Taking Nellie Johnson's fingerprints: Prostitutes and legal identity in early twentieth-century London

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 65, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 96-116

  Laite, Julia A ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; DERMATOGLYPHICS; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; EMPLOYMENT; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; HISTORY; IDENTITY; JURISPRUDENCE; LEGAL ASPECT; POLICE; PROSTITUTION; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL STATUS; SOCIOECONOMICS; UNITED KINGDOM; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

DERMATOGLYPHICS; EMPLOYMENT; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; IDENTIFICATION (PSYCHOLOGY); JUDICIAL ROLE; LONDON; POLICE; PROSTITUTION; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL CONDITIONS; SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WOMEN, WORKING;

EID: 41749095415     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: 14774569     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/dbm067     Document Type: Article

References (108)

1. For the wartime increase in cafes in North Soho see the Report of Superintendent Billings, D Division, 6 Nov. 1916, The National Archives, London (TNA), MEPO 2/2714. For concentrated areas of prostitution see Assistant Commissioner to Monro, 14 Feb. 1889, TNA, MEPO 2/209; 'Observations on the Café Royale', 2 Oct. 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/10108; Superintendent C Division to Horwood, 26 June 1920 and Superintendent D Division to Horwood, 28 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
2. Report of Superintendent Brind, 3 Feb. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
3. Thomas Holmes, Pictures and Problems frorn London's Police Courts, London, 1900.
4. Report of PC Bull, 1 Feb. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
5. Report of the Chief Constable of C Division, 8 Oct. 1906, TNA, MEPO 2/ 1086.
6. Report of PC Watson, 1 Feb. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
7. Report of PC Bull, 1 Feb. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
8. Report of PC Walker, 6 May 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
9. For the Cass case see 'Arrest of Miss Elizabeth Cass', TNA, HO 144/472/ X15239.
10. For later reference thereto see for instance 'Memorandum from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner', 19 Dec. 1901, TNA, MEPO 2/8835;
11. Royal Commission upon the Duties of the Metropolitan Police, Report London, 1908 (ed 4256);
12. Anonymous Report, 'Measures for Dealing with Prostitutes', 2 Feb. 1917, TNA, MEPO 2/1720.
13. Barrett to the Home Office, 21 Jan. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
14. Barrett's Comments on Brind's Report, 19 Feb. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
15. Report of Bradshaw, 3 Feb. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
16. Vagrancy Act, 1824, section 3.
17. Metropolitan Police Act, 1839, section 54.
18. Towns and Police Clauses Act, 1847.
19. For reference to Britain as a nation with a regulated system, see Timothy J. Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920, New York and London, 1992;
20. for the repeal of the CD Acts portrayed as an end to legal labelling, see Lesley A. Hall, Hidden Anxieties: Male Sexuality, 1900-1950, Cambridge, 1991.
21. For studies which have examined non-regulated systems of control see Linda Mahood, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century London, 1990;
22. and Stefan Petrow, Policing Morals: The Metropolitan Police and the Home Office, 1870-1914, Oxford, 1994.
23. See for instance Frank Mort, Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England since 1830 (1987), 2nd edn, London, 2000
24. and Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State, Cambridge, 1980.
25. See the Departmental Committee on Street Offences, minutes of evidence, 1928-1929, TNA, HO 326/7 and 326/8.
26. R. v De Munck [JP 1 KB 635], Court of Criminal Appeal, 1918.
27. Alison Neilans, 'Clause three, a rejoinder', The Shield, December, 1917, p. 401.
28. Julia Ann Laite, 'The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, Abolitionism, and Prostitution Law in Britain, 1915-1959', Women's History Review 17: 2, 2008 (forthcoming).
29. Association for Moral and Social Hygiene (AMSH), Committee of Enquiry into the State of Sexual Morality, testimony of Mary Gordon, 13 Jan. 1918, London, The Women's Library, 3AMS/B.
30. Mary Gordon, Penal Discipline, London, 1922, p. 97.
31. Neilans, 'Clause 3, a rejoinder', Shield, p. 402.
32. See for instance Edward J. Bristow, Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain since 1700, Dublin, 1977;
33. Deborah Gorham, 'The "Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" Re-Examined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late-Victorian England', Victorian Studies 21, 1978, pp. 353-80,
34. Mort, Dangerous Sexualities;
35. Petrow, Policing Morals;
36. and Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society.
37. AMSH Committee of Enquiry into ... Sexual Morality, testimony of Mary Gordon, 13 Jan. 1919; Miss Costin, 27 Jan. 1919; Mr. E. Basil Wedmore, 27 Jan. 1919; Inspector Harburn, 10 March 1919; and W. Clarke Hall, 2 June 1919.
38. Duval v G. L. Denman, 1901 (65 J.P. 297).
39. Bradshaw to the Home Office, 21 Jan. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
40. Departmental Committee on Street Offences, Minutes of Evidence, Hugh Macmillan, 2 Dec. 1927, London, TNA, HO 326/7.
41. Johnson CRO File, as cited by Tottenham Court Road Station to the Home Office, 21 Jan. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
42. As previous note.
43. F. E. C. Gregory, 'Henry, Sir Edward Richard, baronet (1850-1931)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, Oxford, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/ 33822 (accessed 18 July 2006).
