History 3152: British History Since the 17th Century

I think the person who made that comment in class made a very good point. It may be true that more crimes were committed in the poorer areas of London, but the labels were still biased. That is, even today individuals of the upper and middle classes commit crimes, but not as a matter of survival. I have to believe that the same was true in 18th and 19th century Britain. However, Charles Booth's map didn't label and of the wealth areas as "white collar criminals." If he was to use qualitative labels such as this to identify one area of London, he should have been consistent and used qualitative labels to identify every other region.

I couldn't agree more, there is an SUV plague on this city and the nation. They should be outlawed immediately. But why stop there, the 52 foot Mac trucks that roam the nation causing massive accidents, pumping in excessive diesel fuel and out clouds of noxious fumes should be thrown out. Pedestrians and bikers stand no chance against these road monsters. Then the airtravel should be outlawed, for this is by far the most fuel innefficent form of travel on the planet.

This, as well as the smoking ban invasions of freedom. No one should tell me that I cannot drive my jeep just like no one should tell me that people cannot smoke in my bar/restaurant. Polititains have simply kicked smokers out to the curb (where it gets pretty cold here in MN) so they can drink how they want to drink. The new kind of prejudice is here, watchout for the firehoses smokers...

I knew someone once who was not able to pay rent and eat more than once a day. He was working fulltime, had a position of responsibility with his company (working in retail) and, because of the weird hours he was given was unable to get a second job to supplement his income. Eventually, his situation got so bad that he started stealing from the company, a little bit here, a little bit there, just enough to buy lunch today. Eventually it all added up and he was caught. He ended up in jail. He was able to justify it because it was just a little from a HUGE company-it was just enough for lunch. He worked hard, he'd put in multiple years, he was getting paid next to nothing. So, yeah, I can see where a desperation to just survive could lead a person to criminal acts. If your family was starving and you had an opportunity to steal a value meal from McDonald's, wouldn't you?

Crime is a complex issue. There are many theories for what causes crime. Money isn't the cause of crime. People can argue that LACK of money is. Stealing food to feed your family is one thing however, you have to also have some personal responsibility. For the above poster who had a "friend" who lived above his means and had to resort to stealing...That was still a choice. No one forced him to work and live where/how he did. I don't know this person so I'm hesitant to speculate more. In many ways White Collar crime is much more dangerous. Due to the amounts involved and numbers of people effected. Society has us believe that poverty and violent crime is the worst. In many ways it is.
Okay, you wanna talk class biases? How about overdraft fees at a bank? It's clear that the person doesn't have the money, so a bank wants to charge you more of what they know you don't have any of. Oh yeah, cigarettes and lottery tickets. These are also items I think are geared towards lower class markets. To reference another poster...We can't ban trucks or the trucking industry. That is the backbone of American economy. Virtually every manufactured good in this country is transported by Semi-truck at some point. That is why high fuel costs effect the price of essentially everything.

Crime is a complex issue. There are many theories for what causes crime. Money isn't the cause of crime. People can argue that LACK of money is. Stealing food to feed your family is one thing however, you have to also have some personal responsibility. For the above poster who had a "friend" who lived above his means and had to resort to stealing...That was still a choice. No one forced him to work and live where/how he did. I don't know this person so I'm hesitant to speculate more. In many ways White Collar crime is much more dangerous. Due to the amounts involved and numbers of people effected. Society has us believe that poverty and violent crime is the worst. In many ways it is.
Okay, you wanna talk class biases? How about overdraft fees at a bank? It's clear that the person doesn't have the money, so a bank wants to charge you more of what they know you don't have any of. Oh yeah, cigarettes and lottery tickets. These are also items I think are geared towards lower class markets. To reference another poster...We can't ban trucks or the trucking industry. That is the backbone of American economy. Virtually every manufactured good in this country is transported by Semi-truck at some point. That is why high fuel costs effect the price of essentially everything.

