RICERCA SUI CRIMINI DELLE DONNE DURANTE L'ERA VITTORIANA IN INGHILTERRA, Appunti di Lingua Inglese

Scarica RICERCA SUI CRIMINI DELLE DONNE DURANTE L'ERA VITTORIANA IN INGHILTERRA e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! Women as criminals in the Victorian Age: More than 500 mug shots of Victorian criminals have been made available by the military archives of Great Britain. They provide a shocking insight into the way justice was imposed during the late 1800s. The minor crimes such as theft, and 'domestic housebreaking' were punished very harshly by the law. Examples include Elizabeth Murphy, a19-year-old girl who was sentenced to five years of hard labour in prison and seven years of police supervision for stealing an umbrella. A similar case includes Dorcas Mary Snell’s, she was 45 and she was sentenced to five years of imprisonment with hard labour in 1883 for the theft of a single piece of bacon. The youngest female in the records, 11-year-old Ann McQuillan, was sentenced to four years in prison for 'theft by housebreaking'. Ann is just one of 115 girls under the age of 18 who feature in the collection. The records also detail the lengthy, unforgiving sentences given to women who procured abortions, including Mary Billingham who was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment and hard labour in 1875. Meanwhile, the records detail a number of violent crimes which women were convicted of. Mary Morrison, a 40-year-old servant, threw sulphuric acid over her estranged husband for not paying her weekly allowance. She received five years in 1883 but served only three. While early criminals were often sentenced to transportation, later records, predominantly those post-1860, indicate a prison sentence had become the preferred punishment. This was because Australian free settlers had become increasingly angry about having to compete with convicts for jobs. Those who did receive transportation often saw their sentences overturned and were instead jailed and subsequently paroled.