“Nipping crime in the bud”: local magistracy and the criminalisation of juveniles in Staffordshire and Shropshire c.1810-c1860.

This thesis examines the criminalisation of juveniles in two neighbouring English counties – Staffordshire and Shropshire – between circa 1810 and 1860. It builds on the investigations of Peter King and Heather Shore to offer a new understanding of how juvenile behaviour and childhood were redefined in the nineteenth century and how toleration of once minor acts of misbehaviour diminished when fears surrounding idle youths intensified as society was transformed by urbanisation and industrialisation. It reappraises explanations behind the seemingly growing numbers of committals found in each county and the role of magistrates in creating this result, their self-awareness of their role and their efforts to find alternative penal regimes more suitable for a subsection of vulnerable criminals. Underutilised newspaper records of impassioned Quarter Session debates are used to illuminate the often-dry reporting of official committee records and to reveal the motivations and different opinions held by men who are often erroneously portrayed in previous histories as a homogenous entity shaped by desires of control and paternalism. Combining cross-referenced official court documents, census records, and colonial transportation logs allows a closer picture of the juveniles themselves to be uncovered – including their experiences in Tasmania – and fleshes out the criminal biographies of individuals that are otherwise obscured in official court documentation or anonymously represented in statistics in classical historical approaches. This thesis offers quantitative research alongside new perspectives with which to measure the rhetoric of the magistrates in charge of juvenile justice. Utilising micro-historical methods of record linkage provides a deep picture of individual juvenile criminals and allows their criminal associations to be reconstructed. It critiques the accuracy of the ruling magistrates’ assumptions about juvenile criminals and assesses the reasons behind decisions to alter the course of juvenile punishment in mid-Victorian England. The actions of the most impassioned magistrates exacerbated the numbers of juveniles committed to gaols and, as local justice was largely overseen by these men, it is only through local investigation that the move towards reform and reclamation in the mid-century can be fully understood. This thesis analyses the mechanisms behind juvenile criminalisation during the nineteenth century and the role of the local magistracy through a multi-perspective analysis that combines both traditional and novel methods of historical study.

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