Tag Archives: crime
Punishing Forgery with Death.
William Dodd, an Anglican priest, was imprisoned for counterfeiting and then hanged in 1777. Image Courtesy Getty.
Is the death penalty ever acceptable? And, if so, what kind of criminals should it apply to?
In early nineteenth century England, legal scholar Phil Handler writes, it was clear to authorities that death was an appropriate penalty for forgery.
According to Handler, starting in the early eighteenth century, more laws were passed concerning forgery than any other crime.
Given the growing commercial economy’s reliance on paper credit, both in the form of government currency and in notes of credit offered by private parties, forgery posed a “peculiarly subversive threat” with the potential to topple the entire economic system.
In 1797, a shortage of gold bullion pushed the Bank of England to begin issuing paper notes in smaller denominations of one and two pounds, without being backed up by gold reserves. With the wide circulation of these bills came a rise in forgeries, and forgery prosecutions.
From 1805 to 1818, convicted forgers or counterfeiters represented almost one in three people executed in London and Middlesex, and one in five across England and Wales.
Read on via Source: Punishing Forgery with Death | JSTOR Daily
Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies.
Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1757 to 1795, was an annual directory of prostitutes then working in Georgian London. A small, attractive pocketbook, it was printed and published in Covent Garden, and sold for two shillings and sixpence.
A contemporary report of 1791 estimates that it sold about 8,000 copies annually.
Each edition contains entries which describe the physical appearance and sexual specialities of about 120–190 prostitutes who worked in and around Covent Garden.
Through their erotic prose, the lists’ entries review some of these women in lurid detail.
While most compliment their subjects, some are critical of bad habits, and a few women are even treated as pariahs, perhaps having fallen out of favour with the lists’ authors, who are never revealed.
Samuel Derrick is the man normally credited for the design of Harris’s List, possibly having been inspired by the activities of a Covent Garden pimp, Jack Harris.
A Grub Street hack, Derrick may have written the lists from 1757 until his death in 1769; thereafter, the annual’s authors are unknown.
Throughout its print run it was published pseudonymously by H. Ranger, although from the late 1780s it was actually printed by three men, John and James Roach, and John Aitkin.
As the public’s opinion began to turn against London’s sex trade, and with reformers petitioning the authorities to take action, those involved in the release of Harris’s List were in 1795 fined and imprisoned.
That year’s edition was therefore the last to be published, although by then its content was less euphemistic, lacking the originality of earlier editions. Modern writers tend to view Harris’s List as erotica; in the words of one author, it was designed for “solitary sexual enjoyment”.
Read more via Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies – Wikipedia
“Kindy Kopped”.
Grubby Hartshorne had a real perk going.
The Grubs had a swimming pool in his backyard and the water needed to fill it would have cost a lot back in the 1980s (imagine the cost today)
But Grubby had a scam which had been suggested by Alex Riley.
At night the Grubs would climb over the back fence, connect his hose to the Kindergarten tap and fill his pool up with kindy water overnight.
Elsdon decided our Grubby needed to be taught a lesson. He got on the Foreman’s phone and rang Grubs in the Intertype room.
Hartshorne answered and Elsdon said he was from the Water Board, following up a complaint from the Kindergarten behind Grub’s place.
He said that they had witnesses who had seen an overweight and balding man clambering over the kindy fence at night with a garden hose which he connected to the Kindergarten taps.
Well, Grubby absolutely SHIT himself. We were peeping through the door and could see the beads of sweat pouring down his face.
After a few minutes contemplating his future at Yatala Gaol he looked up saw us and realised that he’d been truly had.
Did he stop pilfering the water from the poor little kiddies? Don’t know!
Warren
Quicksand,1950.
Quicksand is a 1950 American film noir. It is a crime film starring Mickey Rooney and Peter Lorre.
It is a story about a young garage mechanic’s descent into crime after he steals $20 to take his girlfriend on a date.
It was directed by Irving Pichel shortly before he was blacklisted by McCarthy’s House on Un-American Activities Committee used to block screenwriters from obtaining employment in the film industry.
This film was a chance for Rooney to play a substantial role that differentiated him from his widely regaled Andy Hardy goody, “good boy” image. It was considered by many to be one of Rooney’s best ever roles.
Source: Quicksand (1950 film) – Wikipedia
The day a young John Monash had a yarn with Ned Kelly.
Photo: General Sir John Monash (1865-1931.
Famous World War One Australian General Sir John Monash was once asked to name two highlights of his life, his reply is absolutely fascinating.
Sir John replied that one was when he called a council of war just before we broke the Hindenburg line and he other was when he had a yarn with Ned Kelly.
Photo: Ned Kelly, Bushranger (1854-1880).
Sir John gave details on the story about Ned Kelly:
“I was a school kid at Jerilderie,” explained Sir John, “when Ned Kelly and his gang took possession of the township and held it for three days.”
While in Jerilderie Ned Kelly and his men went to some of the hotels in the town, treating everyone civilly.
Bushranger Hart took a watch from the Reverend J. B. Gribble, but returned it to Gribble at Ned Kelly’s request.
The group left about 7 pm in an unknown direction. The disarmed and unhorsed police had no other means of following the gang.