I agree with the previous posting regarding the overdraft charges by the bank. It would seem that everywhere in the world laws or regulations were going against the lower income households rather than higher income households. Everywhere you look you get more benefits for having more money. If you are purchasing a house or a car and you are going to finance it, person with higher amount of money in the bank and credit score will receive lower interest rate than a person with lower income. Thus poor always pays twice. In regards to crime and Charles Booth’s map and the demographics of crime, is that, crimes happen at all levels of society. A rich person might hire a poor person to kill someone for money and the poor gets caught. Rich person still is at fault. I believe that no matter where you come from society, if you are pushed enough, if you are at a limit you might commit that crime.

I believe that the definition of crime varies amongst who is committing the actual crime. I believe that people with money as well as celebrities get away with a lot of crimes that us normal citizens would be locked up in seconds for. RIch people have enough money to buy themselves out of everything and every trouble they get themselves into. Look at how many listings of celebrities getting caught for drunk driving and the next day they're out driving drunk again! There are obvious double standards for the rich and the poor. Who ever said it was right, the rich makes up the laws to protect themselves from the poor "criminals." my theory on criminals is that there is always two sides to every story. One person might see it as someone stealing from a store,from that person's point of view, they might be getting food to feed their family. i think it is very reasonable to do it. i dont think that big corporate grocery stores like Cubs or Rainbow would miss a loaf of bread, but that loaf of bread can help a family from starving.

I wonder if the entire university system is meant to limit the number and the type of people admitted to middle class. High tuition is financial segregation for the lower classes and when people say things like above about the guy who stole from the company that he should change his situation, how can you? If you cant afford to go to college, affirmative action isnt worth shit. The middle class wants to maintain its white english speaking majority; they dont want to live next door to the psychiatrist who grew up in Compton moving packs. If America is supposed to be so great because of the large middle class and the fluidity between the tiers of society, people want that middle class, a major representative identifying feature of America, to be white. This is why we have immigration problems. We talk about how we are "liberating" Iraq and bringing democracy to the world, yet we wont give our southern neighbors the chance to rise above poverty. No wonder America is hated . . .cultural diversity is not the end of the world

(this is a continuation of the previous comment i posted) Also I wonder if the requirement to get a good job is a piece of paper called a diploma that you spend thousands of dollars obtaining. I am not saying education is unnecessary, I actually think it is essential but I have a friend who has six years of college under her belt but in various fields so she doesnt have a degree. We college students who have jobs on the side will work really hard for four to five years, get a degree then get paid well for the rest of our lives but there are people who will work hard everyday and still not make enough to get by. Does their hard, physical labor not count for anything?

What surprises me the most about the double standard that views the lower class as habitual criminals is the length to which they will go to enforce it. The poor law forced people into prisons and workhouses, though it seems that providing them the basic necessities would be more cost-effective and beneficial to society on the whole. Exiling criminals to Australia and other remote lands also seems like overkill. It is true that Booth's map was inconsistent in identifying crime. Still, poverty and violent crime remain a serious problem to this day. The United States imprisons more people per capita than any other nation, and the demographics of the prison population indicate the inequalities that still exist. The "American dream," and to that extent, the goals of Britain at this time, both have noble ideas about how to create wealth and enrich humanity, but they both create friction and resentment. The United States are culturally most similar to the rest of the English-speaking world, especially Canada and Australia. British colonies in North America and Australia were established under corporate charters with the intention of harvesting raw materials for the good of the crown. Because the markets are still built on extraction, they require heavy machinery capable of traveling long distances (trucking is the backbone of the economy). It is certainly possible to scale down the size of vehicles and make them more efficient, but the economies still require a great deal of energy to run. This has been done in the last half century mainly through legislation; Jimmy Carter made a speech about people taking the initiative and "tightenting the belt" and received a great deal of jeering. Society is becoming increasingly complex. It is my view that people must find innovative solutions, because the government cannot have the consent of the governed without input.

I think that there is some psychology involved in this issue of crime in poorer areas of London and the demographics of people in prison. People often times behave the same way as the people around them do, in many cases you act how your friends do. If a person is constantly in or around poverty situations and see people stealing, then they are much more likely to participate in these types of activities as well. It does not seem morally wrong to steal if you need it to survive and with everyone around you doing the same thing, it makes it easier. It is also hard to rise out of these situations which places the area of higher crime in a perpetual cycle of crime. A wealthy or middle class person is not going to want to move into run down or poverty stricken neighborhoods. Typically children end up in the same social class as thier parents were in and it takes a strong person to rise above thier situation because there are so many obstacles to overcome.

