Although on occasion the Bow Street Runners, then London law enforcement officers, would travel to the countryside where one of their criminal cases might take them, areas of the countryside were policed ​​by magistrates. These, in turn, appointed bailiffs, who imprisoned and linked the criminals to said magistrates. Justices of the peace dealt with minor crimes in minor sessions. The most serious cases were held four times a year in the Quarterly Sessions. The most serious cases were referred by the Quarterly Sessions to sitting judges for hearing in the Assizes.

Magistrates were appointed by the Crown and drawn from the landed aristocracy, country gentry and Anglican clergy, who were often associated with noble houses.

According to Roger Swift, who wrote about the Magistracy in 19th-century England (see below for the full title of the Summary), the country’s magistrates wielded considerable power. Many towns had still been incorporated, so these and the country were the province of the magistrate. “The magistracy exercised a wide range of administrative responsibilities including the licensing of breweries, the inspection of prisons and lunatic asylums, the superintendence of roads, public buildings and charities, and the enforcement of vagrancy laws. … (and they) adjudicated in the settlement of disputes…” (p.75)

These men presumably dealt with justice, but the poor suffered badly and biased magistrates had the children transported to Australia for stealing bread for their ailing mothers. Poaching, carried out to feed starving families whose land had been fenced off by wealthy neighbors, was severely punished. Carrying and hanging were common. Although many gentry landowners employed the poor on their estates, much of the injustice continued until the reforms came during the Victorian period.

Returning soldiers from the Peninsular Wars, who had no family and could afford passage to the country, unable to find employment, found themselves caught up in poaching. The Sabbath breach was frowned upon, so drinkers and gamblers caught like this were placed in stocks on the public ‘green’ for all to see. Abuses occurred in northern areas of England, for example in mining, where workers were paid in food or goods rather than money until well into the Victorian period.

Compared to London, the dangers in the countryside were minor. Despite this, some biased magistrates still treated vagrancy with transportation. Usually this punishment was seven years, but in the case of children, the mothers’ hearts were broken, for if their children survived the boat trip, they were never seen again. Work among the Botany Bay gangs was said to be tough. Only the strong survived and few made it back to England.

The world of Regency England for the poor, the underprivileged and the interlopers, was truly a dangerous place. My heroes and heroines had a lot to face in their fight against oppression.

Abstract: The English urban magistracy and the administration of justice in the early nineteenth century: Wolverhampton 1815-1860. By Roger Swift, Chester College of Higher Education

From: RESwift. ‘Crime, law and order in two English cities in the early nineteenth century: the experience of Exeter and Wolverhampton, 1815-56’ (University of Birmingham Ph.D. Thesis. 1981), 322-51.

Published in: Midlands Historythe leading magazine covering the history of the English Midlands.