Sir John continued, “That was in February,1879. Like all the other youngsters in the place, I was keen to get a glimpse of the famous outlaw.
So I went round in the morning, rather early, to the hotel which Ned had made his headquarters, and saw him come out of the place and squat on the verandah’s edge to have a smoke.
He beckoned me over, asked me my name, and so forth, and then gave me a short lecture.
A Sunday school superintendent couldn’t have given me better advice as to human conduct..”
Source: Trove Australia and Dennis Grover.
‘They Live by Night’ 1948 directed by Nicholas Ray.
Nicholas Ray’s astonishingly self-assured, lyrical directorial debut opens with title cards and lush orchestrations over shots of a boy and a girl in rapturous mutual absorption: “This boy … and this girl … were never properly introduced … to the world we live in …” A shriek of horns suddenly obliterates all other sound – their shocked faces both turn toward the camera, and the title appears: They Live by Night.
Meet 23-year-old escaped killer Bowie Bowers and his farm-girl sweetheart Keechie Mobley (Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell), in an imaginary idyll of peace and contentment that will never come true for them.
Bowie, jailed at 16 for killing his father’s murderer, has known nothing but jail, and is still a boy.
Having escaped the prison farm with two older bank robbers – T-Dub and the psychotic Indian Chicamaw “One-Eye” Mobley (Jay C Flippen, Howard da Silva) – he feels loyalty-bound to tag along on their crime spree.
Keechie is Chicamaw’s niece, and soon circumstances force them to lam it cross-country at the same time as they tremblingly discover love for the first time.
Somehow all the planets aligned for Ray, a novice director with an achingly poetic-realist vision of Depression-era Texas and the determination to implement it wholesale: a perfect source novel, Edward Anderson’s Thieves Like Us; and exactly the right combination of producer (John Houseman), studio (RKO) and sympathetic studio head (Dore Schary).
The result is luminous in its imagery and highly sophisticated in its musical choices.
John Patterson
Source: Top 10 film noir | Film | The Guardian
Alphonse Bertillon, Invented the Mug Shot in 1912.
Pictured: Alphonse Bertillon – Archives of Service Regional d’Identité Judiciaire, Préfecture de Police, Paris via Jebulon on Wikipedia
While the photographing of criminals began in the 1840s shortly after the invention of photography, it was not until 1888 that French police officer Alphonse Bertillon standardised the process.
Mug shots, which were typically taken after a person was arrested, allowed law enforcement to have a photographic record of an arrested individual to allow for identification purposes by victims, the public and investigators.
Alphonse Bertillon (24 April 1853 – 13 February 1914) was a French police officer and biometrics researcher who applied the anthropological technique of anthropometry to law enforcement creating an identification system based on physical measurements.
Anthropometry was the first scientific system used by police to identify criminals.
Before that time, criminals could only be identified by name or photograph. The method was eventually supplanted by fingerprinting.
Source: Picture of the Day: A Mug Shot of the Inventor of the Mug Shot (1912) «TwistedSifter
Laura, a classic whounnit (1944).
I’ve seen Otto Preminger’s “Laura” three or four times, but the identity of the murderer doesn’t spring quickly to mind. That’s not because the guilty person is forgettable but because the identity is so arbitrary: It is not necessary that the murderer be the murderer.
Three or four other characters would have done as well, and indeed if it were not for Walter Winchell we would have another ending altogether.
Film noir is known for its convoluted plots and arbitrary twists, but even in a genre that gave us “The Maltese Falcon,” this takes some kind of prize.
“Laura” (1944) has a detective who never goes to the station; a suspect who is invited to tag along as other suspects are interrogated; a heroine who is dead for most of the film; a man insanely jealous of a woman even though he never for a moment seems heterosexual; a romantic lead who is a dull-witted Kentucky bumpkin moving in Manhattan penthouse society, and a murder weapon that is returned to its hiding place by the cop, who will “come by for it in the morning.”
The only nude scene involves the jealous man and the cop. That “Laura” continues to weave a spell — and it does — is a tribute to style over sanity.
No doubt the famous musical theme by David Raksin has something to do with it: The music lends a haunted, nostalgic, regretful cast to everything it plays under, and it plays under a lot.
There is also Clifton Webb’s narration, measured, precise, a little mad: “I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass.
It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being left in New York. For Laura’s horrible death, I was alone. I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only one who really knew her.
”It is Clifton Webb’s performance as Waldo Lydecker that stands at the heart of the film, with Vincent Price (see above), as Laura’s fiancee Shelby Carpenter, nibbling at the edges like an eager spaniel.
Both actors, and Judith Anderson as a neurotic friend, create characters who have no reality except their own, which is good enough for them.
The hero and heroine, on the other hand, are cardboard. Gene Tierney, as Laura, is gorgeous, has perfect features, looks great in the stills, but never seems emotionally involved; her work in “Leave Her to Heaven” (1945) is stronger, deeper, more convincing.
Dana Andrews, as Detective Mark McPherson, stands straight, chain-smokes, speaks in a monotone, and reminded the studio head Daryl F. Zanuck of “an agreeable schoolboy.”
As actors, Tierney and Andrews basically play eyewitnesses to scene-stealing by Webb and Price.
Read on via Laura Movie Review & Film Summary (1944) | Roger Ebert