I do agree that there was more crime in the poverty-striken areas in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, I think the bias is shown in the fact that he catagorizes these people based on their criminal activity, whereas he catagorizes the wealthy areas based on how much money they have. If he was to avoid bias, he would have kept a constant theme between the two and said that the upper class areas were "less likely to commit crimes" or something else relating to the criminal activity of the area. It is similar to today's society, though, that the upper class complains about the crime in poor areas, but continues to make laws favoring the upper class. I agree that the people who commit/committed the crimes then and now oftentimes were almost forced to by the economic strains of not having the means to feed themselves. More so during that timeframe, it was nearly impossible to change your economic situation- the poor remained poor, and the rich remained rich.

I think that your example of SUVs and society is very accurate. In the original post, you compare how the upper and middle classes make the laws for their protection and how they also "have" the SUVs to protect themselves on the road. In other words, the laws and the SUVs are made for their best interests; in a way ingnoring the lower class. I find it interesting to note, though, that both are there for funtional porposes as well (I'm sure there are a couple examples of purely aesthetic SUV purchaces as well too, though). In the SUV/large vehicle example: large families, need for fast travel, trucking for businesses, lots of cargo are legitimate reasons for buying a SUV. In the real world example: illegal theft, illegal killing and more are all appropiate reasons for making the law. In both cases there are good purposes for the object (SUV or law), even if it doesn't fit into everyone's lives.
On the other hand, if someone doesn't have enough money to sustain their family, stealing is sometimes the only thing one can do to get through it.
In a completely different train of thought, why do you think Charles Booth made the map the way he did (with the crime comment)? I believe that, first of all, he drew the map from his perspective (as an upper-middle class citizen). This means that, to him, the areas shaded black were the poorest areas of the city. From the crime comment, I am inferring that Booth was someone who didn't steal (because he didn't label his class color with a theft label). Due to this, he drew the map according to what was characteristic the area and that which separated it from other differently-classed areas.
In this manner, I say that there was more crime in the poorer areas of London; at least from Charles Booth's point of view.

Knowing that the Booth map was probably a first of its kind makes it slightly excusable for reasons being that in that time period nothing like it had come before. There was no political correctness back then. If you see more crime documented in certain areas, naturally, you are going to label those areas as being more vicious than others. Our current Booth maps are only labeled differently so as not to offend anyone, but everyone knows where the vicious and semi-criminal are concentrated. We just don't call it that. Obviously there are many more laws to protect the upper classes than the lower classes simply because we live in a capitalist society. If you have money, you have power. If you have power, you have the ability to protect or assert yourself better than those with less power. This was absolutely true of 18th and 19th century Britain as well, and it only served to empower the elite even more. But, at the same time that these class divisions are being articulated in order to empower the elite, the recognition that there are definite problems areas in this society directly contributes to the ability to help nourish and develop them to make them better. Granted, this notion was probably not on the minds of these early demographers, but it is the seed that is planted in order for help to arrive later. Essentially, if these areas are not recognized they are not given any chance at all. This is just another way of interpreting these problems, and I don't think I really agree with it.

I believe with the above statement about power. The people with money in our society have the ability to get out of situations where those without it wouldn't have a chance. We're living in a system that follows the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It's hard to get an education without a lot of money, and if someone's not educated they might not be able to get a decent job. It's hard for them to change their situation too because there are many things that keep pushing them lower and lower. Depression and other medical problems can play into this as well. Also, how are uneducated people supposed to help to change the government in order to better their chances of rising up within society?

