rising foreign and military competition and the effects of the Boer War which highlighted the poor condition of Britain’s population combined to cause anxiety about Britain’s ability to maintain its political and economic supremacy. World War I reinforced concerns about the quality and quantity of the race and resulted in marriage being actively promoted83. The promotion of marriage could moderate condemnation of wife-beating but preventing the breakdown of the family was a priority that arguably could also have resulted in more condemnation of wife- beaters. However as Jones highlights ‘marriage and motherhood’ were being ‘upheld as the ideal for which all women should strive’ thus the violent side of marriage was not something that the inter-war ‘social scientist or social commentators’ chose to focus on84. Rather than condemning wife-beating, the agencies of social welfare in Scotland continued to contribute to the discourse that drunkenness was the cause of marital conflict and this corresponded with attempts by the judiciary and the social services to downplay wife-beating and to mend broken marriages85. For example the Scottish National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children dealt with the victims of domestic violence including wives, but they made it clear that their principle aim was to safeguard the family from breakdown86. In 1931 The Scottish Justices and Magistrates Association called for the establishment of family courts because the number of women seeking separation orders on the grounds of physical cruelty alarmed them. They believed that Family Courts could mediate this by allowing magistrates to deal with ‘intimate domestic problems’. The proposed courts would facilitate reconciliation through the use of social workers which could not be done in the criminal courts because the judiciary were unable to go beyond the strictly legal definition of the law87.

33 The ability to mend marriages was extended when magistrates and justices were given the power to use the Probation of Offenders Act [Scotland] 1907 as an alternative to prison sentences for men who assaulted their wives. McNeill highlights how the Scottish probation service was a class-based provision used to justify the ‘existing social order’ by defending the use of prison sentences for ‘serious’ offences. Probation was also part of the development of ‘individual psychology’, the ‘individuation of punishment’; and of the ‘diagnosing of offending’88. Thus it could be used to prevent family breakdown by reducing the number of wife-beating given prison sentences. Probation allowed some defendants to be identified as ‘deserving and others as undeserving of mercy’; the defendant’s age, social background, character and ‘any extenuating circumstance’ were significant in determining whether probation was regarded as an appropriate punishment for an offence committed89. Under this system wife-beaters could use the range of provocations available to them as ‘extenuating circumstances’ and they could exploit their work reputations to moderate their violent reputation being presented in court. Thus the adoption of what Garland identifies as welfare sanctions, policing through ‘penal welfarism’, reduced what little legal redress victims of marital had and encouraged them to see themselves as part of the problem90.

34 The Probation Act was extended in 1931 and probation was beginning to be seen as a form of marriage mending. In an article on ‘Broken Marriages’ by a probation officer it was argued that the young men and women who entered the “marriage state with little preparation and less knowledge of the demands which matrimony makes upon each party to the contract” will inevitably “suffer difficulties in the settling down period and quite frequently ‘wife assaults’ will occur – the result of faulty adjustments”. Probation

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could help by offering “training in citizenship”: young men were to be taught the “privileges and responsibilities of being a husband” and young wives the “arts of home- making”91. However, it was not merely the young offenders who benefited from probation. Clause II of the act allowed probation to be given to first offenders whose crime warranted a sentence of less than two years. graph 4 below indicates how, in relation to a range of crimes, the only adult men who were deemed deserving of ‘mercy’ in significant numbers were men who committed assaults and press reports and judicial demands indicate that the adult men who were more likely to be given probation were those who assaulted their wives.

Graph 4: Adult men [over 21 years] as a percentage of all individuals who were given probation orders for assault, housebreaking and theft in Scotland, 1930-1936

Source: Parliamentary Papers, Report on Judicial Statistics of Scotland, 1930, 1932, 1924 and 1936.

35 In 1923 when Mrs McNeil took her husband to court for assaulting her, the magistrate lamented that ‘It is unfortunate to see husband and wife living like cat and dog.’ He asked the defendant and his victim, ‘Are you willing to try to make a happier life?’ He then went on to tell the husband, ‘I will put you on probation for twelve months and see if you can come to some happier way of living’92. In the 1920s a Glasgow wife-beater had received probation twice amongst the punishment he had accrued for his five convictions for wife-beating. He was sentenced to thirty days in prison on his sixth appearance in court, because after spending his wages on alcohol he attacked his wife and assaulted a police officer93. In effect probation added a further layer to the number of prosecutions needed to ensure the imprisonment of a wife-beater who continued to receive either non-custodial sentences or sentences of less than one month in prison and less than 5% received sentences in excess of three months.

36 Drunkenness, ‘good character’ and female provocation also continued to be regarded as mitigating factors in wife-beating cases into the twentieth century. William Davie was sentenced to six months in prison after he appeared at Glasgow High Court having killed his wife by cutting her throat with a razor and attacking her with a metal pan. However, she had brought another man home and thirty neighbours had signed a petition testifying to his previous good behaviour94. Thomas Cameron was sentenced to thirty days in prison when he was found guilty of striking his wife over the head with a hatchet while intoxicated. Henry Burton, whilst ‘drunk and disorderly’ struck his wife

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with a stool and tried to strangle her – he was fined £2 and William Herd, who had five previous convictions for assault, three of them on his wife, received forty days in prison for stabbing and beating his wife95. Farmer maintains that at the ‘centre of Scottish law there was an ill-defined notion of reasonableness based on shared or community attitudes towards wrong’96. If this was the case then the criminal statistics, the penalties imposed on men who assaulted their wives and judicial discourses and media reports all highlight the perceptions of the ‘legitimacy of violence’ towards wives in Scottish society. This in turn influenced considerations of the social costs of wife- beating and contributed to continuities in older conceptions of masculinity.

Conclusion

37 Middle-class civic humanism and the ‘civilising offensive’ were moderated in the Scottish legal system as it related to violence against women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There is some evidence of discursive disapproval of wife- beating but changes in the law in theory that should have offered women greater protection from violent men were not applied in practice. In addition, a range of provocations from a wife were open to violent men that reduced the risk of harsh punishment and this mitigated considerations of the social costs of wife-beating throughout the period. The excuse of drunkenness may have featured less as a defence in homicide cases, but the use of intoxication as a mitigating factor in crimes of violence against women increased as it was incorporated into with the defence of diminished responsibility or ‘unconscious by reason of alcohol automatism’. Exacerbating this situation were the changes in the judicial approach to wife-beating in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which added further layers of procedure before men were convicted and imprisoned for wife-beating. This was aggravated by women’s dependence on men and by the state’s emphasis on the importance of marriage. These factors ensured significant numbers of men from all classes in Scotland fiercely upheld traditional conceptions of masculinity based on violence and workplace reputations rather than family and community ones. These men included offenders from all classes of society; they also included members of the press, juries, employers and the judiciary because to beat a wife was all too often seen as either a ‘non-criminal’ act or an unpremeditated minor infringement of the law brought about by extenuating circumstances and the provocation by the ‘victim’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archer, J. E., Men behaving badly? Masculinity and the uses of violence 1850-1900, in D’ Cruze, S. (ed.), Everyday Violence in Britain 1850-1950 Gender and Class, Essex, 2000, pp. 41-69.

Bailey, J., I dye (sic) by inches: locating wife- beating in the concept of a privatisation of marriage and violence in eighteenth-century England, Social History, 2006, 31, pp. 291- 294.

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Bauer, C., Ritt, L., Wife abuse, late Victorian English feminists and the legacy of Frances Power Cobbe, International Journal of Women’s Studies, 1985, 6, 3, pp. 188-189.

Bingham, A., Gender, Modernity andthePopularPress in InterwarBritain, Oxford, 2004.

Carter Wood, J., The Limits of Culture? Society, Evolutionary Psychology and the History of Violence, Cultural and Social History, 2007, 4, 1, pp. 95-110.

Clark, A., Domesticity and the problem of wifebeating in nineteenth-century Britain: working- class culture, law and politics, in D’Cruze, S. [ed.], Everyday Violence in Britain 1850-1950 Gender and Class, Essex, 2000, pp. 27-40.

Clark, A., The Struggle for the Breeches.

Conley, C. A., Atonement and domestic homidice in late Victorian Scotland, in McMahon, R. (ed.), Crime, Law and Popular Culture in Europe, 1500-1900, Devon, 2008, pp. 219-238.

Crowther, M. A., On Soul and Conscience The Medical Expert and Crime, Aberdeen, 1988.

Davies, A., The Scottish Chicago? From “Hooligans” to “Gangsters” in Inter-War Glasgow, Cultural and Social History, 2007, 4, 4, pp. 511-527.

Dolan, F. E., Dangerous familiars: representations of domestic crime in England, 1550-1700, London, 1994.

Donnachie, I., The Dark Side: A Speculative Survey of Scottish Crime During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, Scottish Economic and Social History, 1995, 15, pp. 5-24.

Elias, N., Time: An Essay, Oxford, 1992.

Farmer, L., Criminal law, tradition and legal order: crime and the genius of Scots law, 1747 to the present, Cambridge, 1997.

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, pp. 719-757.

Foyster, E., Marital Violence An English Family History, 1660-1857, Cambridge, 2005.

Garland, D., The Birth of the Welfare Sanction, British Journal of Law and Society, 1981, 8, 1, pp. 29-45.

Hammerton, J. A., Cruelty and companionship: conflict in Nineteenth-Century married life, London, 1995.

Hughes, A., Representation and Counter-representations of Domestic Violence on Clydeside Between The Two Wars, Labour History Review, 2004, 69, 12, pp. 169-184.

Jones, H., Health and Society in Twentieth century Britain, London, 1994.

Kilday, A., Women and Crime in Enlightenment Scotland, Woodbridge, Royal Historical Society Studies in History, 2007.

McNeill, F., Remembering probation in Scotland, Probation Journal, 2005, 52, 23, pp. 23-32.

Pleck, E., Feminist Responses to “Crimes against Women, 1868-1896, Signs, 1983, 8, pp. 451-470.

Rowbotham, J., Only when drunk: The Stereotyping of violence in England, 1850-1900, in D’Cruze, S. (ed.), Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950 Gender and Class, Essex, 2000, p. 160.

Sheldon, D. H., Evidence: cases and materials, 2nd Edition, Edinburgh, 2002.

Shore, H., Crime, Policing and Punishment, in Williams, C. (ed.), Companion to Victorian Britain, ACompanion to Nineteenth-Century British History, Oxford, 2007.

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Siindall, R., Street Violence in the Nineteenth Century, Leicester, 1990.

Smart, C. (ed.), Regulating womanhood: historical essays on marriage, motherhood and sexuality, London, 1992.

Tawney, R. H., The Economics of Boy Labour, Economic Journal, 19, Dec. 1909, pp. 526-543.

Wiener, M., Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England, Cambridge, 2004.

NOTES

2. See, Wiener (2004,pp. 4-7 and passim); Dolan (1994). Although he talks about a justice system becoming more punitive to male offenders, Hammerton takes a more moderate approach to changing conceptions of masculinity. See, Hammerton (1995, p. 65). 3. Elias (1992, especially pp. 11-23 and p. 144). 4. Carter Wood (2007, pp. 95-110). 5. A range of local and national Scottish newspapers have been used reflecting the growth and rising popularity of the press in the nineteenth-century and covering the diversity of editorial positions and the broad spectrum of class perspectives. These were largely but not exclusively digitised sources, using key word searches. Exceptions included the Govan Press and Glasgow Herald. The media was used to explore cultural representations, public opinion and the dissemination of popular discourses. For a discussion on the uses of the press in history, See, Siindall (1990) and Bingham (2004). 6. Clark (The Struggle for the Breeches, p. 268-270; 2000, pp. 27-40). 7. Feeley, Little (1991, p. 742). 8. Scotsman, 23rd June 1821. 9. The Stair Society, An Introduction To Scottish Legal History, Edinburgh, 1958, pp. 445-447. 10. Scotsman, 16th February 1875. 11. Wiener (2004, pp. 2-15, p. 187 et passim). 12. Donnachie (1995, pp. 5-24). 13. House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Report on the Judicial Statistics of Scotland, 1870. 14. Conley (2008, pp. 219-238). 15. Kilday (2007 pp. 86-87). See also Bailey (2006, pp. 291-294). 16. Sheldon (2002, p. 80). 17. Scotsman, January 14th 1899. 18. Sheldon (2002, p. 80). 19. See, Crowther (1988) and Foyster (2005, pp. 214-222). 20. Caledonian Mercury, 2nd July 1835. 21. Foyster (2005, pp. 214-222). 22. Farmer (1997, pp. 73-74). 23. Shore (2007, p. 390). 24. See, Feeley and Little (1991, p. 725). 25. Scotsman, 20th February 1856. 26. Parliamentary Papers,Vol. IV.199, Police and Improvement Scotland Bill [1862]. 27. Scotsman, 22nd May 1877. 28. Scotsman, 15th December 1860. 29. Glasgow Herald, 4th September 1874. 30. Archer (2000, pp. 41-69). See also, Bailey (2006, p. 291). 31. Glasgow Herald, 6th February 1884.

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32. For the self-sacrificing wife see Rowbotham (2000, p. 160). 33. Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 25th September 1883. 34. Ibid., 28th January 1881; 4th January 1888; 13th March 1890; 1st July 1886. 35. See, Clark ( The Struggle for the Breeches, pp. 268-270);Hughes (2004, pp. 169-184) and Rowbotham (2000, pp. 155-169). 36. Rowbotham (2000, pp. 155-169); Clark (The Struggle for the Breeches, pp. 78-87). 37. Scotsman, 29th December 1838. 38. Conley (2008, pp. 219-238). 39. Glasgow Herald, 20th August 1857. 40. Scotsman, 3rd February 1872 and 13th October 1871. 41. Ibid., 1st July 1884. 42. H. M.Advocate vDingwall (1867) 5 Irvine 466; Farmer, (1997,p. 28) and Conley, ‘Atonement and domestic homicide’, pp. 219-238. 43. Caledonian Mercury, 5th May 1857. 44. Glasgow Herald, 10th May 1900. 45. Ibid, 12th April 1878. 46. Scotsman, 27th October 1874. 47. Glasgow Herald, 28th May 1864. 48. Wiener (2004, pp. 2-15 et passim). 49. Hughes (2004, pp. 169-184). 50. Conley (2008, p. 228). 51. Scotsman, 13th October 1871. 52. Ibid. 53. Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 13th March 1899. 54. Wiener (2004, pp. 2-3 and p. 37). 55. Ibid. (pp. 4-7 et passim). 56. See Pleck (1983); Bauer, Ritt (1985, pp. 188-189). 57. Clark (2000, pp. 27-40); Lambertz (Feminists and wife-beating, p. 30). 58. Scotsman, 12th May 1860. 59. Glasgow Herald, 17th January 1871. 60. Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 27th March 1899. 61. Scotsman, 1st June 1872. 62. Ibid., 12th April 1878. 63. Ibid. 64. Scotsman, 11th November; 23rd December 1874. 65. Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 9th December 1874; 6th January 1875. 66. Scotsman, 15th September 1874. 67. Scotsman, 11th January 1875. 68. Scotsman, 29th October 1872. 69. Scotsman, 28th July 1876. 70. Scotsman, 6th December 1878. 71. Hammerton (1995, p. 73). 72. Lambertz (Feminists and wife-beating, pp. 25-43). 73. Scotsman, 15th February 1902; 30th November 1909. 74. Glasgow Herald, 23rd January 1899. 75. Scotsman, 6th October 1910. 76. Scotsman, 24th February 1915. 77. See for example, Scotsman, 6th October 1910. 78. Parliamentary Papers, Report on Judicial Statistics for Scotland, 1913, Annual Report of the Prison Commissioners for Scotland for the Year 1911-1914.

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79. Parliamentary Papers, Annual Report of the Prison Commissioners for Scotland, 1914. 80. Govan Press, 21st March 1930. 81. Lambertz (Feminists and wife-beating,pp. 25-43). 82. Davies (2007, pp. 511-527). 83. Hughes (2004, pp. 171-173). 84. Jones (1994, p. 128). 85. Hughes (2004, pp. 169-184). 86. Glasgow Caledonian University, CHILDREN 1st (RSSPCC) Archive, GB 1847 RSSPCC Annual Reports, Branches, 1896-1914. 87. Glasgow Herald, 18th October 1931. 88. McNeill (2005, pp. 23-32). 89. Scotsman, 30th November 1905. 90. See, Garland (1981, pp. 29-45). See also, Smart, (1992). 91. Scotsman, 24th March 1938. 92. Govan Press, 28th September 1923. 93. Ibid., 5th October 1923. 94. Scotsman, 24th October 1934; 5th August 1938. 95. Scotsman, 24th October 1934; 18th Jan 1935; 30th June 1938. 96. Farmer (1997,p. 28). Contemporaries including the Chief Constable of Glasgow attributed the rise in the number of assault prosecutions in 1908 to the ‘youth problem’. See, Tawney (1909, p. 533).

ABSTRACTS

The nineteenth century has been identified as one in which a ‘new softer patriarchy’ emerged along with a more companionate marriage; a wider acceptance of forms of domestic violence and a hardening of attitudes towards men who inflicted violence on their wives. Using criminal statistics, changes in law and practice and the discursive debates which permeated the Scottish media, this article will highlight how the relationship between provocation, criminal liability and diminished responsibility ensured that attitudes towards men who inflicted violence on their wives reflected greater levels of continuity rather than change in Scotland in the period 1850-1950.

Le XIXe siècle a été perçu à la fois comme une période d’émergence d’un «nouveau patriarcat plus doux» et d’un mariage empreint d’une plus grande camaraderie; une période acceptant plus largement certaines formes de violence domestique et manifestant davantage de dureté envers les hommes qui violentaient leurs épouses. Fondé sur l’examen des statistiques pénales, des réformes législatives, des modifications des pratiques et des débats transparaissant dans les médias écossais, cet article montre que, dans l’Écosse des années 1850-1950, la relation entre provocation, responsabilité pénale et atténuation de cette dernière garantissait davantage de continuité que de changement dans les attitudes à l’encontre des maris violents.

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AUTHOR

ANNMARIE HUGHES Dr. Annmarie Hughes is a lecturer in economics and social history at the University of Glasgow. She is author of Gender and Political identities in Scotland 1919-1939 (2010) and has published work on family and family breakdown and the history of domestic violence in inter-war Scotland.

Dr Annmarie Hughes University of Glasgow Department of Economic and Social History [email protected]

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“But we Will Always Have to Individualise”1. Police Supervision of Released Prisoners, its ‘Crisis’ and Reform in Prussia (1880-1914)

Philipp Müller

“Moral care” and the “police tone”

1 One could describe the shortcomings of police supervision in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Prussia in terms of a conflict: two basic principles, those of tutelage and independence, contradicted each other. As prison chaplain Braune posited, “moral care” (sittliche Pflege) was required without patronization or any “tone of police” (Polizei-Ton)3. However, to abandon any form of surveillance went against the grain of police supervision as it presumed an asymmetrical relationship and necessitated both confinement and liberty. The repercussions of this theme can be traced in the legal history of police supervision. There were two different laws regulating the intervention of the police, the “Law on police supervision” (Gesetz über die Polizeiaufsicht) and the “Law on the admission of settling persons of 31 December 1842” (Gesetz über die Aufnahme zuziehender Personen vom 31. Dezember 1842). While the latter remained unchanged throughout the period, the proportions of legal constraints and the police’s permissions to intervene regulated in the law on police supervision shifted throughout the 19th century.

2 Generally the punishment of the convicted person was alleviated – while the police discretionary powers were increasingly restricted. The codification of the constitution in Prussia (1848/1850) marked a first step in this long-term development as “the formulation of maxims for the practice of the police was deemed desirable.”4 The police’s powers of ‘indeterminate sentencing’ gave way to regulations of the Napoleonic Code pénal that had been implemented in some parts of Prussia during Napoleon’s imperialism (the western provinces on the left bank of the Rhine and the Duchy of

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Berg). From the beginning of the new constitutional regime in 1850, imposing police supervision required the decision of a court5. In 1870 the Imperial Penal Code introduced further elements that softened the conditions of police supervision: the punishment’s maximum duration of ten years was reduced to five, and the concept of “night time” (Nachtzeit) which forbade certain offenders from leaving their home during the night was abolished; finally, police supervision was no longer a compulsory “additional punishment” (Nebenstrafe) for particular types of criminals determined by the court, but had now become an option to be considered by the police at the end of the prison sentence6. These modifications suggest an increasing regulation of policing, a ‘taming’ of the police, while released prisoners were continuously granted more liberty. However, the 1842 Right of Residence Law continued to guarantee the police’s wide ranging powers as it was entirely in the hands of the police to allow persons to enter a police district or to expel them for an unlimited period of time7. It was this law of 1842, coexisting with the legal provisions about police supervision, which enabled the police to continue with more violent forms of policing8.

3 The focus of this article is the juxtaposition, if not interdependent interlocking, of granted rights and legal confinements, of coercion and support, of distant surveillance and subtle intrusion. I will examine the tools and means of police supervision put in place to administer a specific social milieu in the context of the history of the Prussian Police in the Imperial period. This study will provide an analysis of these “power relationships” (relations de pouvoir)9, including the strategies deployed by the agencies involved in carrying out the supervision, the diverse conditions under which the strategies were applied, and their effects or the lack thereof on the “sentenced individuals” (verurteilten Elemente)10. The article consists of the following parts: In the first part I highlight the shortcomings of the policing practices as traditionally understood, the tacit assumptions about the ‘administered’ and the right of the police to expel former prisoners; The second part provides an analysis of the particular rhetorical appropriation of these problems by the penal reform movement and its political result: the reforms of police supervision initiated between 1895 and 1907. The third part examines the changes and continuities of the newly reformed police supervision; and, finally, I assess the problems that arose in spite of the promised effects.

Police supervision in Prussia

4 Police supervision was defined as an “additional punishment” (Nebenstrafe) of prisoners after their release from prison. The notion underlying this form of punishment considered a recently released prisoner not an autonomous person in social and legal terms, but a disabled social being: former prisoners challenged by their sudden freedom required control. Hence the limitation of the ex-prisoner’s civic rights. The confinement of the freedom of a sentenced person was subject to change during the constitutional transformation of the Prussian Kingdom during the second half of the 19th century. However, two crucial means of intervention remained in the hands of the police throughout the period: the local police were authorised to search the former prisoner’s house, to confine his or her mobility (including specific places and localities), and, ultimately, to expel the former prisoner altogether out of the police district (Polizeibezirk)11.

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5 The typical ex-prisoner under police supervision was male while female offenders were seldom sentenced to police supervision12. However, all of them shared the same characteristic: an entry in their criminal records indicating their prosecution for property offences13. Karl Fuhr, an expert on penal law and a disciple of Franz von Liszt (1859-1919), concluded in 1886 that the district police authority opted for police supervision more than 90 per cent of cases if the prisoner had been sentenced for committing a property crime14. Metaphorically speaking, ‘the thief’, the epitome of delinquency in the 19th century15, was the main concern of both the courts and the police. A close monitoring process was to follow after the property offender’s release thus turning the released prisoner into an “observat”, an observed individual.

Illustration one: Heinrich Zille “Bleak Prospects: Badly dressed and subjugated to police supervision one is not able to make better acquaintances.”

6 “Observat”, “Polizeiobservate” or ”Observanden,” were the most common denominations used by the involved authorities to label their object of concern. The jargon, however, is misleading if one takes the administrative terms for granted. The notion “Observat” supposes an abstract and disciplined mode of active observation while the object of observation is passive, meaning it is excluded from the operation of observing. However, the police’s gaze was neither in permanent control of the sentenced persons nor did the observation operate in a neutral and detached way. On the contrary the gaze of the police was biased and value-laden; already the police’s favoured choice of observation, a source of concern, was largely informed by a social stereotype: ‘the thief.’ Furthermore, the object of police surveillance did not remain passive. “Observate” were actively involved in the process of supervision as they were officially required to be, at least in part. Nevertheless, released prisoners appropriated the conditions of their status as “Observat” according to their own needs and interests.

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As a consequence, they not only contributed to the outcome but also shaped the conditions to which they were subjected.

7 In theory, and to safeguard public safety, police monitored the way of life and the development of prisoners after their release. In order to prevent them from relapsing into any criminal activities, the police was therefore “to produce and to uphold by permanent supervision the notion that every step [of the ex-prisoner] was monitored and that the police was informed of anything he did”16. In doing so former prisoners were urged to accustom themselves to honest occupation and to permanent respectable business17. An industrious way of life would further the disciplinarisation process and thus contribute to the safety of society. Yet, despite the eyes of the police being “always alert and open”18, this did not per se translate into the desired effects, namely the reintegration of the former prisoner under ever closer control.

Watching: panoptic illusions

8 Two key elements of police supervision, the industriousness of the ex-prisoner and the surveillance of the police, were in uneasy juxtaposition. Time and again the successive interior ministers reminded subordinate authorities “that the police control of provisionally released prisoners should not be applied in a way so that the released is hampered in his progress or exposed to public contempt”19. Already in 1866 the Minister urged the police to avoid “any public attention”20 when monitoring former prisoners. However, the ex-prisoner had little opportunity to escape the “Erinyes of the evil deed”21; the police continued to haunt the wrongdoer and made him live a restless and fugitive life. Mostly the “Erinyes” would manifest themselves in the form of local policemen. In accordance with their monitoring task they regularly looked after their “observate” either in their private home or at their workplace22. However, the policeman’s regular check on a released prisoner raised suspicion among housemates, neighbours, and employers and, consequently, alerted them to the deviant past of the recently released, but settled ex-prisoner. In contrast to sweeping panoptic illusions, the “alert and open eye” of the local police did not operate from an invisible position23, but was instead carried out in public and therefore noticed by “respectable citizens.” Given their own understanding of deviancy, “respectable citizens” felt that their “honour” was insulted and that the police’s public observation of a sentenced person prompted distrust and hostility24. The ‘administered’ were often sacked by their employers and had to leave after the revelations of their infamous past.

9 Take the example of Ernst Heidrich. The “assistant painter” (Malergehilfe) was to experience more than once the police’s involvement in the unequal distribution and organisation of opportunities in society. Having been released after serving more than five years in gaol, the painter had found work again. Very soon, however, Heidrich faced intrusion from the police and was laid off by his employer. Subsequently, the painter would experience the same treatment detrimental to his integration in society several times. After the painter had found work, policemen would inform his masters about their assistant’s recent past and the painter’s dismissal would shortly follow25.

10 The brief story of Ernst Heidrich was one of many circulated in diverse media of the time. Such compelling cases fuelled the debate about the shortcomings of police supervision and conveyed only one message, namely the urgency of a reform of this institute. Prison chaplains, pastors, playwrights, lawyers and experts in penal law, all

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claimed to have a say in the affairs of the police by spreading the narrative of the tragic victim of police supervision. However, local policemen checking on an “Observat” in public was routine practice. To fully comprehend the policemen’s actions, we must put aside the biased statements of the reformers and presume that the authorities’ policing practices operated with some degree of coherency. Safety was the chief concern of the police and their perception of the problem and how to address it slightly differed from the opinions held by the advocates of reform. Appearing in person from time to time was a police activity informed by traditional practices of policing. A police manual of 1828 depicted the task of monitoring accordingly:

11 For the policemen, the safety of their district mattered; “Snooping and informing”27 on ex-prisoners’ living conditions were unquestioned everyday policing practices.

12 Other means of policing reveal a similar kind of thought rooted in traditional modes of police work. Apparently, policemen as well as district authorities often published the name and criminal record of a fugitive “Observat”28. The chance to arrest an ex- prisoner in hiding was limited, but the mere possibility of tracking down a disappeared “Observat” by publishing “lists of wanted criminals” gave nimbus of power. The official action and its impression of effective performance weighed more than its potential social impact. Former prisoners in hiding were rarely caught, but, given the revelations of their criminal records, they were often forced to pack their bags again.

13 This handling of supervision resonates with the overall bureaucratic mode of policing in the Prussian Kingdom. Prussian police was requested to fulfil an all-encompassing administration of society regulated by numerous and detailed instructions which made themselves felt in daily life. Commanding tone, authoritarian instructions and bureaucratic police arbitrariness dominated policing by local policemen on the beat29. It did not help that the military attitudes and ethos were the main source for the police’s practices. Only after nine years of military drill and influence from the army was a non-commissioned officer deemed an appropriate candidate for another but related service, namely the Prussian police30. This military training was not without effect on policing, and the experience of drilling, expectations of obedience, and the use of coercion was passed onto the ‘subjects’. Consequently, for the “bureaucratic soldier”31, supervising an ex-prisoner was an instruction to be enforced in order to safeguard public safety. Accomplishing this task did not require any reflection concerning means, circumstances, or consequences.

Reporting: Fictions of Governance

14 The control of a sentenced person’s mobility (Konfination,Verstrickung), another component of police supervision, also reflects the prevalent policing à la mode bureaucratique. The implicit expectations of obedience and subjugation of the released prisoner were tied into the monitoring procedures. In accordance with the regulation, a person subjugated to police supervision was obliged to report any move:

15 Whenever an ex-prisoner wanted to leave the district of the local police, the “Observat” was obliged to report on his or her movements. In other words, police supervision effectively installed a continuous tracking of the administered person33. The idea underlying the concept of “Observat” was a permanent observation, suggesting the option to take alleged “asocial elements” in preventive custody at all times.

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16 Nevertheless, the idea of a permanent visibility of the “Observat” relied on the co- operation of the latter. It was the ex-prisoner who was obliged to report to the police about his or her sojourns, about changes of residence, etc.; only these co-operative acts furnished the authority with the required information. It was thus the “Observat” who enabled the police to observe. The efficiency of police supervision presumed the obedience and the compliance of the ex-prisoner with the official instructions taken for granted by state authorities. However, the official subjugation under a specific policing regiment did not result in law-abiding behaviour34 as they went underground instead.

Expelling: fictions of banning

17 A similar effect resulted from the ultimate resort of police supervision: the expulsion of the “Observat” from the police district. The police district authorities were allowed to decide on the expulsion of the ‘policed’. If they deemed the presence of the former prisoner to constitute a high risk to “public security and morality” monitoring could give way to expulsion. In an attempt to prevent any breach of the law within the territorial confinement of the police district those who were deemed “very dangerous” were to leave. However this measure of last resort remained an ambiguous strategy deployed to safeguard public safety. The banning of a person from the territory, although a gesture of absolute power, also marked the end of the monitoring process and left the observing agency in the dark.

18 Time and again contemporaries noted the inefficiency of these measures. Former prisoners escaped the gaze of the police by non-compliance with orders and instructions35. A prominent example of this is the infamous Captain from Köpenick. Prior to his notorious coup wearing the stolen uniform of a Prussian military officer, Wilhelm Voigt (1849-1922) was expelled by the Berlin police in August 1906 because he was generally considered to constitute a threat to public security. The recently released prisoner, however, did not follow the authorities’ order to leave the Berlin area. When asked about Wilhelm Voigt’s whereabouts, his sister Bertha Menz told the local police in Rixdorf that her brother had left for Hamburg36. The police rightly doubted the accuracy of this report and correctly assumed that their former “Observat” had gone into hiding in Berlin, knowing that Voigt had rented a room in Langestraße 2237. The police ordered the necessary “penal control” (Strafkontrolle) of the expellee and demanded his arrest in the official police report38. These measures neither helped to identify the wanted “Observat” in Berlin in late summer 1906 nor did they prevent the reappearance of Wilhelm Voigt as bogus Captain in October 1906.

Prussian policing: clamp down and lack of control

19 The discrepancy between the theoretical idea of supervision and its actual practice in daily life is palpable. In contrast to intriguing ideas such as “unlimited custodial powers” and “invisible but permanent supervision,” Prussian police lacked the ability to install a regime as pictured in the decrees and regulations. The administrative effort of police authorities was enormous; the result, as the police headquarters in Berlin admitted, was “null”39. Despite the symbolic effort in displaying police authority and its close relationship to the army, the policing practice of the Prussian police reveals a type of governance which was characterised by clamp-down and lack of control. Given

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the limited personnel, the recruiting patterns of the police and the prevalent bureaucratic policing style this should not come as surprise. While the authoritarian and rigid mode of policing and the military conduct of policemen was only one side of the coin, the other side displayed helplessness, disinformation and frustration. Nonetheless, in practice both the authoritarian and violent style as well as its limitations were interlinked and enhanced each other.

20 The policy of the Prussian police in Berlin provides a prime example of the juxtaposition of severity and helplessness, harshness and frustration. The Berlin police headquarters were leading in imposing police supervision on former prisoners40 and, in addition, pursued a rigorous policy of expulsion. It was the urban environment of Berlin and the political significance of this particular site which entailed a strong bias and a sufficient excuse for these methods: both shaped the measures taken by Berlin police headquarters. The capital was conceived in metaphors of the Big City41 and was considered a “reservoir of sentenced elements”42. Hopes for better living and working conditions made people of lesser means move to Berlin and, in the eyes of the police, increased the likelihood of deviant and criminal activities. Hence the capital was considered critical. In order to keep “sentenced elements” (verurteilte Elemente) out of Berlin, guidelines were drawn up, facilitating the expulsion of former prisoners “personally known as particularly dangerous criminals:” “Observate” who had been prosecuted for “committing sex crimes, perverse sexual actions, brutal offences and certain dangerous crimes against property” were to be expelled43. Although the Berlin headquarters were directly subordinated to the Interior Ministry, the minister’s repeated demands for the consideration of the individuality of ‘the administered’ were ignored. The mere presence of allegedly “dangerous criminals” in the Imperial capital raised the concern about the current security situation, the notorious “exekutive Sicherheitsvorbehalt,” and resulted in a constant expulsion of ex-prisoners44. However, expelling an ex-prisoner from Berlin and its surrounding areas marked the end of police surveillance: despite the harsh measures it had predictably little effect.

21 Nevertheless, one should not forget to consider the social consequences of the Janus- faced character of police supervision for those who were subjugated to this type of criminal control. Clamp down and lack of control affected those placed under police supervision in two ways. Certainly, released prisoners could easily thwart the efforts of the police and go underground. But in spite of the romantic idea of subversion, we must consider the difficulties and obstacles of such a way of life that was not freely chosen in the first place. Considering the practices of the police, the ex-prisoner’s wayward appropriation of the police instructions were often the only means of settling for a time. Furthermore, living underground was fraught with difficulties and restrictions. Their (temporarily confined) attempt and desire to live a “decent life”45 was dependent on the good will of tenants, possibly neighbours, and employers. The danger of another expulsion by the police, of arrest, or of a revelation concerning their criminal past, loomed large and was detrimental to the establishing of a stable way of life in whatever form.

The discourse of penal reform

22 The restless way of life of released prisoners, their frequent loss of work and property, their immediate experience of police violence, their suffering from social

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discrimination by “respectable citizens,” and, finally, their yearning for a “decent life”, all this was used to a good effect by the movement for penal reform. For reformers police supervision was a “chain of the penitentiary whose clanking sound follows the sentenced individuals for his entire life”:46 Police supervision was left like a “tattoo which one never gets rid off,” a “mark of Cain” which excluded ex-prisoners “forever” from society47. The ‘administered’ were turned into objects of pity while the police was reproached for its application of police supervision, particularly the lack of any acknowledgment of the individual conditions and of the ex-prisoners’ character. The handling of police supervision appeared arbitrary and harsh48. Whether in postcards, songs, news, plays, novels or articles in expert journals49, protagonists of reform asserted the counterproductive effects of police supervision in diverse media by presenting the story of the “tragic victim” of police supervision. Drawing on the scientific notion of “the disabled man”50, an ex-prisoner’s relapse into crime was conceived as a product of his or her social milieu. After release from prison the former prisoner strove to live a decent life and found work, but unjust police measures would lead to the repeated break-up of the settled. The story about Wilhelm Voigt was just the most successful repetition of this well-established narrative51.

Illustration two: Postcard “Who is the real culprit? Police Supervision,” Heimatmuseum Köpenick © 2011

23 “Police Supervision!” is the title of the post card. On the left side we see the bogus “Captain” from Köpenick imprisoned in a cell in Moabit. An unfinished letter in his hands begins with the words, “Dear Bride. I wanted to work, but in…” The missing is visualised on the postcard’s other half. Here Wilhelm Voigt is identified as “Shoemaker Voigt in Wismar” while working in a shop. From the far right a hand reaches into the picture holding a card inscribed with “expulsion.” Wilhelm Voigt had found a job and lived an honest live in Wismar after his release from gaol in February 1905. However, the police expelled the former prisoner in May 1905 because of his alleged danger to “public safety and morality,” and by October 1906 Voigt relapsed into crime.

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Apparently police supervision which ignored the individual character and situation produced delinquency. Suffice it to say the entire debate of penal reform resonates in this illustration of the Voigt Case.

