The abduction of innocent Oliver Twist into Fagin's gang with the Artful Dodger is a quintessential image of juvenile crime in the Victorian period. In this seminar we will challenge this image to see the ways that childhood criminals were motivated to commit crimes, as well as how they were treated in a criminal justice system designed for and by adults.

Optional intro material:
BLOG: Matthew White, 'Juvenile crime in the 19th century', British Library (2014)

Questions for discussion:

• Was the juvenile delinquent an invention of the Victorian era?
• Why did gangs of youths cause such concern? What were the reasons that contemporary commentators gave for youth crime?
• Explain differences in motivation for committing crimes and treatment between girls and boys.
• How important was philanthropy or the 'voluntary impulse' in the treatment of juvenile offenders?

Primary reading:

• Parliamentary Papers, Report from the Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles (1852), pp 32-56 (evidence of Matthew Davenport Hill)

• 'The Punishment of Scuttlers', Manchester Guardian, 13 December 1890

Essential secondary reading:

• Jeannie Duckworth, Fagin's Children (2004), ch. 1. (also chapter 2 if you have time!)
• A. Davies, '"These viragoes are no less cruel than the lads": young women, gangs and violence in late Victorian Manchester and Salford', British Journal of Criminology, 39 (1999)

Further reading:

Primary:

• Mary Carpenter, Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes and for Juvenile Offenders (1851), introductory chapter (pp. 1-53)
• James Greenwood, The Seven Curses of London (1869), chapter 8

Secondary:

• K. Bradley, A. Logan and S. Shaw, ‘Youth and Crime: Centennial Reflections on the Children’s Act, 1908’, Crimes and Misdemeanours, 3 (2009)
• Pamela Cox and Heather Shore, Becoming Delinquent
• Jeannie Duckworth, Fagin's Children: Criminal Children in Victorian England
• J. M. Feheney, ‘Delinquency among Irish Catholic children in Victorian London’, Irish Historical Studies (1983) 
  
• J Gillis, 'The evolution of juvenile delinquency', Past and Present, 1975
• Philip Gooderson, 'Noisy and Dangerous Boys' : The Slogging Gang Phenomenon in Late Nineteenth-Century Birmingham', Midland History, 2013
• Drew Gray, Crime, Policing and Punishment in England (chapter on juvenile crime)
• Kelly, Christine, ‘Continuity and Change in the History of Scottish Juvenile Justice’, Law, Crime, and History (2016) 
• Peter King, ‘The Rise of Juvenile Delinquency in England, 1780-1840’, Past and Present, 160 (1998), pp. 116-166.
• Seth Koven, 'Borderlands' in Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, Mothers of a New World
• P. Lerman, ‘Policing Juveniles in London: Shifts in Guiding Discretion, 1893-1968’, British Journal for Criminology, 24 (1984), pp. 168-84
• Anne Logan, ‘Policy Networks and the Juvenile Court: the Reform of Youth Justice, c. 1905-50’, Crimes and Misdemeanours, 3 (2009)
• S.Magarey, ‘The Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Early Nineteenth Century England’, in John Muncie, Gordon Hughes and Eugene McLaughlin (eds), Youth Justice: Critical Readings
• M. May, ‘Innocence and Experience: The Evolution of the Concept of Juvenile Delinquency in the Mid Nineteenth Century’, in John Muncie, Gordon Hughes and Eugene McLaughlin (eds), Youth Justice: Critical Readings
• Geoffrey Pearson, Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears
• Sarah Pickard, Anti-Social Behaviour in Britain chapter 10
• Heather Shore, ‘The Trouble with Boys: Gender and the “Invention” of the Juvenile Offender in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain’, in Margaret Arnot and Cornelie Usborne, Gender and Crime in Modern Europe
• Heather Shore, ‘Cross Coves, Buzzers and General Sorts of Prigs: Crime and the Criminal “Underworld” in the Early Nineteenth Century’, British Journal of Criminology, 39 (1999), 10-24
• Heather Shore, ‘Reforming the Juvenile: Gender, Justice and the Child Criminal in Nineteenth-Century England’, in John Muncie, Gordon Hughes and Eugene McLaughlin (eds), Youth Justice: Critical Readings
•  John Springhall, ‘“Pernicious Reading’? ‘The Penny Dreadful’ as Scapegoat for Late-Victorian Juvenile Crime’ Victorian Periodicals Review (1994)