Crime is indeed a very complex issue. How can you say that it is right to take something that is not yours?? On that same note, how can you let your family starve?? I disagree that the law is there to protect the middle-class. How often is a huge corporation like Wal-Mart robbed of cash money?? However it seems like every other week the Mom and Pop store down the street is knocked off. Smoking is a menace to society no matter what you compare it with. It should not be allowed in any public place becuase it causes such harmful effects on other people. By using the logic that "I should be able to smoke becuase i want to" is the same logic that state "I should be able to drive golf balls in the middle of a bar." Sure you are having fun and enjoying the benefits because you are smoking/golfing, but who else are you hurting with your second hand smoke. Sure, the other people at the bar don't have to be there, but what about the staff that is serving you. Should that bartender be forced to suck in 250 cigarettes in his 4 hour shift? SUVs are a menace to the road but they aren't catering to anyone. It has to do with how much cost goes into the production of them. Remember, those who build these vehicles need to make a living too. Some families also need the SUV for traveling purposes. You would be hard pressed to find a family of 5 or 6 that would be able to cram all of their belongings into a four door sedan for a two week trip. In the 18th and 19th centuries there was more crime in the poorer areas because a lot of the time the people didn't have jobs or anyway to feed themselves. It is the same these days. There is more crime in poorer areas, but then again why would the middle and upper classes commit crimes? They have no reason to steal or rob others for a living, but I don't see why they themselves should have to deal with working hard all day long and get mugged on the way home by someone who didn't work all day long.

I still believe that there is a certain bias when referring to these people as "semi-criminal." It is true (as someone mentioned above) that people in middle and upper classes commit crimes too, and it is my believe that they're are not as publicized. Also, as I brought up in class, I believe that if Booth wanted to classify each class with the type of "criminal" they are, he should have done so. However, he didn't. He classified them based on INCOME...he should never have mentioned the idea of a "semi-criminal" unless he was going to use the same classification system with the other classes as well.

I agree that Booth did show bias through his labels, however as someone mentioned above, there was no political correctness at the time so I assume he was just documenting what he saw without fear of offending anyone, especially since those who would have viewed his map at the time would not have been from this area and very well may have appreciated knowing where they were “safe� or not. Crime is present in all classes of societies in different ways, but I think that the types of crimes Booth was referring to that “vicious, semi-criminals�would have been committing, were crimes such as stealing that were most likely done out of desperation. I think that it is always easier to take the moral highroad when you are in position of safety and comfort, than when desperation sets in. This could account for the percentage of crime being higher in the less fortunate areas of the community and not just simply because poor people are immoral or criminals by nature. I believe there are some people who are truly in unfortunate situations, and although it is still not right, it is easier to understand why they can commit crimes. However some people need to take responsibility for their own lives and the position that they have put themselves in, and there may be an opportunity for them to change their situation for the better without resorting to crime. Again every situation is different and it is definitely a complicated situation to assess and this is why in American culture today, as opposed to the view of the British in the 18th and 19th centuries, we often see labels as dangerous instead of helpful.

I agree with a lot of what is being said regarding the complexity of crime. We must remember that Booth had a motive for making this map and probably wanted to find a market for it. The upper class are most likely snobby people and this appeals to them. It goes against everything we have ever been taught in America, or is it? Do people not lock their doors when going through a "bad" part of town. We had a discussion in class a few weeks back about pot smoking at Block E, does it not make a difference if you are walking through this area and on the West Bank past Blegen. I would be lying if i said that i feel diffently in these different environments. I feel that we do a lot of the same things today only in a dulled down manner. Booth was generalizing in a form of class profileing. There is constant discussion in today's airports if some form of this is allowed or not.

In relation to the talk of white class crime, i would be interested to know if this even a concept of the time.

As the laws of the 18th and 19th century were made specifically for the elite as a means to protect property, these same people enacted various laws which forced the poor to remain poor. The law makers were interested in protecting their property and status and had no regard for the average commoner. Therefore, in my opinion, the "semi-criminal" had every right to be criminal, if Booth's map was indeed accurate. They had no chance at being heard in a legal manner and in effect, were forced to commit crimes in order to get their point across. Even if they weren't stealing to obtain food for their family, I feel their actions were justified...when a people are stripped of all rights and made to live like animals due to policy, crime is a natural rebellion against this said policy. As far as Booth labeling the poor semi-criminal and basing all other categories on wealth and not on levels of criminal activity, I do not think that this is too big of a deal. Of course he was biased. He was not poor and therefore looked at the poor from the same perspective as the policy makers. Bias is the root of all evil but it is also unavoidable especially in 18th and 19th century Britain.

I don't really see what the big deal is here, of course there is more crime in impoverished areas. It's not "classist" to say that, it's true. It's a fact. There are more crimes committed in poorer areas. Why? Because when there are no means to make enough money to survive in an area legally, people look outside the law for employment. In the heirarchy of human obedience, we place the laws of nature, hunger, starvation, etc. above those made by man, e.g. no robbery or murder.

