Gender and the Geography of Crime in Nineteenth-Century Leiden and Amsterdam

Abstract

This article builds on recent calls in urban and gender history for a better understanding of the interaction between gender and the urban environment. Its focus is on male and female offending behaviours and their relation to the urban space, specifically the spaces shared by women and men: the home, the street outside of their house, and the main thoroughfares. The article aims to shed light on common practices and understandings between men and women, while highlighting potential differences. The analysis is based on the mapping of offending behaviours recorded by Leiden police court and Amsterdam correctional court in the second half of the nineteenth century. In part, the article confirms what other historians have already shown: women were on average accused of committing an offence closer to their home than men, but they were also very much present in the streets around their house. But the data presented also shows that women and men were more or less mobile according to the time of day, that they shared a common understanding of what their neighbourhood represented, and that work was an important reason why women would commute outside of their neighbourhood. Overall, the article confirms the value of a nuanced view of gender and the use of the urban space.