The reform of police supervision (1895-1907)

24 The widespread criticism by reformers, backed by the wider movement for penal reform, resulted in the introduction of a number of important changes. The Interior Ministry embarked on a first reform in 1895. Essential changes of the regulations were instituted in June 1900, and in 1907, one year after the reform of the penal code, a final modification accomplished the reform of the institute of police supervision. These reforms proved the efficiency of the reformists’ propaganda as the new regulations in part reflected some arguments and criticisms of the discourse of reform. One essential result of the reform process was the new position acquired of welfare associations (Fürsorgevereine).

25 Welfare associations existed alongside police supervision for several decades before they rose to prominence with the new model of police supervision52. Charitable organisations such as the Association for the Betterment of Prisoners (Verein zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen, 1829) had been involved in the support and care of former prisoners for many decades. However, step by step the reform of police supervision entrusted a particular competence upon church and private welfare associations and allowed them to play a significant role approved by state authorities and sanctioned by the law. In this respect, the reform of police supervision must be viewed against the background of the general development of policing in Prussia. During the Imperial period the police began to pass on certain powers to private welfare associations53. Consequently, former opponents of police supervision began to support the new institution of police supervision which they had criticised so harshly in the preceding decades54.

26 The first reform initiated in 1895 put welfare associations in charge of the wages earned by prisoners during their prison sentence, the so-called “work bonus” (Arbeitsprämie). Previously the police had paid prisoners their whole earnings after their release from prison. From 1895 onwards welfare organisations were commissioned with the payment and with these funds at their disposal they had been provided with a lever. The bonus was not paid at once; to benefit from their little wage earned while in prison, known as the “gift of work” (Arbeitsgeschenk), released prisoners had to fulfil a first basic requirement of the regulation of police supervision: they were obliged to report to the local police authority55. The ex-prisoner should engage in the monitoring process and turn themselves into an “Observat”. Additionally, the newly implemented regulations urged “to use the earning to the purpose of welfare and to oppose any abuse.”56 Welfare associations were entitled to subject further payments to conditions and the overall progress of the former prisoner and, if he or she did not co- operate and comply with the instructions, the rest of the payment was to be submitted to the local police.

27 In 1900 further reforms were introduced which widened the scope of competences of the welfare organisations. In contrast to previous regulations the new instructions modified the relationship between the “Observat” and the police:

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28 As long as a released prisoner was registered with a charitable organisation the police was obliged to avoid any contact, the police was required to ask the association about the terms of care. The welfare associations acted as a mediator between the police and the former prisoner. The police supervision “rested” (ruhte), and a “monitoring care” (beaufsichtigende Fürsorge) replaced police supervision as long as the “fosterling” did not indulge in idleness or misbehaviour58.

29 Although leading members of the Interior Ministry considered it “a fundamental change”59, the final reform in 1907 confirmed details decreed already in June 1900 (§9)60. However, “subsequent to the Wilhelm Voigt case”61 the Prussian government obviously had to respond to the wide-ranging allegations made against it. During the revelations following the successful deception by the fake Captain and the arrest of the usurper in October 1906, it transpired that Voigt had once been a ‘reformed’ prisoner before being unreasonably expelled by local police authorities. Hence the Interior Ministry declared that from now on released prisoners who had found “honest labour” (ehrliche Arbeit) to make their living without the support of a welfare association, were to be spared any action of the police62. The government’s public assertion of a “complete transformation of the police procedure”63 dubbed by the Berlin press as “Lex Voigt” was supposed to convey an alleged willingness to further the policy of penal reform in view of the scandalous revelations subsequent to Voigt’s arrest in October 1906. At least the subordinate institutions of the Interior Ministry, including the police, were again reminded of their recently constrained field of competences. The public announcements even went so far as to urge police authorities to encourage released prisoners to register with welfare associations, but even if they did not co-operate with any of these; they were, at least in theory, not to be expelled by the district police authority.

30 The reforms of police supervision did not result in an immediate change of practice. Time and again police authorities did not comply with the new restrictions of their powers, but clung to their traditional concerns and measures of policing64. A further problem which surfaced after the initiation of reforms was the lack of communication between local police authorities and welfare associations65; some associations did not take on these new tasks, and in some regions of the Prussian Kingdom the associations which were supposed to perform the new police supervision did not exist66. However, charitable organisations had undeniably been bestowed with essential policing powers.

The Prussian police, civilian policing and the professionalization of policing

31 It would be misleading to perceive the newly empowered welfare associations as being in opposition to the police. The task of welfare associations and their relationship to the police and the criminal justice system should be understood in terms of co- operation rather than antagonism, given their shared attitudes towards surveillance as well as overlap in administration and personnel.

32 The old institution of police supervision and the enhanced “powers of individualising” by the new monitoring authorities were historically related to the traditional “technology of pastoral care” (la ‘technologie pastorale’) in European history: its target is man67, in this case property offenders supervised to increase the society’s safety and

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wealth68. The new policy towards prisoners revived the very idea of police supervision, the efficient interlacing of the former prisoners’ industriousness and the surveillance of this process by a superior authority. Monitoring and reintegration were closely entwined in both models, even if the reformative programme – informed by the knowledge and experience of missionary work69 – differed from the prevalent style of policing. In other words, to improve “the modern art of governing” (l’art moderne de gouverner)70 of former prisoners, the new monitoring care reformed the old institution of police supervision by borrowing extensively from a different “modality of pastoral care” (modalité de pouvoir pastorale)71.

33 Furthermore, welfare associations enjoyed the political support of the Interior Ministry which promoted – if not decreed – the establishment of a network of welfare associations in the Kingdom to ensure the provision of “monitoring care”. In 1901 there were 384 associations; by 1914 the number of active welfare associations had reached 473. In Berlin alone there were three different institutions whose social activities included the care of ex-prisoners: the Verein zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen, the Verein für die Berliner Stadtmission, the Evangelisch-kirchliche Vereinigung zur Fürsorge für entlassene Strafgefangene and, finally, the Fürsorge-Kommission der jüdischen Gemeinde72. Moreover, further administrative initiatives of the Prussian government reveal institutional ties between the Ministry and associations. Administrative co-operation was considered essential to ensure the effective functioning of the respective institutions. To prevent the “dispersal of forces and resources” (Zersplitterung von Kräften und Ressourcen), the Ministry decreed the establishment of “Central offices” (Zentralstellen) in June 1885 73 inspired from the example of the South German State Baden74.

34 Finally, a glance at the membership of the Verein zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen in Berlin is quite revealing in trying to comprehend the mission of welfare associations. In 1902 the managing board (Direktorium) of this society included several counsellors of the Justice Ministry, members of the criminal justice system such as the president of the district court, the directors of Berlin’s prisons Tegel and Moabit, and the chief of the police headquarters75. The leading management provided a platform of expertise across established institutional borders intended to facilitate co-operation and communication.

35 Although the police was not entirely marginalised, the differences between both institutions are palpable. The Prussian police was made to co-operate with an institutional body that differed with regard to its design, personnel, self- understanding, and comportment. While the Prussian police had its roots in the army, welfare associations sought to include leading state officials and directors from the judicial and penitentiary system as well as voluntary guardians, mainly of middleclass origin. Commissioned with the surveillance of ex-prisoners, guardians (Pfleger)76, a kind of social worker avant la lettre, eclipsed policemen who were deemed unfit to rekindle the “sense of honour” of former prisoners77. In Cottbus, the membership of the ‘Society for the Welfare of Former Prisoners’ comprised a superintendent, a missionary, a pastor, a precentor, a headmaster, a police officer, an archdeacon, a postman (Postschaffner), the wife of a town councillor, a court counsellor (Amtsgerichtsrat), a captain, a factory owner, a pharmacist, a noblemen, a state prosecutor, “and other ladies”78. The care and monitoring of former prisoners were no longer the privilege of the police; supervision of former prisoners was transformed into a social affair in which

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members of the public, at least those who could spare the required time and money, could participate and contribute. New labels for the old concept of police supervision were invented such as “care supervision” (Fürsorgeaufsicht), “monitoring care” (beaufsichtigende Fürsorge) or “civilian supervision” (bürgerliche Überwachung), reflecting the emphasis on care and the widening participation79.

36 A further characteristic of the reform was the institutional continuity of the Prussian police. In contrast to other areas of police reform, such as the criminal investigation department, urban policing, female police, press policy80, the reform of police supervision did not entail any institutional changes of the Prussian police. Certainly, the police lost its overall responsibility and the empowerment of welfare associations partly removed the police from the supervision of released prisoners. The Prussian police, not only saved resources and personnel, but also avoided internal reform of its institution. The delegation of reform to welfare associations sheltered the police from the concern and the criticism of reform; the new “monitoring care” diverted the attention from the urgency of institutional change of the police. While the Interior Ministry was willing to embark on wide-ranging reforms which empowered charitable organisations, the Ministry spared the police from political change. The authoritarian bureaucratic practices of the police were still considered to be a necessary component of Prussian rule to safeguard the Kingdom’s social and political stability. Although policing changed around the turn of the century, the reform of police supervision did not necessitate a reform of the Prussian police as such; the traditional policing lingered on81.

The new institution of police supervision

37 The reform of police supervision sought to rekindle the idea of care and surveillance by implementing a new mode of policing. The former bureaucratic handling of police supervision by Prussian authorities was to give way to a new policy of monitoring care in the hands of the welfare societies which attempted to revive the traditional mission of police supervision, i.e. the efficient interlacing of police surveillance and the ex- prisoner’s honest labour. In comparison with the “bureaucratic soldier”82 the role of the guardian of released prisoners differed accordingly:

38 The rigid handling of police supervision was replaced by an elaborated and differentiated set of strategies which addressed the shortcomings of the former practices of police supervision. The payment of the workbonus after the prisoner’s release was transformed into a strategic use of this monetary resource to turn the released prisoner into a submissive “Observat”. As soon as an “Observat” had requested the “monitoring care” by a welfare society, the “protégée” (Schützling) enjoyed the society’s “Guarding supervision”84 (Schutzaufsicht) and was, therefore, provided with a “personal identity card” (Ausweiskarte) which should protect him from any intrusive treatment by local police forces85. Thus the highly visible checks on the living and working of the ‘policed’ conditions gave way to a regular report of the “Observat” on a more or less voluntary basis86.

39 A further leitmotif of the new “monitoring care” was its emphasis on the individuality of the “Observat”, echoing the main criticism voiced by reformers. In contrast to the seemingly arbitrary, schematic and “tormenting” application of police supervision87, welfare associations deemed “the individualising power”88 (le pouvoir individualisant) a

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promising method. The individual character of a released prisoner was to be taken into account in order to provide an appropriate control. Hence, additional documenting techniques were introduced. The “monitoring care” care was not complete without the accurate documentation of the “protégée’s” (Schützling) situation and improvement. Associations in Berlin as well as in Görlitz had developed small cahiers (Fürsorgeaufsichtsbuch) to equip their volunteers with a means of regular recording for each fosterling89. The cover sheet provided personal details such as name, date of birth, place of birth, religious affiliation, and included particular information about occupation, employer, the latest sentence, previous convictions and the duration of the punishment. These “supervision reports” (Aufsichtsberichte) also recorded the “day of revision” and details about the observations90.

Illustration three: Model of a Cahier.

© 2011 Landeskirchliches Archiv Berlin Brandenburg

40 These cahiers helped the welfare supporters to remember encounters, to overview the development of the “protégée” (Schützling), and to provide evidence for his or her “characterisation” (Charakteristik). Furthermore, the cahier provided the associations with the means to instigate and justify further actions such as a “reward” (Prämie), admonition or expulsion91. Most interestingly, it was the police who exploited, for its own purpose, this new expertise of the charitable organisations in “the knowledge of the human nature”: Leading members of the Ministry and the police had publicly declared the suspension of any intervention in police supervision in 1907, but, in the subsequent years, the Berlin police headquarters requested with reference to the decree of the same year reports about the character of suspicious elements in order to expel them from the police district on the provision of the penal code (§§38-39) and the 1842 Right to Residence Law92. Under the umbrella of the new “monitoring care” the

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police authority did continue with its more violent forms of policing although under changed circumstances of the post reform years.

41 However, “the great feat” of the monitoring care, as Pastor Pfeiffer put it, was to educate and accustom former prisoners to work for “the released deserved both help and – work.”93 Welfare associations liaised with local employers, or they sent their “protégées” to the relevant employment agencies (Arbeitsbureau). Consequently, their “fosterlings” were placed as “craftsmen, writers, salesmen, servants, coachmen, earth-, field-, and brick workers.”94

42 To support the reintegration process, welfare supporters had an arsenal of tools at their disposal95. A first contact, an informal chat provided the opportunity to check the “fosterling’s” character: “one offers these people a seat” and signals social attention and interest; “one talks about their current accommodation and work” and thus reveals en passant their personal situation; “one is able to give them this or that advice” to provide them with essential information to live a “decent life”; “one provides them with a library card” because one cares about their edifying reading; one invites them “to the choir” because entertainment is a requisite of life as well; “one gives them a piece of clothing from our collection”; the most vulnerable of needy people96. Last but not least, food vouchers and also small amounts of money were at the guardians’ disposal. Advice could take different forms depending on the “fosterling’s” character and individual situation. Furthermore, a key feature of all deployable strategies was their compound nature: they were neither pure forms of material support nor mere means of surveillance, but a juxtaposition of both and provided the guardians with subtle and intricate means of intrusive help which tacitly suggested an industrious and law abiding way of life.

Illustration four: Model of a Form

© 2011 Landeskirchliches Archiv Berlin Brandenburg

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Distinguishing competences: soft and coercive disciplinary means

43 However, these subtle strategies could not function efficiently without the threat and the application of coercive means. As Alf Lüdtke posits in a slightly different context, the “little stick” required the “big stick”:97Violence douce could not do without violence ouverte and the first did not render the latter superfluous. Each welfare supporter was equipped with a “card of legitimation” (Legitimationskarte), in order to ensure the support of local police forces in case of lacking respect, idleness or any kind of inappropriate behaviour while dealing with a “fosterling”.

44 The “legitimating card” is indicative of a differentiation of roles and tasks of volunteers and policemen. The former was supposed to wield gentle disciplinary power to accustom the ex-prisoner to the rules of a “decent life.” If the “fosterling” did not comply with the expectations of “civilian supervision,” an indication of the guardian’s disposal of police powers was possibly sufficient to restore the “fosterling” to “good order.” The reformed mode of police supervision did not deprive the police of its role, particularly not of its competence in using coercive means. In contrast to new terms such as “fosterling”, “welfare supervision” or the idea of an alleged “suspension of police supervision”98, the police would be present throughout the monitoring care provided by welfare associations. If the threat looming large in the background did not suffice, a welfare supporter could still request the police to act according to its prevalent practice: displaying authority, possibly using physical force and, ultimately, expelling the non-compliant “Observat,” if necessary.

45 The reformed police supervision did not suspend the punishment; it continued, but under changed circumstances. Permission to stay was provisional and depended on the “proof of real employment” and the conduct of the released prisoner. Both the police and the welfare associations could cancel the “provisional permission of residence” at any time during the whole period of supervision99. “Impudent behaviour” (freches Betragen), “indecent conduct” (ungebührliches Benehmen), non-compliance with regulations and orders or the suspicion of criminal activities, e.g. pimping and prostitution, prompted the suspension of the welfare associations’ monitoring care and resulted, ultimately, in the expulsion of the ‘policed’100.

46 The police continued to play an essential, albeit less evident, role within the reformed police supervision. From the sideline the police was essential for ensuring law and order. For the police and welfare associations, the disciplinary effects resulting from the co-operation were an integral part of the reforms:

47 However, whether the new regulations succeeded in installing a new and efficient regime is a different matter.

The limits of reform and constraints of efficiency

48 Welfare associations accounted for their own efficiency by counting the number of “fosterlings” they had put to work. However, the data provided by these statistics, listing the employment of released prisoners, do not lack the institution’s bias. While the mere quantity of people put to work was the only indicator of success, the

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conditions and terms of the employment and particularly its duration were ignored, let alone considered the (mis-) match of skills and job requirements.

49 In order to demonstrate success, the guardians frequently used story telling as a mode of representatio. At the centre of the short account was the successful integration of a former prisoners: the protagonist was repeatedly hampered in his strive for a “decent life”, but, thanks to the caring support of the story teller, the tragic victim of harsh and arbitrary policing measures was finally able to become what he wanted, a “respectable citizen”. This heroic salvation of a lost soul can be conceived as a crystallised form of the experience of the work of reformers. Nevertheless, the affirmative morale of the narrator ignored the ambiguities, contradictions, and conflicts of monitoring care and served to congratulate the narrator for his strenuous efforts while taking care of his “protégées”102.

50 More revealing with regard to the new policy and its effects are the complaints and criticisms discussed by the supporters of the new police supervision after the reforms. The change of police supervision did not help to prevent the embarrassment of released prisoners. The “periodic report”103 on the “fosterling” still generated contempt as both employer and employee were compromised104.

51 Another problem faced by reformers was the limited acceptance of help. It transpired that “the worst obstacle of welfare is always the fosterling”105. Former advocates of reform realised that their “protégées” allowed them “to help very occasionally”106; either because they did not ask for help or did not need it:

52 The reformers’ hope of utilizing their “fosterlings” “fall” as a lever proved illusionary. Released prisoners partially appreciated the work of welfare associations; particularly the buffer zone installed between welfare associations and police authorities was welcomed108. Furthermore, the “main task”109 of the associations, i.e. the support in the search for a job, was often appropriated to a good effect. However, a commonly shared experience was, as Gustav von Rohden (1855-1942), a pastor and prison chaplain, noticed that: In the words of George Orwell, a man “humiliated” by receiving help “hates his benefactor”111. The calculated outcome of the new welfare policy failed; “fosterlings” reduced the offered welfare programme to a job agency; ignoring any further help they did not relapse to crime or breached any rules112. Their selective use of the support subverted a “fundamental” (tiefgreifend) and “full” (vollwertige) care and the welfare associations were “helpless” and “unsuccessful”113.

53 Traces at the margins provide further clues about the limits of the new policy pursued by welfare associations. Apart from lists of members, expenses, and statistics, some of the associations’ “reports about [their] effectiveness” (Berichte über die Wirksamkeit) include anecdotes about positive outcomes and failures, summarising their experiences of “gains” and “losses.”

54 These brief stories were subject to a serious revision process before publication, and yet these few sentences encapsulate encounters of the “welfare volunteers” with their clientele. Given the obvious discrepancy between expectations, patterns of behaviour and values, the experience of these encounters was represented as “tidings” (nouvelles) about some kind of “infamous men” (hommes infâmes)115. The “fosterling’s” conduct lacked any sort of match with the basic assumptions prerequisite for the monitoring care; their behaviour was at the margins of what was to be considered reasonable. Here

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in these “lives of a couple of lines or of a couple of pages”116 surface the ultimate limits of care and surveillance and, at the same time, they reveal an enjeu different from the presumptions of a “decent life” and its necessary requirement, policing.

55 In conclusion, the co-operation of welfare associations and police established between 1895-1907 did not achieve the aims pictured by the agencies involved in the reform; the new “monitoring care” was bedevilled by old problems. To put it succinctly, the propagated effects of the “individualising power” (pouvoir individualisant) were exaggerated, the efficiency of the monitoring care overrated. In fact, the appropriation of the monitoring care, reducing the associations’ welfare policy to a mere job agency, is indicative of a misleading, albeit flamboyant, symbolic nimbus of the “technology of pastoral care” and a desire of the ex-prisoners for a kind of government different from the current form of policing. “Being guided was a state”117, this is true, but it was a contested, vexed and conflicting state of being.

Continuity, change, and the “longue durée” of silence

56 The main results of the analysis of police supervision could be described in terms of continuity and change.

57 The former police supervision was characterised by its predominantly bureaucratic style to administering everyday aspects of social life. The policemen’s enforcement of instructions, tacit assumptions about the subjects’ obedience and the overall set of strategies were by and large informed by the prevalent bureaucratic approach of policing in Prussia. However, in contrast to the sabre-rattling notion of authority and power, the examination of the prevalent policing practices revealed a juxtaposition of coercive intervention, authoritarian symbolic acts, and helplessness. The rigid and authoritarian application of punishment as well as the police’s disinformation and frustration went together and enhanced each other. Whether it had disciplinary effects on the subjects, the insufficiency of practices, means and the legal foundations of police supervision were in their essence contradictory, and yet confirmed the status quo.

58 For advocates of reform this old type of policing was deemed counterproductive, arbitrary and unjust, because potential disciplinary effects of this type of policing were ignored118. The propaganda in favour of penal reform proved efficient as “monitoring care” was introduced with welfare associations at the centre. A new form of cooperation between state officials and “respectable citizens” was charged with the responsibility for ex-prisoners. Borrowing largely from the tradition of “pastoral technology”, the monitoring care implemented an intricate “art of governing” (art de gouverner) to guarantee public safety.

59 The role of the police in the reformed police supervision is revealing. The police was to a large extent disengaged from the care of former prisoners, but it continued to loom in the background in a critical position. As a result of the reforms a new form of co- operation was established which ensured distinct, albeit interlocked, competences to both agencies. While welfare associations were in charge of the monitoring process, the police were to refrain from any intrusive interaction unless the “protégée” was disobedient. In any case of emergency, however, the police’s traditional competences were required: the display of state power and the use of coercion. Given this persistent demand of the “big stick,” the reforms of police supervision could not but spare the police from any change of its institutional organisation. Furthermore, the interlacing of

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the new with the old can also be observed in another aspect of the new police supervision. It was the police’s most direct violent form of policing and its ultimate resort, i.e. the expulsion of a former prisoner, which, in accordance with the last reform in 1907, was based on the welfare associations’ newly introduced techniques of personal identification documents. The police based its traditional resort to banishment on the data retrieved from the welfare associations who had made great efforts to individualise their clientele. The bureaucratic handling of police supervision did not cease with the reforms, but instead the administering of deviant subjects took on a more sophisticated form.

60 Another persistent phenomenon, if not a phenomenon of longue durée, is the silence of those placed under police supervision. There is no immediate trace of a personal voice which could reach us a hundred years later, and yet the presence of the ‘policed’ in the affairs discussed in this article is palpable. In this respect, the material itself, whether it originated from police authorities, advocates of penal reform, or from welfare associations, is revealing for one shared characteristic: Whenever the involved authorities accounted for the released prisoners, they had lost control of them. The ex- prisoner figured prominently in the constantly repeated narrative of tragic loss; in the edifying story of reformers about their strenuous – but finally successful – salvation of one lost soul; in short anecdotes about funny encounters with incompliant “fosterlings” 119; and transformed into numbers in the statistics of the welfare associations. In other words, whenever authorities lost sight, i.e. visual control, their accounts sought to compensate for the ex-prisoners invisibility. The police supervision and the discussion of its reform sought to re-create the presence of those who slipped out of reach as if noted numbers or written words could once again get hold of those who had disappeared. In view of the sudden independence after release from prison, the former prisoners were considered weak, “helpless” like a “castaway” and immature like “children”120. Yet their repeated disappearances were a powerful thorn in the side of the authorities in charge of the ‘administered’. It was the very idea of helplessness and weakness encapsulated in notions such as “Observat” or “fosterling” that turned the disappearance of former prisoners into a force of change, i.e. a force of historical change.

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NOTES

1. Martin Peltasohn (1849-1912), GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Minutes of the Prussian Diet 11./12.1.1907, 89. I thank the Heimatmuseum Köpenick and the Landeskirchliche Archiv Berlin Brandenburg for the kind permission to publish original pieces of their holdings. 2. Lüdtke (1982, p. 237); cf. Lüdtke (1989, p. 131). 3. Braune (1884, p. 112); Funk (1986, p. 164). 4. Goltdammer (1851, p. 148); See also Funk (1986, p. 145). Regarding other German states: Anonymous (1884), R. (1884), Wagner (1886), Fuhr (1892), Nußbaum (1909, p. 275f., p. 279f.); Rosenfeld (1910, p. 297ff.). 5. Lüdtke (1989, p. 128); cf. Fuhr (1892, p. 150f.); Funk (1986, p. 80f.). 6. Fuhr (1892, p. 168f., p. 186f.); Braune (1889, p. 818); GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 30.6.1900, 42, 43; cf. Roth (1997, p. 281); cf. Müller (2006, p. 62f). 7. Nussbaum (1909, p. 358). 8. For a very helpful critique of our notion of the ‘modernisation of law and justice’: Habermas (2009a, pp. 37-41). 9. Foucault (1981, p. 136, 1979, 2004, pp. 3-6, p. 4); Lüdtke (1979, 1991). 10. GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 4.2.1907, 94ff., 94. 11. GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 30.6.1900, 41ff. [§8]. 12. For example, in 1903, a prison chaplain at the prison in Görlitz reported that out of twenty- one convicts nineteen were male, only three female, see Braune (1903, p. 759), see also Kr. (1883); Wagner (1886). In 1902 the Verein zur Besserungder Strafgefangenen reported about 213 male and twenty-four female clients, the Verein der Berliner Stadtmission noted fifty-two male and three female “protégées”, Landeskirchliches Archiv Berlin Brandenburg (LAAB ) 14/1508, Bericht der Centralstelle (1902), 13ff. Similar proportions of males and females are to be found in other reports. The vast majority of prisoners were male, only few female, reflecting the gendered performance of crime and its prosecution by the police and justice system. Police supervision, focusing mainly on male petty criminals, was the equivalent to the police surveillance of prostitutes, cf. Nienhaus (1992); Schulte (1979); Evans (1998, p. 166ff.). 13. Lüdtke (1982, p. 237). 14. Fuhr (1892, p. 231). 15. Habermas (2006, 2009b). 16. Fuhr (1892, p. 264). 17. Zimmermann (1979 [1847], p. 366f.); Fuhr (1892, p. 188, 1888); GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 4.2.1907, 94. 18. Fuhr (1892, pp. 164, 264). 19. GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Writ 10.2.1904, 76 [original emphasis]; Ibid. Decree 30.6.1900, 41 [§9]; ibid., Writ 10.2.1904, 76 [in regard to the decree of 12.4.1871]. 20. Instruction of the Interior Minister 22.5.1866, in Fuhr (1892, p. 339), cf. ibid. (p. 182ff.).; GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 4.5.1907, 102. 21. Fuhr (1892, p. 230). 22. Instruction of the Interior Minister 22.5.1866, in Fuhr (1892, p. 338); GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 4.5.1907, 102; ibid., Decree 30.6.1900, 44; ibid., Writ 26.3.1907, 96. 23. Foucault (1975, p. 203). 24. Anonymous (1884, p. 158). 25. GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Frankfurter Zeitung 18.5.1908, 108; ibid., Volks-Zeitung 13.5.1908, 107; ibid., Newspaper Article 23.5.1908, 109; see also Berliner Börsen Courier 28.12.1911; Fuhr (1982, p. 229). 26. Zeller (1828, p. 48ff.), according to Lüdtke (1989, p. 128).

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27. Lüdtke (1989, p. 129). 28. Rohden (1908, p. 130); GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Writ 9.1.1903, 74. 29. Funk (1986, pp. 285 & 287). 30. Lüdtke (1979, p. 211); Spencer (1985); Funk (1986, p. 290); Reinke (1991); Johansen (2001). 31. Reinke (1991, p. 55). 32. GStA I. HA Rep. 84, Nr. 7935, Decree 30.6.1900, 41ff., 43; LAB Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Nr. 1091, Copy of writ 29.12.1905, 73f., 73. 33. See also Lüdtke (1989, p. 128). 34. Fuhr (1892, p. 236f.); Freudenthal (1912, p. 132f.); Roth (1997, p. 283). 35. Fuhr (1892, p. 236f.); see also GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Posener Zeitung 30.12.1906, 83 [Max Richter]; Fuhr, Strafrechtspflege, 271 [an anonymous gardener]. 36. LAB Pr. Br. Rep. 030 Nr. 1091, Writ 13.9.1906, 27. 37. Ibid., Sentence, District Court Berlin 1.12.1906, 223. 38. Ibid., Writ 20.9.1906, 29. 39. According to Fuhr (1892, p. 234). 40. Ibid. 41. Reinke (2000, p. 225). 42. GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 4.2.1907, 94ff., 94. 43. Ibid.; cf. ibid., Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger 12.2.1907, 88. 44. The contradiction is built in the logic of the writing of the decree GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 4.2.1907, 94ff., 94; Schlichting/Reckes (1908, pp. 376f., 380, 385); Aus dem preussischen Strafvollzug (1909, p. 15). 45. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Vereins zur Fürsorge entlassener Strafgefangene in Cottbus (1902), Cottbus 1903, 4. 46. Braune (1908, p. 36). 47. Bahn (1907, p. 82); cf. Caplan (1997). 48. Fuhr (1892, p. 202); Braune (1903, p. 821f.); idem (1908, p. 40); Freudenthal (1912, p. 133); GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Minutes of the Prussian Diet 11./12.1.1907, 89. 49. HMK Bildarchiv Nr. 437/00, published in Müller (2006, p. 60); Sudermann (1905), Hübner (1900), Fuhr (1892), Zille (1908, p. 57), Wulffen (1908). 50. Becker (1999, p. 371); idem (2002); Habermas (2003, p. 149). 51. Müller (2002); Hett (2003); idem (2004); Müller (2005). 52. Hüchtker (1999); Grzywatz (1999); Lindner (2004, p. 99ff.) 53. Reinke (1991, p. 55). Cf. Meyer-Drawe (1996). 54. See Braune (1903, p. 760); idem (1889). 55. Decree 13.6.1895, in Braune (1903, p. 752). 56. Ibid. 57. GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 30.6.1900. 58. Braune (1903, p. 754). 59. Schlichting/Reckes (1908, p. 375). 60. GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 30.6.1900; Braune (1908, p. 31). 61. Schlichtung/Reckes (1908, p. 375). 62. GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 4.5.1907, 102; ibid., Writ 26.3.1907, 96. 63. Schlichting/Reckes (1908, p. 379). More important was the change of regulations about the requirements of references to be provided for the imposition of police supervision at the end of the prisoner’s sentence, see GStA I. HA Rep. 84 Nr. 7935, Decree 21.3.1907, 99f., 99; Neue Bestimmungen (1909, p. 279). 64. Cf. Braune (1903, p. 758). 65. LAAB 14/1509, Writ of Oberpräsident Provinz Brandenburg, Potsdam 29.3.1913 [no pagination].

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66. LAAB 14/1509, Writ of Schleßischer Provinzial-Verein, Breslau 12.5.1906 [no pagination]; see ibid., Anlage A and Anlage II. (…). 67. Braune (1903, p. 762); Foucault (1981, p. 136); cf. ibid. (pp. 155, 157, 159). 68. Foucault (1981, pp. 139, 136, 159, 161); idem (1977, pp. 719, 719f.). Cf. Bohlender (2001). 69. LAAB 14/1794, Martin Henning, Bericht über das Rauhe Haus in Hamburg, Hamburg 1904; Rohden (1908, p. 106f.); Dießenbacher (1986); Habermas (2008); cf. Foucault (1981, pp. 144 & 155). 70. Foucault (1981, p. 159). 71. Foucault (1981, pp. 160 & 136). 72. LAAB14/1508, Anlage A zur Statistik der Strafanstalten pp. für 1901. 73. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht über die Wirksamkeit der Zentralstelle für das Gefangenen-Fürsorgewesen der Provinz Brandenburg im Rechnungsjahre 1903 nebst dem Verzeichnis der Preußischen Fürsorgevereine für entlassene Gefangene, Berlin 1904, Anlage B (1902), 3. 74. By 1901 ten central offices had been founded. In 1914 there were eleven of them, LAAB 14/1509, Anlage A zur Statistik der Strafanstaltenpp. für 1901 and Anlage II. Nachweisung der in Preußen bestehenden Zentralstellen [...] und Vereine zur Fürsorge für Gefangene und Korrigenden. 75. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht über die Wirksamkeit des [...] Vereins zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen (1902), Berlin 1903, 5. 76. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Vereins in Cottbus (1901), Cottbus 1902, 13. In contrast to the private society in Cottbus, the association of the protestant church in Berlin did not only allow female volunteers to care for ex-prisoners several years later (1907), but also distinguished clearly between male “representatives” (Delegierte) and female “helpers” (Helferinnen) and their tasks and competences. Helpers were only allowed to assist if permission was granted by a male “representative”. The clientele of helpers was confined to female convicts and families, see ibid., Jahresbericht der Evangelisch-kirchlichen Vereinigung zur Fürsorge für entlassene StrafgefangeneBerlin (1904, 1905, 1906), Berlin 1907, 3; ibid., Instruction, 23.1.1906, 14. 77. LAAB 14/1508, Brochure of R. Braune, Pflege und Anregung des Ehrgefühls der Strafgefangenen, 37-45. 78. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Vereins in Cottbus (1901), Cottbus 1902, 13. 79. Braune (1903, pp. 753, 754, 755). 80. Reinke (1991), Spencer (1992), Nienhaus (1992), Johansen (2004), Müller (2005). 81. Funk (1986, p. 287ff.). 82. Reinke (1991, p. 55). 83. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Vereins in Cottbus (1901), Cottbus 1902, 3. 84. Braune (188, p. 113) Rohden (1908, p. 125); Schlichting/Reckes (1908, p. 389 [E. Neckes]), Freudenthal (1912, p. 135). 85. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Vereins zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen (1902), Berlin, 1903, 17. Besides “observat” terms like “protégée”, “fosterling” or simply “released” were frequently used denominations of reformists, e.g. Rohden (1908, pp. 116, 121). 86. One association practiced a set of diverse contacts between nurse and protégée and distinguished between initial “registration” (Anmeldung), “visit” (Besuch), and “report” (Meldungen), see LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Vereins zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen (1902), Berlin 1903, 17. 87. Fuhr (1892, p. 229). 88. Foucault (1981, p. 136); Braune (1903, p. 762). 89. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Vereins zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen (1902), Berlin 1903, 17; LAAB 14/1509, Writ of Schleßischer Provinzial-Verein, Breslau 12.5.1906, Attachment 3 [no pagination]. If keeping a diary was feasible, Formularberichte were to be completed, LAAB 14/1509 Writ of Schleßischer Provinzial-Verein, Breslau 12.5.1906 Attachment 4 [no pagination]. The diary did not serve the nurse’s purposes only, but would be presented to the associations’ managing board, too.

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90. LAAB 14/1509, Writ 12.5.1906, LAAB 14/1509, Writ of Schleßischer Provinzial-Verein, Breslau 12.5.1906, Attachment 3. 91. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Vereins zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen (1902) Berlin 1903, 5; Cf. Foucault (1981, p. 145). 92. Aus dem preussischen Straffvollzug (1909, p. 14f.); LAAB 14/1509, Bericht der Zentralstelle (1907), Berlin 1908; ibid., Bericht der Zentralstelle (1910, 1911), Berlin 1911, 23f. 93. LAAB 14/1508, Brochure of Pastor Pfeiffer (Berlin), Aus der Welt der Strafentlassenen, 9. The first attempt at reforming police supervision defined the work placement to be the welfare associations’ very task, Decree 13.6.1895, in Braune (1903, p. 751). LAAB 14/1508, Jahresbericht Evangelisch-kirchliche Vereinigung Berlin(1904-1906), Berlin 1907, 2; Anonymous (1884, p. 154); Art. Gefängisvereine (1893, p. 116). Nurses of church associations were additionally commissioned with missionary tasks and had to make up for christening, wedding, etc., LAAB 14/1508, Jahresbericht Evangelisch-kirchliche Vereinigung Berlin (1904-1906), Berlin 1907, 13. 94. Anonymous (1887, pp. 466, 466ff.). 95. LAAB 14/1508, Jahresbericht Evangelisch-kirchliche Vereinigung, Berlin 1901, 8. 96. Braune (1903, p. 758). 97. Lüdtke (1979, p. 214). 98. Braune (1903, p. 754). 99. Schlichting/Reckes (1908, p. 384). 100. E.g. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht der Zentralstelle (1907), Berlin 1908, 18; ibid., Bericht des Vereins zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen (1906) Berlin 1907, 5; ibid., Bericht des Vereins zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen (1908), Berlin 1909, 222; LAAB 14/1509, Bericht der Zentralstelle (1908), Berlin 1909; ibid., Bericht der Zentralstelle (1910, 1911), Berlin 1911, 23f.; LAAB 14/1508, Bericht der Zentralstelle (1908), Berlin 1909, 22. 101. Ibid., (p. 384); see also LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Verein zur Besserung der Strafgefangenen (1902), Berlin 1903, 5, 17. 102. Cf. Braune (1889, p. 829f.) 103. Braune (1903, pp. 757, 745). 104. LAAB 14/1509, Writ of Schleßischer Provinzial-Verein, Breslau 12.5.1906, Attachment 1: Copy of Writ of Oberpräsident der Provinz Schleßien, Breslau 9.8.1905 [no pagination]. 105. Rohden (1908, p. 128). 106. Ibid. (p. 123). 107. Rohden (1906, p. 186); cf. LAAB 14/1794, Martin Henning, Bericht über das Rauhe Haus in Hamburg, Hamburg 1904, 10. 108. LAAB 14/1509, Paper of Pastor Eichberg (Luckau), Alte Aufgaben und neue Wege in der Fürsorgearbeit an den Strafentlassenen, 1-36, 25; Anonymous (1887, p. 467). 109. Art. Gefängnisvereine (1893, p. 116). 110. Rohden (1908, p. 126). 111. Orwell (2001, pp. 185, 186). In this respect it is revealing that, in 1914, war disabled persons rejected help and care as they deemed it dishonourable; a concern shared by the Ministry of Interior, cf. GStA I HA Rep. 77 Tit. 227b Nr. 100 Bd. 12. 112. Rohden (1908, pp. 136, 127). 113. Ibid. (pp. 128, 124). 114. LAAB 14/1508, Bericht des Vereins in Cottbus (1901), Cottbus 1902, 6; see also Zwangs- Fürsorgefür entlassene Strafgefangene (1909, p. 629). 115. Foucault (1977, p. 237). 116. Ibid. 117. Foucault (1981, p. 146). 118. Cf. Lüdtke (1979, p. 188). 119. Freudenthal (1912, p. 133f.).