I agree with the point that often times society labels people in catagories without looking at the social factors that contribute to the problems. Also the elite who rule society rarely acknowlege their own crimes because they are not made illegal. Booth is characteristic of this pattern when he labels lowest income as vicious criminal, then the second lowest income is semi-criminal. But I want to bring up another idea not related to the ones brought up. That is the idea of challenging laws that are in place because they make no sense. I believe prohibition is not working with Marijuana. The Government continues to deny Alcohol is more harmful than Marijuana even though Alchohol causes deaths. This hypocracy destroys the Government's stance on other drugs because youth are reluctant to believe anything adults say about drugs. This Hypocracy is also evident in the labeling of London by Booth and his associates. Booth fails to see how the wealthy commit corporate crimes, and create economic situations that cause the death of the lower classes by pure incompetence. An example is the East India trading company monopolizing the market and keeping the lower classes from entering the international trading industry. Also the failure of the goverment run by the upper class to provide Proper education to its people leading to criminal activity. However depending on the crime these people still must be punished to maintain law and order, so should all criminals. And finally stupid illogical laws such as Marijuana prohibition and other Idiotic laws should be repealed to help society focus on serious crimes not pleasure seeking which according to the puritans is wrong

I was just thinking about which crimes are commited in poorer areas. the crimes of the poor are predominantly violent crimes. But i wouldn't say that there is more crime there, just more violent crimes. The middle and upper class people commit crimes, but have a lower percent of violent crimes. But a CEO stealing company money, and a violent assault are both still crimes, just different categories. This is in todays' time. However in the Victorian age i think also had a lot of violent crimes from the upper classes. the problem was that if you were titled and wealthy, you were pretty much assured of not being convicted, unless your crime was on another member of the ton. But crimes against lower classes, mainly against the women, by upper class, mainly men, were not taken seriously.

(I posted this earlier but it never showed up so this is my attempt to re-create it!)

One very large example in regards to laws that oppress the poor and help the rich would be the minimum wage laws of today. with people working two or three jobs and on minimum wage trying to support a family and most likely want to help children succeed in life more than themselves, the currnt rate is just not high enough. If minimum wage had kept up with inflation it would be around $9/hour instead of the measly $5.50 that it is today (in minnesota anyways and i believe wisconsin). While to the rich the minimum wage is just another way to keep down costs so their profits skyrocket and they can buy that new SUV. I just think that either today or in the 18th c. if people have such a problem with the poor then help them out, help create a better environment for them to succeed. Do not expect them to work 3 jobs in order for them to break even. Of course they are going to feel hatred toward the government and society in general and probably will lie, cheat, and steal as they see fit.

Yes I do believe that there were more crimes in the poorer areas of London. People in these areas have to do what ever was needed to survive in these poor areas, wether it was to be a hooker or sell stolen goods. I am not sure if being a hooker was considered being a crime during the time period, but you probably would not find any hookers in the well off areas. Even to this day when people are finding places to live, most of them want to avoid these ghetto areas because of the crime rate in all these areas. When we watch the news on TV most of these crimes happen in downtown or the lesser off areas in any state or country. If people notice a crime that happens in the wealthier places they are more like "Oh my God, I can't believe it.", but if they were saw it happen in these poorer places, they are more like "I thought so."

There is also a relationship between the property and the laws of the period. I am sure if the rich was to commit any sort of crime, more of the authorities would more likely look the other way if anything was to happen in these better off areas. If a poor person was to commit a crime in the poor area there would be reason to say that the law would deal with it.

I think crime and poverty are completely related. The upper class are rich and powerful, that means one of two things. The system worked for them or that they wrote the rules of the system. Either way, they see no reason to break something that has been so good to them. On the other side of the spectrum, poor people constantly have a uphill battle. They have to constantly struggle with feeling inadequate when they look upon those better off than them, and in then, pyschologically speaking, there is a large chance that they will snap and break the law that has been put in place to subvert them in the first place. This effect is then seen pronouncedly in regions where there are a large concentrations of people facing poverty.