NCJ Number
177792
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 39 Issue: 1 Dated: 1999 Pages: 39-55
Date Published
1999
Length
17 pages
Annotation
Records of 88 local court proceedings in and around the industrial town of Middleton, Lancashire, England, in the 1850s and 1860s were used to examine issues of class and gender involved in cases involving sexual and physical violence against women.
Abstract
Results revealed that although Middleton had a large female industrial workforce, these cases mostly associated working women's social identities with home and neighborhood, a contrast with the increasing respectability of working men's organization and politics. The proceedings were published to a courtroom audience and in local newspapers. To the extent that Middleton working women used the courts to obtain redress for the physical or sexual violence of working men, they colluded with the middle-class magistrates' agendas of disciplining the disorderly aspects of working-class masculinity. The analysis also suggested that respectable working-class opinion must also have disapproved of this disorder. However, women avoided total subordination within these sessions, if for no other reason than that they spoke not only to the magistrates but also to their friends and neighbors in the public gallery. Findings indicated that local courts gave working women a public forum to air their grievances, but this forum entailed a real risk to their own reputation. Table, footnotes, and 79 references