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120. Kr. (1883, p. 315); Braune (1884, pp. 106, 112); LAAB 14/1508, Berichte Verein Cottbus (1902), Cottbus 1903, 4; Rohden (1908, pp. 116, 121); Wulffen (1908, p. 131).

ABSTRACTS

This paper examines a particular form of punishment in Prussia: the institution of police supervision. Police supervision was an additional punishment imposed on prisoners after their release from prison. Although it was meant to safeguard law and order by carefully integrating former prisoners, “the failure of betterment [of the convict] was an essential element of the logic”2 of police supervision. This article deepens our insight into the history of this form of punishment by examining the practise of supervision and its reform. Police supervision was contested; its handling was criticised by advocates of reform, and even the Prussian Interior Ministry was alerted in 1866 that the current practises did not match with the aims of police supervision. The notorious military style of policing in Prussia, as well as persistent policing practises of local policemen on the beat and the design of police supervision itself, jeopardised the care and the surveillance of ex-prisoners. By the turn of the century, a set of reforms sought to make a fundamental difference by introducing a “monitoring care” under the responsibility of welfare societies: an enhanced individualising approach to remedy the situation. However, as I will show, the reforms did not successfully address the shortcomings of police supervision; the “failure of betterment” continued, even if it took on a new form.

Cet article étudie une forme particulière de sanction en Prusse, la surveillance de haute police. La surveillance de haute police était une peine complémentaire imposée aux détenus après leur libération. Bien que sa finalité fût de préserver la loi et l’ordre en intégrant soigneusement les ex- prisonniers, « l’échec de l’amendement [du condamné] était un élément essentiel de la logique » de la surveillance policière. Cet article approfondit notre compréhension de l’histoire de cette forme de châtiment grâce à l’examen de cette pratique et de sa réforme. La surveillance de haute police était contestée; son utilisation était critiquée par les avocats de sa réforme, et le ministère de l’Intérieur prussien lui-même fut alerté en 1866 du fait qu’elle ne remplissait pas les fonctions de la surveillance de haute police. Le style notoirement militaire de la police prussienne, tout comme les pratiques persistantes des policiers locaux sur le terrain, et la conception même du contrôle de la police, tout cela mettait en péril la prise en charge et la surveillance des anciens détenus. Au tournant du siècle, un ensemble de réformes s’efforcèrent de modifier fondamentalement la situation en introduisant une « prise en charge suivie » – c’est-à-dire une approche plus individualisante – sous la responsabilité de sociétés de bienfaisance. Toutefois, je démontre que ces réformes n’ont pas remédié aux carences de la surveillance de haute police; l’« échec de l’amendement » se perpétua, quoique sous une forme nouvelle.

AUTHOR

PHILIPP MÜLLER Dr Philipp Müller is Lecturer in Modern German History at University College London. Prior to his current position he obtained his Ph.D. at the European University Institute in Florence.

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Subsequently he was Post Doctoral Fellowship at the Research Centre Media of History -History of Media at the Universität Weimar and the Universität Erfurt. He specialises in the field of the history of crime, police and media. Selected Publications: Auf der Suche nach dem Täter. Dramatisierung von Verbrechen im Berlin des Kaiserreichs, Campus: Frankfurt a.M., 2005 (Historische Studien; 40); “‘Éducateur’ ou ‘mauvais garçon’? Le capitaine de Köpenick et les bouleversements du paysage médiatique dans l’Allemagne de Guillaume II.” (Requate, Les médias au XIXe siècle, 2009, pp. 89-99).

Philipp Müller DAAD Francis Carsten Lecturer Department of History School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London Gower Street UK – London WC1E 6BT [email protected]

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The Life of an Unknown Assassin: Leon Czolgosz and the Death of William McKinley

Cary Federman

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The author would like to thank C.A. Gable for his invaluable assistance and encouragement.

Nineteenth-century origins

1 Assassinations played a key role in the development of the discursive construction of the late-nineteenth-century dangerous individual2. As paradoxical as it may seem, assassinations bring forth life. The murder of a political figure reconfigures the lives of both the deceased and the assassin. In the case of the deceased, hagiographies are written, celebrating the deceased’s birthplace, his education, his army service, his friendships and his fidelity to his wife, culminating in the achievements of his political career: president, statesman, hero3. The criminal, however, gets a different biography. “After the crime”, Don Delillo writes, “comes the reconstruction”4. The assassin’s friendships, ethnicity, occupations, and political associations are mined for his motive. The life of an assassin unravels backward: from rational assassin to crazy, unemployed, loner5.

2 Leon F. Czolgosz – Czolgosz had no middle name, he used the “F” “because he liked the extra initial”6 – was either born in Detroit or in Alpena, Michigan, there are contradictory accounts, including from Czolgosz himself. His parents were born in Poznan, Prussia, and arrived in America either in 1871 or 18737. Czolgosz’s birthday is unknown, though it is thought he was born in 1873. There is no extant birth certificate8.

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3 The McKinley assassination illustrates vividly how the construction of a late nineteenth-century assassin’s life occurred within Gilded Age thought that stressed the dangerous capacities of those on the fringes of society. Czolgosz’s life starts not with a birthday, but with the event, and works its way back, not toward an innocent, misspent youth, but toward a type9. Although born in the United States, he is said to come from any number of central European countries which had recently experienced revolutionary violence. Having a father who once briefly owned a saloon makes Czolgosz a saloon dweller, surrounded by prostitutes, anarchism, tobacco and alcohol10. Incapable of working because of his health, he is considered lazy and a malingerer11. A non-practicing Roman Catholic and an itinerant day laborer, he is classified as a member of an oppressed minority religion and a working-class radical12. Hitherto shy and aloof, he is now a loner. His associations frame his biography, providing his life with a meaning he could not give13. Motives are ascribed to him, his secrets are revealed. The construction of an individual figure of harm out of hints, allegations, and faulty historical narratives allows for generalizations that overlook contradictions, in an effort to say something significant about the manner of the man that kills. Upon the soft ground of a quiet and dissembling killer, a tree of knowledge has been built.

4 The purpose of this essay is not to describe the life of an unknown assassin, but to examine the discourse of his life – to analyze an assassin whose life and motive have been created for him by the popular press, the medical and legal professions, and by succeeding generations of writers. The views of Czolgosz are not simply alternative narratives to a largely unknown life. Rather, I see them as working within a discourse of danger and deviance that finds its roots in the emergence of the social and medical sciences during the nineteenth century14. Like Jack the Ripper, Czolgosz is the creature not of facts, but of “complex rhetorical structures”15.

5 By a discourse, I mean a framework through which concepts are understood as already in existence and which play an important part in constructing reality. “Discourses are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the ‘nature’ of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern.”16 As a social and linguistic construction of the late nineteenth century, I argue that there is no Czolgosz whose motive can be explained by what he says, by what he does not say, by a hitherto unknown revelation, or by solemn proclamations of his intentions. Czolgosz remains a mystery, lost in the discourse of deviance, criminality and anarchism that was already in existence at the time of the assassination17.

6 The construction of the assassin’s life began right after he shot McKinley and declared: “I shot the president because he was the enemy of the people, the good working people,” and “I killed President McKinley because I done my duty. I didn’t believe one man should have so much service and another man should have none”18. These words did not satisfy (and have not satisfied) those interested in the assassination, both past and present. Czolgosz’s contemporaries made him appear physically dangerous. “There was a plain trace of the expression of vanity, shadowy evidence that his grand passion was egotism,” wrote Murat Halstead, just after the assassination19. Surveying his body, the police, the medical profession, and the press instantly linked Czolgosz with European anarchism and hereditary taints.

7 Our contemporary writers, too, want more. Rather than accepting the confession as the isolated thoughts of a mentally troubled person, mimicking what he had heard from others regarding the state of the nation20, an entire discourse has been created that

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situates Czolgosz firmly within Gilded Age pathologies, mostly focusing on the oppressive economic conditions Czolgosz lived under, but not excluding his sexual interests and work habits. James W. Clarke, the author of American Assassins, criticizes the alienists who wrote sympathetically about Czolgosz because they failed “to consider the context” of the assassination21. Situating Czolgosz within the strikes and violence that marked the Industrial Revolution, Clarke sees Czolgosz as a revolutionary, seeking to overturn the political order. But if Czolgosz’s contemporaries said nothing of Czolgosz’s revolutionary fervor it is because Czolgosz made no speech to this effect. Unlike with his predecessors in assassination, there is a tendency among modern writers to “multiply auxiliary hypotheses”22, in an attempt both to deny Czolgosz’s insanity – to establish his responsibility – and to categorize him as a warrior against the excesses of the age.

8 In focusing on the discursive construction of Czolgosz, my purpose is to highlight the interpretation of Czolgosz as sane and rational, despite the presence of certain “insane” ideas and practices he had and engaged in. If I had to choose, I would say, with the leading mental alienists of the time, that he was mentally ill, “an aggravated specimen from the insane borderlands”23. From a legal perspective, however, borderline insanity is problematic because it means the subject is not fully insane, and given that option, the law focuses on sanity, and therefore, responsibility. Indeed, based on the legal reasoning and the lack of medical knowledge about the brain at the time, it would be impossible to say that Czolgosz was insane. He had no delusions or hallucinations. At a minimum, he satisfied New York State’s legal test of right and wrong24. Perhaps a better term would be “mad”, as insanity is a purely legal concept, and the discourse that surrounds Czolgosz is not strictly juridical. But the discourse of madness, rooted in a medieval notion of unreason, and unrelated to any medical inquiry into the brain’s relation to behavior, was superseded by the medical-juridical discourses that surrounded the mad at the beginning of the nineteenth century, turning them into the “insane”, a legacy which provides no real guidance, either for law enforcement or the medical profession, and which is still with us25.

9 It is this medical-juridical discourse of isolation, quantification, labeling, confinement, and death that I want to present as an example of the forces that shaped the meaning and context of the McKinley assassination. By presenting part of the enormity that was the criminological discourse of danger and the need for personal responsibility, a discourse deeply embedded within the Gilded Age, but not wholly dependent on it26, I want to demonstrate how a man about whom so little is known and understood could become a slate upon which every evil of the Gilded Age could find a platform, except the discourse of insanity itself.

The structures of his thought

Panics

10 Leon Czolgosz could not ignore the depressions, called “panics,” that riddled the late nineteenth-century economy. They bracketed his life. The first post-Civil War depression began in Czolgosz’s presumed birth year, 1873, and lasted until 187927. The depression of the 1870s was the “longest cyclical contraction in American history”28. Another panic hit in 1886, lasting until 1889, and then another, in 1893. That one ended

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in 1897, but some economists say that the United States did not fully recover from these series of depressions until 1901, the year of Czolgosz’s execution29. Rather than seeing these panics as discrete, Rendigs Fels calls the period from 1873 to 1897 “the long-wave depression”30. Spanning some twenty-eight years, these panics cast a shadow over Czolgosz, framing his existence as an angry day laborer.

11 After old age and illness, the “lack of work or trade misfortune” was the second leading cause of poverty among males during the Gilded Age31. Lloyd Vernon Briggs, a medical doctor who wrote a full-length biography of Czolgosz just after the assassination, but published it in 1921, tells us that Czolgosz worked on the family farm and in lumber mills, in a bottle works factory as a wire thresher, and in a glass factory. The Chicago Sunday Tribune reported that Czolgosz worked as a blacksmith in “the Consolidated Mill,” near Cleveland32. Any other job he may have had is without proof.

12 Yet Mary Foote Henderson, a suffragette and temperance advocate, writing just after the assassination, has Czolgosz working in the Stroh Brewery in the East End of Cleveland, surrounded by anarchist and socialist talk33. Although Briggs establishes that Czolgosz began working in mills in Michigan at age twelve34, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says that Czolgosz started working at wire mill at age thirteen as a “water boy”35. Emma Goldman has Czolgosz working at age six, shining shoes and selling papers, and then working in a factory. But he was not a simple factory worker. He was a “silent youth,” bookish and aloof36. If Czolgosz worked at these and other jobs, Briggs does not record them.

13 In 1889, the Czolgoszes moved near Pittsburgh, where Czolgosz got a job at a glass factory37. There, Czolgosz’s “duties consisted of carrying bottles red hot on forks to the different ovens.” He also worked on galvanized fence wire, and then was given “more fancy work to do.” Czolgosz earned “seventy-five cents a day until the last six months when he got a dollar a day”38. Moving near Cleveland, Czolgosz worked in the Newburg Wire Mills, from 1892 to 1897, the work was so arranged that he worked ten hours a day for one or two weeks and then had twelve hours’ night work for a similar period. He was paid $16 or $17 for the two weeks of day work, and $22, then $24, for the two weeks of his night work39.

14 This would be Czolgosz’s last job. He quit working on August 29, 189840. He had been laid off about 1894, with many others, and “that at that time he changed – ‘got quiet and not so happy’”41. After six months, Czolgosz reapplied for the job under the name Fred C. Nieman42. Czolgosz was rehired, working until 1898, when he quit, according to Briggs, for health reasons.

15 We can already see that Czolgosz’s work history is more than the sum of its parts. It is said that he starts working as a six-year-old, becomes an itinerant day laborer and a budding intellectual, and winds up representing the problems of proletarianization confronting industrial countries at the turn of the century. His brief and episodic career as a worker is instantly placed within the language of class struggle43. This is most clearly illustrated by the rumors of Czolgosz’s participation in violence that constitute his years before the assassination.

16 In his short life, Czolgosz traveled no farther west than any one of these three cities: Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, or Chicago44. Yet there is a rumor that Czolgosz made it to California, where he “tracked” McKinley45. He may never have been farther east than Buffalo, but press reports put him in Duryea, Pennsylvania, where there are rumors he participated in labor violence46. He was never farther north than Alpena, Michigan, but

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rumors have him in the Upper Peninsula, engaging in lawless behavior47. And he traveled no farther south than Pittsburgh, but maybe he was in Charleston, West Virginia, where he may have gotten married48.

17 Once the assassination occurred, the idea that Czolgosz was only a factory worker could not be contained. In 1901, the BurlingtonHawk-Eye reported that “six years ago,” using the alias “Fred Nieman,” Czolgosz organized a “lodge of anarchists” in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. The newspaper described Nieman as doing “all the talking,” which contradicts other descriptions of Czolgosz as shy and reticent49. The Buffalo District Attorney, Thomas Penney, for example, thought Czolgosz was “not a voluble chap,” a sentiment shared by Czolgosz’s lawyer50. A correspondent for the St. Louis Post- Dispatch said that Czolgosz’s manner of speech was “slow” and that he had an “awkward grasp of the questions asked him.” The newspaper also notedthat Czolgosz did not “take an active part in the speeches or discussions” of the social clubs he attended51. Joseph, Czolgosz’s brother, told Briggs that Leon was “awful bashful”52. The Buffalo Express reported that Czolgosz had a “slight lisp” and spoke with a Polish accent53.

18 Czolgosz was never an organizer of anarchists, for two reasons. One, he did not call himself an anarchist until around 1900, by his own testimony. Prior to his interest in anarchism, he admitted to being a socialist54. It is unlikely that a socialist would organize anarchists, though maybe the newspaper meant that Czolgosz organized socialists, not anarchists. Second, as noted, his physical illnesses started to flare around 1894, restricting his ability to travel far from home. Moreover, it would be a rare moment in labor history if an unskilled, mostly Polish-speaking seasonal day laborer, who feared or disliked talking to strangers, whose manner of speech was slow, and who had an “awkward grasp of the questions asked [of] him,” organized a group of men of different ethnic backgrounds into a political force55. Unskilled laborers lived on the fringes of late nineteenth-century industrial society. They were neither strike leaders nor labor organizers. They were generally known as “migratory and casual laborers, drifters, hoboes, rounders, blanket-stiffs”56. Most important, it was this class of laborer, not the skilled and the unionized, which were likely to become “followers of unscrupulous men”57.

19 Briggs does not make it clear if Czolgosz was laid off or participated in a strike in 1894, but all other accounts, past and present, have him striking. If it was a strike, then Czolgosz participated in only one documented strike against a factory. The larger question is: does participating in one strike make one a revolutionary? Was his discontent formed in the factory, among workers, or at home, reading books and newspapers? In asking these questions, I want to refocus the interpretations and attempted understandings of Czolgosz that only see him as participating in the establishment of an identity “grounded in the modern processes of industrialization and urbanization”58. Rather than seeing Czolgosz as an important assassin because he represents a new threat to American security, the specter of both international and domestic terrorism at the beginning of the twentieth century59, I see Czolgosz as America’s first modern assassin and criminal subject because his unspoken thoughts, his physiognomy, and his associations take on meaning independent of their source, and are understood as signs that can unearth the secret motive of the assassination.

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Health

20 As important as the Industrial Revolution was in producing certain types of persons and of classes, it was not the only force operating on subjects. Czolgosz’s economic activity was seriously jeopardized by his illnesses. Here, however, little is made of his physical infirmities as real or influencing his reasoning skills. Instead, writers at the time of the assassination transformed his physical problems into moral weaknesses and willful character flaws.

21 About 1894, Czolgosz began to act “queerly”, his sister, Victoria, told Briggs, and she encouraged him to go west for his health. This was also a time of increased friction between Czolgosz and his stepmother (Czolgosz’s mother died sometime between 1883 and 1885). Briggs says that when Czolgosz’s stepmother was away from the house, Czolgosz cooked and ate dinner with his family60. When his stepmother returned, “he would never eat with them nor come into the house when she was there if he could help it…. He seldom took anything else to eat unless his stepmother was away, when he would go into the pantry and eat some things.” Czolgosz would wait for his stepmother to leave the house and then he would “run into the kitchen and fry and eat [fish] by himself, but if she returned unexpectedly or if strangers came in, he would let the fish burn or throw them away”61. Leon’s brother, Jacob, told Briggs that Czolgosz “was the only member of the family who took his meals alone, which he always did when his stepmother was around”62. Victoria told Briggs that her brother “could not get along with his stepmother; they were always nagging each other; he never swore, but he came pretty near it in talking to her”63. Beyond these descriptions, there is no information as to why Czolgosz disliked his stepmother. Although there are insinuations of an abusive relationship, we do not know if it was physical or mental64. Those who believe, like Briggs, that Czolgosz was less than psychologically stable by 1901, find Czolgosz’s relationship with his stepmother to be a salient feature of Czolgosz’s biography. Yet none of the medical doctors interested in psychiatry who later wrote about the assassination – Briggs, Walter Channing, J. Sanderson Christison, Allan McLane Hamilton and Charles Hamilton Hughes, each of whom thought Czolgosz had mental problems, or Edward Sptizka, who thought Czolgosz sane – investigated this important question.

22 By the late 1890s, while on the family farm, Czolgosz fixed machines, but mostly slept and read. Beginning around 1896, Czolgosz ceased working on heavy machinery, and instead he “fussed about with small things”65. Waldeck told Briggs that Czolgosz “refused to do heavy work unless obliged to do so – said he did not care for it, though he was not unwilling to take a hand when it was necessary”66. Victoria told Briggs that Czolgosz “ had not been doing anything but catching rabbits, etc. He had a cough when she was there and would ‘spit out great chunks’”67. Often, Czolgosz “would go out under a tree and lie down and sleep”68. Jacob, another brother, told Briggs that Leon “frequently dropped asleep in the daytime, without any explanation whatever; he never got excited”69. Czolgosz was taking medicine for his cough and had been using “an inhaling machine” for “about 2 months”, a clear sign that his illness was respiratory and serious70.

23 Briggs tracked down one of Czolgosz’s doctors, Marcus Rosenwasser, of Cleveland, who provided Briggs with the notes from his examination: April 28th, 1898. – Czolgosz, Leon, 23 [note that this puts his birth year as 1875]. Worker in wire mill – Res. 319 Cowan St.; – Sick two years; short breath (catarrh) – palpitations – some wheezing at apices – emphysema (?). R. Potass. Iodid Oz. i), Tinct. Nux. Vomic. Oz. fs av Oz. iv.

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Nov. 1st, 1898. – Has been better throughout summer – worse past two months – wheezing – aches all over – Pulse 64 – respiration 25 – Examination negative. R. Styrch sulph. 1/30 gr.71

24 As Rosenwasser’s description makes clear, Czolgosz’s symptoms point to a respiratory illness, most likely emphysema, possibly epilepsy or tuberculosis; at the outside, he had pulmonary syphilis. His pulse was low, so Rosenwasser proscribed two drugs – potassium iodine functions as an expectorant and the sulphuric strychnine as a stimulant. With the hindsight of modern medicine, it seems probable that he had “carbon dioxide-retaining chronic obstructive pulmonary disease” (COPD), though there was no such diagnosis in 1898. Such respiratory diseases were not uncommon among factory workers and smokers, and it seems Czolgosz was partial to cigars72. Today, smoking is the leading cause of COPD, though in the nineteenth century, working conditions probably caused Czolgosz’s breathing difficulties. As Rosenwasser remarked on Czolgosz’s medical sheet, his symptoms pointed to “catarrh,” a common nineteenth-century catch-all phrase for respiratory problems, and he was treated with potassium iodide, the usual treatment for catarrh in the late 1890s.73

25 Even though COPD was not named before the end of the nineteenth century, doctors knew that patients with serious respiratory problems could retain carbon dioxide74. The typical symptom of carbon dioxide retention is drowsiness. Czolgosz, however, had more problems than fatigue. Rosenwasser suggests emphysema, but puts a question mark next to the diagnosis, most likely because the proof of emphysema could only be found in autopsy75. If not COPD or emphysema, was it tuberculosis? There are, however, reasons to be skeptical of a diagnosis, primarily because Rosenwasser should have been able to diagnose the disease in his office76.

26 By the end of the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was linked to the environment in which one lived and worked. It was associated with eight factors: (1) a low rate of wages, entailing discomfort and privations in the home; (2) unsanitary conditions of the place of employment; (3) exposure to dust arising from marble, stone, plaster, wood, metals or textiles; (4) excessive physical exertion or a continued constrained position; (5) close confinement within doors; (6) exposure to excessive heat; (7) temptations to intemperance; and (8) long or irregular hours77.

27 Despite that Czolgosz fulfills nearly all of the eight factors, there is no extant diagnosis of him having the disease. To be sure, throughout the 1870s and 1880s, a proper diagnosis “depended largely upon a patient’s temperament, which could be sanguineous, lymphatic, bilious, or nervous”78. Rosenwasser makes no such characterization. He says the examination was “negative” – though the symptoms of tuberculosis, culturally as well as organically, are present. Tuberculosis produces mania: “spells of euphoria, increased appetite, exacerbated sexual desire”. It is a disease of “poverty and deprivation”, but also of “too much passion”, whether political, romantic or moral79. Its defining characteristic is the cough, and Czolgosz had a serious cough and was often sleepy. Similarly, his appetite seems to have fluctuated from meager to ravishing80. For health reasons, he sought to get away from cities and he had a limited diet centered on milk81.

28 Tuberculosis, moreover, was known to be present in higher than average quantities in immigrant communities, in large cities, and among the poor82. When Czolgosz quit working in 1898, he said he wanted to go out west, which is where many consumptives went before the rise of sanitariums in the twentieth century83. Czolgosz also used an inhaling machine, which writes Katherine Ott, “allowed everyone to be her or his own

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physician and remained the most popular therapeutic apparatus for consumptions throughout the nineteenth century”84. Patients in advanced stages of tuberculosis can cough up blood, and even parts of pulmonary tissue, as Czolgosz clearly did, symptoms that could make anyone appear to “go all to pieces”, as Waldeck said of his brother85.

29 Despite what looks like a clear diagnosis, there is no way to tell if Czolgosz had tuberculosis. But it is more interesting to note that even if Czolgosz was tubercular, he was not portrayed as tubercular, that is, sympathetically, as an artist, a romantic, a sufferer over a lost cause, though there are insinuations from Briggs that this precisely describes Czolgosz86. Along with insanity, the cultural construction of Czolgosz as tubercular is notably missing. Why? If Czolgosz had tuberculosis, syphilis, emphysema or was insane as a consequence of these diseases, the thinking went, he brought it on himself, by his politically extreme associations and sordid working-class indulgences87. In this instance, Czolgosz’s perversions, and neither economic factors nor his musings about capitalism was to blame for the assassination. One thing is certain: that Czolgosz became ill at a time when it was no longer “glamorous to look sickly”88. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it is the discourse regarding responsibility that changed, not the discourse of illness itself; in the face of a serious crime, and absent clear markings of bizarre behavior, the carrier was held responsible for his illness89.

30 It is possible he was very tired from a life spent working twelve-hour days as a wire winder, or for unknown medical reasons. Or, as Drs. Channing and Christison think, Czolgosz had epilepsy90. In A. Ross Defendorf’s textbook, written in 1902, he described the symptoms of epileptic insanity as follows: Epileptic insanity is a complex accompanying epilepsy, characterized by a varying degree of mental deterioration, evidenced by impairment of intellect, and to a lesser extent of memory; emotional irritability, impulsiveness, moral anergy, and incapacity for valuable production. It also includes certain periodical disturbances, transitory ill-humor (Verstimmung), and dreamy states (Daemmerzustaende), which accompany epilepsy91. The press promptly dismissed the idea that Czolgosz was epileptic. The St. Louis Post- Dispatch reported that Czolgosz “appeared to be suffering from epilepsy, but [it] was the epilepsy of personal fear”92. One defining feature of epileptics is a dreamy state, which is the most common description of Czolgosz’s behavior. Indeed, the Post-Dispatch described Czolgosz in just these terms: Viewed at close range as he was by the correspondent of the Post-Dispatch he appears to be a strange creature of moods, a dreamy, uncanny sort of individual in whom the quality of imagination has been abnormally developed93. Ridding this description of its moral overtones, some within the medical community viewed Czolgosz more sympathetically. But perhaps for this reason, they were excluded from the trial. Only Drs. Spitzka, Carlos MacDonald, and John Gerin, the three doctors who performed Czolgosz’s autopsy, and the three prison doctors, Joseph Fowler, Floyd Crego, and James Putnam got to examine Czolgosz. All six thought Czolgosz sane. For Christison, however, observing Czolgosz during his trial, Czolgosz “had marked twitchings of the right fore-arm while in the court room, and of the lower right jaw just before his electrocution”94. Although these tics do not amount to epilepsy, Christison thought his diagnosis had validity, coupled with some form of insanity95. Channing also suggested, but admitted he did not know, that Czolgosz’s onslaughts of sudden sleepiness were really epileptic fits96. Ultimately, Drs. Channing, Christison, Briggs, Hamilton and Hughes – all of whom either saw Czolgosz at trial or spoke with his relatives, but never physically examined him – thought that Czolgosz had psychological

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problems, resulting from a mixture of causes, heredity, the environment, and neurological97.

31 Considering that Czolgosz left no medical or confessional archive, it is exceptionally difficult to diagnose his physical disorders, to say nothing of his mental problems. But even if one existed, the narrative of mental illness linked with irresponsibility could not overcome the assassination of a president. Although it is quite likely that John Wilkes Booth (Abraham Lincoln), Charles Guiteau (James Garfield), Joseph Prendergast (Mayor Harrison of Chicago) and Czolgosz were each mentally deranged, only Richard Lawrence (Andrew Jackson) and John Schrank (Theodore Roosevelt) were found to be insane and therefore not responsible for their crimes. Of these seven assassins, it is notable that only Lawrence and Schrank were unsuccessful in their attempts at murder. At the time of the McKinley assassination, rather than mental illness, we have the preservation of personal responsibility in the face of an attack against governmental figures. Relying on that discourse, Czolgosz’s behavior exists as a metaphor for the ills of an American-born, Polish factory worker, who became an assassin seemingly for no reason other than that President McKinley was the enemy of the working people.

Contemporary misrepresentations

32 Modern commentators begin their interpretations of Czolgosz with the Gilded Age and all that it represents to us. For Clarke, it was “not easy to be an immigrant member of the working class” at the end of the century, because the “country was run by industrialists such as Carnegie and Rockefeller, masters of capital like Morgan and Gould, and their spokesmen in government with names like Blaine and Aldrich and Hanna”98. Don Sneed, in an examination of the role of news coverage at the time of the McKinley assassination, similarly situates Czolgosz’s motive squarely within the Robber Baron ideology: Czolgosz’s decision to assassinate McKinley in 1901 can best be understood if analyzed in the context of the economic and political climate in the 25 years which preceded the shooting…. The country was run by industrialists such as George Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Henry C. Frick….[It was an age of] big banks, big railroads, big iron and big steel…long hours, low wages…dirty and dangerous work…strikes and labor unrest99.

33 Searching for a motive that makes more historical sense than psychological or neurological illnesses, which are difficult to diagnose100, and unwilling to acknowledge Czolgosz’s paltry association with anarchism101, these commentators dismiss and ignore the possibility of real mental illness affecting Czolgosz’s judgment, downplay any effect his physical ailments may have had on his psychological outlook, and see Czolgosz as an industrial product, the result of a life witnessing and participating in economic privation. “What we see”, Clarke writes, “is not a psychotic but a young man who was as much a product of the times as William McKinley”102. For the Michigan historian, Jeremy Kilar, Czolgosz killed McKinley because he “was a product of his ethnic culture and accompanying discrimination”103, though Czolgosz said nothing while in prison about being discriminated against because he was a Catholic or because of his Polish ancestry. Kilar also rejects any notion that Czolgosz was insane, seeing his anarchism as emanating from “complex changes in the socio-economic order”, and as a response to the upswing in revolutionary fervor that rocked the turn of the century104. He sees

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Czolgosz, at age four, being affected by the national railroad strike of 1877, and at twelve, the Alpena, Michigan lumber wagon-drivers strike (1885)105.

34 By connecting capitalism and the Gilded Age to his motive – of which there is no evidence that Czolgosz understood these events in a specific way, as he never said a word about them when in prison106 – a narrative is created around the assassination that funnels meaning in one direction: that a sane and responsible Czolgosz, motivated by knowledge of the history of violence against the working class, killed the president. Situating Czolgosz within an industrializing and imperial milieu gives him a nobility, a reason for dying, that he himself failed to provide. In the absence of a coherent confession from the murderer himself, the era and his class speak for him.

35 Clarke’s Czolgosz embodies nineteenth-century working-class anger. Clarke suggests that in the autumn of 1897, Czolgosz had a mental breakdown, following the outbreak of violence at Lattimer Mines, in eastern Pennsylvania, which began on September 10, 1897, and in which sixteen Slavic workers were slaughtered107. Czolgosz, Clarke writes, was “obsessed with the need for social change in America” because he knew that the problems of poverty and of crime were “symptoms of political and economic oppression.” Indeed, “It was this realization and not ‘dementia praecox’ that was at the core of Czolgosz’s ‘breakdown’ following the Lattimer Mines incident”108.

36 As the assassination occurred four years to the month after the events at Lattimer, and fifteen years after the anarchist violence at Haymarket, Clarke believes that Czolgosz became a political “zealot” from the shock of labor violence at Lattimer Mines and in Chicago. Clarke writes that as a consequence of Lattimer, Czolgosz “believed in revolution” and was “obsessed with the need for radical social change in America”109. In an attempt to create a revolutionary Czolgosz, he says that Czolgosz was psychologically troubled by social history, not ill from disease, “foremost was the intolerable injustice of industrial employment epitomized by events such as the Lattimer Mines Massacre”110.

37 While this makes for an interesting Czolgosz, it does not seem to be an accurate one. According to Briggs’s account, Waldeck told Briggs that Czolgosz went “all to pieces” sometime in the late 1890s, but refused to go the hospital111. Briggs offers no explanation for Waldeck’s portrayal of his brother falling apart. Clarke, however, relies on Waldeck’s description and on another quote from Czolgosz to Waldeck, “I can’t stand it any longer”, to arrive at his diagnosis of a mental breakdown112. Clarke, however, splices these two quotes together from Briggs’s book, when in fact, according to Briggs, they occurred three years apart. Moreover, a nervous breakdown by a presidential assassin seems like something that would have been mentioned by any Czolgosz observer, whether ally or foe. Yet no medical professional at the time of the assassination mentions a nervous breakdown. More significantly, of the variety of confessions that existed at the time of the assassination, none, including from Czolgosz himself, gave Lattimer Mines or Haymarket as a motive. Indeed, according to Briggs, an anarchist gave Czolgosz a book of Haymarket speeches to read, sometime after May 19, 1901, but Czolgosz returned it, unread113.

38 As I can find no evidence at the time of the assassination that Czolgosz had a nervous breakdown, it seems that the idea of Czolgosz’s mental breakdown is a modern one, a contribution to the search for Czolgosz’s motive that is related to a reappraisal of the Gilded Age as a producer of industrial workers who become assassins. In the

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contemporary reassessment of Czolgosz, the Gilded Age becomes the lens through which everything is filtered: poverty, resentment, assassination.

Forbidden desires

39 There is more to the Gilded Age than factory work. The narrative of Czolgosz’s life does not stop by noting the existence of strikes and panics. Modern writers on the assassination have also diagnosed his peculiar behavior and habits and situated it within Gilded Age sexual pathologies. Clarke, for example, mentions that Czolgosz avoided people, mostly his stepmother, as a sign of his oddity. At the time of the assassination, however, this was understood in part as shyness, and as an unexplained problem with his father’s new wife. Is it possible, however, that Czolgosz avoided people because he thought he was contagious with a communicable disease? Did he eat alone because he thought his food was poisoned?114 Both are possible. But who can say what Czolgosz knew of the pathologies of disease? He avoided doctors for class reasons, not medicinal. He once told Waldeck, “There is no place in the hospital for poor people; if you have lots of money you will get well taken are of!”115 It is unlikely he understood what he was suffering from on his own, or anticipated its proper outcome. It is clear that his avoidance of people was not something that started happening with the onset of his physical problems. A closer examination of the record reveals that Czolgosz’s desire for solitude was not restricted to his stepmother. Paul Czolgosz, Leon’s father, said his son “was always quiet and retiring and would not play with other children”116. “As a little child”, Channing wrote in his assessment of Czolgosz, “[i]t was hard for [Czolgosz] to get acquainted with other children; he cared to play with only a few. If he was angry he would not say anything but he had the appearance of thinking more than most children”117.

40 Apart from Waldeck, with whom he seemed to be quite close, his only “chum”, Briggs writes, was a fellow factory worker named Jugnatz Lapka. Briggs relates the story that Lapka and Czolgosz talked often. It was an “association”, Briggs writes, “more intimate than Leon was in the habit of having with anyone else”118. Czolgosz’s father, on the other hand, told Briggs that Leon never had male or female friends, but that he was exceptionally shy with females. Briggs writes that Czolgosz kept his distance from the females in the saloon. Jacob said that Czolgosz never looked at girls119. Czolgosz told the police in Buffalo that one girl had “gone back on him” and since then he stayed away from girls120. But the St. Louis Post-Dispatch took all this a step further, and said that Czolgosz “evinced a singular dislike for women”121. And the members of the saloon that Czolgosz frequented told Briggs that they thought Czolgosz was “an onanist, but no one had ever had proof of this”122.

41 By mid-century, the discourse around masturbation was not only directed at one’s potential health problems; it was also understood as a sign of a lack of moderation in a person’s life. Onanism had political connotations. It was assumed that masturbation could lead to greater impertinence among children, lasting through adulthood if not controlled, and was taken as a sign of moral degeneracy. Masturbating in secret signified that outside forces had lost their power to shape individual behavior. “There was a deep-seated sense”, Stephen Mintz writes of the problem of social control in the latter-half of the nineteenth century, “that individualism, unless contained and socialized, would result in a general process of society unraveling”123.

