Gender and the commission of violent street robbery in Liverpool, 1850–1870. A historic criminology approach

Abstract

Instrumental studies of gender and the accomplishment of violent robbery in the United States (Miller, 1998) United Kingdom (Brookman, Mullins, Bennett, & Wright, 2007) demonstrated that whilst men's and women's motivations for committing street robbery were similar – to fund addiction, hedonism or to supplement meagre incomes – male and female robbers commissioned the offences in markedly different ways. By offering a historical counterpart to modern criminological enquiries, this article examines gender and the enactment of street robbery in Liverpool between 1850 and 1870. By drawing on a database of 260 cases, I argue, in line with the patterns of offending by men and women uncovered in contemporary UK and US criminological studies, that men and women committed street robberies in ways that were shaped by the gender-stratified nature of street life and structured by broader gender and class inequalities. In doing so, the article reflects on how historical criminological approaches can develop our understandings of gender and violent crime across time and place and hopes to encourage future interdisciplinary work in historical criminology, gender and violent crime.