Great Wave by Fischer David Hackett;

Author:Fischer, David Hackett;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 1996-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.09 summarizes many studies of homicide in England. It finds evidence of a long secular decline in personal violence. This trend was interrupted by strong upward surges in the fourteenth, sixteenth and twentieth centuries; by a more moderate rise in the eighteenth century; and by smaller and short-lived increases in other periods of stress (1680s, 1860s, etc.). Little evidence exists for the period from 1350 to 1530.

The many problems of source-bias in the evidence are discussed in Ted R. Gurr, “Historical Trends in Violent Crime: A Critical Review of the Evidence,” Crime and Justice 3 (1981) 295–352, the first attempt to draw this material together. Population estimates are also full of difficulty, especially for the Middle Ages.

Other general studies reach similar conclusions as to level and trend. All stress the long decline, and also note (as did Gurr) strong upward surges in the fourteenth, sixteenth and twentieth centuries. See Lawrence Stone, “Interpersonal Violence in English Society, 1300–1983,” Past&Present 102 (1983) 206–215; J. A Sharpe, “The History of Violence in England: Some Observations,” Past & Present 108 (1985) 216–54.

Specific studies include James B. Given, Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England (Stanford, 1977); J. S. Cockburn, “Patterns of Violence in English Society: Homicides in Kent, 1560–1985,” Past&Present 130 (1991)70–106); Joel Samaha, Law and Order in Historical Perspective: The Case of Elizabethan Essex (New York, 1974); V. A C. Gatrell, “The Decline of Theft and Violence in Victorian and Edwardian England,” in Gatrell, et al., Crime and the Law (London, 1980), 342–45.

An excellent survey and bibliography of the very large literature is J. A. Sharpe, “The History of Crime in England, c. 1300–1914, An Overview of Recent Publications,” British Journal of Criminology 28 (1988) 254–67.

A third crime wave followed in the eighteenth century. It was not as strong as other upward movements had been, but it was clearly evident in homicide rates, and more visible in respect to other crimes. In Staffordshire, indictments for theft increased sixfold from the 1760s to the 1790s. In Wiltshire, prosecutions for violations of the game laws multiplied by a factor of seven from the 1760s to the 1790s. See J. S. Cockburn, ed., Crime in England, 1550–1800 (Princeton, 1977), 226; Douglas Hay, “War, Dearth and Theft in the Eighteenth Century: The Record of the English Courts,” Past and Present 95 (1982) 125.

This surge reached its climax in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, then reversed. By 1830, rates of violent crime were falling in England, and in many nations. This decline, once begun, continued with a few interruptions through the Victorian era and well into the early twentieth century. It persisted as late as 1930 in Stockholm, 1940 in Sydney and Chicago, 1950 in London, and 1960 in Calcutta.

In the mid-twentieth century, a fourth crime wave began, and rapidly overswept most nations throughout the world. Dates varied in detail, but crime rates were rising everywhere by 1960, and surged to very high levels after 1970. The magnitude of this increase was very large. Homicide rates in some American cities approached the highest levels of the fourteenth century.

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