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42 Here, then, is the crux of the Czolgosz problem, presented through the discourse of the Gilded Age, yet unrelated to factory life. If Czolgosz was an onanist, then he had accepted his own notions of right and wrong as more important than submitting to the powers of external government and historically sanctioned social forces. It is onanism, then, and not his anger over capitalism, strikes, Robber Barons or anything he had read or heard about McKinley that was Czolgosz’s link with anarchism and assassination124. But of course this is not so. The condemnation of Czolgosz relies on many different ideas.

43 Nineteenth-century medical literature also linked solitary sex with homosexuality125. Masturbation, in other words, could be understood as a substitute for the desire to have sexual relations with the opposite sex. If Czolgosz was not just shy with women but avoided them, and was an onanist, was Czolgosz a homosexual? On the one hand, Czolgosz spoke of liking a girl, an unnamed woman who “went back on him”, and others described Czolgosz as mesmerized, if not in love with, Emma Goldman126. There was even a rumor that he was married. Yet the Iowa State Register reported that Czolgosz’s effeminacy was the cause of more or less comment among his acquaintances127. Czolgosz’s own lawyer suggested that the handkerchief he wrapped the gun in was a women’s handkerchief128. But apart from the fact that he lived in a homo-social culture, there is no evidence that he engaged in so-called “decadent” behavior or frequented male-only clubs with a homosexual subculture. Likewise, even if Czolgosz traveled throughout the Midwest by train, in search of jobs or anarchist ties, he does not seem to have been taken in by the hobo or tramp subculture, where homosexuality was an accepted practice129. The problem is that, unlike onanists, and apart from obvious effeminacy, the understanding of homosexuality in the late nineteenth century lacked a physiological feature130.

44 While in prison, Czolgosz told Dr. Carlos F. MacDonald that he “admitted having had sexual intercourse with women, but denied masturbation or other unnatural practices” 131. Did Czolgosz have a sexually transmitted disease? MacDonald writes: The external genitals were normal, excepting two small, flat, unidurated cicatrices on the mucous surface of the prepuce, probably the result of previous chancroids, although he [Czolgosz] denied having had venereal disease other than gonorrhea. There were no signs of specific nodes or periodsteal tenderness over the usual sites of these lesions132.

45 Where did Czolgosz get the idea that he had gonorrhea? There are two possibilities. Either a doctor diagnosed him with it or he assumed he had it133. Note that MacDonald neither confirmed nor denied Czolgosz’s self-diagnosis. Gonorrhea is not usually visible and the problems associated with the disease are usually lodged in the urinary tract and the urethra. Although there can be a complete absence of symptoms, the disease itself could spread to the joints and the eyes. Czolgosz’s autopsy, however, showed no signs of this occurrence134. It is also possible that the scar tissue could be left over from gonorrhea, and MacDonald knew this and was satisfied with his observations.

46 But MacDonald makes no determination of a sexually transmitted disease. It may be because neither MacDonald nor Spitzka were experts on venereal diseases, or because late nineteenth-century physicians considered “gonorrhea a relatively minor, nonspecific, inflammatory disorder”135, or because no tissue could be taken out of the prison for further examination, or because there was no cure, just proscribed abstinence, so any sexually-transmitted disease that a factory worker may or may not

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have had was taken without assumptions of its origins. On the other hand, if Czolgosz had syphilis, then there was an increased chance he was insane, which would diminish, if not obviate, his responsibility in the crime, and these doctors, unsympathetic with any claim that Czolgosz was mentally ill, chose not to pursue this idea.

47 The difficulty here is that throughout the nineteenth century, many physicians had no clear idea how individuals contracted venereal diseases. Many experienced doctors thought that faithful married couples could contract gonorrhea; others thought that a male having sex with a menstruating woman could become infected136. It was not uncommon, moreover, for the uneducated to think that all kinds of physical ailments were signs of sexually transmitted diseases. According to John and Robin Haller, “Lepra, herpes, scabies, pemphigus, impetigo, eczema, lichena rubber, psoriasis along with leucorrhea and catarrhal discharges were all confused at one time or another with venereal disease”137. Gonorrhea, in fact, can produce “a chronic catarrhal condition”138. Did Czolgosz confuse his “catarrhal discharges” with a venereal disease and not a respiratory problem?

48 Czolgosz had two scars on his body, one on his face from a factory accident, and the other on his genitalia, but this was not known until the autopsy. Waldeck told Briggs that he had a secret about Czolgosz that he would sell to Briggs for $100. It was not connected to a woman, Waldeck told Briggs. Although he tried to pry the secret from Waldeck, Briggs did not pay Waldeck for the information because he did not trust him. He thought Waldeck was “a useless member of the community,” and he found the other Czolgoszes generally uneducated139.

49 But Eric Rauchway has figured out Waldeck’s (and Leon’s) secret. Although Rauchway suspects that Czolgosz did not have syphilis, he writes that “Leon Czolgosz was acting like someone who believed he had syphilis”140. Czolgosz was taking herbal concoctions and potassium iodide, which Rauchway suggests Czolgosz used for treating his syphilis, but it is clear it can be taken for emphysema, as an expectorant, as well as for other ailments141. Rauchway also suggests that Czolgosz’s respiratory problems were induced from syphilis, which is possible, but impossible to prove. Given Czolgosz’s blood- curdling cough and his history as a worker in a bottle works factory, it seems clear that Rosenwasser’s diagnosis of emphysema, even with a question mark attached, is closer to the mark than syphilis as the cause of his respiratory problems. Rauchway also assumes that Czolgosz steered clear of people because he thought himself contagious from syphilis, but fails to recognize that Czolgosz’s peculiar social habits were directed against his stepmother for the most part and others as well, but not everyone. Czolgosz’s work supervisor, for example, told Briggs that Czolgosz ate with his fellow workers142. Finally, Rauchway asserts, without documentary evidence, that Czolgosz was a homosexual because a) “same-sex contact was commonly known, especially among an immigrant population that skewed heavily male”; and b) the location of Czolgosz’s chancroids indicates that he was the penetrator in a homosexual relationship143. From this, Rauchway asserts that Czolgosz killed McKinley in a murder- suicide.

50 There are two problems here. First, being in a homo-social environment does not make one a homosexual. Could he have engaged in homosexual sex and did not consider himself a homosexual? That is possible144. But all this is just too much speculation to arrive at a motive for assassinating a president. Second, it is medically impossible to judge from the location of chancroids whether or not one is a penetrator in a

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homosexual relationship. Yet Rauchway writes, “In many working-class contexts, it was not even especially stigmatized if a man was the penetrator, as the location of Leon’s chancroids indicates he was”145. At the time of the assassination, it was well known in medical circles that chancroids could come from sexual or from non-sexual contact, from basic uncleanliness, from syphilis or from gonorrhea.

51 According to Robert W. Taylor, the leading scientist on the study of venereal diseases at the turn of the century, one could develop chancroids by a faulty medical procedure, such as circumcision, or chancroids “could originate in some subjects de novo.” In other words, Taylor writes,“it is not very uncommon to see chancroids in men who have had no sexual exposure whatever, such lesions being perhaps due to inherent peculiarities of their tissues… Such cases are far from rare”146. Taylor also notes that a male can develop chancroids after having sex with a woman who had other non-sexually derived infections that affected her genitals147. Lacking proof, then, how does Rauchway know Czolgosz did not engage in sex with a woman, whether syphilitic or not? Waldeck’s cryptic phrase to Briggs (Briggs is not directly quoting Waldeck here), that the doctors “could have found” Czolgosz’s scar “if they had looked for it,” and that “it was in no way connected with a woman; in a way it was an accident and in a way it was not,” does not provide enough evidence to support Rauchway’s speculation that Czolgosz killed McKinley as a kind of suicide for his own impending death148. Besides, surely Briggs was aware that the scar would be found in autopsy and that he could make an independent judgment on its merits when the contents were revealed, without hearing it from Waldeck. Most telling, perhaps, is that Briggs does not reproduce the “scar” story in his published essay on Czolgosz, though he published it twenty years after the assassination, when all that Waldeck had hidden from him was known.

52 In general, assassinations generate two kinds of narratives, one that celebrates the life of the deceased as more than human, and another that vilifies the assassin as less than a man. In the event, they create facts about both the assassin and the assassinated that unspool and multiply exponentially, creating archetypes and stereotypes, generating something intricate and larger, but less certain, than what was. Not myths but factoids. The Czolgosz biography is a magician’s handkerchief. Pulling a fact out of a hat, one finds another attached, once removed from the truth, and so on, until Czolgosz is constructed in such a manner that on September 6, 1901, Czolgosz arrives fully formed, a seamless cloth, his identity perfectly choreographed and his motives certain, when, in fact, he is an ensemble of obvious contradictions, fabrications, embellishments and hearsay.

Conclusion

53 The point of this essay is not to tell the story of an unstable person who, when all the rhetoric of motive, social condition, and psychological baggage is peeled away, or added on, is revealed to be a simple person with an ax to grind. Rather, I want to situate the assassination within the discourse of danger that permeated late nineteenth- century criminological thought, and point out that this discourse remains with us. The great work of post-World War II social psychology, the Warren Commission, dismissed Lee Harvey Oswald’s “attachment to Marxist and Communist doctrine” as “in some measure, an expression of his hostility to his environment”149. Having lost his father before he was born, the Commission found it salient that Oswald grew up in an

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orphanage and experienced poverty. Substitute anarchism for Marxism and the death of Czolgosz’s mother for the death of Oswald’s father (poverty remaining a constant) and you are staring at Leon F. Czolgosz, presidential assassin. Indeed, for modern writers, the more Czolgosz is encased in the social and economic structures of the late nineteenth century, the clearer his motive becomes, creating an inverse relationship between Gilded Age knowledge and Leon Czolgosz uncertainty. It is the Gilded Age that is real, the producer of subjects, and Czolgosz becomes the “expression of a cultural tradition in somatic form”150.

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NOTES

2. Spitzka (1902). 3. Brush (1907). 4. Delillo (1991, p. 434). 5. Enzenberger (2000). 6. Briggs (1983, p. 291). 7. Briggs (1983, p. 262). 8. Briggs (1983, pp. 302, 289). 9. MacDonald (1893, pp. ii-iii). 10. Henderson (1906, pp. 541-543). 11. Ohio Farmer (1901, p. 187). 12. New York Times (1901). 13. Chicago Daily Tribune (1901, p. 2). 14. Leps (1992). 15. Walkowitz (1992, p. 2). 16. Weedon (1996, p. 105). 17. Zenker (1897);Lombroso (1891). 18. Briggs (1983, p. 251). 19. Halstead (1901, p. 470). 20. Carter Harrison’s Assassination (1893, p. 43);Briggs (1983, p. 310). 21. Clarke (1990, p. 41). 22. Feuer (1957, p. 109). 23. Southern California Practitioner (1902, p. 101). 24. Silvernail (1901, pp. 10-11). 25. Foucault (2009); Clark v. Arizona (2006). 26. Railroad Tax Cases (1882, p. 743). 27. Eckler (1933, p. 77). 28. Fels (1951, p. 344). 29. Tinsley (1933). 30. Fels (1949, pp. 69-73). 31. Warner (1894, p. 51). 32. Chicago Sunday Tribune (1901). 33. Henderson (1906, p. 541). 34. Briggs (1983, p. 283). 35. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1901). 36. Goldman (1977, p. 355). 37. Briggs (1983, pp. 287, 262). 38. Briggs (1983, p. 303). 39. Briggs (1983, pp. 303, 314). 40. Briggs (1983, pp. 303, 307, 314). 41. Briggs (1983, p. 303). 42. Briggs (1983, p. 314); Currie and Ferrie (2000, p. 48); Ozanne (1962). 43. Hobsbawm (1984); Thompson (1963). 44. Briggs (1983, pp. 244, 291). 45. Burlington Hawk-Eye (1901b, p. 3). 46. Burlington Hawk-Eye (1901a, p. 8). 47. Federal Writers’ Project (1941, p. 560). 48. Andre and Cohen (2001, p. 210). 49. Burlington Hawk-Eye (1901a).

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50. Daily Picayune (1901). 51. St. Louis Post Dispatch (1901). 52. Briggs (1983, p. 312). 53. Buffalo Express (1901). 54. Briggs (1983, p. 323). 55. Briggs (1983, pp. 290, 302-303). 56. Speek (1917, p. 72). 57. Abbott (1905, p. 324). 58. Zaretsky (2005, p. 5). 59. Economist.com (2005). 60. Briggs (1983, p. 296). 61. Briggs (1983, p. 313; italics in original). 62. Briggs (1983, p. 296; italics in original). 63. Briggs (1983, p. 289; italics in original). 64. Briggs (1983, p. 318). 65. Briggs (1983, p. 306; italics in original). 66. Briggs (1983, p. 306). 67. Briggs (1983, p. 293; italics in original). 68. Briggs (1983, p. 293; italics in original). 69. Briggs (1983, p. 296; italics in original). 70. Briggs (1983, p. 312; italics in original); Fowler (1898). 71. Briggs (1983, p. 300). 72. Channing (1902, pp. 248, 254) 73. Fowler (1898, p. 77); Wyman (1873); Dobell (1876). 74. Osler and McCrae (1921, section 6). 75. Fowler (1898, pp. 169, 175); Rosenblatt (1972, p. 825). 76. Ott (1996, p. 26). 77. Brandt (1903, p. 68). 78. Ott (1996, p. 9). 79. Sontag (1979, pp. 13, 15, 21). 80. Briggs (1983, pp. 246, 255, 267, 270, 276, 294). 81. Briggs (1983, p. 294); Otis (1909, pp. 35-37). 82. Knopf (1908). 83. Rothman (1994, p. 198 and chap. 14). 84. Ott (1996, p. 48). 85. Channing (1902, pp. 239, 262). 86. Briggs (1983, p. 268). 87. Outlook (1901). 88. Sontag (1979, p. 28). 89. Bois (1901). 90. Channing (1902, p. 275); Christison (1902). 91. Defendorf (1902, p. 329). 92. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1901). 93. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1901). 94. Christison (1902, p. 14). 95. Church, Peterson (1905, chap. x). 96. Channing (1902, p. 263). 97. Hastings (1965). 98. Clarke (1990, p. 42). 99. Sneed (1998, pp. 361-362).

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100. Holt (1902, p. 193). 101. Briggs 1983, pp. 328, 337). 102. Clarke (1990, p. 61). 103. Kilar (1995, p. 15). 104. Kilar (1995, p. 12). 105. Kilar (1995, pp. 13-14). 106. Briggs (1983, p. 324). 107. Clarke (1990, p. 51); Novak (1978); Greene (1968, chap.7). 108. Clarke (1990, pp. 52, 53). 109. Ibidem. 110. Clarke (1990, p. 51). 111. Channing (1902, pp. 239, 262). 112. Clarke (1990, p. 51); Briggs (1983, p. 308). 113. Briggs (1983, pp. 317, 324). 114. Rauchway (2003, p. 180). 115. Briggs (1983 p. 307; italics in original). 116. Briggs (1983, p. 290; italics in original). 117. Channing (1902, p. 238). 118. Briggs (1983, p. 297). 119. Briggs (1983, p. 294). 120. Briggs (1983, p. 291). 121. St. Louis Post Dispatch (1901). 122. Briggs (1983, p. 298). 123. Mintz (1985, p. 63). 124. Fellman, Fellman (1981); Hilkey (1997). 125. Laqueur (2004, pp. 255-268); Hunt (1988, pp. 605-607). 126. Briggs (1983, pp. 267-268). 127. Iowa State Register (1901). 128. People of the State of New York v. Leon F. Czolgosz (1901, pp. 73-74). 129. Anderson (1923); White (1915, p. 150). 130. Blanchard (1998, ch. 1); Tripp (2005). 131. MacDonald (1902, p. 379). 132. MacDonald (1902, p. 379). 133. Wolbarst (1911, p. 171). 134. Chapman (1905, pp. 34, 41). 135. Brandt (1987, p. 10). 136. Haller, Haller (1974, p. 260). 137. Haller, Haller (1974, p. 252). 138. Taylor (1900, p. 74). 139. Briggs (1983, p. 310). 140. Rauchway (2003, p. 180). 141. Medical Bulletin (1904, p. 370). 142. Briggs (1983, p. 314). 143. Rauchway (2003, p. 181). 144. Hansen (1989, pp. 92-108). 145. Rauchway (2003, p. 181). 146. Taylor (1900, p. 420). 147. Taylor (1895, p. 486). 148. Papers of Walter Channing (Box 15, folder 2, p. 27); Rauchway (2003, p. 181). 149. Warren Commission (1992, p. 376).

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150. Morris (1985, p. 723).

ABSTRACTS

The purpose of this essay is to examine the discourses that surrounded the life of Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley. The gaps in Czolgosz’s life, his peculiar silences, his poor health and the ambiguity and thinness of his confession, rather than taken as instances of mental and physical distress, have, instead, been understood as signs of a revolutionary anarchistic assassin. Czolgosz is an expression of a cultural tradition in somatic form. I argue that the discursive construction of criminality, already present in the late nineteenth century within the medical and human sciences, is what shaped Czolgosz’s life story.

Cet article vise à examiner les discours qui ont entouré la vie de Léon Czolgosz, l’assassin de William McKinley. Les trous dans la biographie de Czolgosz, ses silences étranges, sa mauvaise santé, l’ambiguïté et la minceur de ses aveux, ont été interprétés dans la perspective d’un assassin révolutionnaire anarchiste, plutôt que comme des symptômes de détresse physique et mentale. Czolgosz est une manifestation somatique d’une tradition culturelle. Mon argument est que l’histoire de vie de Czolgosz a été forgée par une construction discursive du crime, présente dès la fin du XIXe siècle.

AUTHOR

CARY FEDERMAN Cary Federman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Justice Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. His first book, The Body and the State: Habeas Corpus and American Jurisprudence, was published by SUNY Press (American Constitutionalism Series) in 2006 (paper, 2007). He is also the author of numerous articles, including: Deconstructing the Psychopath: A Critical Discursive Analysis (published in Cultural Critique); Breaking Bodies into Pieces: Time, Torture and Bio-Power (published in Critical Criminology) and Constructing Kinds of Persons in 1886: Corporate and Criminal (published in Law & Critique).

Cary Federman Assistant Professor Department of Justice Studies Montclair State University Montclair, New Jersey 07043 [email protected]

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Dreaming about the prison: Édouard Ducpétiaux and Prison Reform in Belgium (1830-1848)

Bert Vanhulle

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I am indebted to the two anonymous reviewers who have made many insightful comments on an earlier version of this article.

La science pénitentiaire between theory and practice

1 Today, the statement that the nineteenth century was a key period in the development of the modern prison system would hardly be contested. Since the publication of Michel Foucault’s masterpiece Surveiller et punir in 1975 scores of historians and criminologists have described in detail the nineteenth century origins, rise and implementation of modern penitentiaries in almost every European country3. One of the recurring themes addressed in these works is the position of national prison experts in the pan-European prison debate. This debate, which mainly took place in the 1830s and 1840s, helped to shape the image of the penitentiary as a decidedly modern element of penal policy. Regimes that saw themselves as modern and enlightened would therefore have no other option than to abolish the ‘barbaric’ spectacles of public corporal punishments, that were the hideous remnants of the Ancien Régime, according to enlightened jurists. In many countries this debate proved to be a strong incentive for local prison reform.

2 The issue that was so fiercely discussed by legal specialists, prison administrators, politicians and a growing network of prison specialists was the ideal prison system, especially following the publication of the rapport on the American prison systems by the French parliamentary observers, Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville,

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in 1833. The penal specialists were united in their belief that there was a largely unexploited potential within European penal institutions for using incarceration as a tool for improving criminals. The introduction of a modern, improvement-oriented prison system became their common agenda. However, there was considerable disagreement among them about how this goal was to be achieved. The dispute between advocates of the cellular prison model and supporters of the communal model was particularly long-lasting4. A deluge of texts was published in the 1830s and 1840s with projects for the much awaited prison reform, detailing the advantages that each model would have for the moral improvement of the prisoners. This was the ultimate and – according to those participating in this debate – perfectly achievable goal of each prison sentence, provided that the punishment was carried out in a modern penitentiary. This feverish enthusiasm for prison reform that gripped European intellectuals caused the French inspector-general of the prison system, Louis-Mathurin Moreau-Christophe, to observe in 1847, and not without irritation, that il semble qu’on ne puisse pas mourir sans faire accompagner son testament d’une petite brochure sur le système pénitentiaire5.

3 Moreau-Christophe was particularly targeting those who turned their attention to the prison system on the basis of vague philanthropic concerns. The future of the penal institutions had to be decided by people who had direct experience of them, i.e. the penologists. This attempt to defend their professional territory against ‘philanthropic amateurs’ was fairly typical of the struggle undertaken by the prison specialists in order to assert the identity of their science, known as science pénitentiaire, Gefängniskunde or simply penology. Whereas in the first decades of the nineteenth century the quest for prison reform was taken up by zealous religious philanthropists, inspired by the example of John Howard, the ‘apostle of the prisons’, a new group of prisons specialists emerged from the 1830s onwards. In their writings and correspondence about the ideal organisation of prison regimes, these specialists sought to distinguish themselves from the philanthropists by the use of modern objective sources of knowledge. The goal of their scientific reports was not merely to sanitise prison hygiene or denounce unacceptable treatment of inmates in local prisons, as they minimalised the activities and achievements of the philanthropists. The ultimate objective of the specialists’ reports and debates was the reform of the entire prison system. This ambitious goal could only be reached if their belief in the reformatory power of modern penitentiaries became widely accepted. Crime statistics, inspection reports on existing practice and malpractice, as well as travel reports on the modern American prison system which prioritised prisoners’ improvement were all used as arguments to strengthen their case.

4 The key-issue in this debate was the ideal prison system, but also other more mundane problems were discussed. Issues such as the preferred disciplinary regime within a penal institution or the need for penal law reform were also subjected to intense intellectual scrutiny. A definition of this ‘science pénitentiaire’ is not easy to provide. In the broadest terms, these penologists operated with the notion of detention and the closely associated question of the moral improvement of prison inmates. In the view of most specialists, their new science should be allowed to steer the process towards the expected improvement of the prison system6. By the time of the penitentiary congresses of 1846 and 1847, respectively held in Frankfurt and in Brussels, the debate about the ideal prison system was more or less settled in favour of cellular imprisonment. After the revolutions of 1848 this once flourishing pan-European debate

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never returned with the same viguour7. The large interest in prison organisation had reached its climax and broader societal interest in the prison question quickly faded. As evidence of this decline is the fact the third penitentiary congress was organised as late as 1872 in London.

5 The furious, and even feverish, intellectual energy that was released in this pan- European debate has primarily been interpreted as a sign of the allure of the ‘promises of punishment’, to paraphrase the title of Patricia O’Brien’s well known work on the French prison system of the nineteenth century8. The technology of the modern prison would prevent criminals from straying from the right path by a mixture of deterrence, through strict discipline, and of moral and religious education appealing to the fundamental decency that was believed to be present in each criminal. The implementation of this modern prison ideology through legislation and prison institutions was a very slow process that steadily gained ground during the second half of the nineteenth century.

6 The historiographical focus on the international prison debate through the history of ideas has remained largely unchanged since the publication of Foucault’s Surveiller et punir. Foucault analysed the international prison discourse of the first half of the nineteenth century as part of a new scientific language. In Foucault’s view the ‘invention’ or the ‘discovery’ of the penitentiary must be seen as the origins of a new technology of disciplining which functioned as an instrument of power and social control for the ruling classes. The prison discourse and the debate on the ideal prison system obscured – and at the same time scientifically legitimised – this shift in disciplinary power. Later historians have not all adhered to Foucault’s theories concerning the penitentiary, but the general appraisal of the importance of the pan- European debate stayed firmly rooted within the history of ideas.

7 According to the canon of prison historiography, the existence of the prison debate of the 1830s and 1840s points to a growing interest and subsequent acceptance in wider society of the reformative ideal of the penitentiary. Supporters of incarceration formed a more or less coherent front of specialists who believed in the possibility of criminals’ moral improvement by means of modern penitentiary technologies. They organised and campaigned successfully for prison building and legal reform. The idea of the penitentiary thus emerged from the prison debate and gradually became acceptable to the wider public. Institutional changes were preceded by this campaign of awareness. Prison historians have not questioned this united front-thesis which was first advocated by Foucault. They have constructed a historical narrative of gradual realisation of the idea of the reformative prison through prison regimes, penal legislation and government policy. According to the historiographical canon, these reformative ideas were central in steering the development of the prison system through much of the nineteenth century. Only from the 1870s onwards did this societal consensus concerning the role and possibilities of the penitentiary come under severe attack by criminal anthropologists and neo-classical jurists. Although the implementation of this modern penal thought at the institutional level has been described thoroughly by a younger generation of historians in the 1980s and 1990s, there is still a lot of ground left to cover.

8 For instance, only the overall themes and some main figures of the pan-European prison debate have been presented in scientific research. The French historian Jacques- Guy Petit has admirably reconstructed the marginalisation of the philanthropic

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thought in France by the protagonists of the science pénitentiaire9. Other elements that have not been taken into account include the inner workings of the network of prison supporters, a thorough analysis of its participants, its hierarchical structures, and the circulation of knowledge within this network. It is equally unclear how much these new penitentiary ideas influenced existing penal practices. Building plans, prison regimes and reports from prison officials have been extensively studied. Similarly, analyses of parliamentary debates and the introduction of new legislation have been duly researched; yet, still the question remains how exactly this new reformative ideology was integrated in prison practice. Historians who describe the institutional rise of the penitentiary generally discuss new model penal institutions that were created by prison enthusiasts, but rarely investigate the shift in existing practices. Seán McConville’s work on the English prison administration is a notable exception to this lack of attention to penal practice, but his work in turn lacks a broader analysis of the influence of European intellectual debates on prisons10.

9 Recent German research has tried to add this two-sided ‘practical’ dimension in the history of the evolution of the prison system. A notable work was written by the German scholar Thomas Nutz, who was the first to analyse the networks and strategies of legitimisation employed by the prison specialists11. Lars Hendrik Riemer’s publication of the letters by the nineteenth century German prison specialist Karl Josef Anton Mittermaier has proven to be an invaluable source in unearthing the workings of the European prison network. Riemer has also provided this edition with a very interesting introduction to the topics that were discussed in the network and the hierarchical structure of what he calls the Netzwerk der Gefängnisfreunde12. Furthermore these two scholars have presented in-depth analyses in two separate articles; Riemer on the composition and hierarchy within the prison network and Nutz on the problematic implementation of the modern prison thought.

10 The latter has drawn attention to the conflict of interests between local bureaucrats and scientific authorities during the reform of the Prussian prison system, notably in the case of Nikolaus Heinrich Julius13. During the 1830s and 1840s, Julius, who had been intensively involved with the prison reform movement since 1828, had been able to strengthen his position from an academic with some influence in his own country to a penologist of international reputation14. Julius played an important role in the pan- European network of penologists, which came into being in the 1830s. ‘Dr. Julius’, as he was commonly referred to, became one of the best-known German advocates of a modern prison system constructed according to scientific penological principles. In the debate about the ‘communal model’ versus the ‘cellular model’, Julius opted resolutely for the latter. It was for this reason that he was designated by King Frederick William IV of Prussia in 1840 to steer prison reform in his country15. Nutz shows convincingly in his article that the existing prison administration was displeased with the interference from Julius as ‘specialist’. The prison officials as a whole were not convinced that Julius’ claims about the merits of the cell-based prison were justified. After 1848, Julius was completely sidelined by the administration, despite recurrent pressure from the monarch to make use of Julius’ services. Julius’ scientific knowledge was opposed, and ultimately successfully ignored during the implementation of prison reform in Prussia.

11 A contribution by Riemer to a collection of essays about prison specialists discusses the relationship between leading penologists who considered prison reform from a ‘scientific’ perspective and the prison governors (the Praktiker from the title of his

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article) who approached the penitentiary question from a more pragmatic and empirical angle16. The difference of approach and the enormous discrepancy in their prestige made for a troubled relationship between the two groups. Although Gefängniskunde was essentially centred on prison practice as a discipline, it were nevertheless academics and senior officials who engaged in the debates despite having little or no sense of what prison life was really like. This was partly due to the low prestige of local prison officials – including the prison management. Often, though not always, they lacked the education and ambition to make their voices heard in the prison reform debate. Secondly, it was due to the specific direction that the prison debate took in the 1830s and 1840s, when the search for a universally applicable organisational system for prisons came to dominate the science pénitentiaire. This debate was not conducted one the basis of the experience of individual prisons. Protagonists from both camps argued the merits of their preferred system through a combination of theoretical and practical arguments. General ideas about the origin of criminality and depravity and about the merits of solitude and control of prisoners as a group were used as arguments to support any particular prison system. The experiences of prison governors were only cited by the penologists if they fitted with their reasoning. Not surprisingly, some prison governors tried to make their voices heard in this debate, which – throughout the period from the mid-1830s until the penological congresses of 1846 and 1847 – was mainly conducted via correspondence, monographs and journal articles. They sought to find a middle way between the two ‘main systems’, however, their proposals were passed over by the ‘Fürsten der Wissenschaft’. According to the prison specialists it was not clear whether measures which worked well in one specific institution were in fact universally applicable. According to the penologists the observations made ‘from below’ were often too closely related to the personality of the governor or reflected the composition of the prison population to be universally applicable. The penologists ambition to construct an universally applicable and scientific theory of the ideal prison system thus stifled the voice of the practitioners.

12 To my knowledge Reimer and Nutz’s articles are the first to explore the inner workings of the prison network from an organisational point of view. Nutz’s article hints at a hidden level in the implementation of prison reform, one that has been glossed over by historians who describe the rise of the penitentiary mainly as a mental discursive shift. It can be concluded from the analyses of Riemer and Nutz that despite the rapid growth of penology in the 1830s and 1840s, the actual influence of its scientific insights on existing prison practice remained limited. Both authors point to the awkward relationship between the theoretical discursive level of prison reform and the practical level of prison life as a possible explanation. Both describe the prison specialists as alien to prison practices. Their views could thus easily be ignored by the practitioners. This article is not based to the same degree on this antagonistic model. It focuses on the activities of the Belgian penologist Édouard Ducpétiaux.

13 Édouard Ducpétiaux was appointed inspector-general of the Belgian prison system in 1830, only a few months after the successful Belgian revolution. This appointment took place shortly after his 26th birthday; his superior in the Belgian prison administration, Charles-François Soudain de Niederwerth, was his senior by two years. These two young intellectuals were assigned the task of organising the Belgian national prison system according to the most modern insights. Unlike Julius, Ducpétiaux was thus from the beginning an integral element of the prison administration. At the same time, Ducpétiaux built up his position during the 1830s and 1840s to become an

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internationally respected penologist. In 1846 he would convene the first penal congress together with Mittermaier, Julius, Moreau-Christophe and other acclaimed penal specialists17. In other words, the theory and practice of the prison reform movement was united in the single figure of Ducpétiaux. Was there any interaction between theory and practice in Ducpétiaux’s activities and publications or was the discrepancy that Nutz and Riemer identify also present in his case? Can an analysis of Ducpétiaux’s activities explain why the international Gefängniskunde opted for the cellular regime?

14 Ducpétiaux’s background was mainly in journalism and law. In the 1820s he had built up something of a reputation in the then southern provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. He had fiercely opposed the death penalty in various polemical writings. Ducpétiaux’s first publication, at the age of 23, was De la peine de mort (1827). In this work, which he published before completing his legal studies, he vehemently denied the supposed value of the death penalty. He used the Latin translation of one chapter from this work, du châtiment propre à remplacer la peine de mort as his university dissertation in the same year18. Ducpétiaux argued that the alternative to capital punishment was a prison system centred on the improvement of the prisoner. His views reflected the abolitionist debate which was also in full swing in France, where Charles Lucas also proposed an improvement-oriented prison as the most effective substitute for capital punishment19.

15 The expertise that Ducpétiaux had built up through this and other writings on related topics was mainly focused on the ‘ideal prison’. However, the question of how this ideal prison should be organised in practice remained unanswered in these abolitionist works. By 1831, at the time of his entry into the prison system, Ducpétiaux’s thinking seems to be mainly theoretical.Yet, Ducpétiaux himself stressed his first-hand experience of the existing prison system. During the reign of the Dutch king William I, Ducpétiaux’s liberal pen had put him on the wrong side of the law at several occasions. He was also locked up by the Dutch authorities during the Belgian uprising. The shocking experiences of the way in which prisons were organised convinced Ducpétiaux of the urgent need for prison reform. After the Belgian independence, his former revolutionary comrades gave him the opportunity to help shaping government policies in this field.

16 This, at least, is the romanticised story that Ducpétiaux himself was particularly proud of. A rather hagiographical biography, written in the 1920s only reinforced this vision20. Since no personal archive has been preserved, Ducpétiaux’s writings and a few archival data are the only available inroads to study him. As a result Ducpétiaux has largely succeeded in creating his own legend. In his final text, a sort of penitentiary testament, he looked back on his achievements as inspector of the Belgian prison system. He particularly praised the introduction of the cellular regime in the Belgian prison system as his personal struggle and his main achievement21. Ducpétiaux’s (self)image as some sort of Prometheus for the cellular system has continued in Belgian historiography22. Although Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat should be credited for drawing attention to Ducpétiaux’s fascination with French utopian social reformers like Saint-Simon and Victor Considérant, she has also strengthened the image of Ducpétiaux as an isolated supporter of the cellular model23. In this article I would like to look beyond this carefully constructed image and beyond the analysis of his work within the framework of the history of ideas. I believe that analysing Ducpétiaux’s views on prison reform as that of a practitioner can contribute to a better

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understanding of his preference for the cellular model. It is a myth, created by Ducpétiaux himself, that the cellular system was already at the centre of his prison ideology in the 1830s. Furthermore I intend to analyse Ducpétiaux’s dealings with the penal floor, a topic that has been largely ignored in international as well as in Belgian prison historiography.

17 In the first part of this article I discuss Ducpétiaux’s theoretical writings and his steady climb within the international network of prison specialists. In the second part I research his early achievements in Belgian prison reform before 1848. I consider 1848 as a turning point in the history of the Belgian prison system. In 1848 the principle of individual imprisonment was adopted into Belgian penal law, culminating in the law on penal imprisonment of 1870 which stated that every prison sentence should be carried out in cellular confinement24. The tacit parliamentary agreement of 1848 to the cellular system led in Belgium to an ambitious building programme of cellular prisons from the 1850s onwards. A third reason to see a turning point in 1848 was the decline of the international prison debate in the years after 1848, caused by the political upheaval that many European countries had witnessed.

Ducpétiaux and the theory of penology: his engagement with the pan-European debate and the preference for the cellular system

18 Little is known of Ducpétiaux’s activities during the first few years after the Belgian independence in 1830. His first inspection visit – the conduct of such visits being one of his core tasks under the decree confirming his appointment – was made to the prisons of Ghent and took place on 9 January 183325. During the first two years after his appointment, the new inspector-general apparently made several trips to different prisons around Europe, probably in order to widen his practical knowledge of daily prison life and organisation. In a number of letters that have been preserved, Ducpétiaux depicts a deplorable picture of the provincial prisons that he visited on his journey through Alsace26. This was the first of many visits to foreign institutions, an activity that other penologists also engaged in during these years as a way to broaden their knowledge. In a letter to the editors of the French journal Annales d’hygiène publique et de médecine légale dated late December 1832, Ducpétiaux refers to visits to penal institutions in France, Switzerland and Germany27. In 1835 he also visited the British Isles28.

19 Through these visits, Ducpétiaux sought to gain information about the organisation of foreign prisons, thus adding to his own practical knowledge of prison life. He alluded to this in his contribution to the Annales d’hygiène publique et de médecine légale. Ducpétiaux argued that most intellectual efforts had so far focused on developing the theoretical principles of penology without paying any attention to practical issues: il y a cent ouvrages qui traitent de l’amélioration des prisons, je n’en connais pas deux qui envisagent la question sous le point de vue de l’utilité pratique; les théories sont nombreuses et les moyens de les appliquer peu connus29. Ducpétiaux was thus urging theorists to pay more attention to prison practices and administration.

20 The foreign trips and prison visits that Ducpétiaux undertook during this period also served a second goal, though. He was building up a network of correspondents who

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would keep him informed about developments of prison policies in foreign countries. This form of networking has been referred to rather dismissively by some historians as letourisme pénitentiaire. Yet this practice was one of the most common ways of exchanging knowledge about existing prison systems right up until the 1840s.30 In 1834, Ducpétiaux replied to a letter from the German jurist and prison reformer Karl Josef Anton Mittermaier31. It was the beginning of a correspondence between Ducpétiaux and Mittermaier that would continue for almost thirty years32 Through Mittermaier Ducpétiaux was introduced to the pan-European prison network in which jurists, penologists and government officials were active. The participants in this informal network kept each other informed about local prison news through letters, reciprocal visits and the dissemination of official and semi-official reports33. The prison experts found crime statistics, official as well as unofficial, particularly attractive. Rates of recidivism and crime figures were used to develop arguments about the effectiveness of particular measures taken or the need for reform. Monographs were also exchanged in which local legislation and the transformation of prisons to penitentiaries were central topics.

21 In the early years Ducpétiaux’s role within this network was limited to providing statistics and information about Belgian crime rates and prison policies. In the first letters between Mittermaier and Ducpétiaux, it is clear that the Belgian inspector- general was in a subordinate position. For example, he expressed explicitly his thanks to Mittermaier for documents the latter had sent. For his part, Ducpétiaux sought to entice the German jurist with proposals for articles for the journal edited by Mittermaier, Kritische Zeitschrift für Rechtswissenschaft und Gesetzgebung des Auslandes34. Ducpétiaux can be regarded in this phase as a criminal justice practitioner who provided the theorists with useful data. This is clear from a letter from Mittermaier to Julius from 1836: Ich freue mich dass Du mit Ducpétiaux Bemühungen zufrieden bist. Er ist ein geistvoller Mensch – im letzten Hefte meiner Zeitschrift ist ein ziemlich guter Aufsatz über Criminalstatistik von Belgien35.

22 Ducpétiaux’s role and importance within the international prison network was extended after the publication of his Des progrès et de l’état actuel de la réforme pénitentiaire in 183836. The work’s subtitle, Appendice[…]à l’ouvrage de MM. G. de Beaumont et A. de Tocqueville sur le système pénitentiaire aux États-Unis makes it clear that through this monograph Ducpétiaux was seeking to make a contribution to the European debate on the ideal prison system. In the first two volumes, he discussed prison organisation and reform in the United States, France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom as well as provided a detailed analysis of the Belgian situation. He also dealt extensively with the question of the ideal form of prison organisation, coming out clearly in favour of cellular confinement (confinement solitaire).

23 The strongest argument in favour of the cellular regime, according to Ducpétiaux, was that it made it absolutely impossible for prisoners to communicate with one-another. As a result, inmates would no longer be able to influence each other. In this contemplative cell life, only the beneficial influence of constant work, education and regular consoling contacts with moral agents (the chaplain, the instructor and the governor) would be possible37. After the introduction of the cellular regime, the prisons would no longer be ‘schools of vice’ (écoles de vice), but true ‘schools of repentence’ ( écoles de repentir). Among other things any pernicious influence from lower-ranking prison officials was reduced in this system. Separate confinement facilitated the

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prisoners’ contacts with higher officials such as the chief warden, governor, chaplain, doctor or instructor. These would be able to set a far more positive example for the prisoners and were more likely to bring about the desired moral regeneration: leur éducation, leur expérience, leurs lumières, rendent assurément plus aptes à étudier les caractères, à sonder les cœurs des condamnés, et par suite à approprier les remèdes aux maux dont ils auront constaté l’existence38.

24 To illustrate his point, Ducpétiaux, in the third volume of the work, drew upon a number of examples of prison practices from the renowned Ghent prison He included the full report of the prison doctor Daniel-Joseph Mareska about health conditions in the Ghent prisons which was provided with additional commentaries. The accounts of homosexuality in prisons were particularly shocking and challenging to contemporaries. Mareska apologised for providing what he called ‘obscene details’, but took the view that such abuses should not be passed over in silence39. This was grist to Ducpétiaux’s mill. The communal system that was applied in Ghent’s prisons in accordance with the strictest standards could neither prevent nor eradicate such ‘unnatural acts’. Salvation for the prisoner and the prison system in general could only be developed in the cellular regime.

25 Ducpétiaux’s reputation was transformed by this work, turning him into one of Europe’s leading penologists. Belgian reviews of his work were generally favourable and few challenged his position as a penal specialist. Ducpétiaux’s credentials as a penal reformer certainly were enhanced with this publication and his position within the Belgian prison administration was suitably strengthened. In his initial contacts with Mittermaier, Ducpétiaux remained modest about the book. After its publication he sent a copy to Mittermaier and described it as a project that had gotten out of hand. He explained that originally he had only intended to provide a compilation of recent studies on the penal question to accompany a new edition of the work of de Tocqueville and de Beaumont. Due to the wealth of material, he then decided to issue an independent work40. Ducpétiaux was downplaying the importance of his work. For the first time, he was taking a clear and well-founded standpoint on the question of the ideal prison system. This discussion would become the most important topic for the penological research over the following decade. Ducpétiaux justified his preference for the cellular regime on the basis of his ‘modest’ experience as inspector-general: J’y ai pris parti pour le système d’emprisonnement séparé; c’est que ma conviction et le peu d’expérience que j’ai acquise dans l’exercice de mes fonctions, m’y poussaient d’une façon en quelque sorte irrésistible41. He was again stressing his links with prison practice, no longer from the position of former prisoner, but in his capacity as a senior official within the prison administration.

26 Strengthened by this publication, Ducpétiaux ventured for the first time into a debate with Mittermaier. The eminent German scholar was a convinced champion of the Swiss communal system, in which inmates worked together in silence during the day and were locked up in cells at night42. Ducpétiaux admitted that the system had its merits, but doubted the effectiveness of this method of imprisonment in principle, since it allowed prisoners to keep company with one another43. In subsequent years, the two men would develop from colleagues to friends, despite the enduring difference of opinion about the ideal prison regime.

27 In what the Belgian criminologist Eric Maes has labeled his magnum opus, Ducpétiaux reiterated his support for the cellular regime in the Mémoire à l’appui du projet de loi sur

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les prisons. He wrote this work in 1845 in order to help ensure the passing of a new law by the Belgian Parliament that introduced the cellular regime as the standard for all Belgian prisons44. On the basis of a dazzling array of tables, statistics and arguments Ducpétiaux concluded that the cellular system was incontestably superior to the communal system, whether in its European or its American variant. Remarkably, out of the book’s 300 pages, only around fifty dealt with Belgian prisons. Furthermore, only two pages referred to Belgian prison governors (Riemer’s Praktiker ), all of whom concluded that the communal confinement of prisoners was failing to achieve the desired moral improvement45. They expressed their views in writing at the request of Ducpétiaux, who had invited every prison governor to set out his views about the shortcomings of the existing system.

28 Ducéptiaux’s reputation as a penologist was officially confirmed when in 1846 he was asked to help organising the first penal congress in Frankfurt. The programme of this conference primarily concerned the question which of the two prison systems was preferable. No fewer than fifteen of the twenty-two questions, on which the participants of the conference were to deliberate, related to aspects of the different prison systems46. Ultimately, only eight resolutions would be taken at the Frankfurt congress, due to the extensive debates47. Separate confinement was accepted by a large majority as the preferred form of punishment, both for suspects and for those condemned to short or long prison sentences48. In his various interventions at the congress, Ducpétiaux particularly emphasised ‘l’élasticité du régime cellulaire’49. Individual imprisonment could be made more or less severe and adapted to individuals in many different ways, whereas the communal punishment lacked this flexibility50. Strikingly, Ducpétiaux did not make one single reference to his activities as inspector- general in providing this appraisal. During the debates at this congress, his support for separate confinement was based on theoretical considerations of the merits stemming from this method of imprisonment.

29 In the following congress in Brussels in 1847, attention was mainly focused on the architectural application of the penal principles established in Frankfurt. A second question concerned the issue whether the cellular regime should be extended to young offenders. In the discussions at this congress it became clear how difficult it was to determine generally applicable principles. The role that religious congregations should play in the prison regime proved to be a particularly controversial point51. For Ducpétiaux, his position as general secretary at the Brussels penal conference constituted a high point in his career and confirmed his status as a leading figure in penology. As a theorist he had opted early on for the cellular system and found himself thus in the ‘winning’ camp. Yet, to what extent did Ducpétiaux succeed in getting these ideas introduced in Belgian prison practice?

Ducpétiaux and the prison floor: theory into practice?

30 As inspector-general of the Belgian prisons, Ducpétiaux conducted a policy that was based on his theoretical positions. Only lack of funds prevented him from organising the Belgian prisons entirely in line with the cellular model that he propagated at the international forum. New constructions of small detention centres and local correctional institutions were in line with cellular principles, although there was no legislative basis for doing so. The first of these institutions was the cellular prison of

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Tongeren built in 1844. By that time, the legislation initiated by the then Minister of Justice, Jules d’Anethan, to make cellular imprisonment official policy had not yet been debated in the legislative chambers, despite the support of Ducpétiaux52. Without legislative endorsement of the cellular regime, it was virtually impossible to fund the conversion of the existing large prisons from communal to cellular institutions.

31 To relieve the burden of the large prison institutions, Ducpétiaux had hitherto pursued a policy of diversification. Different groups among the prison populations who had previously been confined in the same location were now moved into new accommodations. A women’s prison was founded in Namur in 1837, while from 1840 onwards young offenders were sent to a converted monastery at St. Hubert53. Ducpétiaux also insisted that convicted prisoners should not come into contact with people held on suspicion or those imprisoned for debt. The separation of the various groups of inmates according to age, gender and nature of conviction was intended to reduce the disorder that was rampant in the large prisons. This was to facilitate more effective inculcation of moral principles into prisoners

32 In the large correctional and penal institutions, Ducpétiaux organised the overall population into smaller groups in an attempt to limit the harmful influence of the communal regime. The classification criteria for these groups were strictly determined. The inmates were not only to be classed by age, gender or crime. Their degree of depravity could also serve as a guideline for determining the unit in which they were to be placed. These rather defensive measures were intended to impede mutual corruption. However, the plans for improving prisoners were also carried out in a more positive manner. Religious instruction by the chaplain was combined with ordinary education, so that the prisoners would leave the penal institutions with a certain level of educational achievement54. Vocational training was another area that was taken very seriously in prisons. In 1835 Ducpétiaux attempted to set up a patronage system that would support released prisoners55.

33 In theory at least, the Belgian prisons were moving towards becoming total institutions supposedly transforming people through modern technologies of punishment and re- education. The broad outlines of the policy in this period can thus be regarded as translating Ducpétiaux’s views into the existing national frameworks, although within existing financial and infrastructural constraints. However, a closer look at prison practices shows that not everything that Ducpétiaux prescribed was actually taken up without further questions.

34 The modernisation of the prison infrastructure seems to have been a priority in the first decade following Belgian independence. Such efforts cannot be distinguished from the new goals of prison reform. The desired moral improvement of prisoners was only achievable when given suitable physical conditions: lorsque les locaux seront convénablement appropriés à cet effet wrote Ducpétiaux in 1833 56. In a letter to the administrative committee of the prisons of Ghent, Ducpétiaux explained the changes he would like to see implemented following his inspection visit. The majority of his points can be described as improvements to the standards of hygiene and enhanced security measures. Among other things, Ducpétiaux called for improvements to the infrastructure such as paving the inner courtyard, relocating the latrines and installing extra safety fences or doors. One final point related to the reorientation of the purpose of imprisonment, which Ducpétiaux had articulated for the first time in the decree containing the rules for obtaining a royal remission for prisoners: he expressed the

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wish to hold newly arrived prisoners in ‘moral quarantine’ before they came into contact with other prisoners57. After this quarantine period, a decision could be made as to which group the prisoner were to belong. The insights into the prisoner’s mind and into the extent of his moral depravity that had been gained during the ‘moral quarantine’ would help the prison staff to form a reasonably comprehensive judgement of the prisoner before his entry into prison: ce serait de cette époque que devraient dater les premières notes sur leur caractère58. The members of the committee recorded in their minutes of the meeting that on doublera des soins à cet égard59.

35 Other comments were less favourably received by the committee members. One point of disagreement was the request from the central administration that only women who were under correctional detention should be accommodated in Ghent prison. The administrative committee was not opposed to the philosophy underlying this proposal, namely the grouping together of prisoners who had incurred the same type of sentence60, but they expressed their opposition to the set system of distribution. The members of the Ghent prison board believed they had the right to take care of female prisoners convicted to long sentences under the criminal law given that it was more lucrative to accommodate this type of prisoner61. This group had been allocated to the prison in Vilvoorde. The income that was expected from women convicted to these long sentences was higher than that for women submitted to correctional sentences. Their shorter sentences meant that comparatively more time had to be devoted to teaching work techniques to the prisoners. Another point of conflict was the proposal to install artificial lighting so that the inmates could also work in the evenings. This was repeatedly rejected by the committee members62. According to Ducpétiaux, working in artificial light could serve as a puissant moyen de réformation63, but in their reply the committee members mainly referred to the safety risks associated with such an undertaking64.

36 The committee members further contested both Ducpétiaux’s proposals and those of the prison administration concerning other matters. Their protests became particularly vehement when substantive interventions were planned from the central administration which went further than adjustment to material or infrastructure. They were not convinced of the merits of reorienting imprisonment towards moral improvement. For example, the introduction of a cellular regime for part of the prison population was met with incomprehension on the part of the Ghent committee members. They were not convinced of the benefits of this new-fangled idea, and had it recorded that their views were based sur l’expérience de près de cinq années qui [...] a donné l’intime conviction que le système actuel (communal confinement) laisse peu de choses à désirer65. Somewhat sarcastically they added that l’administrateur supérieur décidera dans sa sagesse lequel des deux systèmes doit être préféré66.

37 The order given by Soudain de Niederwerth to keep out visitors who would only visit the establishment for the sake of une stérile curiosité was also dismissed as irrelevant 67. The members of the administrative committee responded to this in no uncertain terms: La maison de force est placée au nombre des établissements les plus curieux de la Belgique; en exclure les personnes qui ne pourraient prouver qu’elles y vont dans les vues exprimées par l’administration, serait en quelque sorte en exclure tout le monde, d’ailleurs il arrive fréquemment que des étrangers s’arrêtent pendant une journée à Gand pour voir ce bel établissement. Les en priver serait agir contrairement à ce qui toujours a existé68.

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38 The irritation expressed by members of the administrative committee with the meddling from the central administration became more pronounced as time passed. The modern ideas developed by the two youths, Ducpétiaux and Soudain de Niederwerth, were rejected with the argument that it was better to leave things as they were. The experience of the committee members was certainly preferable to the youthful arrogance of these two high-ranking officials. However, much to their irritation, the members of the administrative committee were repeatedly forced to climb down on these points. They felt their influence weakening to the advantage of central authority. Furthermore, the central administration considerably reduced the strength of the committee by introducing a system whereby a third of the committee’s members came up for re-election every other year69. According to Ducpétiaux, this was simply an attempt to involve as many honest citizens as possible in this œuvre de bienfaisance et de dévouement70. Irrespective of the justification, it effectively weakened the local committees.

39 Ducpétiaux was conscious of the hostility which remained among the local prison staff and management. In his first report from 1833 to the Belgian parliament about the state of the national prisons he implicitly criticised the prison staff. The current prison officers, he claimed, were incapable of changing from performing purely disciplinary functions to become the desired agents of moral regeneration: Mais ces premiers essais tentés dans l’intérêt de la réformation des détenus, pour réussir, nécessitaient le concours d’employés capables et dignes à tous égards de travailler à l’œuvre importante préparée par l’administration71. Only the members of staff with the required abilities would be retained, and the rest would be discarded and replaced72. The first steps towards this were taken in 1837 with the introduction of nuns from a religious order to run the women’s section of Ghent prison73. For the male prisoners, the Brothers of Our Lady of Charity, better known as the Brothers of Scheppers after their founder Victor Scheppers, were brought in74. The use of these Brothers in the prison system was a relatively inexpensive way of employing prison staff with some level of education. Initially, the Brothers were asked to take on a variety of specific tasks such as the care of sick inmates, but in the course of the 1840s and 1850s they were assigned to other functions. These included the role as wardens of the cell blocks or responsibilities for the instruction of prisoners75.

40 One might argue that the prison policy operated by Ducpétiaux consisted of the gradual introduction of the cellular model in smaller prisons. The first cell-based prison was brought into use in Tongeren in 1844. In prisons where this was not possible, an alternative system of strict classification was preferred. A variety of new institutions were built to accommodate specific subgroups. Work, education and religious instruction were used to bring about the desired moral improvement of the inmates. The central administration restricted the freedom of action of the local administrative committees by appointing members for a short period only. The negative influence of ill-educated prison wardens was diminished by employing members of male and female religious orders as part of the workforce. Ducpétiaux’s penal programme seems to have been fully achieved in the 1840s, apart from the complete introduction of the cellular regime.

41 In contrast to the experience of Dr. Julius in Prussia, Ducpétiaux succeeded, at least in part, in introducing the cellular prison organisation. In Belgian prisons, the discrepancy between theory and practice as identified by Nutz and Riemer apparently

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did not apply. As a criminal justice practitioner who made the leap to become a leading theorist, Ducpétiaux, unlike other colleagues, actually managed to successfully apply his insights into prison policy, albeit not without resistance from local prison committees. The main obstacle for Ducpétiaux’s penitentiary ambitions seemed to be the uncooperative attitude of members of parliament who were reluctant to officially endorse the cellular model. Supported by his position as an internationally renowned penologist, he tried to influence decision-makers by publishing the aforementioned work, Mémoire à l’appui du projet de loi sur les prisons. His reputation was certainly enhanced by his stellar climb within the international prison network.

42 Ducpétiaux condemned rather harshly the existing Belgian prison system in the Mémoire. Although being himself a leading prison official, he described Belgian prisons as primitive and completely failing in achieving their goal: on ne peut méconnaître l’action funeste de la captivité, l’affaiblissement du principe de l’intimidation, l’insuffisance des moyens d’amendement, l’absence du repentir76. This bitter and severe appraisal is all the more surprising in view of the more optimistic tone of earlier works and reports, which had emphasised and praised the progress of the Belgian penal system. Ducpétiaux’s tough line can probably be explained by the specific context of the publication. In 1840, the inspector-general had had to admit defeat in the debate about the implementation of youth prisons. Against his will, the government had allocated an old monastery in St. Hubert as the only institution for young offenders. Ducpétiaux had always pleaded for at least three special borstals77. Ducpétiaux wanted to stand his ground this time using the official legitimation of his cellular approach. This explains in part the book’s tone.

43 Yet the structure of Ducpétiaux’s argument is revealing for his growing distance from prison practice. Whereas Ducpétiaux in earlier works and reports made ample use of empirical examples from daily prison life, these are completely absent from the Mémoire. Ducpétiaux prefered to illustrate his claims by describing the Belgian situation in statistics, as was customary in the international science pénitentiaire. The statistics on recidivism were particularly important to him. As these were on the increase Ducpétiaux saw this as a telltale sign that should not be ignored by policy-makers78. In terms of the perceived problems in the penitentiary system, Ducpétiaux did not approach the discussion from the viewpoint of everyday prison life. Only the ‘objective’ statistical data that attempted to capture that reality mattered to him. The same man, who in 1832 had been pleading for more attention paid to the practical aspects of the prison system, completely ignored penal practices in his book of 1840.

44 However, there was a seamy side to the Belgian prison system, which was home to more suffering and gruesome stories than Ducpétiaux’s figures could capture. For example, the members of the administrative committee of the Ghent prisons showed considerable skill in hushing up scandals. In 1839, an officiating chaplain was sidelined after being suspected of having published a rather unflattering article in a local newspaper about the use of corporal punishments in Ghent prisons. This mistreatment had led to the suicide of a prisoner79. Worse still, in a sermon the chaplain had urged the prisoners not to subject to such abuses any longer. Through intervention by the bishop of Ghent, the problem was dealt with and the clergyman was pensioned off80. During the same year, a female prisoner claimed to have been raped by an unknown man in the courtyard of the women’s prison. She admitted this six months later when she was no longer able to conceal her pregnancy. She was pardoned with a reduced

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sentence to buy off her silence81. In neither case did the central administration get involved.

45 The international prison discourse, using terms such as improvement, moral regeneration and repentance, sounds rather hollow in the face of such incidents. Ducpétiaux’s modernisation project did not seem to take very firm roots in everyday prison life. It is striking that the administrative committee of Ghent still had enough power to settle these affairs amicably. The interests of the local administrative committee members and of the central administration also clashed on other matters. For instance, the introduction of the Brothers of Scheppers did not go without opposition. At the military prison of Alost, the local chaplain conducted a bitter campaign of vilification against the Brothers, supported by the members of the administrative committee82. These incidents impeded the creation of the desired moral education intended to set the prisoners on the right path. Victor Scheppers, founder and superior of the Brotherhood, complained in a letter to Alexis-Guillaume de Hody, successor of Soudain de Niederwerth as director of the prison system, that it was not the prisoners but the governors who were the greatest opponents of his Brothers’83.

46 Nor did the prisoners themselves turn out to be particularly impressed by the new regulations. In 1835 a work trading racket among the prisoners was exposed. Ducpétiaux and Soudain, who both regarded work as a pillar of the reformatory project, were shocked to discover how prisoners handled this ‘privilege’. Those who were condemned to hard labour for life would sell the proceeds of their work to prisoners with a limited sentence. Thus the work of the ‘lifers’ was handed over to the other prisoners in exchange for extra food or snacks from the canteen and smuggled goods. As the inmates received a piece wage, this fraud was relatively easy, and could sometimes even be organised ad hoc84. This system was organised by those condemned to hard labour for life because the prison system had failed to devise a system for the treatment of their wages that was appropriate to their specific situation. As was the case with the other prisoners, most of their wages were put aside as a savings allowance (masgeld), which was normally only paid out at the time of a prisoner’s release. According to the rules of this system, they could only have free use of a limited amount of pocket money, whereas their savings would continue to accrue until their death. After their death, the saved money would be paid out to their heirs or would revert to the prison. The prisoners’ racket had obviously been operating for a few years before it was discovered. The committee members were astounded to discover that prisoners who had already been working for several years in Ghent central prison did not have a cent of savings.

47 Such incidents show that the regime of improvement that Ducpétiaux aimed for was only introduced very partially, although the official policies were based on the most modern penal principles. Not only did the administrative committees turn out to be not nearly as toothless as had been thought, but the new regulations also went wide off the mark on more than one occasion. The dichotomy between theory and practice thus turns out also to have characterised Belgian prisons, despite Ducpétiaux’s advantageous position as an ideal link between the two aspects. Although being an eminent figure among international scholars of penology, the impact of his decisions on the life of the Belgian prisoner turns out to have been relatively limited. Incidents such as the beatings and the rape in Ghent demonstrate that the decried immorality

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that prevailed in the prison institutions of earlier periods was still present in Belgian prisons after their modernisation. Ducpétiaux’s success proved very insecure.

48 In several rapports from the Ghent prison, increasing criticism was heaped on Ducpétiaux’s programme of cellular prison reform. It is striking that in these rapports Ducpétiaux was clearly considered an outsider, someone who built his penal expertise on theoretical sandcastles without having a proper practice-based knowledge of crime or criminals. In 1836 this dismissal is still carefully worded. The creation of a cellular wing in Ghent prison was a but louable according to the local prison director, but he did not believe it would bring the intended amélioration morale. Criminals were, according to this prison official, too firmly entrenched in a life of vice for a mere prison sentence to make much of an impression on them85. More than local inertia and the desire to leave things unchanged, the opposition in Ghent prison to the reform proposals from Ducpétiaux and the central administration stemmed from a fundamentally different attitude to criminals and scepticism about the potential for moral regeneration of prisoners. No matter how refined the techniques were, a complete moral improvement seemed very unlikely to local prison officials. This distrust in the reformative goal of the prison sentence was based on their day-to-day dealings with the prisoners, who proved time and time again to be immune to moral administrations.

49 In a report of 1848 detailing the activities of the Brothers of Scheppers, the Ghent prison doctor Daniel-Joseph Mareska all but buried the reformative ideal of prison sentences: Lorsque la constitution physique de l’homme est mauvaise, la médecine parvient rarement à la changer; il en est de même pour le moral, lorsqu’il est profondément corrompu la religion et la philosophie restent le plus souvent impuissantes. C’est une triste pensée, mais pourtant elle est vraie. In the same vein he stated that one should not flatter oneself with grand ideas of creating moral improvement, but be content if one succeeded in purifying the moral atmosphere of a prison. That was according to Mareska the only realistic goal of the modern prison system86. In a general report of 1849 on the physical and moral effects of prison sentences, that was circulated in print in 1852, Mareska stated, in no uncertain terms, the complete failure of improvement-based cellular prison system: Nous avons vu fonctionner pendant des années le système d’isolement […] il nous en coûte d’en faire l’aveu, mais nous en sommes à nous demander si nous avons produit le moindre bien87. He added dejectedly: À ceux qui nous objecteront que nous n’avons pas toujours tenu un pareil langage, nous répondrons: nous parlions autrefois le langage de la théorie, nous parlons aujourd’hui celui de l’observation et de l’expérience88.

Conclusion: dreaming about the prison

50 Edouard Ducpétiaux’s views underwent an interesting development during the period under consideration. From being an outspoken criminal justice practitioner with relatively little interest in the theoretical approach to prison reform, he evolved to become a leading theorist. This development was mainly caused by his integration in the pan-European network of prison specialists. At the international level, his transformation was extremely successful. Ducpétiaux’s international prestige was acknowledged by Belgian members of parliament who lauded his scientific credentials as well-deserved89. Although before 1848 the Belgian parliament was reluctant to give their full support to Ducpétiaux’s endeavours to promote the cellular system, their reservations were quickly discarded in the 1850s. Ducpétiaux’s international

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reputation, combined with relatively minor unrest in Belgium in 1848, led to the adoption of cellular-based prison reform as official policy. An ambitious building programme realised Ducpétiaux’s ambitions to introduce the cellular system. From the 1850s onwards, the Belgian prison system became almost synonymous with the cellular regime. Thus, in the long run, Ducpétiaux’s international strategy proved to be successful.

51 In order to make the transition from prison practitioner to prison theorist, Ducpétiaux had to adopt a different tone and alter the argument of his published works. Ducpétiaux’s works in the early 1830s were focused on the spreading of practical knowledge of prisoners’ living conditions. Over the years, he became increasingly preoccupied by a more theoretical approach to the prison issue. Ducpétiaux successfully emulated the international penological discourse and devoted less and less space to the discussion of the Belgian situation in particular. That his interest in prison practices was replaced by a more theoretical framework of reference is strikingly illustrated by the contents and lines of argument in the Mémoire. The conflict between theory and practice, as described by Riemer, also characterised the writings and actions of Ducpétiaux, although the inspector-general himself continued to stress his ties with the practical functioning of prison administration.

52 Although Belgian prison policies clearly bore the mark of Ducpétiaux’s thinking, it remains to be seen how great his influence was on the practices within the prison system. Neither the prisoners nor the local prison administrators seemed enthusiastic about the proposed reorientation towards an improvement-based prison system. Local inertia can explain the early reluctance to fully embrace the penal thoughts advocated by the young prison administrators Ducpétiaux and Soudain de Niederwerth during the first decade of Belgian independence. From the 1840s onwards a fundamentally different assessment of the value and goals of the prison system was made by those running the prisons. Their belief in the potential for the moral regeneration of inmates was rapidly fading, a development caused by years of practical experience and repeated failures. The opposition from the prison practitioners towards Ducpétiaux’s penitentiary project became more vocal over the course of the 1840s. Ducpétiaux himself was regarded by the prison practitioners as a theoretician, who remained naïvely unaware of prison reality. It is remarkable that it was precisely during this period that Ducpétiaux’s views on the merits of the cellular regime became rigid and more theoretically-based.

53 It can be assumed that this strained relationship with prison practitioners was an important factor in Ducpétiaux’s turn towards theory and his option for the radical cellular system. A close reading of the theoretical reflections that the leading lights of the science pénitentiaire formulated in their publications of the 1840s reveals a hankering for a different type of prison institution. Perhaps this is why the choice in favour of the cellular regime was made so clearly in international prison discourse. Safety was scarcely an issue in the cellular prison; there was no need for crowd control for the prisoners and the prisoners would be exposed to modern improvement techniques under the most auspicious circumstances, without having to be concerned about failings on the part of prison guards or local administrators. Over time, the ideal image of a prison which was kept alive on the basis of this discipline lost all touch with actual practices. And perhaps that was precisely the point.

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54 This discrepancy between theory and practice would be exposed in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. A radical rethinking of the function and purpose of prison institutions was propagated during this period against the background of new thinking in disciplines such as the neo-classical criminal law philosophy (the défense sociale- doctrine) and criminal anthropology. The insights of the classical science pénitentiaire were systematically discarded. It is noticeable how explicitly these new disciplines in the field of penology related their scientific claims to empirical evidence. Cesare Lombroso gained his knowledge from the bodies of the prisoners, Alexandre Lacassagne rigorously noted the biographical accounts of prisoners and their social milieux, while Belgian défense sociale advocate Adolphe Prins pointed to the abstract human image of classical law in general and the science pénitentiaire in particular.

55 The example of the Belgian prison system strikingly illustrates the powerlessness of international penology in its heyday. This interpretation radically differs from conclusions presented in the main canon of prison historiography. The prison discourse of the 1830s and 1840s did not point to the existence of a united prison front whereby, minor disagreements aside, everyone adhered to more or less the same view. Apart from the discourses by certain prison specialists, there was a reality that is seldom studied and in which prison practitioners had to re-evaluate their own beliefs about the potential for moral regeneration of the criminal. Men like Daniel-Joseph Mareska started their career in the prison service fully enthralled by the idea of the possibilities of the modern penitentiary. After twenty years in prison service Mareska was forced to conclude that the initial aims of the penitentiary were unachievable and that it was necessary to set more realistic and less ambitious goals. While leading penologists like Ducpétiaux continued to believe in the ability to morally improve prison inmates and saw this as a key quality of the cellular system, a mental shift away from the original aims of punishment had already taken place among prison practitioners.

56 Analyses that approach the writings, activities and prison policy of Ducpétiaux from the perspective of the history of ideas give a superficial view of prison reality. If focusing exclusively on these aspects, one could easily construct a narrative of successful and logical implementation of the cellular system into Belgian prison policies. However, an analysis of the reactions of the prison practitioners to these new prison policies shows that this image is distorted. Even a universally renowned penologist like Ducpétiaux was unable to put his insights into the science pénitentiaire fully into practice. The prison policies he pursued, with emphasis on the education and reform of prisoners, did not live up to his high expectations. The universal support for the cellular approach within the international network of penologists can be seen as a final attempt to redeem the improvement-principle which was fundamental to the success of the penitentiaries. In essence, the choice of the cellular regime represented a rejection of existing practice and the pursuit of a utopian project. By the mid-1840s, the discrepancy between prison theory and modern penal practice had become impossible to reconcile. The science of the prison system ultimately became confined to mere dreams about the ideal prison.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival sources

State Archive depot Beveren (RABeveren), Archive of the prisons of Ghent, Notes of the meeting of the administrative commission 1830-1848 (inventory numbers 1-7); Provincial Archive of East- Flanders, 1830-1850.

Correspondance Scheppers, in the private archive of the Brothers of Scheppers, conserved Mechelen, the Belgian see of the Brothers of Scheppers.

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NOTES

3. Foucault (1975). For an overview of this historiography see for instance Nutz (2001, pp. 1-12). 4. See for instance Riemer (2005, pp. 150-153). 5. Quotation taken from Roth (1981, p. 187). “It seems as if people cannot die without leaving a little leaflet about the penitentiary system as part of their will.” 6. Nutz (2005, pp. 431-459). See also Nutz (2001, pp. 259-260). 7. Riemer (2005, pp. 170-175). 8. O’Brien (1982). 9. Petit (1990, pp. 198-205). See also Petit (1982, pp. 333-336). 10. McConville (1981). 11. Nutz (2001). 12. Riemer (2005). 13. Nutz (2005, pp. 452-457). 14. Nutz, (2005, p. 440). 15. Nutz (2005, p. 453). 16. Riemer (2007, pp. 35-53). 17. Débats Francfort-sur-le-Main (1847, p. 3). 18. Ducpétiaux (1827). 19. Lucas (1827). For an interesting analysis of the abolitionist debate and its links with prison reform in Belgium see De Brouwer (2009). 20. Rubbens (1922). 21. Ducpétiaux (1865). 22. Dupont-Bouchat (1988). 23. Dupont-Bouchat (1988, p. 7). For Ducpétiaux’ ties with Considerant see Beecher (2001). 24. Maes (2006). 25. State Archive depot Beveren (RABeveren), Archive of the prisons of Ghent (SI Ghent), inventory number 5, Notes of the meeting of the administrative commission 9 January 1833. 26. Strijpens (1992). See also Vercruysse (1999). 27. Ducpétiaux (1833a, p. 273). 28. Riemer (2005, p. 1080). 29. Ducpétiaux (1833a, p. 295). “There are at least one hundred books dealing with the question of improving prisons. I have not come across two that consider the question in terms of how ideas might be carried out in practice. The theories are numerous, but little is known about how to apply them.” 30. Dupont-Bouchat (2002, pp. 533-563). 31. The first letter from Ducpétiaux to Mittermaier dates from 15 august 1834, see Riemer (2005, p. 1078). 32. The last letter from Ducpétiaux to Mittermaier dates from 1862, see Riemer (2005, pp. 1106-1109). 33. Nutz (2001, pp. 282-306).

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34. Riemer (2005, p. 1081). 35. Riemer (2005, p. 531). “I am pleased that you are satisfied with the efforts made by Ducpétiaux. He is an enthusiastic young man – in the last volume of my review you will find a rather good analysis of Belgian criminal statistics.” 36. Ducpétiaux (1838). 37. Ducpétiaux (1838, vol. 2, p. 229). 38. Ducpétiaux (1838, vol. 2, p. 232). “With their education, their experience and their levels of insight, they are undoubtedly in the best position to assess the personalities of the inmates, to look into their hearts, and subsequently to judge by which means the evil that they have identified might be rectified”. 39. Ducpétiaux (1838, vol. 3, pp. 323-326). 40. Riemer (2005, p. 1084). 41. Riemer (2005, p. 1084). “I have opted for the system of cellular imprisonment; it is my personal conviction, and whatever limited experience I have acquired in my capacity as prison inspector forces me to draw this conclusion as inevitable.” 42. Riemer (2005, pp. 190-200). 43. Je désire que la théorie que vous défendez avec un si noble et beau talent, porte des fruits salutaires, bien que j’en doute un peu. Quotation from Riemer (2005, p. 1084). “I wish that the theories that you defend with such high-minded and excellent talent will bear healthy fruits, although I have my doubts.” 44. Maes (2009, p. 53). For a comprehensive analysis of the parliamentary discussion concerning the introduction of the cellular system in Belgium see Maes (2009, pp. 663-684). See also Weber (1996). 45. Ducpétiaux (1845, p. 43). 46. Débats Francfort-sur-le-Main (1847, pp. 4-5). 47. Débats Francfort-sur-le-Main (1847, pp. 160-161). 48. Débats Francfort-sur-le-Main (1847, p. 102). 49. Débats Francfort-sur-le-Main (1847, p. 123). 50. Débats Francfort-sur-le-Main (1847, pp. 123-124). 51. Débats Bruxelles (1847, pp. 152-176). 52. Maes (2006, p. 16). 53. ‘Arrêté royal instituant une maison centrale de détention pour les femmes condamnées de toutes les catégories’, ministère de la Justice (1840, p. 76). See also Dupont-Bouchat, Alexandre and Strimelle (1996). 54. See for instance ‘Règlement pour l’école de la maison de détention de Vilvorde (28 décembre 1831)’, ministère de la Justice (1840, pp. 99-101). 55. ‘Rapport au roi sur le patronage des condamnés libérés, et arrêté royal à ce sujet’, ministère de la Justice (1840, pp. 160-162). 56. Ducpétiaux (1833b, p. 23). “…once the space has been appropriately converted for this purpose.” 57. RABeveren, SI Ghent 5, Notes of the meeting of the administrative commission 18 April 1832. 58. Ducpétiaux (1833b, p. 40). “It should be from this period that we collect the first observations on the character of the prisoner.” 59. RABeveren, SI Ghent 5, Notes of the meeting of the administrative commission 18 April 1832. “…we will reinforce the efforts on this point.” 60. ‘Arrêté concernant la classification des femmes condamnées et des détenus enfants et adolescents (9 November 1832), ministère de la Justice (1840, p. 118). See also Dupont-Bouchat (1995, pp. 23-53). 61. RABeveren, SI Ghent 5, Notes from the meeting of the administrative commission 3 October 1832.

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62. RABeveren, SI Ghent 5, Notes from the meeting of the administrative commission 12 December 1832. See also RABeveren, SI Ghent 6, Notes from the meeting of the administrative commission 4 February 1835 and 23 December 1835. 63. Ducpétiaux (1833b, p. 28). “…a powerful means of moral regeneration.” 64. RABeveren, SI Ghent 5, Notes from the meeting of the administrative commission 12 December 1832: ‘could bring about great disorders and provoke the immorality we have almost eradicated’.‘devant amener des grands désordres et provoquer l’immoralité qu’on est presque parvenu à extirper.’ 65. RABeveren, SI Ghent 5, Notes from the meeting of the administrative commission 28 May 1834. “… on the experience of almost five years, which had led to the firm conviction that the present system (the communal regime) leaves little to be desired.” 66. RABeveren, SI Ghent 5, Notes from the meeting of the administrative commission 28 May 1834. “… the senior administrator will decide in his infinite wisdom which of the two systems is preferable.” 67. RABeveren, SI Ghent 5, Notes from the meeting of the administrative commission 20 August 1834. 68. RABeveren, SI Ghent 5, Notes from the meeting of the administrative commission 20 August 1834. “The prison is amongst the most curious establishments in Belgium. To exclude anyone who cannot prove that he visits while in full agreement with the expressed views of the prison administration would be to exclude everybody. By the way, it frequently happens that foreigners stay for one day in Ghent simply to see this beautiful establishment. To deprive visitors from this experience would be to act contrary to practices which have always existed.” 69. ‘Arrêté relatif au renouvellement des commissions administratives (1 er novembre 1832)’, in Ministère (1840, p. 117). 70. Ducpétiaux (1833b, p. 9). “… in acts of charity and devotion.” 71. Ducpétiaux (1833b, p. 9). “But these first tentative attempts towards the moral regeneration of prisoners depended for their success on cooperation from staff who were, in all respects, capable and worthy of working towards the higher goals set by the prison administration.” 72. L’épuration et le renouvellement successif d’une partie du personnel des prisons… Quotation from Ducpétiaux (1833b, p. 9). 73. RABeveren, SI Ghent 6, Notes from the meeting of the administrative commission 4 January 1837. 74. Mechlinien (1982). 75. Correspondance ‘Scheppers’ in the private archive of the Brothers of Scheppers, Mechelen. Letter dated 6 July 1844 from Scheppers to the Belgian Minister of Justice. See also letter dated 6 January 1848 from Scheppers to Baron de Hody or letter dated 10 May 1855 from Scheppers to the Minister of Justice. 76. Ducpétiaux (1845, p. 45) “one cannot ignore the negative effects of imprisonment, the undermining of the principle of deterrence, the inadequacy of the means of improvement and the absence of repentance.” 77. Maes (2009, p. 242). 78. Ducpétiaux (1845, pp. 44-45). 79. Tweegesprek (1839): “these prisoners […] who were there so severely beaten from a warden …”; “Is that their way to moralise those poor devils …” 80. RABeveren, SI Ghent 6, Notes of the meeting of the administrative commission 17 July 1839. 81. RABeveren, SI Ghent 6, Notes of the meeting of the administrative commission 30 November 1839 and 18 December 1839. 82. Mechlinien (1982, p. 135). 83. Private archive Brothers of Scheppers, Letter dated 22 November 1845 from Scheppers to de Hody: les directeurs, qui en général sont les adversaires des frères …

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84. SI Ghent 6, Notes of the meeting of the administrative commission 25 November 1835. 85. RABeveren, Provincial Archive of East-Flanders 2438/6, Notes on twoweekly meeting of main prison staff Ghent prison 29 January 1836, attached to a letter from the governor of East-Flanders to the administrateur-général des prisons, 1 February 1836. 86. RABeveren, Provincial Archive of East-Flanders 2361/6, Rapport on Brothers of Scheppers from Jean Mareska to governor of East-Flanders, 22 January 1848. “When a man’s physical constitution is poor no medicine is likely to change that; the same goes for the moral constitution: when it is profoundly corrupted, religion and philosophy are most often impotent. It is a sad thought, but a true one.” 87. Mareska (1852, p. 39). “For years we have seen the system of individual imprisonment in practice (…) It is hard to admit it, but we must ask ourselves if we have done the slightest good.” 88. Mareska (1852, p. 40). “To those who will object that we have not always spoken in these terms, we will reply: then we were speaking the language of theory; today we speak from observation and experience.” 89. See the quotation of Belgian liberal member of parliament Adelson Castiau in Maes (2009, p. 682).

ABSTRACTS

Historians of the prison system have recently been interested in the discrepancy between the official prison discourse emanating from the semi-official specialists of penology and prison practices during the first half of the nineteenth century. It seems that the theories of specialists did not have any significant impact on old practices of prison discipline. In this article I draw attention to Édouard Ducpétiaux, the first general-inspector of the Belgian prison system, who was recognised as a leading theorist as well as criminal justice practitioner. It is the aim of this article to investigate whether these discrepancies between theory and practice are also discernable in the writings and actions of Ducpétiaux. Finally, this article raises the question whether the strong support of the cellular regime among penal theorists was caused by the rejection of existing penal practices.

Les historiens du système carcéral se sont récemment intéressés à l’écart qui existe entre le discours pénitentiaire officiel émanant des spécialistes semi-officiels de la pénologie, et les pratiques pénales de la première moitié du XIXe siècle. Il semble que les songeries théoriques des spécialistes n’interféraient guère avec les vieilles pratiques de la discipline carcérale. Dans cet article, j’attire l’attention sur Édouard Ducpétiaux, premier inspecteur-général du système pénitentiaire belge, qui fut reconnu comme un éminent théoricien et praticien de la justice pénale. Cet article vise à examiner si l’écart entre théorie et pratique évoqué est également visible dans les écrits et les actes de Ducpétiaux. Finalement, cet article s’interroge sur le point de savoir si le ferme soutien des théoriciens pénaux à l’emprisonnement cellulaire était dû au rejet des pratiques pénales (modernes) en vigueur.

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AUTHOR

BERT VANHULLE Bert Vanhulle is currently a research assistant with the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL). His research is part of the PAI 6/01–research-programme into the social and political history of Belgian criminal justice. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. on the Belgian prison science comptabilité morale at the KULeuven University, and has published in Dutch, English and French on different aspects of the history of the Belgian prison system.

Bert Vanhulle Research Assistant PAI 6/01 – UCLouvain Centre d’Histoire du Droit et de la Justice (CHDJ) Rue du Poirier 10 B - 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve [email protected]

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Comptes rendus / Reviews

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Jäger (Jens), Verfolgung durch Verwaltung: Internationales Verbrechen und internationale Polizeikooperation 1880-1933 Konstanz, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006, 424 pp., ISBN 3-89669-568-1

Anja Johansen

REFERENCES

Jäger (Jens), Verfolgung durch Verwaltung: Internationales Verbrechen und internationale Polizeikooperation 1880-1933, Konstanz, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006, 424 pp., ISBN 3-89669-568-1

1 Jens Jäger’s book derives from his Habilitationsschrift on the origins and development of international police co-operation on criminal investigation. It is an extremely erudite study on a fascinating topic with an abundance of details. Following Mathieu Deflem’s research on 19th and 20th century international police co-operation with focus on the US and Germany, Jäger provides a study which is firmly focused on Europe and which is historical rather than sociological in its approach. In these respects Jäger’s study is in direct line with Liang’s 1992 study on the Rise of European Police in the context of international relations.

2 The breath and a wealth of details are impressive. Jäger casts his net wide, involving the main capitals of Europe, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London, St. Petersburg, and makes excursions to the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. This leads to many important insights about the dynamics driving police forces from around Europe towards ever greater integration and co-operation on international crime.

3 While Jäger is not specific about the main focus of his argument(s), five main themes emerge. The overall argument seems to be that the development of the International

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Criminal Police Commission (later known as Interpol) was no linear process or the result of a preconceived plan (p. 13). This seems a very plausible development and perfectly in line with the processes described by Historical Institutionalists. Jäger traces the origins of international police co-operation back to the 1860s-1870s with public concerns over white slavery, obscene publications and later trafficking of illegal drugs. He shows how the concept of the ‘international criminal’ emerged in criminological debates of the mid-19th century as a consequence of concerns over the ease with which people could move across the European continent and operate anonymously within the great cities. However, he then demonstrates how international crime was in fact very marginal to crime statistics, and that much more was made of the perceived threat from international professional criminals than the problem deserved. It was therefore not the magnitude of the problem that caught the attention of senior and middle ranking officials in the criminal investigation departments around Europe, but a perceived need for co-ordinating information. As Jäger aptly puts it, the bureaucratisation of the problem, the collection of a wealth of data that could be quantified and shared, gave the sense of controlling it. Jäger then links this phenomenon to wider processes of centralisation, standardisation, professionalisation and specialisation within police forces around Europe as well as the scientification of criminal investigation. At the same time, Jäger sees little evidence that the increased specialisation and scientification of detection methods had any significant impact on the detection rate for the crimes associated with ‘international’ criminals (p. 381).

4 Some of Jäger’s most interesting findings are his observations on the processes of exchange and integration. He argues that the international police co-operation originated from the personal connections of individual criminal investigators in Berlin, Vienna, Paris and London, who began to exchange information about international criminal activity outside the sanction and largely without the knowledge of the foreign ministries or justice ministries of the countries concerned. These informal connections were institutionalised through international police conferences starting in the 1880s which after the turn of the 20th century developed into a set of concrete policies and practices for police surveillance, identity checks and exchange of information. The establishment of the ICPC in 1923 was just the completion of a long process of integration and standardisation between police forces across boarders which had been ongoing for the previous fifty years. In the final part Jäger shows how the First World War only constituted a temporary hold on the co-operation and that connections from before the War were quickly re-established after the end of hostilities. Thus Jäger emphasises the continuity from 1880 right through to 1933 with slow but continuous integration of shared police knowledge. However the question arises why Jäger ends his main research in 1933, as he subsequently shows that the police co-operation continued, albeit with altered agendas, throughout the 1930s. The cut-off point with the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany seems a bit arbitrary, and if it is explained somewhere, this reader lost that point among the wealth of information.

5 This leads me to the main problem with the book: it does not lie in the material or the arguments, but in the presentation. In the introduction some rather vague general questions are formulated (p. 14), but I am not convinced that any of these questions do justice to the impressive amount of detailed research that follows. Similarly, the final chapter, rather than drawing the threads together, continues to thrown new information at the reader. Throughout the almost 400 pages, the reader is led through a wilderness of details and arguments without any prior clarification of where the

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argument is going and why. All too often it is only after many pages of endless amounts of details that the relevance of the previous forty or fifty pages becomes clear. This makes a very tough read. The reader has to pay careful attention to every little detail because any point may turn out to be crucial, but this will only be clear fifty pages further on. To make matters worse, there is no index to help the reader going back and catching up on details that escaped her attention the first time around. This is a great pity for any researcher who might need Jäger’s findings for further investigations as specific pieces of information are very difficult to locate in the book. Moreover, the numeration of headings and subheadings is extremely unhelpful and confusing. It reaches a subdivision of up to five digits (e.g. 2.2.2.2.3. Austria – Vienna), but these five digits are again a subdivision within each chapter, and to make the confusion complete, the parts I, II and III each starts with a new Chapter 1. As a result there are no less than five headings with the number 3.1. (pp. 27, 82, 227, 277 & 342). Finally, the section on documentation only provides a minimum of information on unpublished material. A list of archives does not help the interested researcher in any way, as it only states that Jäger has consulted the Public Record Office, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police, but does not provide details of which documents he was using. For any detail of the actual records, the interested researcher will need to trawl through all 1,055 footnotes.

6 It is a great pity that Jäger’s excellent research does not appear as clearly and forcefully as it rightly deserves because of the unhelpful presentation of the book. The book is certainly worthwhile the effort, but I would recommend the reader to arm herself with a block of ‘post-it’ to keep track of data and key arguments.

AUTHORS

ANJA JOHANSEN University of Dundee [email protected]

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Kidambi (Prashant), The Making of an Indian Metropolis. Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890-1920 Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007, 268 pp., ISBN 978-0-7546-5612-8

Emmanuel Blanchard

RÉFÉRENCE

Kidambi (Prashant), The Making of an Indian Metropolis. Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890-1920, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007, 268 pp., ISBN 978-0-7546-5612-8

1 Publié dans une collection d’histoire urbaine, le livre de Prashant Kidambi dépasse de beaucoup les limites de ce domaine pour proposer une véritable analyse du « pouvoir colonial » dont le sous-titre rend parfaitement compte. L’ouvrage est découpé en six chapitres qui, après une synthèse sur les métamorphoses de la ville de Bombay au tournant du XXe siècle, proposent autant de plongées articulées dans des dispositifs de pouvoir (la prise en charge sanitaire des épidémies de peste, l’aménagement urbain par le Bombay Improvement Trust, les réformes et pratiques policières, l’émergence d’une société civile et l’action philantropique des classes moyennes)dans un moment de reconfiguration de la « gouvernance coloniale ». La thèse de l’auteur est ainsi solidement étayée : jusque dans les années 1890, les autorités coloniales étaient presque entièrement accaparées par le contrôle des campagnes, et, dans les villes, elles étaient adeptes d’une organisation des pouvoirs laissant une grande place aux autorités et communautés locales. Elles étaient donc peu intrusives dans l’intimité (les analyses en termes de bio-pouvoir font l’objet de nombreuses critiques) et le quotidien des habitants. L’auteur démontre que, si le développement industriel de la ville était engagé depuis plusieurs décennies, pendant longtemps, les instances municipales laissèrent se développer une « ville informelle » (unintended city) sans que cette

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expansion de l’espace et des activités de populations migrantes et prolétarisées ne fasse l’objet d’une véritable inquiétude, ni ne soit érigée en problème public. Au cours des années 1890, c’est la conjonction de l’événement (les épidémies de peste notamment) et de l’accélération de ces grandes mutations économiques, sociales et démographiques qui va être motrice de l’accroissement des interventions des autorités politiques institutionnelles. Cet interventionnisme grandissant fut notamment marqué par le ciblage des plus pauvres et des minorités (religieuses, ethniques…) et par la volonté de les discipliner, notamment dans une optique de régulation et d’ordonnancement des espaces publics.

2 Les silences des notes de bas de page et de la bibliographie témoignent de ce que Kidambi ne vise pas à apporter une contribution théorique aux débats sur la domination coloniale. Il propose une brillante démonstration d’histoire sociale, dans la moyenne durée d’un espace urbain dont les particularismes sont parfaitement rendus. Par ces choix méthodologiques et ce « tournant urbain » (selon l’expression de Gyan Prakash pour qualifier le renouveau de l’histoire des villes indiennes intervenu au cours des années 1990), l’auteur se démarque ainsi de travaux longtemps dominants qui, à la focalisation sur les campagnes, ont peu à peu ajouté le glissement vers des ambitions théoriques oublieuses des nuances et de la diversité des rapports sociaux en situation coloniale.

3 Bien que les analyses de Prashant Kidambi soient beaucoup plus larges, je m’attarderai surtout sur son analyse des réformes policières1. Il s’intéresse particulièrement au renforcement des prérogatives de la police de Bombay induit par le City Police Act de 1902, aux réformes organisationnelles impulsées par le commissaire en chef Edwardes (1909-19162) et décrypte, avec un soin particulier, les interactions sur le terrain entre les agents subalternes et les populations plus particulièrement ciblées par ces dispositifs – d’encadrement de la vente ambulante ; d’interdiction des nuisances de rue diverses, en particulier sonores ; de régulations des parades et autres processions religieuses… La prégnance de l’exemple londonien, souvent érigé en modèle, est restituée mais en pointant toutes les limites d’une impossible adaptation en un contexte de contrainte budgétaire extrêmement forte et de faible qualification d’un personnel aux conditions d’existence très éprouvantes. Surtout, la connaissance du tissu social nécessaire à cette emprise policière était rendue aléatoire par la coupure de plus en plus forte entre les autorités traditionnelles, sur lesquelles s’appuyaient des administrations coloniales longtemps peu bureaucratisées, et les nouvelles couches issues de migrations internes aussi diverses que dynamiques.

4 La contribution de Kidambi est majeure dans la manière dont il lie la fabrication de l’ordre policier à la production de l’ordre social. Ses analyses des émeutes communautaires (communalist), parfois réprimées dans le sang (1898, 1911), qui opposaient certains groupements chiites et sunnites en lutte pour la reconnaissance de leurs processions traditionnelles et de leurs modes d’occupation de l’espace public, donne toute sa place à l’institution policière – dont les dirigeants pouvaient même se piquer d’exégèse coranique – dans la détermination des frontières et des pratiques identitaires de divers groupes sociaux. Bien sûr, Kidambi n’oublie pas la contribution des colonisés eux-mêmes à ces pouvoirs policiers, en particulier en raison de l’origine sociale d’agents subalternes souvent originaires des mêmes quartiers que les individus qu’ils étaient chargés de discipliner et qui leur résistaient en employant des modes d’action parfois spectaculaires (l’attaque à coups de pierres des forces de l’ordre semble

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ainsi avoir été un mode courant de revendication et de politisation). Selon l’auteur, les policiers de Bombay ont ainsi régulièrement échoué à démontrer qu’ils étaient les « ultimes maîtres de la ville ». Ils ont pourtant contribué à supporter un ordre politique, sur lequel l’auteur est relativement silencieux en ce qui concerne les gouvernants et les coalitions au pouvoir, mais dont il analyse finement certaines des configurations. Ainsi, tant les forces de police que des fractions des classes moyennes supérieures ont été engagées dans la constitution de lieux en rupture avec les appropriations populaires de la rue, mais plus en accord avec les conceptions dites démocratiques de l’espace public : cet « associationnisme » non limité aux seules classes éduquées prit cependant appui sur des séparations « ascriptives » (en termes de castes, de religions, d’ethnies…) qu’ils contribuèrent à durcir dans des oppositions parfois violentes. L’auteur ne cache pas sa volonté de contribuer à la genèse de phénomènes contemporains caractéristiques de la démocratie indienne et à l’anatomie de la grande violence – souvent présentée comme nouvelle – de la métropole de Bombay. L’ampleur du propos fait qu’en raison de la modeste taille de l’ouvrage (à peine 250 pages), le lecteur non spécialiste est souvent avide d’en savoir sur les multiples thèmes abordés. Cette étude de cas très informée et stimulante atteint pourtant pleinement son objectif de proposer une histoire sociale vivante des transformations des formes de pouvoir et de l’emprise réciproque du politique sur le social dans le Bombay du tournant du XXe siècle.

NOTES

1. Voir aussi Kidambi Prashant, 2004, ‘The ultimate masters of the city’: police, public order and the poor in colonial Bombay, c. 1893-1914, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies, vol. 8, n°1, pp. 27-47. 2. Voir son histoire de la police de Bombay: Edwardes S. M., 1923, The Bombay City Police: A Historitical Sktech, 1672-1916, London, Oxford University Press.

AUTEURS

EMMANUEL BLANCHARD CESDIP-CNRS – UMR 8183 [email protected]

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Critchley (David), The Origin of Organized Crime in America. The New York City Mafia (1891-1931) New York, London, Routledge, 2009, 347 pp., ISBN 9780415 990301

Laurence Montel

RÉFÉRENCE

Critchley (David), The Origin of Organized Crime in America. The New York City Mafia (1891-1931), New York, London, Routledge, 2009, 347 pp., ISBN 9780415 990301

1 Ce livre de David Critchley, historien britannique, porte sur le premier âge du crime organisé italo-américain, abordé au travers du cas new-yorkais, emblématique par l’ampleur de la colonie italienne que ce grand port abrita, et par la fonction matricielle qui fut dévolue à son crime organisé. Il se fonde sur un corpus volumineux d’archives imprimées et institutionnelles, allant de la presse aux procès, en passant par des témoignages de repentis, des enquêtes, et des archives de l’état-civil, notamment italien. Par des éclairages sur des groupes criminels et des affaires marquantes, des bandes de maîtres chanteurs des années 1900 aux règlements de comptes du début des années 1930, il répond à une triple finalité : rendre une légitimité académique à la recherche sur le crime organisé italien, battre en brèche un certain nombre d’idées reçues, et proposer une histoire « interne » des milieux criminels.

2 Dans l’introduction, qui forme le chapitre premier du livre et présente clairement l’ensemble des thèses, David Critchley rappelle qu’entre les années 1930 et 1960, le crime organisé était attribué aux étrangers, et principalement aux Italiens, qui l’auraient importé de Sicile et adapté au contexte américain. La réfutation de ce paradigme, à partir des années 1970, conduisit d’après lui à occulter excessivement la place de cette communauté. En quête d’un juste milieu, qui reconnaisse l’existence de groupes criminels italiens sans leur attribuer pour autant la totalité des meurtres et des trafics, il cible les associations italiennes majeures de ce premier tiers de siècle, et les

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étudie, sans verser dans la généralisation abusive, à partir de sources qu’il recoupe autant que possible, et confronte à l’historiographie.

3 Les chapitres 2 à 5 ont trait à la place des Siciliens dans l’ensemble des associations italiennes, avec en toile de fond la question du leadership insulaire. Autour de l’histoire du clan des Morello, première « famille de la mafia » new-yorkaise, d’origine sicilienne, David Critchley étudie les correspondances culturelles et les relations humaines entre l’île et New York. S’il réfute que les organisations américaines aient été des jalons de la mafia sicilienne, il met en évidence l’existence de relations réelles entre les groupes criminels des deux espaces, et c’est l’un des points forts de cette recherche, qui croise des archives américaines et italiennes, dans une perspective internationale. Il montre par ailleurs que l’on ne peut réduire le crime organisé new-yorkais aux Siciliens, d’une part parce que des groupes non siciliens les ont précédés – notamment des bandes calabraises spécialisées dans le chantage au tout début du siècle –, et d’autre part parce que des Napolitains originaires de Brooklyn viennent les concurrencer dans les années 1910, avant de se mêler à eux. D. Critchley revisite ensuite la période mieux connue des années Vingt, de la Prohibition à la « Guerre de Castellammare », en 1930-1931. Sa monographie le conduit à mettre en doute que la Prohibition ait été le moment d’une accumulation primitive de capital essentielle à l’essor consécutif de la mafia italo- américaine. Il n’y voit pas non plus un début de centralisation du crime organisé italien (chap. 6). Puis, il confirme que la « Guerre de Castellammare » n’eut pas la dimension qu’on lui prêtait dans l’après-guerre, et qu’elle ne fut pas suivie par l’avènement d’une mafia italo-américaine centralisée (Cosa Nostra) et dirigée par des chefs « américanisés », porteurs de valeurs modernes, succédant aux leaders éliminés, représentants d’une tradition dépassée.

4 Par ce travail, David Critchley entend interroger aussi la façon dont les historiens s’engagent sur le terrain de recherche du crime organisé. D’après lui, ces derniers sacrifieraient en général l’étude des milieux criminels au profit des logiques contextuelles susceptibles d’expliquer leurs dynamiques. Il prône a contrario une histoire spécifique des réseaux et se consacre, d’ailleurs, à l’examen des trajectoires individuelles, des organisations criminelles, et des luttes et recompositions propres à ces dernières. L’entreprise est périlleuse. C’est travailler, en effet, sur des objets générateurs de mythes et caractéristiques des productions grand public (les figures criminelles, la culture criminelle italienne, les sanglants règlements de comptes, pour citer les plus importants). On se démarque plus facilement de cette littérature en choisissant d’autres angles d’attaque, en partant par exemple de la répression ou des pratiques criminelles. David Critchley n’évite pas certains travers. Ainsi, il présente une riche iconographie, composée, pour l’essentiel, d’une galerie de portraits, dont la portée illustrative évoque les productions destinées au grand public. Il applique aussi, sans les critiquer, les concepts de « camorra » et de « mafia » aux bandes napolitaines et siciliennes de New York. Cependant, il porte une attention constante à la restauration rigoureuse des faits, des trajectoires individuelles et des réseaux ; et c’est un autre point fort de son travail. Le domaine du crime organisé est en effet saturé de discours parascientifiques imprécis et fantasmatiques, proches parfois de la fiction, mais vraisemblables ou tenus pour vrais, et susceptibles, à ce titre, de s’immiscer dans la sphère scientifique. Ce travail de reconstitution est fastidieux. Il exige une rigueur et une endurance d’autant plus grandes qu’il est mené ici en rapport constant avec la bibliographie existante. Il atteste l’exigence scientifique du livre, même si l’on pourra,

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éventuellement, suggérer que l’auteur passe un peu vite sur la critique des sources, succinctement exposée en introduction, et sur leurs discordances éventuelles.

5 Dans une perspective criminologique, le livre de David Critchley est sans doute exemplaire. L’historien pourra, toutefois, rester par moments sur sa faim, notamment parce que l’attention accordée au contexte culturel, économique et social, est minimale. L’absence quasi-complète de bibliographie extérieure au champ du crime organisé en atteste. En introduction, l’auteur justifie cette ouverture restreinte par sa focalisation sur l’objet « crime organisé », au détriment des logiques contextuelles. On peut se demander, cependant, si cette histoire « interne » des milieux criminels va tout à fait au bout de sa logique. L’examen transversal des données biographiques n’aurait-il pas, par exemple, apporté, dans la perspective d’une histoire sociale plus synthétique, un complément enrichissant aux multiples reconstitutions juxtaposées de trajectoires individuelles et de réseaux ? Cette question n’enlève rien, toutefois, à une recherche solidement documentée, qu’il faut saluer pour ses apports tant sur le plan des connaissances, que de la méthodologie.

AUTEURS

LAURENCE MONTEL Université catholique de Louvain Centre d’histoire du droit et de la justice [email protected]

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Bergère (Marc), Le Bihan (Jean), Fonctionnaires dans la tourmente. Épurations administratives et transitions politiques à l’époque contemporaine Genève, Georg, 2009, 299 pp., ISBN 978 2 8257 0976 4

Jonas Campion

RÉFÉRENCE

Bergère (Marc), Le Bihan (Jean), Fonctionnaires dans la tourmente. Épurations administratives et transitions politiques à l’époque contemporaine, Genève, Georg, 2009, 299 pp., ISBN 978 2 8257 0976 4

1 Placé sous la direction de Marc Bergère et de Jean Le Bihan de l’Université de Rennes II, ce travail collectif se situe au carrefour de deux historiographies en fort développement ces dernières décennies : celle des fonctionnaires d’une part, des épurations administratives de l’autre. Plus précisément, ce recueil a pour ambition – rencontrée, précisons-le d’emblée – de réfléchir aux « fonctionnaires dans la tourmente ». À ce propos, il serait peut-être opportun d’utiliser ce dernier substantif au pluriel, tant les fonctionnaires se retrouvent confrontés, de par leurs fonctions, aux conséquences des différentes tempêtes que sont les guerres, les révolutions, les occupations et transitions politiques. Pourtant, le singulier se justifie au regard du dénominateur commun de ces situations : à savoir, l’exacerbation de relations parfois compliquées entre les fonctionnaires, par définition inscrits dans une permanence du service de l’État, et leurs autorités politiques qui elles, ne bénéficient pas de cette stabilité.

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2 Comme le précise son sous-titre, le travail coordonné par Marc Bergère et Jean Le Bihan entend comprendre la situation des serviteurs de l’État face aux épurations administratives et aux transitions politiques survenues en France depuis la Révolution. Par la longue durée adoptée, la situation des fonctionnaires est confrontée aux prismes de processus « violents » mais aussi, de processus beaucoup plus « policés ». Si l’espace français occupe le cœur du propos (avec les contributions de Serge Bianchi, Arnaud- Dominique Houte, Alain Bancaud, Emmanuel Bellanger et Pierre Karila-Cohen), les perspectives internationales ne sont pas oubliées, avec un article de Valéria Galimi relative à l’épuration des préfets italiens après la chute du fascisme et une analyse de Marie-Bénédicte Vincent sur la « longue durée de la fonction publique professionnelle » en Allemagne, d’une guerre à l’autre. La richesse de l’introduction et de la conclusion1 constitue également un appel à l’élargissement géographique des recherches, à l’ouverture de chantiers comparatifs, ou à la multiplication des approches professionnelles.

3 Car, et nous ne faisons là que répéter un constat ancien, c’est dans la confrontation des expériences et des histoires nationales que se situent les développements futurs de la recherche sur les relations ambiguës des fonctionnaires à la chose politique. En croisant les situations nationales, le lent « mouvement vers la neutralité politique » du service de l’État, que traversent des phénomènes de « repolitisation conjoncturelle »2 pourra être mieux compris, et permettra d’achever, en corollaire, la redéfinition de ce concept polymorphe d’épuration administrative.

4 Pour résumer notre pensée, nous affirmons que les titre et sous-titre de cette initiative éditoriale en soulignent les intérêts multiples. Rappelons d’abord que « Fonctionnaires dans la tourmente » constitue la première synthèse collective d’ampleur sur la notion d’épuration administrative qui soit parue depuis 19773. Or, cet exercice de synthèse devenait plus que nécessaire au vu du foisonnement récent d’approches monographiques sur cette question (certes pour la Seconde Guerre mondiale, mais plus largement pour l’ensemble de la période contemporaine), des nouvelles ressources archivistiques disponibles ou du changement de génération des chercheurs qui a ouvert de nouveaux questionnements… Enfin, largement discuté et mis en lumière par les contributeurs, le renouvellement épistémologique de la notion d’épuration administrative, confrontée à celle de transition politique qu’éclairent les bouleversements géopolitiques des trente dernières années (Afrique du Sud, Europe de l’Est notamment), constitue sans doute la dernière, et non la moindre, des raisons justifiant l’intérêt du travail.

5 Dans une lecture transversale, les contributions publiées ont l’immense mérite de dresser un tableau pluriel des relations entre fonctionnaires et autorités politiques. Les focales qu’offrent la variété des périodes et événements considérés, des identités professionnelles abordées (préfets, employés municipaux, gendarmes ou magistrats), ou des niveaux d’échelle étudiés (de l’histoire individuelle et biographique aux approches locales ou collectives) ouvrent autant de portes, qui permettent de mieux comprendre les tenants et aboutissants de la confrontation des fonctionnaires aux aléas de la vie politique. Relevons notamment la délicate question de la « normalité » du travail à fournir lorsque légalité et légitimité se brouillent ; la difficile définition du loyalisme, à la frontière des droits et devoirs dans le service de la chose publique ; la mise en lumière des temporalités propres aux phénomènes épuratoires et/ou de réintégration ou, au delà des seules continuités et ruptures, les jeux de concurrence et

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de complémentarité qui entourent la mise en œuvre des mesures épuratoires et les évolutions de personnels qui en découlent. Dans cette optique, apparaissent en filigrane les multiples stratégies des individus, des corps et des politiques face aux enjeux de carrière, de pouvoir, ou aux réalités économiques et sociales que sous- tendent les épurations internes et les changements de régime. Enfin, la mise en évidence de la diversité des échelles de peines (des sanctions financières aux retards de carrière, de l’exclusion pure et simple des corps à la relégation sur une « voie de garage »), illustre la difficile définition de l’épuration administrative en tant que phénomène semi-public, qui ne dit pas toujours son nom. Il en découle une diversité de perception et d’acceptation des épurations menées, tant pour les agents concernés, que pour leurs collègues non-épurés, les décideurs ou les administrés. Avec nuances, cette variété est soulignée à différentes reprises dans le volume.

6 Certes, comme le remarquent d’ailleurs Marc Bergère et Jean Le Bihan dans leur introduction, certaines problématiques auraient mérité de plus amples développements. En écho à leur réflexion, nous pensons aux violences – physiques ou symboliques – qui frappent les agents publics, dans le cadre de leur fonction, en périodes de transition politique. De par leur volonté de contester les fonctions publiques exercées par les fonctionnaires, ces violences constituent bien évidemment un pan important, parfois moteur, parfois consécutif, aux procédures et sanctions administratives. Plus largement, il convient sans doute d’insister davantage sur l’articulation qu’il peut exister entre les différents registres épuratoires. De quelle manière les procédures, pénales, populaires ou administratives, qui parcourent les corps de fonctionnaires lors des transitions politiques sont-elles en concurrence ou complémentaires ?

7 Enfin, il est utile de revenir sur les stimulantes mises en perspective offertes par les textes introductif (Marc Bergère et Jean Le Bihan) et conclusif (Marc-Olivier Baruch). Ces deux contributions constituent d’abord une remise en perspective réussie des sept approches monographiques proposées. Plus largement, elles offrent un bilan détaillé des recherches menées jusqu’à ce jour, et des chantiers qu’il reste encore à explorer. La conjonction de l’expertise, notamment transpériode, développée depuis des années par ces trois auteurs prend ici toute son acuité. Par conséquent, ces deux contributions constituent des fondations mais aussi des finitions indispensables, à tout chercheur qu’intéresse le devenir des fonctionnaires européens dans des contextes politiques troublés. Relisant dans une perspective de longue durée l’histoire des épurations et de leurs enjeux, ainsi que l’histoire des logiques administratives, ces deux articles constituent, à l’image de l’intérêt de l’ensemble de cette initiative éditoriale, des contributions incontournables à la connaissance de l’historiographie du service de l’État.

NOTES

1. Cfr. infra.

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2. Marc Bergère et Jean Le Bihan, Épurations administratives et transitions politiques en France à l’époque contemporaine, p. 20. 3. Paul Gerbrod et al., Les épurations administratives XIXe et XXe siècles, Genève, Droz, 1977.

AUTEURS

JONAS CAMPION Université catholique de Louvain Centre d’histoire du droit et de la justice [email protected]

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McRorie Higgins (Peter), Punish or Treat ? Medical Care in English Prisons 1770-1850 Oxford, Trafford Publishing, 2007, 283 pp. , 32 illustrations, ISBN 4251 01534

Michel Porret

RÉFÉRENCE

McRorie Higgins (Peter), Punish or Treat ? Medical Care in English Prisons 1770-1850, Oxford, Trafford Publishing, 2007, 283 pp. , 32 illustrations, ISBN 4251 01534

1 En 1978, dans A just measure of pain : the penitentiary in the industrial revolution 1750-1850 (Londres, MacMillan Press), Michael Ignatieff impute la culture carcérale triomphante dans la seconde partie du siècle des Lumières aux idéaux réformistes, rédempteurs, disciplinaires et correctifs du philanthropisme et du libéralisme hostiles à la pénalité du supplice selon les normes de l’Ancien Régime. Dès 1777, le sheriff de Bedfordshire et philanthrope quaker John Howard, abondamment cité par Peter MacRorie Higgins, dénonce l’« état des prisons en Angleterre ». Il pointe notamment leur insalubrité épidémique et leur promiscuité qui en font le réservoir du désespoir social et de la récidive. Avant de devenir dès le XIXe siècle le dépotoir punitif du crime, de la récidive et de la misère sociale, tel que l’on voit encore aujourd’hui bien vivant en France, la prison pénale, comme le pensait Bentham qui voulait la réformer par une « simple idée d’architecture », aurait pourtant dû être le laboratoire social et moral de la réinsertion des individus jugés pour un crime. Punir ou traiter en prison : ce dilemme pénal remonte au moins à Platon pour qui la justice est une forme de thérapie sociale. Un peu hâtive et didactique, la monographie de Peter MacRorie Higgins est consacrée à ce dilemme du contrôle social en milieu pénitentiaire. Cette page d’histoire sociale et institutionnelle est bien ancrée dans les sources parlementaires, administratives et pénitentiaires (Gloucester, Horsley, Littledean, Northleach, Lancaster, etc.). L’historien étudie le

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travail quotidien des officiers médicaux dans des prisons anglaises entre 1750 et 1850. Il suit les liens complexes et souvent conflictuels entre les espaces carcéral et hospitalier, entre la prison et les commissions d’enquêtes parlementaires. Insistant beaucoup sur les usages thérapeutiques dans le confinement non médicalisé de la prison, il montre en quelque sorte la professionnalisation de la médecine pénitentiaire. Genèse et réformisme de l’espace carcéral, formation, statuts et pratique des chirurgiens pénitentiaires, médecine clinique en prison, insanité et morbidité carcérales, autorité morale et professionnelle du personnel médical dans l’espace pénitentiaire : la division thématique du livre donne sens à une histoire mal connue de la médecine pénitentiaire au moment où s’affirme en Europe – précocement en Angleterre – la prison comme peine. Hygiène pénitentiaire, prophylaxie physique et mentale des détenus (épidémies de typhus, tuberculose, fièvres carcérales, maladies vénériennes, suicide), opération chirurgicale de certains prisonniers, suivi sanitaire : les problèmes classiques de l’économie carcérale, soit de gestion massive des détenus pour de brèves ou de longues peines, sont les objets détaillés de cette enquête. Elle montre finalement l’autorité limitée du personnel médical dans le réformisme et l’humanisation des prisons anglaises : mauvais traitements, mise au fer, nourriture. Pourtant, si la prison doit neutraliser en enfermant l’homo criminalis que la société sous l’État de droit veut idéalement régénérer et resocialiser, sa salubrité garantira les conditions de la détention conforme à la dignité humaine. Les médecins deviennent – comme le montre ce livre – des experts privilégiés de l’espace pénitentiaire en construction. Ils sont des criminologues en puissance, car ils observent de visu la population pénitentiaire qu’ils traitent tant bien que mal. Sur eux pèsent souvent les pressions sécuritaires de l’administration pénitentiaire et des politiciens. Par ailleurs, les détenus, soumis au contrôle social du personnel pénitentiaire et médical, sont en quelque sorte des patients privés de liberté sur qui pèsent les pathologies propres à la prison. Celle-ci punit avec dureté les individus qui… doivent être soignés ! Peter McRorie Higgins écrit en fait l’histoire naissante de la médecine légale pénitentiaire – comme l’a pratiquée en France le médecin humaniste Daniel Gonin dans les prisons lyonnaises : La santé incarcérée : médecine et conditions de vie en détention, Paris, 1991 et 2000.

AUTEURS

MICHEL PORRET Université de Genève [email protected]

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Chauvaud (Frédéric), Justice et déviance l’époque contemporaine. L’imaginaire, l’enquête et le scandale Rennes, PUR, « Histoire », 2007, 392 pp.

Dominique Kalifa

RÉFÉRENCE

Chauvaud (Frédéric), Justice et déviance l’époque contemporaine. L’imaginaire, l’enquête et le scandale, Rennes, PUR, « Histoire », 2007, 392 pp.

1 Depuis sa thèse sur les conflits ordinaires dans les campagnes d’Île-de-France au XIXe siècle1, Frédéric Chauvaud s’est imposé comme l’un des meilleurs spécialistes de l’histoire de la justice contemporaine, apportant des contributions importantes à des questions telles que l’organisation des territoires judiciaires, les représentations de la magistrature et du système pénal, l’invention de l’expertise et des experts judiciaires. En actualisant 26 articles publiés entre 1993 et 2005 et en les refondant dans 9 chapitres originaux, ce livre offre une très belle introduction à l’œuvre d’un historien qui a fait de la justice pénale – et indirectement de la violence criminelle qu’elle construit comme fait de société – l’objet de sa réflexion.

2 Les thématiques recouvertes sont si nombreuses (les figures du monstre ou de l’incorrigible, le théâtre des assises et sa dramaturgie, les « descentes » judiciaires, la rationalisation des modèles et de l’art de juger, l’angoisse de l’enfermement et les campagnes contre les bagnes d’enfants) qu’il serait sans doute un peu vain de les résumer ici. Trois points me paraissent en revanche pouvoir être soulignés, qui éclairent le type d’historiographie mise en œuvre. Le premier concerne le langage. Suivant l’exemple de Lucien Febvre, qui invitait les historiens à s’immerger d’abord dans « la langue du temps », à sonder l’épaisseur des mots et la texture changeante des expressions, Chauvaud fait œuvre de lexicographe, s’attache à la valeur des mots, des associations, convoque à chaque article ou presque le Grand Dictionnaire Universel de

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Pierre Larousse, dans lequel il voit à juste titre « la cathédrale lexicographique du XIXe siècle ». Cette attention est décisive pour qui souhaite s’inscrire dans une histoire compréhensive de la justice, attentive aux systèmes de représentations et aux imaginaires construits par les acteurs sociaux. « Les stratégies discursives et les mots renseignent bien souvent davantage que d’autres indicateurs sur les conceptions qu’une société se fait d’une groupe d’âge ou d’un groupe social », écrit-il p. 67. Tout l’ouvrage parcourt ainsi les paysages et les déclinaisons linguistiques de la justice et du crime au XIXe siècle, éclairant leur relations à une histoire des sensibilités (la « perturbation des sentiments », les « gestes de l’effroi », les « ressorts de l’angoisse », les « marges de l’horreur »), qui constitue l’horizon épistémologique de l’auteur. Sans doute pourrait-on estimer parfois un peu biaisée cette entrée par les mots, qui retranscrit et privilégie nécessairement ceux de la norme et de l’institution. Mais Chauvaud, fin connaisseur de l’archive judiciaire, montre comment tirer parti de ces « paroles captives » et en restituer tout le dénivelé social.

3 Le second trait concerne le rapport à la violence. Chauvaud s’inscrit ici dans le sillage d’Alain Corbin qui, de longue date, a invité les historiens à ne pas céder à la cécité imposée par le sentiment d’horreur et à récuser les lectures « aseptisées » du passé. L’attention au langage permet précisément à Chauvaud d’esquiver toute déréalisation de la violence criminelle, qui fut l’une des grandes anxiétés du XIXe siècle. Son livre est donc empli de « crimes inouïs », de crânes fracassés, de corps morcelés, mutilés, dépecés, éviscérés, de jeunes filles « souillées » ou d’enfants torturés. Nulle complaisance ou voyeurisme dans cet étalage, mais le souci de comprendre comment Dumollard, l’assassin des servantes exécuté en 1862, Menesclou, qui éventra une fillette de 4 ans en 1880 et la découpa en 38 morceaux ou Pranzini, qui tua en 1887 une demi- mondaine, sa servante et sa fille, ont saisi d’effroi un corps social engagé dans un lent processus d’individuation, d’adoucissement des mœurs et de « redéploiement des sensibilités ». D’autres figures de la répulsion ou de « l’odieuse étrangeté » sont aussi convoquées, notamment le terroriste (Charles Sand, l’assassin de Kotzebue, ou Orsini), l’enfant criminel ou le récidiviste, dont les itinéraires et les actes délimitent alors les territoires de l’horreur.

4 Le dernier aspect concerne l’attention aux mises en scènes, et principalement à celles de l’instruction criminelle, qui fait de ce livre un précieux complément à L’Enquête judiciaire au XIXe siècle, paru la même année2. On trouvera ici de pertinentes analyses sur la lecture judiciaire des paysages criminels, l’émergence progressive d’une raison topographique, d’une « science nouvelle des indices » et des traces, ou encore sur l’art subtil de faire parler les mouchoirs, ces accessoires alors essentiels et aujourd’hui disparus. Revenant sur ces trois étapes que constituèrent la toxicologie dans les années 1820-1840, l’identification judiciaire de la fin du XIXe siècle et la criminalistique du Dr Locard dans les années 1920, Chauvaud détecte une mutation générale du régime de la preuve en matière criminelle. L’essor de la preuve « indiciale » et plus encore « expertale » se double pour lui du rejet progressif de l’aveu, du témoignage, en bref de tout ce qui relève des preuves « par défaut », orales ou morales. Cet aspect est sans doute celui qui ouvre le plus à la discussion. Un tel processus, indéniable dans le cas des « grands crimes » que l’ouvrage privilégie (tout en précisant qu’ils ne constituent « qu’une infime proportion »), peut-il être étendu à la masse du contentieux pénal, qui fonctionne souvent sur des modes plus médiocres ? L’aveu, assorti de toutes ses conditions de production – le témoignage, la dénonciation, « l’indication », la « cuisine » – ne constitue-t-il pas la forme plébiscitée par les acteurs policiers dont le

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rôle ne cesse de s’accroître depuis le XIXe siècle ? Sans doute le procès de rationalisation judiciaire est-il manifeste tout au long de ce siècle. Mais il ne permet in fine pas de rassurer un corps social de plus en plus taraudé par le sentiment d’insécurité, l’idée d’un « krach » de la répression, l’angoisse ou la réalité (Alfred Dreyfus) de l’erreur judiciaire que la criminalistique, loin s’en faut, ne permet pas toujours d’éviter.

NOTES

1. Tensions et conflits. Aspects de la vie rurale au XIXe siècle d’après les archives judiciaires (l’exemple de l’arrondissement de Rambouillet; 1811-1871), Université Paris X, 1988. Une version abrégée est parue sous le titre Les passions villageoises au XIXe siècle. Les émotions rurales dans les pays de Beauce, du Mantois et du Hurepoix, Paris, Publisud, 1995. 2. Jean-Claude Farcy, Dominique Kalifa et Jean-Noël Luc (dir.), L’Enquête judiciaire en Europe au XIXe siècle: acteurs, imaginaires, pratiques, Paris, Créaphis, 2007, 392 pp. Voir aussi le petit dossier « L’enquête judiciaire et ses récits », Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, 2008, n° 36.

AUTEURS

DOMINIQUE KALIFA Centre de recherches en histoire du XIXe siècle [email protected]

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Rafter (Nicole), The Origins of Criminology. A Reader Edited by Nicole Rafter, Oxon, New York, Routledge, 2009, 348 pp., avec quelques illustrations, ISBN 980415 451123

Michel Porret

RÉFÉRENCE

Rafter (Nicole), The Origins of Criminology. A Reader, Edited by Nicole Rafter, Oxon, New York, Routledge, 2009, 348 pp. , avec quelques illustrations, ISBN 980415 451123

1 À l’instar de la médecine légale, la criminologie est devenue la science auxiliaire de la justice pénale contemporaine. Ce livre en montre l’enracinement théorique. Conclue d’une substantielle bibliographie introductive à l’histoire des sciences du crime, cette petite et pratique anthologie est divisée en dix parties. Avec un zeste de téléologie, Nicole Rafter, traductrice en anglais de Lombroso, rassemble un corpus de textes criminologiques classiques, publiés principalement au XIXe siècle. Cette période est celle durant laquelle la « science du crime » s’autonomise et gagne ses lettres de noblesse avec son implantation institutionnelle, ses publications scientifiques, ses congrès, ses réseaux intellectuels, ses associations professionnelles, ses groupes de pression. S’y ajoute la formulation de sa doctrine qui est une sociologie analytique et normative de l’anomie sociale, fortement empreinte de morale. La courte introduction de l’auteur (pp. XIII-XXVI), qui commente ensuite en quelques paragraphes chacun des 61 textes sélectionnés, évoque l’enracinement urbain des sciences du crime au siècle de Marx. En insistant sur les « origines » toujours improbables d’un objet historique, Nicole Rafter voit notamment chez Beccaria (prévention légale du crime comme fait social) et chez Lavater (physiognomonie comme anthropologie morale soudant l’apparence physique au comportement) les « précurseurs » de la pensée criminologique. Celle-ci trouve un relais efficace et inspirateur chez Philippe Pinel et ses confrères aliénistes (James Cowles Prichard, Daniel Hack Tuke, Richard von Krafft- Ebing ou encore Prosper Despine). À leur suite, en amont et en aval de Darwin, les

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doctrinaires évolutionnistes de la dégénérescence et de l’atavisme héréditaire (Bénédict-Auguste Morel, J. Bruce Thompson, le prudent Henry Maudsly pour qui la frontière entre la folie et la santé mentale n’est pas établie) labourent intellectuellement le terreau des économistes et des penseurs du déclassement social comme condition du paupérisme industriel, du crime primaire ou commis en récidive (Elizabeth Fry, Joseph John Gurney, Friederich Engels, Edwards Craspey, etc.). Avant et après Cesare Lombroso, l’anthropologie physique et mentale de l’homme né ou devenu criminel en opère la taxinomie. Son cerveau prouvera ou infirmera la déchéance dans le crime ponctuel ou d’habitude (J. Bruce Thompson, Moriz Benedikt, Pauline Tarnowsky, Havelock Ellis, Arthur Mac Donald, Léonce Manouvrier, Alexandre Lacassagne, Frederik Howards). À la Belle Époque, pour notamment identifier les délinquants endurcis, la science du crime devient un savoir indiciaire. Elle recoupe les techniques signalétiques, dont le bertillonnage (photographie de « face et de profil ») et la culture de l’empreinte digitale du spécialiste de l’hérédité Francis Galton. Parfois obsédé par la dégénérescence et les « sciences de l’hérédité » comme mesure de l’évolution physique et mentale, le savoir criminologique fraie avec l’eugénisme (Johann Gaspard Spurzheim, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Henry M. Boies, W. Duncan McKim) dans une finalité de prévention de l’anomie sociale. Les statistiques criminelles la mesurent de plus en plus systématiquement en ville (problème du « milieu ») et dans les observatoires spécialisés que sont notamment les prisons (Andre-Michel Guerry, Adolphe Quetelet, Joseph Fletcher, Mary Carpenter, Frederick Howard Wines, Enrico Ferri). Finalement, la criminalité dans toutes ses formes est pensée comme une donnée de la vie sociale moderne (rapports entre hommes et femmes, industrialisation, ville, paupérisme et « classes dangereuses », etc.) que problématisent les économistes, les observateurs empiriques ou scientifiques comme Francis Lieber, Friederich Engels, Henry Mayhew, John Binny, Gabriel Tarde, Edward Alsworth Ross, Émile Durkheim, Enrico Ferri. Les textes choisis montrent qu’à l’instar des autres sciences sociales dont elle se dégage ou qu’elle inspire, la criminologie comme savoir « objectif » sur la délinquance évolue lentement de savoirs diffus à un savoir constitué. Elle s’émancipe en s’en inspirant de la médecine et de la psychiatrie légales. Elle ouvre la voie à la police scientifique selon Edmond Locard (Lyon) ou Rodolphe Archibald Reiss (Lausanne). Les experts du passage à l’acte criminel adhèrent au grand idéal positiviste de leur temps. Ceci les autorise à bricoler un savoir qui veut quantifier et modéliser pour le prévenir l’anomie sociale comme origine ou conséquence du crime. Tout autour de la dégénérescence darwinienne des espèces donc des individus déclassés, utilisant la prison comme un laboratoire pour évaluer la dangerosité de l’homo criminalis récidiviste ou non, les criminologues en pointent les causalités atavique ou sociale comme le font, partiellement, les savants d’obédience lombrosienne ou ceux qui suivent le Lyonnais Alexandre Lacassagne. La criminologie conforte le positivisme pénal dans la plupart des États régis par la légalité des délits et des peines. L’anthologie proposée par Nicole Rafter montre les enjeux descriptifs et normatifs de la pensée criminologique comme science « objective » et « exacte » (rêve s’il en est !) du comportement et de la personnalité de l’homo criminalis au fil du long XIXe siècle.

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AUTEURS

MICHEL PORRET Université de Genève [email protected]

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Nootens (Thierry), Fous, prodigues et ivrognes. Familles et déviance à Montréal au XIXe siècle Montréal et Kingston, London, Ithaca, McGill-Quenn’s University Press, 2007, 308 pp. , 12 tableaux statistiques, ISBN 9780773 531840

Michel Porret

RÉFÉRENCE

Nootens (Thierry), Fous, prodigues et ivrognes. Familles et déviance à Montréal au XIXe siècle, Montréal et Kingston, London, Ithaca, McGill-Quenn’s University Press, 2007, 308 pp. , 12 tableaux statistiques, ISBN 9780773 531840

1 Avec parfois un brin de didactisme outré, de jargon sociologisant, de répétitions formelles ainsi que de naïveté descriptive sur la philosophie du droit, la nosographie de la folie, les rapports professionnels entre aliénistes et psychiatres ou sur la qualification de la « dangerosité », Thierry Nootens étudie 511 procédures d’internement instruites et engagées entre 1820 et 1895 inclusivement dans le district judiciaire de Montréal. Sans toujours donner les repères nécessaires sur le fonctionnement et la procédure des tribunaux montréalais, il alterne les cas singuliers, les causes célèbres (entre requérants et intimés), les extraits de procédures et les considérations générales (méthodologiques ?) sur les conflits familiaux régulés par les institutions modernes étatiques. Éclairante page d’histoire du contrôle social urbain dans le cadre domestique, judiciaire, asilaire et médical, l’ouvrage en quatre chapitres – qu’ouvre une introduction théorique et que boucle une conclusion sur la transition capitaliste au Québec – montre que la famille moderne est le lieu de définition et de régulation des multiples formes de déviance. En mobilisant des experts (médecins asilaires, généralistes), la justice répond aux « désordres des familles » en retirant la « capacité civile » des indisciplinés, des idiots, des séniles, des dépravés par l’alcool, des violents. Celle ou celui qui ne peut plus gérer sa vie et ses biens est l’objet d’une demande

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d’interdiction, tarifée de 20 à 40 dollars à la fin du siècle, très souvent appliquée – même si on peine au fil du livre à mesurer l’écart entre les demandes d’interdiction et leur succès. Des épouses réclament l’interdiction d’époux ivrognes, des époux demandent celle d’épouses « aliénées », des pères se déchargent de fils « imbéciles », prodigues et oisifs, des parents déplorent l’idiotie et la vulnérabilité d’un enfant, un frère dénonce un autre frère pour éviter la mésalliance d’un mariage à venir. À chaque fois, il s’agit de sauver l’honneur, de protéger la respectabilité, d’endiguer le scandale, de limiter la dégradation du statut social, d’étouffer un conflit testamentaire lié à l’incapacité du discernement. Parfois, celui par qui le scandale arrive, qui peut se défendre avec un avocat, sera enfermé à domicile – à l’instar de la prison domestique sous l’Ancien Régime (notamment à Genève au XVIIIe siècle). L’interdiction du fou, du prodigue et de l’ivrogne (par exemple) mis sous curatelle résulte moins d’une intervention disciplinaire de l’État autoritaire dans le for privé qu’une démarche familiale (ou des alliés de la famille) d’autoprotection dans le monde urbain, insalubre souvent, des démunis et de la « classe moyenne » de Montréal, où chacun doit s’adapter à la violence sociale du capitalisme industriel. La requête d’interdiction remonte vers les instances tutélaires de l’État, un peu comme les demandes de lettres de cachet en France sous l’Ancien Régime remontaient vers la police du roi. L’expertise médicale du fou et celle de l’ivrogne invétéré répondent à une exigence d’ordre social que formule la famille perturbée, souvent brisée par un membre incontrôlable. L’État régule les accidents et le désordre des familles qui deviennent les interfaces sociales entre les normes et les déviances. Interactions entre individu jugé déviant et ses proches hors des institutions officielles, rapports sociaux entre les familles et l’appareil judiciaire qui s’adapte aux circonstances particulières des conflits privés, réponse judiciaire des magistrats conditionnée par la non-résolution infra-judiciaire des désordres, médicalisation (sanitaire, mentale, asilaire) de la déviance familiale : l’architecture de la monographie donne à penser sur l’histoire de la mise à l’écart des « indésirables de tout acabit » sur lesquels les familles de Montréal ne peuvent veiller dans le respect de l’ordre domestique et public, ni dans celui de la sécurité des individus. Malgré des ressources d’enferment institutionnel très limitées (p. 45), l’internement des indisciplinés est peut-être une forme ambiguë de mise à l’écart protectrice des plus vulnérables dans la société montréalaise. Dans le contexte du libéralisme au Québec au XIXe siècle, l’enfermement des indésirables qui embarrassent les autres est aussi une forme extrême d’application et de rappel des normes de la morale familiale et bourgeoise (« moraliser les masses, les discipliner », p. 209). Cette pédagogie de l’ordre s’effectue autour du travail, de la sobriété, de l’économie domestique (morale et économique), de l’intolérance face à la brutalité et des rôles sociaux dans la famille. Ce livre stimulant illustre bien la régulation sociale de la justice concertée dans le cadre communautaire des litiges familiaux. En évoquant la montée en puissance depuis 1870 à Montréal des experts assermentés (médecins, aliénistes) qui diagnostiquent pour le juguler le comportement asocial et immoral (« trajectoires déviantes ») des fous, des prodigues et des ivrognes d’habitude mis à l’asile ou claquemurés dans leur famille, cette monographie aurait gagné en profondeur avec un peu plus de comparatisme historiographique.

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AUTEURS

MICHEL PORRET Université de Genève [email protected]

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Cicchini (Marco) et Porret (Michel), Les sphères du pénal avec Michel Foucault. Histoire et sociologie du droit de punir Lausanne, Antipodes, 2007, 303 pp., ISBN 9782940 146864

David Niget

RÉFÉRENCE

Cicchini (Marco) et Porret (Michel), Les sphères du pénal avec Michel Foucault. Histoire et sociologie du droit de punir, Lausanne, Antipodes, 2007, 303 pp., ISBN 9782940 146864

1 Tout comme Surveiller et punir n’était pas vraiment une histoire de la prison, Les sphères du pénal, dont le titre emprunte à Sloterdijk pour repenser Bentham, s’étendent bien au delà de l’espace carcéral. Aux contrepoints de Foucault sur les corps suppliciés, la discipline militaire, ou les colonies pénitentiaires pour enfants répondent, dans ce volume réalisé à l’occasion des trente ans de la publication du philosophe, des considérations sur la discipline, le panoptisme, la gouvernementalité, l’identification, la stigmatisation, l’aliénation, la corporéité. Ce sont autant d’items sortis de la boîte à outils foucaldienne dont s’emparent les auteurs pour se livrer avec bonheur, à la suite d’un maître qu’ils se refusent à vénérer, au démontage consciencieux de la doxa pénale.

2 Limpide, l’introduction de Marco Cicchini et Michel Porret, directeurs de la publication, retrace la généalogie de Surveiller et punir, situé au mitan du projet foucaldien, et dans un contexte de militance virulente contre l’arbitraire carcéral au sein du GIP. Ne pas célébrer cet ouvrage comme une œuvre totale, mais le considérer comme une étape dans le cheminement habile du philosophe, tel est le projet de cette réflexion collective. « Du moment suppliciaire au moment carcéral », Surveiller et punir soulève « le problème de la prison dans la démocratie comme la matrice de la surveillance générale

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de chacun » (p. 8). Ainsi mise en perspective, l’analyse de l’œuvre convoque des réflexions épistémologiques plus anciennes dans la production de Foucault, appliquées à la constitution des savoirs et à leurs effets de pouvoir, et appelle également les étapes ultérieures de sa pensée, organisée notamment autour du principe de biopouvoir, plaçant le corps au cœur des dispositifs politiques modernes, et de gouvernementalité, entendue comme une « conduite des conduites » que le libéralisme tente d’engendrer selon une économie de moyens idéalisée : « pour gouverner mieux, il faudrait gouverner moins » (pp. 11-13).

3 « Relire Surveiller et punir », mettre en contexte et en miroir ce monument qui a fécondé tant de travaux1 tout en soulevant la polémique dans le Landerneau français2, voici qui fait l’objet d’une première partie de l’ouvrage. Pierre Lascoumes, écartant la caricature d’un Foucault obsédé par un contrôle social érigé en théorie du complot, signale que l’ouvrage préfigure, à travers une étude attentive des pratiques disciplinaires, ses travaux ultérieurs sur la gouvernementalité. Plus proche de Certeau que ne le laissaient penser les controverses, Foucault propose une analyse de « l’exercice du pouvoir » à travers son « emprise sur les corps », via la médiation de technologies. Loin du modèle suppliciaire, « le pouvoir ne s’exerce plus par l’application d’une autorité extérieure et violente, mais par une incitation aussi discrète qu’obsédante qui met la conformité au service de la productivité » (p. 25). Cyprian Blamires revisite également l’idée selon laquelle le panoptisme carcéral relèverait exclusivement d’une volonté de contrôle exercée directement sur les individus. Au contraire, « l’utopie de Jeremy Bentham (…) est moins une société de surveillance qu’une société d’économie ou une société sans gaspillage » (p. 47), procurant « le bonheur pour le plus grand nombre ». Ce bien-être serait prodigué par une parcimonieuse allocation des ressources humaines comme économiques, utilement distribuées par un ensemble de techniques architecturales génériques, dont la prison n’est que le prototype.

4 Ces relectures ouvrent la voie à de nouveaux « chantiers de l’histoire du droit de punir », constituant la seconde partie de l’ouvrage. La charge de Michel Porret contre l’ahistoricisme d’un Foucault recourant au « cas limite » de « l’anéantissement » du régicide Damiens pour étayer sa démonstration ne relève pas simplement de l’entreprise de démolition, puisqu’il propose de revisiter le récit fictif du basculement d’une pénalité d’Ancien Régime barbare à un régime des peines post-révolutionnaire adouci. « Foucault pense le droit de punir dans l’ordre abstrait du discours normatif », selon une représentation « figée[e] dans l’éclat suppliciaire », affirme-t-il (p. 112). Or, d’une part, le supplice de Damiens répugne à nombre d’observateurs et leur paraît digne d’une cruauté anachronique, inutile, voire perverse, et d’autre part, la prison pénale révolutionnaire, bien loin d’adoucir les sanctions selon la prescription de Beccaria, sera consubstantielle à la souffrance corporelle et sociale qu’elle instillera.

5 De la même manière, Patrice Peveri propose de réinterpréter, après Foucault, la signification de l’usage de la marque judiciaire du XVIe au XIXe siècle. L’essorillement, puis la marque au fer rouge ne relèvent pas uniquement du supplice, mais du stockage de l’information judiciaire la plus cruciale : la récidive. En outre, en passant de l’ablation de l’oreille, marque ostensible, à la marque à l’épaule plus discrète, et ce dès le XVIe siècle, les magistrats témoignent du basculement d’une régulation communautaire par le biais de l’« infamie » (la mauvaise réputation) vers le monopole étatique, progressivement bâti, de la gestion des populations pénales (p. 98).

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6 Avec le casier judiciaire, l’identification devient plus fiable et moins avilissante, mais Jean-Lucien Sanchez montre que ce processus de gestion humaniste des récidivistes, visant à leur réinsertion, n’est pas linéaire. La IIIe République met ainsi en œuvre, en 1885, une loi sur la relégation des condamnés récidivistes, qui masque mal, derrière l’invocation d’un imaginaire colonial de la régénération, le retour de la sanction irréversible. Ainsi, le second XIXe siècle est marqué par « le désenchantement opéré par les sciences sociales au premier rang desquelles la criminologie, alimenté par les chiffres du crime, [qui] a conduit à délaisser une vision optimiste de l’homme » (p. 152), pour ne plus percevoir parmi ces récidivistes que des « incorrigibles ».

7 Laurence Guignard interroge également les interactions entre droit et science, lorsqu’elle évoque les liens se nouant entre responsabilité pénale et aliénation mentale. Impossible mariage pour les juristes révolutionnaires, selon lesquels, dit Foucault, un « réquisit de rationalité » sous-tend l’acte criminel, l’idée d’une « responsabilité graduée en fonction de l’état mental » s’élabore progressivement au XIXe siècle, formant un pouvoir hybride que Foucault qualifie de « normatif ». D’une justice révolutionnaire laïque refusant la pesée des âmes, la pensée spiritualiste, avant même le développement de nouveaux paradigmes aliénistes, permet, au XIXe siècle, de réinventer une « justice morale » (p. 256). Cette « subjectivation du droit » est reprise à bon compte par les sciences du crime, qui trouvent une voie déjà ouverte pour justifier le principe de l’individualisation des peines, selon le mot d’ordre de la « défense sociale », qui fait du fou criminel son emblème et sa justification.

8 Du supplice à la peine sensorielle, de la relégation à la gouvernementalité carcérale, ces questionnements sont repris et actualisés dans la dernière partie de l’ouvrage, principalement centrée sur la prison, qui se penche sur les « théorie et pratique actuelles du droit de punir ». Gilles Chantraine décrypte « l’invention du détenu néolibéral ». Tempérant les thèses de la « nouvelle pénologie », laquelle prétend que la prison aurait abandonné l’utopie de réhabilitation individuelle au profit d’une gestion actuarielle des risques présentés par les populations pénales, il souligne l’hybridation de ce paradigme du risque avec un modèle « thérapeutique d’inspiration cognitivo- comportementale », mettant en œuvre des dispositifs de responsabilisation des détenus, qualifiés de « pôle motivationnel » (p. 184). On invite le sujet à objectiver lui- même les facteurs de risque auxquels il est exposé, et à proposer, avec les agents de libération conditionnelle, des scénarios de sa propre réhabilitation, devenant ainsi « entrepreneur de soi ». Mais les enquêtes menées par le sociologue révèlent, sous ce vernis managérial, les craquelures d’une fiction rédemptrice que mettent en scène les nouveaux experts de la réinsertion pénale. Les détenus, tenus de jouer ce jeu de rôles pour obtenir un aménagement des peines, ne sont pas dupes de cette fabrique du consentement, qui opère au détriment d’une démarche réelle de soins, laquelle, au contraire, nécessite une mise à distance de soi-même.

9 La question du genre, ténue dans l’analyse de Foucault, est examinée par Coline Cardi. Si, en effet, la justice pénale fait preuve d’une apparente mansuétude à l’égard des femmes, qui ne représentent aujourd’hui que 3,7 % de la population carcérale française, les régulations « infra-pénales », liées notamment à l’intervention sociale, ainsi qu’à l’action d’une justice des mineurs inquisitrice des familles, s’appliquent aux « mauvaises mères ». « La déviance des femmes, nous dit l’auteure, apparaît comme une déviance particulière : elle se définit non seulement par rapport à une loi, mais également par rapport à des normes médicales, morales et psychologiques » (p. 235).

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10 Retenons enfin, parmi de riches contributions concernant la prison contemporaine, celle de Simona Ioana Schumacher, qui boucle la problématique foucaldienne exposée dans les premières pages de Surveiller et punir, en se penchant sur la pénalité de l’incorporel que sont les privations et afflictions sensorielles en milieu carcéral. Selon l’auteure, l’effacement de la peine corporelle dans l’histoire pénitentiaire ne constitue pas une atténuation de la peine, car « le sensoriel » dont la prison, plus que jamais, investit les ressorts, « n’est pas une substitution, une approximation réductrice ou une métamorphose du corporel, mais surtout une forme sublimée de la chair suppliciée » (p. 255). En échos aux râles d’un Damiens désarticulé et extatique, livré aux regards en place de Grève, l’anthropologue indique que si « la peine ne répond plus aux impératifs de visibilité ou d’extériorité », « elle se plie toujours à une idéologie d’exemplarité sociale », alors que, paradoxalement, privée de tout droit de regard, « la société civile est incapable de dire comment la peine se déroule » (p. 256). Rendre au regard citoyen la nouvelle économie des peines replacée dans la longue durée occidentale comme le propose cet ouvrage, loin de ressusciter l’infamie de l’exposition des suppliciés, contribue à faire advenir une réforme carcérale devenue urgente, en ouvrant le débat sur le sens de la peine dans nos sociétés contemporaines. Plus que jamais, un Foucault visionnaire pourrait aujourd’hui constater que la souffrance, constituée en instrument de pouvoir, dépasse largement les murs de la prison.

NOTES

1. Ignatieff Michael, A just measure of pain : The penitentiary in the industrial revolution, 1750-1850, Pantheon Books, 1978. Spierenburg Pieter, The Spectacle of Suffering. Executions and the Evolution of Repression : From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience, Cambridge University Press, 1984. Petit Jacques-Guy, Ces peines obscures. La prison pénale en France (1789-1870), Fayard, 1990. 2. Michelle Perrot, L’impossible prison : recherches sur le système pénitentiaire au XIXe siècle, Seuil, 1980. On écoutera avec intérêt l’entretien donné par Michelle Perrot au sujet de la table ronde tenue à Paris en 1978, confrontant Foucault à ses juges historiens. France Culture, La fabrique de l’histoire, émission du 8 octobre 2004 (disponible en ligne).

AUTEURS

DAVID NIGET Centre d’Histoire du Droit et de la Justice Université catholique de Louvain [email protected]

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Fijnaut (Cyrille), A history of the Dutch police Amsterdam, Boom Publishers, 2009, 203 pp. , ISBN 9 789085 064565

Jonas Campion

RÉFÉRENCE

Fijnaut (Cyrille), A history of the Dutch police, Amsterdam, Boom Publishers, 2009, 203 pp. , ISBN 9 789085 064565

1 Ces dernières années, Cyrille Fijnaut a coordonné un projet de recherches portant sur l’histoire sociopolitique de l’appareil policier des Pays-Bas aux XIXe et XXe siècles. En 2007, à l’issue de ce projet collectif de grande ampleur, trois tomes, traitant respectivement des polices locales (Guus Meershoek), des polices nationales (Jos Smeets), des associations et de la formation professionnelle (Ronald van der Wal) étaient publiés en néerlandais. Cyrille Fijnaut proposait, dans un quatrième volume, une vision globale de l’évolution de l’appareil policier dans le « tourbillon de l’histoire » 1.

2 Afin de rendre ces travaux accessibles au plus grand nombre, est aujourd’hui publié en anglais par ce dernier auteur, un résumé des principaux résultats jusqu’ici obtenus. Dit autrement, A history of the Dutch police ne doit pas être lu de manière indépendante des quatre principales publications issues du projet initial.

3 Car, l’essentiel des regrets qui apparaissent à sa lecture, notamment le caractère parfois trop succinct des développements proposés, ou la faible bibliographie proposée, ne résiste pas à l’analyse générale de cette série. À cet égard, nous ne pouvons que conseiller le recours aux données archivistiques et bibliographiques présentes dans les quatre publications initiales. Elles permettent au chercheur de disposer d’un panorama presque exhaustif de la matière disponible pour construire une histoire policière des Pays-Bas. Lesquels matériaux éclairent aussi l’histoire européenne, du fait de la conquête française des territoires néerlandais (1795) ; de l’instauration, après le

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congrès de Vienne, d’un royaume des Pays-Bas comprenant l’actuelle Belgique, ou des contacts policiers entre l’Allemagne et les Pays-Bas dans l’entre-deux-guerres.

4 Illustrée, la synthèse de Cyrille Fijnaut propose en six chapitres, une progression chronologique, depuis l’occupation française du pays jusqu’aux dernières réformes menées en 2006. Dans ce lent processus de maturation de l’appareil policier, la Seconde Guerre mondiale constitue un moment d’accélération marquant, aux conséquences majeures en termes d’organisation policière. Car, bien que les autorités politiques néerlandaises s’en défendent, la majorité des réformes imposées durant l’Occupation du pays, puisqu’elles s’inscrivent pour partie dans le prolongement de débats anciens, sont confirmées après la guerre. Premier aboutissement marquant après plus d’un siècle d’hésitations et de débats, l’Occupation constitue le point de départ des réflexions et réformes menées aux Pays-Bas tout au long du second vingtième siècle. C’est pourquoi la guerre constitue, avec ses suites, le cœur des propos de Cyrille Fijnaut (chapitres 4 et 5).

5 Le parcours proposé par ce spécialiste des questions policières contemporaines s’intègre résolument dans une réflexion actuelle sur l’organisation policière. Selon Fijnaut, ancrée dans un processus en devenir, la police néerlandaise est encore appelée à évoluer vers une unification accrue, pour répondre aux enjeux de sécurité, d’ordre ou d’exercice de la justice des sociétés contemporaines (p. 192). C’est la lente et difficile évolution d’un complexe policier à l’origine morcelée entre cinq institutions, vers la centralisation et la rationalisation, qui sous-tend les analyses de l’auteur.

6 Avec nuances, l’essentiel du propos décrit les rythmes, causes et difficultés de l’adaptation institutionnelle des polices néerlandaises face aux mutations de la société. Il ne s’étend qu’accessoirement et de manière générale sur les pratiques policières quotidiennes, pour se concentrer presqu’exclusivement sur une lecture institutionnelle, idéologique et politique de l’histoire policière. À cet égard, comme Cyrille Fijnaut l’avait déjà mis en lumière2, ce sont les moments de tensions, de crises ou de scandales qui attirent l’attention, en tant qu’accélérateurs de réformes. Ils entraînent la succession des actes législatifs qui veulent apporter une réponse définitive à la question policière, mais qui s’avèrent rapidement insatisfaisants (comme en 1851, 1935, 1945, 1957, 1993…). Face à cette multiplication des tensions, la recherche d’un compromis quant à la structure à donner à l’organisation policière est omniprésente. Par exemple, tout au long des XIXe et XX e siècles, les débats sont permanents quant au degré de centralisation nécessaire, ou quant à la nécessité de disposer de force(s) militaire(s) et nationale(s) de police. La lente expansion de la Koninklijke Marechaussee témoigne de la prégnance de ces oppositions. D’autres questions, comme le rôle judiciaire de la police, structurent également les réflexions et débats qui traversent alors l’espace public.

7 L’intérêt de la recherche est de prendre en compte la diversité des points de vue qui interviennent dans le débat public (partisans, populaires et professionnels), et de souligner l’importance des traditions politiques (notamment locales ou confessionnelles) pour leur compréhension. Car, et c’est là une spécificité néerlandaise, le pays est traversé par un clivage religieux entre catholiques et réformés. Ce dernier se retrouve également au sein des organisations corporatives et professionnelles. Or, celles-ci sont des acteurs de premier ordre de la question policière : elles insistent sans relâche sur la nécessaire professionnalisation des policiers, ou sur l’amélioration de

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leurs conditions de vie, deux domaines qui donnent également lieu à des crispations récurrentes depuis le XIXe siècle.

8 Cette approche sociopolitique possède, on l’aura compris, de nombreux atouts, au premier rang desquels la diversité des perspectives abordées. Elles permettent de faire de l’institution policière un objet d’histoire, au cœur des relations sociales et politiques. À côté des débats identitaires sur le rôle et l’organisation policière, l’influence des enjeux sociaux, économiques et politiques en tant qu’événements auxquels doit s’adapter la police, est clairement souligné. À cet égard, si la synthèse de Fijnaut est évidemment éclairante sur les spécificités néerlandaises et les grands tournants de l’histoire de ce pays (comme l’affaire Oss ou les émeutes de Jordaan pour l’entre-deux- guerres), elle est également pertinente pour une lecture à l’échelle européenne de l’évolution des modèles et des fonctions policières. Dans cette logique, elle met en lumière les invariants transnationaux propres à la définition d’un appareil étatique de coercition. Les apports de l’argumentaire sont d’autant plus grands que la situation policière néerlandaise se définit comme un carrefour, au cœur de l’Europe, où se rencontrent diverses influences policières, qu’elles soient française ou allemande.

9 Pour ces raisons, nous ne pouvons que saluer la mise à disposition d’un large public, par cette traduction en anglais, des principaux résultats issus du projet coordonné par Cyrille Fijnaut.

NOTES

1. Cyrille Fijnaut, De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Politie. Een staatinstelling in de maalstroom van de geschiedenis, Amsterdam, Boom, 2007, 1029 p. ; Guus Meershoek, De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Politie. De Gemeentepolitie in een veranderende samenleving, Amsterdam, Boom, 2007, 546 p. ; Jos Smeets, De Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Politie. Verdeelheid en eenheid in het rijkspolitieapparaat, Amsterdam, Boom, 2007, 616 p. ; Ronald van der Wal, De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Politie. De vakorganisatie en het beroepsonderwijs, Amsterdam, Boom, 2007, 619 p. 2. Cyrille Fijnaut, Opdat de macht en toevlucht zij ? Een historische studie van het politieapparaat als een politieke instelling, Anvers-Arnhem, Kluwer, 1979.

AUTEURS

JONAS CAMPION Université catholique de Louvain Centre d’histoire du droit et de la justice [email protected]

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Gauvard (Claude), Violence et ordre public au Moyen Âge (Les médiévistes français, 5) Paris, Picard, 2005, 288 pp., ISBN 27084 07392

Philippe Genequand

RÉFÉRENCE

Gauvard (Claude), Violence et ordre public au Moyen Âge (Les médiévistes français, 5), Paris, Picard, 2005, 288 pp., ISBN 27084 07392

1 En seize articles, retravaillés pour l’occasion, C. Gauvard offre un panorama saisissant des recherches qu’elle a récemment menées autour de la violence et de sa normalisation en France du nord dans les deux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge. Le titre de l’ouvrage – Violence et ordre public au Moyen Âge –, dont on imputera la responsabilité à l’éditeur, est en effet doublement imprécis. Si l’auteur élargit parfois sa préoccupation aux rares études existantes qui l’éloignent du bassin parisien, elle ne quitte pas le temps de la construction de l’État royal. Ne boudons pour autant pas notre plaisir : le propos est de grande qualité et la cohérence de l’ensemble en est renforcée !

2 La matière a été répartie en trois portions, la première consacrée au crime lui-même (Crimes et modes de résolution), débutant avec l’exposé des sources de la pratique utilisées et abordant la difficile question de l’apparente incohérence de la société médiévale face aux délits, en particulier ceux de sang. Que penser en effet d’une justice royale qui condamne parfois à mort mais n’exécute quasiment jamais ses sentences ? À travers la notion de « beau fait », qui excuse l’homicide pour peu qu’il soit réparation d’honneur, les juges entérinent une réalité profonde de la société médiévale, rappelée dès l’introduction, qui veut que prime l’honneur sur la vie humaine. Ce ressort essentiel, s’il est exacerbé lorsque l’on considère le groupe nobiliaire et s’il demeure essentiellement masculin, est partagé par tous les groupes sociaux. Revers de la condamnation, restitution d’honneur lui aussi, le rite de l’amende honorable retient

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largement l’attention de l’auteur qui a choisi de lui consacrer plusieurs développements, dont un intitulé – Gracier et exécuter -, qui conclut la première partie de l’ouvrage, apparaît redondant. Il est plaisant de relever qu’il s’agit du seul moment où est apparent le principal risque des recueils : la répétition.

3 La deuxième partie s’intéresse à l’activité judiciaire elle-même, aux hommes qui en sont responsables et aux jugements qu’ils rendent (Juges et jugements). Voulant réfléchir sur la façon dont les juges royaux – en particulier ceux du Parlement criminel – conçoivent leur rôle et sur la manière dont leur action trahit les mouvements de fond qui amènent la société médiévale à accepter de se soumettre, pas à pas, à un pouvoir judiciaire unique, celui du roi, l’auteur propose un parcours extrêmement riche qui mène de la théorie de la peine à la réalité de son application – ou de son absence d’application – et à l’affirmation du droit royal à juger. La société médiévale étant bien riche en paradoxes, l’auteur adresse parallèlement la question des conflits qui opposent justice déléguée et justice retenue au sein même du « camp royal », le Parlement attaquant parfois les lettres de rémission publiées par la Chancellerie.

4 Passant de la façon dont on peut comprendre le maintien de l’ordre public à la fin du Moyen Âge, à la question de la violence, l’ouvrage consacre son ultime portion à trois études de cas qui renouvellent assurément la façon dont il est possible de concevoir le recours à la force durant cette période (Violence et contrôle social). L’auteur décrypte tout d’abord les rituels de la violence, et les freins à cette dernière, pour souligner que le Moyen Âge finissant ne connaît pas, quoi qu’on en ait pu dire, une violence anarchique. Les liens sociaux sont en effet multiples – famille, convivialité, confraternité, etc. – et servent à limiter l’exercice licite de l’acte violent. Plus encore : ceux-ci sont maintenus en ville où les voisins viennent suppléer les parents dans des solidarités et dans un contrôle social qui empêchent, pour quelques temps encore, le monde urbain de se différencier fondamentalement sur ce plan du monde rural. Paradoxalement, c’est dans l’entourage des grands bien plus que dans les marges de la société chères à B. Geremek, que l’auteur trouve les principaux facteurs de déséquilibre, les principaux fauteurs de trouble de la capitale française : ouverts à une faune interlope, les hôtels royaux et princiers du premier XVe siècle apparaissent en effet sous sa plume, dépouillés du faste et de l’or dont ils sont souvent recouverts, dans une crue lumière qui en souligne les recrutements douteux et les actes répréhensibles.

5 Répondant au chapitre introductif qui propose une définition de la violence, empruntant son texte au dictionnaire dirigé par J. Le Goff et J.-C. Schmitt, la conclusion propose de distinguer violence licite et violence illicite, montrant finalement une évolution qui rapproche peu à peu le monde médiéval du nôtre. Dans le courant des XIVe et XVe siècles, la royauté parvient en effet à s’assurer le monopole du maintien de l’ordre en France, jouant de la justice déléguée comme de la justice retenue, toutes deux participant en effet – et la seconde plus efficacement peut-être que la première – à l’affirmation de l’État royal. La cohérence des textes rassemblés dans ce recueil apparaît une nouvelle fois à la lecture d’une conclusion qui s’inscrit comme fille légitime des développements précédemment exposés, soulignant leurs apports et leur originalité.

6 Les quelques lignes qui précèdent sont incapables de rendre compte de la richesse de l’ouvrage recensé dont les limites géographiques et temporelles resserrées apparaissent bien comme une force : celle qu’offre la cohérence d’un espace profondément balisé et compris par l’A. En conclusion, on pourrait encore se réjouir de l’inclusion de trois

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éditions de sources1, souligner la présence d’un index ou mettre en exergue la belle résonance entre les présents articles et la grande thèse que C. Gauvard a consacrée à l’analyse des lettres de rémission royales à la fin du Moyen Âge2, mais on se contentera de recommander la lecture d’un ouvrage fécond et utile qui mérite d’être exploré soigneusement par tous ceux qui s’intéressent à la construction de la modernité ou à une histoire sociale de la justice. C’est l’occasion, finalement, de féliciter les éditions Picard pour l’initiative d’une collection indéniablement bienvenue.

NOTES

1. En annexe au chapitre premier, l’auteur propose la table des matières du registre du Châtelet de 1391 (pp. 31-34) et la transcription d’une décision du Parlement de 1401 autorisant un chevalier à passer accord avec la partie adverse malgré le procès ouvert devant lui (pp. 34-36). Plus loin (pp. 109-115), on trouve l’édition du procès qui oppose au Parlement criminel l’évêque de Paris au prévôt Guillaume de Tignonville en 1406. 2. « De grace especial » : Crime, État et société en France à la fin du Moyen Âge, Paris, Publ. de la Sorbonne, 2 vols, 1991.

AUTEURS

PHILIPPE GENEQUAND Université de Genève [email protected]

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Rigakos (George S.), McMullan (John L.), Johnson (Joshua), Ozcan (Gulden) (eds), A General Police System: Political Economy and Security in the Age of the Enlightenment Ottawa, Red Quill Books, 2009, 302 pp., ISBN 978 0 9812807 0 7

Clive Emsley

REFERENCES

Rigakos (George S.), McMullan (John L.), Johnson (Joshua), Ozcan (Gulden) (eds), A General Police System: Political Economy and Security in the Age of the Enlightenment, Ottawa, Red Quill Books, 2009, 302 pp., ISBN 978 0 9812807 0 7

1 It is always tempting to think that there is nothing new under the sun. The editors of this reader explain that one of the key starting points for the book was the current debate about security and surveillance in the contemporary state. They see the Enlightenment discussion of police as a moment when many of the modern issues were first raised and debated by important European thinkers seeking to resolve issues of economic, political and social change and tension. The book focuses on the work of ten such thinkers – four Germans (Georg Hegel, Wilhelm von Humbert, Johann von Justi and Joseph von Sonnenfels), three English (Jeremy Bentham, Sir John Fielding and Sir William Petty), two Scots (Patrick Colquhoun and Adam Smith) and an Italian (Cesare Beccaria). A short introduction, just under thirty pages, brings out the basic trajectories in the ideas of the theorists; it highlights the major concerns that prompted their work, where they agree and disagree, and the different directions that their thinking took. The bulk of the book, some 250 pages, brings together significant readings from the work of the ten thinkers.

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2 It is useful to have this material brought together and made available for students. To that extent the authors are to be thanked and the collection is to be welcomed. The introduction is also a useful précis of the theories set out in the extensive readings and it provides stimulating ideas about how current debates might be said to echo those of the Enlightenment. Perhaps this area might have been pushed a little further, but the major problem in the book is what is left out.

3 It is always annoying for authors to read a review that criticises them for omissions, but it is surprising to find nothing here from French authors of the Enlightenment and to find such scant recognition of the work on Polizeiwissenschaft by historians of the German lands such as Roland Axtmann and Marc Raeff, to name two who write in English. Von Justi and von Sonnenfels were working in a very long tradition of the idea of Gute Polizei, incorporating both Wohlfahrt and Gemeine Nutz, as a key role of the state, be it a city state, a principality or an empire. But it is the omission of things French that provides the greatest disappointment and the biggest drawback. When the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa wanted advice on police for Vienna, she wrote to the lieutenant général de police de Paris asking for details of his institution. An edited version of the report was printed and published more than a century ago1. There is no reference to it here. The editors’ statement in a footnote to their introduction ‘the important French work Traité de Police (1707) by Nicolas de La Mare is still unavailable in English’ is true, but hardly seems like sufficient excuse to omit specially translated extracts from a reader of this kind. Raeff described the Traité as ‘the first treatise on police (in the early eighteenth-century meaning of the term)’. He noted also that, while many German police ordinances pre-dated it, at least the lieutenant général de police de Paris had a body of men capable of implementing police practice. De La Mare’s (or Delamare’s) work was widely read across Europe; together with that of various German thinkers it was translated and sometimes served up as ‘original’ by advocates of police reform in several countries – in eighteenth-century Russia and Spain, for example2.

4 In sum, as far as it goes, this book constitutes a useful reader. But an opportunity has been missed. The book might offer some value to political scientists looking at the antecedents of contemporary debates; but for historians of the Enlightenment, of the development of the state and of the concept of police, it could have been so much more valuable.

NOTES

1. Augustin Gazier (ed.), La police de Paris en 1770, mémoire inédit composé par G. de Sartine sur la demande de Marie-Thérèse, Paris, 1879. 2. Marc Raeff, ‘The well-ordered police state and the development of modernity in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe: An attempt at a comparative approach’, American Historical Review, 80, 5 (1975) pp. 1221-1243; idem, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through the Law in the Germanies and Russia, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, p. 243; Pedro Fraile, ‘Putting order into the cities: The evolution of ‘Policy Science’ in eighteenth-century Spain’, Urban History, 1998, 25, 1, pp. 22-35.

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AUTHORS

CLIVE EMSLEY The Open University [email protected]

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« Norbert Elias et le XXe siècle. Le processus de civilisation à l’épreuve » Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 2010, n° 106, avril-juin

Emmanuel Blanchard

RÉFÉRENCE

« Norbert Elias et le XXe siècle. Le processus de civilisation à l’épreuve », Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 2010, n° 106, avril-juin

1 Norbert Elias est au nombre de ces références que les spécialistes d’histoire du crime et de la réaction pénale ont l’habitude de voir citer de façon quasi rituelle, mais qui alimente aussi certaines des controverses scientifiques les plus fécondes au sujet de l’exposition à la violence et de sa perception sociale1. Il n’est donc guère étonnant qu’un des articles les plus stimulants de cet ample dossier soit dû à David Garland (« Le processus de civilisation et la peine capitale aux États-Unis ») dont une des recherches devient, pour la première fois, accessible à un lectorat francophone.

2 La question de la traduction est d’ailleurs l’un des fils conducteurs de ce numéro coordonné par l’historien Quentin Deluermoz. L’œuvre d’Elias, élaborée des années 1930 à la fin des années 1980, est en effet indissociable de son contexte de production – de l’ancien soldat des transmissions au cours de la Première Guerre mondiale à l’enseignant au Ghana en passant par la fuite du nazisme et un exil longtemps marqué par la précarité académique en Angleterre, la traversée du siècle est aussi riche qu’ample. Les contextes de réception des travaux d’Elias sont cependant plus primordiaux encore, tant ils furent liés à une politique de traduction (depuis l’allemand ou l’anglais) aléatoire, partielle, peu rigoureuse2, elle même dépendante des aléas de l’économie de l’édition pendant « l’âge des extrêmes » (Über den Prozess der Zivilisation

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trouva difficilement un éditeur en Suisse, en 1939, et ne fut republié qu’en 1969 avant d’être enfin traduit en français – partiellement – et en anglais3).

3 Les trajectoires diverses de la réception et de l’usage de l’œuvre d’Elias, rappelées dans un entretien avec Roger Chartier, ont conduit le coordonnateur de ce numéro à le penser à destination d’un public clairement identifié : les historiens francophones de l’époque contemporaine. Par leurs inscriptions disciplinaires et géographiques, la douzaine de contributeurs à ce dossier débordent cependant très largement le lectorat visé. Ce numéro a en effet pour ambition de montrer que la méconnaissance de l’œuvre et des études eliasiennes (en partie liée aux vicissitudes de la traduction…) a conduit les historiens du XXe siècle à négliger des travaux qui seraient marqués du sceau de leur aveuglement aux deux guerres mondiales. Ce reproche est très superficiel, en particulier si l’on intègre le dernier livre paru du vivant d’Elias (Studien über die deutschen, 1989, traduit en anglais en 1996, et toujours inédit, même si commenté, en français), et cache sans doute une certaine réticence des contemporéanistes français à se saisir des outils et concepts des sciences sociales, circonspection que ne partage pas leurs homologues médiévistes ou modernistes qui ont été les passeurs d’Elias dans le champ historique et bien au-delà (cf. notamment le rôle de Roger Chartier dans la diffusion de l’œuvre d’Elias en France). Il semble ainsi que l’appel à une histoire contemporaine ouverte sur des conceptualisations et des méthodes variées soit commun aux contributeurs à ce dossier, les références multiples à Foucault, de Certeau ou Bourdieu figurant parmi les signaux de cette volonté de décloisonnement. Les auteurs réunis dans ce numéro, dont certains des plus prestigieux continuateurs des perspectives d’Elias (Eric Dunning, Stephen Mennell, Cas Wouters), ne prônent pas les vertus de l’interdisciplinarité, ni celles de la théorisation mais invitent les contemporéanistes à manier, dans des usages divers (fidèles, relâchés, critiques…), les propositions eliasiennes permettant d’enrichir les questionnements et les sources de l’historien : ainsi, « l’intérêt de l’œuvre d’Elias réside aussi dans les incertitudes qu’elle recèle, dans cette capacité d’ouvrir et de bousculer les débats » (Florence Delmotte, p. 68).

4 C’est donc à ce chantier que s’attelle ce riche numéro, laissant une large place aux domaines les plus balisés de l’usage de l’œuvre de Norbert Elias (l’analyse du sport, de la violence, du corps, des émotions…) mais avec des perspectives souvent novatrices. Ainsi, Romain Bertrand ne se saisit-il pas de la question des violences impériales pour proposer une nouvelle réfutation de la théorie de la pacification des mœurs. Creusant le sillon de Stephen Mennell pour qui l’un des « traits distinctifs » du génocide perpétré par les nazis réside dans « l’ampleur de la réaction qu’il suscita quand tout fut connu » (cité par Florence Delmotte, p. 67), Romain Bertrand montre que, certes, les colons et marchands portugais, anglais ou hollandais exilés en Asie du sud-est ne rechignaient, ni à la torture, ni aux profanations, en particulier aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Mais, il insiste surtout sur le fait qu’à partir du XIXe siècle, les pillages, meurtres et autres rafles ont « grevé lourdement la légitimité métropolitaine du projet colonial » (p. 134). Ainsi, « faire son miel des travaux de Norbert Elias, avec leur insistance sur les “décalages” entre régimes de sensibilité et sur les mouvements contradictoires des rapports collectifs à la violence » (p. 140) permet d’écarter les perspectives évolutionnistes trop souvent reprochées à l’auteur de La civilisation des mœurs.

5 Le texte de Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau s’inscrit dans ces perspectives délibérément critiques et est construit atour du « point aveugle que la conflictualité constitue » (p.

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110) dans l’œuvre d’Elias et sur l’hypothèse qu’il tiendrait au « déni » (p. 114) de l’expérience combattante de ce dernier au cours de la Première Guerre mondiale. Si des éléments biographiques importants sont précisés, la démonstration générale n’emporte pas complètement la conviction en raison de ses prémisses mêmes. En effet, pour nombre des commentateurs d’Elias, « l’horreur des conflits armés » et de leurs processus décivilisateurs constituent l’horizon de son œuvre, rappelés en conclusion de son grand livre de 1939 : « Il y a d’abord le danger de la guerre. Or, la guerre n’est pas pour le dire encore une fois avec d’autres mots, le contraire de la paix (…) Et derrière les tensions au niveau continental se dessinent, en partie déjà engagées, les tensions du niveau suivant (…) on perçoit les préliminaires de luttes d’élimination et d’hégémonie4 ». Ce numéro permet pleinement aux lecteurs de se confronter à ces conflits d’interprétation classique de l’œuvre eliasienne. Surtout, par la richesse de ses instruments de travail (biographie, bibliographie, notes de lectures, articles de contextualisation de l’œuvre d’Elias…), il constitue une très solide introduction aux usages historiques contemporains d’une pensée dont les contributeurs montrent qu’elle est particulièrement féconde.

NOTES

1. Laurent Mucchielli, Pieter Spierenburg (dir.), Histoire de l’homicide en Europe. De la fin du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Paris, La Découverte, 2009. 2. Avis aux amateurs, « le conseil de la Fondation Norbert Elias (…) est en principe prêt à financer la traduction en français des parties manquantes et la révision des parties existantes, si la publication d’une nouvelle édition d’Über den Prozess der Zivilisation est entreprise » (p. 211). 3. Marc Joly (pp. 81-95) montre bien que dès 1939 un éditeur anglais était prêt à se lancer dans cette traduction mais que les aléas de la guerre puis le basculement du champ intellectuel vers le pôle américain ont finalement repoussé ce projet d’une trentaine d’années. 4. La dynamique de l’Occident, Paris, Agora-Pocket, 1975, pp. 316-317.

AUTEUR

EMMANUEL BLANCHARD CESDIP-CNRS – UMR 8183 [email protected]

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Bethencourt (Francisco), The Inquisition. A Global History, 1478-1834 translated by Jean Birrell, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009, Xii+491pp., including 40 b&w Plates, ISBN 978-0-521-74823-0 (pb)

Christopher F. Black

REFERENCES

Bethencourt (Francisco), The Inquisition. A Global History, 1478-1834, translated by Jean Birrell, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009, Xii+491pp., including 40 b&w Plates, ISBN 978-0-521-74823-0 (pb)

1 This is an expanded translation of Bethencourt’s L’Inquisition à l’époque moderne. Espagne, Italie, Portugal, XVe-XIXe siècles (Fayard, Paris, 1995). For this edition the author had provided an enlarged introduction, with a bibliographical survey commenting on developments in the study of the different inquisitions and rival approaches, and he has incorporated recent studies in the notes and bibliography. A few paragraphs thereafter have been added or altered, mainly concerning Italy in taking advantage of work by Andrea Del Col and Agostino Borromeo, (see especially pp. 50, 85-91, 174, 236, 443-446). Three Maps have been added locating the established local tribunals. Professor Bethencourt has long been a major contributor (largely in Portuguese), to the study of the inquisition in Portugal and its colonies, now reflected in his holding the Charles Boxer Chair at King’s College, London. His knowledge of the Spanish inquisition is also considerable, and he has drawn on archival sources of some Italian tribunals (notably Bologna, Modena, Udine and Venice), to illuminate his comparative study. However in the long gap between the original French edition and this translation he seems not to have taken direct advantage of the 1998 opening to scholars more widely of the central Holy Office in Rome, (Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede). The reviewer’s expertise is the inverse to Bethencourt’s; given his recent publication of The Italian Inquisition (Yale University Press), he is inclined to concentrate

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his criticisms on the Italian scene (which included Spanish inquisition tribunals in Sicily and Sardinia). The attempt to provide a comparative analysis of the early modern inquisitions is welcome, the outcome impressive in the range of scholarship shown, throwing much new light on the institutional structures and on the different interfaces with the wider societies. Yet, the densely packed book is not an easy read, and it is a shame that in being allowed to make some revisions and expansions, and producing the book fifteen years after the original, the author did not heed comments on the original edition, as by Henry Kamen, and made it a little more accessible to those being less experienced to inquisition history.

2 We have here an impressive comparative study of the inquisitorial institutions from origins to closures, how they were founded and developed, their operational procedures as institutions, the links between central organisation and the local tribunals. Bethencourt also considers the problems in dealing with kings, princes and republics like Venice, and with bishops. He does not here make trials and their victims a major focus of attention, though as a trained lawyer he has previously analysed trial records (pp. 32-33). He does attempt to calculate the numbers of accused, and the typology of victims, with useful tables, (pp. 334-348), and reflects on evidence of social backgrounds of the accused. But this book does not introduce the reader to due processes of investigation and trial, subtleties of judgement and punishment, inter- relationships between accusers, accused and inquisitors, with possibilities of plea- bargaining (as I have shown for the Roman Inquisition). Bethencourt rightly stresses that the main aim of most inquisitorial labour was to secure confessions (pp. 67-69). To his saying that asking denouncers and witnesses whether they had enmity towards the accused was just ‘for form’s sake’, I would suggest that Italian inquisitors at least did have this in mind when deciding whether to pursue the accusations to full trial. The translation here of procès (Italian processo) as ‘trial’ can be misleading, since the English implies a full process leading to a verdict, when many ‘cases’ in the statistics (as Bethencourt does admit), especially in Italy are of denunciations (and self- denunciations), followed by varying degrees of investigation – or none, but with many not leading to formal charges, abjuration or punishment. The reader receives no real indication of what famous investigations, tangentially mentioned, of men like archbishop Carranza, Antonio Perez, Giordano Bruno or Galileo involved; and they can throw much light on different institutional approaches, and power struggles within the Churches. They would also provide a human interest that is rather lacking here.

3 Bethencourt’s ‘new model of research’ is based on four approaches: rites and etiquette, organisational forms, strategies of action, and systems of representation (p. 29). The first approach runs through much of the book, with the author writing very fully of the rituals involved in appointing inquisitorial officials, in their introduction to jobs and social roles. He sees rituals, orders of precedence and comparative status, as a key to the infiltration of Iberian inquisitions into state and society, and winning of public acceptance. (Such issues are less important in mainland Italy, though strong in Spanish Sicily). Much is made of the number and roles of ‘familiars’, privileged assistants, supporters and hangers-on from wider society, who might defend inquisitors, add to their prestige and display in formal parades, and secure social-political acceptance. Battles over privileges such as tax exemptions and right to carry guns could also create discord with local secular authorities. In the Italian scene Bethencourt seems to use ‘familiars’ and crocesignati (named after a cross-badge worn on robes) as

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interchangeable; the latter term I think should be reserved for those formally enrolled in confraternities of that name (or something similar), as in Bologna and Modena, when not all privileged familiars were so associated. In dealing with organisational forms, the discussion could have been fuller and clearer about the situation in the Kingdom of Naples, where the papacy as feudal superior would not accept the Spanish rulers’ desire to have branches of the Spanish Inquisition, and they in turn as de facto rulers would not allow the Roman Inquisition to operate tribunals openly; though Rome did exercise power more surreptitiously through commissioners and the episcopacy, as recent work has well illustrated.

4 For this reviewer the highlights of the book include the long chapter 7 on the auto-da-fé , with massive fascinating details on their complex organisation in the Iberian systems, the elaborate structures, the public ceremonies, the importance of etiquette for the observing participants, the treatment of those to die, and those not. Bethencourt is not really concerned with the fewer and less spectacular autos under the Roman Inquisition, but rightly indicates that these concerned individuals or a small group, while the Iberian were regular mass celebrations. Chapter 9 on ‘Representations’ stimulatingly discusses visual and verbal publicity for the actions of the inquisitions, (again primarily Iberian), whether favourably propagandist, or antagonistic contributions to the Black Legend. The physician Charles Dellon’s 1687 memoirs of his experiences of the Goa inquisition (seen as the harshest colonial tribunal), and illustrations accompanying publication are seen as very damaging to the reputations of inquisitions. Chapters 5 and 6 on ‘The Edicts’ and ‘The visits’, while very dense for a general reader, are valuable for specialists, and do illustrate the extent to which inquisitors from the centre, and locally, sought to control society, and its moral conduct beyond strict theological heresies. The effectiveness of publishing edicts – general or specific – is hard to gauge. Inquisitorial visitations checked on the conduct of inquisitors and their familiars in Iberia, but were not used in Italy. Spanish inquisitors were noted for visits to ports, netting heretical foreigners. ‘Visits’ allows some consideration of book censorship, though room was presumably lacking to reflect on recent work on the Roman Congregation of the Index and its newly accessible archive. Bethencourt follows those scholars who see Spanish censorship as highly detrimental to the sciences.

5 Among the differences between the inquisitions Bethencourt emphasises that Iberian inquisitors tended to be lawyers, while the Roman ones were theologians (especially Dominicans); Iberian ones could be more fully integrated at the top level into court or state politics; there nepotism could be important, and especially in Portugal contact with the inquisition facilitated social promotion. ‘Purity of Blood’ concepts came later in Portugal, and seem less important than in Spain; and they are not an Italian consideration, where problems of New Christians were comparatively minor (and treated with leniency in places like Venice). Bethencourt suggests that when the Judaism and Morisco problems diminished the pursuit of other offences like superstition, clerical solicitation in confessionals, or lay sexual deviancy was needed to justify the continuing activity of the institutions; ‘new suspects had to be found’ (p. 350); there was ‘a quest for functionality’ (p. 352). This implies a considerable degree of pro-activeness; but my investigations of the Italian scene indicate much stemmed from neighbourly fears and denunciations. We agree that those suspects of magical and

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superstitious practices were likely to be more leniently treated by inquisition tribunals than by other clerical or lay courts.

6 Despite the above quibbles and frustrations over certain omissions I applaud this valiant attempt at a global analysis of the inquisitions as institutions. His comparative approach brings out their considerable impact socially and politically in Spain, Portugal and their colonies; while the public profile of the Roman Inquisition, and the ‘medieval’ or ‘episcopal’ in the Kingdom of Naples was less.

AUTHORS

CHRISTOPHER F. BLACK University of Glasgow [email protected]

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Becker (Peter) and Wetzell (Richard F.), Criminals and their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 492 pp., ISBN 0-521-81012-4 (PB); 978-0-521-81012-8 (HB)

Anja Johansen

REFERENCES

Becker (Peter) and Wetzell (Richard F.), Criminals and their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective, Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 492 pp., ISBN 0-521-81012-4 (PB); 978-0-521-81012-8 (HB)

1 This collected volume of essays grew out of a conference on criminology, which took place in 1998. With a delay of eight years before the publication of the edited book, this cannot unfortunately be regarded as reflecting the current state of the research. However, the merit of this volume lies elsewhere. The collection presents a multidimensional and highly inspiring introduction to a range of themes and approaches related to 19th century criminological thinking. Although only directly referred to in a few contributions, there seems to be an underlying theme concerning the relationship between criminological thinking of the late 19th and early 20th century and the infamous programs of eugenics undertaken by the Third Reich and other extreme attempts to engineer societies so as to minimise, or altogether eliminate, crime and deviance. It is therefore interesting reading not only for specialists on the rise of criminology and researchers generally interested in the history of crime and criminal justice, but also for researchers with a more general interest in the cultural and intellectual background for some of the more extreme attempts in the 20th century to engineer individuals to conform to general social norms for acceptable behaviour.

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2 Together the chapters do not form a coherent narrative of the origins and development of criminological discourse. This is a deliberate choice, and a good one I believe, as any attempt to present a homogenous description of 19th century criminological thinking inevitably creates the illusion of coherency and inner logic where in fact the field is characterised by heterogeneity and much of the writing flawed by inconsistency and poor science. Instead the authors present aspects of criminological discourse in the widest possible sense including the writing of scientists, theorists, self-styled experts and media coverage. What binds the different contributions together is the concept of criminology as an ongoing discourse, tracing its different manifestations in a very Foucauldian sense (Becker & Wetzell, pp. 1-2). While the shadow of Foucault is unmistakable in several contributions (Becker, Salvatore), linking criminological thinking and practice to wider agendas of control through institutionalisation, other contributors use the idea of discourse in a very loose way. The aim is not to discuss methodology or to provide a coherent or comprehensive narrative of the development of criminology in the 19th century.

3 The merit of the book is to bring together researchers with a broad range of perspectives on criminology. However, the papers on the German speaking parts of Europe take a particularly prominent place. The reason for this is not apparent or explicit, but may simply be due to the fact that the original conference in Florence was sponsored by the German Historical Institute in Washington. This does give a rather unbalanced impression: eight contributions out of twenty-one (Lees, Becker, Bondio, Fritzsche, Wetzell, Liang, Finder, Giles). Indeed the final part of the book, with four contributions, is specifically concerned with the development of German criminology from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich. By contrast, Italy is only represented by one contribution (Gibson) despite the fact that one of the running themes in the book is the reception of Lombroso. Four contributions focus on France (Renneville, Mucchielli, Kaluszynski, Artières) while only Wiener focuses on Britain. The rest of the world is represented through four contributions on the US (Rafter), Australia (Garton), Argentina (Salvatore), and Japan (Nakatani). The contributions of Berkowitz, Horn and Caplan refer broadly to major European countries.

4 One major theme is the reception of Lombroso’s theories in countries around the world and how Lombroso’s ideas were adapted, often only very selectively, to local agendas and concepts of “the criminal”. Another main theme is the tension between the practitioners such as medics, prison officials and chaplains, on the one hand, and theorists on sociology and psychology the other, who saw criminal acts as a reflection of faulty social or biological development. Linked to this is the gradual institutionalisation of some approaches, while other approaches were pushed to the margins or abandoned. A third theme revolves around the institutionalisation of particular aspects of criminological knowledge as a field of expertise, before criminology emerged as a recognised academic discipline. The collection also reflects two contributions to the discussions about the opposition between French criminologist and Italian, Lombroso-inspired, criminal anthropologists in which the two contributors (Mucchielli, Kaluszynski) take opposite views on the question of French exceptionalism. Of particular interest for non-specialist readers are the contributions on the dissemination of knowledge on crime to policy makers and to the wider public.

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5 What I miss is some reflection in the introduction about the categories of ‘criminologists’, ‘criminology’, ‘criminal anthropology’ (mainly used in the Lombrosean sense). Becker even distinguishes between ‘criminologists’ (those who theorised over the nature of the criminal) and ‘Criminalists’ (practitioners who worked with convicted criminals). Of course these terms were loosely and inconsistently applied during the 19th century, often by the writers themselves. Criminology was not yet a recognised academic discipline, so theorists and practitioners came with many different backgrounds, having nothing in common other than claims to possess special insight and knowledge into the nature of criminals and how best to deal with them. While it seems a good choice to avoid a coherent narrative of criminological discourse as a succession of main thinkers on the topic, there appears to be a missed opportunity to come with some suggestions to alternative ways to establish the intellectual connection of the multifaceted approach to criminologist thinking during the 19th century. The editors of this volume are in an excellent position to come up with some guiding principles. Unfortunately after reading the volume, this reader was no wiser on that crucial point.

AUTHORS

ANJA JOHANSEN University of Dundee [email protected]

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Informations diverses

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Bergère (Marc), Le Bihan (Jean), Fonctionnaires dans la tourmente. Épurations administratives et transitions politiques à l’époque contemporaine, Genève, Georg, 2009, 299 pp., ISBN 978 2 8257 0976 4. Briegel (Françoise), Farré (Sébastien) (eds), Rites, hiérarchies, Genève, Georg, 2010, 283 pp., ISBN 978 2 8257 0981 8. Caron (Jean-Claude), Stora-Lamarre (Annie), Yvorel (Jean-Jacques), Les âmes mal nées. Jeunesse et délinquance urbaine en France et en Europe (XIXe-XXIe siècles), Besançon, Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2008, 405 pp., ISBN 978 2 84867 244 1. Chauvaud (Frédéric), La chair des prétoires. Histoire sensible de la cour d’assises (1881-1952), Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010, 382 pp., ISBN 978 2 7535 1097 5. Cox (David J.), A Certain Share of Low Cunning. A history of the Bow Street Runners (1792-1839), Portland, Willan Publishing, 2010, 280 pp., ISBN 978 1 84392 773 0. Denys (Catherine), Marin (Brigitte), Milliot (Vincent), Réformer la police. Les mémoires policiers en Europe au XVIIIe siècle, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009, 248 pp., ISBN 978 2 7535 0849 1. Emsley (Clive), The Great British Bobby. A history of British policing from the 18th century to the present, London, Quercus, 2009, 324 pp., ISBN 978 1 84724 947 0. Fogg (Shannon L.), The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France. Foreigners, Undesirables, and Strangers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, 226 pp., ISBN 978 0 521 89944 4. Guignard (Laurence), Juger la folie. La folie criminelle devant les Assises au XIXe siècle, Paris, PUF, Coll. Droit et justice, 2010, 296 pp., ISBN 9 782 130 5 7367 8. Hagenloh (Paul), Stalin’s Police. Public Order and Mass Repression in the USSR (1926-1941), Washington D.C., Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2009, 450 pp., ISBN 978 8018 9182 3. Houte (Arnaud-Dominique), Le métier de gendarme au XIXe siècle , Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010, 319 pp., ISBN 978 2 7535 0988 7. Jaulin (Emmanuel), La gendarmerie dans la guerre d’Algérie. Dépendance et autonomie au sein des forces armées, Panazol, Éditions Lavauzelle, 2009, 496 pp., ISBN 978 2 7025 1505 1.

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Lacchè (Luigi), «Non giudicate». Antropologia della giustizia e figure dell’opinione pubblica tra Otto e Novecento, Casoria, Satura Editrice, 2009, 78 pp., ISBN 978 88 7607 068 6. Pleskoff (Isabelle) (dir.), Préface de Henri Raczymow et postface de Jean-Marc Berlière, Portrait(s) de Victor Zigelman. Belleville. Yiddish. Engagement politique. Le parti. FTP-MOI. Léa. France-Soir. Mémoire de la Résistance, Paris, l’Harmattan, 2009, 178 pp., ISBN 978 2 296 10672 7. Porret (Michel), L’ombre du diable. Michée Chauderon, dernière sorcière exécutée à Genève. Préface d’Alessandro Pastore, Genève, Georg éditeur, 2009, 259 pp., ISBN 978 2 8257 0975 7. Sbriccoli (Mario), Storia del diritto penale e della giustizia. Scritti editi e inediti (1972-2007), Milano, Giuffrè, 2009, 1338 pp., 2 tomes. Tuten (Belle S.), Billado (Tracey L.), Feud, violence and practice. Essays in Medieval Studies in Honor of Stephen D. White, Surrey, Ashgate, 2010, 336 pp., ISBN 978 0 7546 6411 6. Ward (Jennifer R.), Flashback. Drugs and dealing in the Golden Age of the London rave scene, London, Willan Publishing, 2010, 182 pp., ISBN 978 1 84392 791 4. Wenzel (Eric), Justice et religion. Regards croisés: histoire et droit. Actes du Colloque international, Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, Avignon, Éditions Universitaires d’Avignon, 2010, 347 pp.

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