44. Sir Edward Henry, Classification and Uses of Fingerprints (1900), 6th edn, London, 1928.
45. Anne Joseph, 'Anthropometry, the Police Expert, and the Deptford Murders: The Contested Introduction of Fingerprinting for the Identification of Criminals in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain', in Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World, ed. Jane Caplan and John Torpey, Princeton and Oxford, 2001, pp. 164-84.
46. Henry, Fingerprints, pp. 14-16.
47. Horwood, Police Circular, 19 June, 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
48. See for instance Gordon, Penal Discipline, p. 114.
49. Lucy Bland, 'In the Name of Protection: The Policing of Women in the First World War', in Women-in-law: Explorations in Law, Family and Sexuality, ed. Julia Brophy and Carol Smart, London, 1985;
50. Philippa Levine, '"Walking the Streets in a Way No Decent Woman Should": Women Police in World War I', Journal of Modern History 66, 1994, pp. 34 78;
51. and Angela Woollacott, '"Khaki Fever" and its Control: Gender, Class, Age and Sexual Morality on the British Homefront in the First World War', Journal of Contemporary History 29, 1994, pp. 325-47.
52. Judith Walkowitz, 'Going Public: Shopping, Street Harassment, and Streetwalking in Late Victorian London', Representations 62, 1998, pp. 1-30;
53. Claire Langhamer, Women's Leisure in England, 1920 1960, Manchester, 2000;
54. Selina Todd, Young Women, Work, and Family in England, 1918-1950, Oxford, 2005, pp. 195-224.
55. Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England, Oxford, 1996, pp. 13-31;
56. and Tony Henderson, Disorderly Women in eighteenth-century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730 1830, London, 1999.
57. Superintendent B Division to Horwood, 26 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
58. Ewark to Horwood, 25 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
59. Correspondence between Home Office and Mr. Newton of the Scientific Instrument Company, 19 May 1914, TNA, HO 45/12915.
60. Jill Liddington has explored the issue of the surveillance and photography of suffragist women in, 'Era of Commemoration: Celebrating the Suffrage Centenary', History Workshop Journal 59, 2005, pp. 204-09. In the face of surveillance, suffragists appear to have also adopted the tactics of women like Nellie Johnson, employing aliases to escape the police.
61. Report of Superintendent, Marylebone Lane, 26 Jan. 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/ 9998.
62. Henry, Fingerprints, throughout.
63. On the Bertillon system see Simon Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, London, 2001, pp. 32-51.
64. Mary Gordon, 'The Tattooed Woman', Penal Discipline, pp. 129-43.
65. Jane Caplan and John Torpey, Introduction, Documenting Individual Identity, p. 12.
66. Boyle to Dryhurst, 23 Feb. 1914, TNA, HO 45/12915.
67. Boyle to Henry, 20 Feb. 1914, TNA, HO 45/12915.
68. Horwood comments, 18 May 1920 and Hammett to Horwood, 7 July 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
69. Horwood to Collins, 19 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
70. Clark to Horwood, 25 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
71. Hammett to Horwood, 7 July 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
72. Hopkins to Horwood, 25 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
73. Bastable to Horwood, 26 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
74. Superintendent D Division to Horwood, 26 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
75. Bastable to Horwood, 26 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
76. Paula Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860-1914, London, 2000.
77. AMSH Committee of Enquiry into ... Sexual Morality, testimony of Mary Gordon, 13 Jan. 1918.
78. Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, section 2 (1) and section 3 (2).
79. Licensing Consolidation Act, 1910, section 76.
80. See also Clubs (Temporary Provision) Act, 1915, section 2, which imposes similar liabilities.
81. Ewark to Horwood, 25 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
82. Hewit to Horwood, 26 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
83. Horwood to the CID, 31 May 1921.
84. Josephine Butler, 'An appeal to the people of England on the recognition and superintendence of prostitution by governments', in The Sexuality Debates, ed. Sheila Jeffreys, London, 2001, Women's Source Library, vol. 6, p. 187.
85. Horwood to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), 31 May 1921, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
86. Cole, Suspect Identities, pp. 154-5.
87. For a discussion of the controversies surrounding the system's implementation from an administrative standpoint, see Joseph, 'Anthropometry, the Police Expert and the Deptford Murders', pp. 164-83.
88. Horwood to the Fingerprint Bureau, 19 June 1920, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
89. Horwood, Police Circular, 4 April 1921, London, TNA, MEPO 2/9998.
90. Petrow, Policing Morals, pp. 117-75.
91. The Judicial Statistics of England and Wales, 1893-1930.
92. Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Annual Reports, 1885-1930.
93. V. A. C. Gatrell, 'The Decline of Theft and Violence in Victorian and Edwardian England', in Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in western Europe since 1500, ed. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman and Geoffrey Parker, London, 1980.
94. Hera Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex and Contraception, 1800-1975, Oxford, 2004;
95. Lesley A. Hall, Hidden Anxieties: Male Sexuality, 1900-1950, Cambridge, 1991;
96. Steve HumphTies, A Secret World of Sex: Forbidden Fruit: the British Experience 1900-1950, London, 1988;
97. Alison Neilans, 'Changes in Sexual Morality', in Our Freedom and its Results, by Five Women, ed. Ray Strachey, London, 1936.
98. Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Annual Reports, 1885-1930.
99. Judicial Statistics of England and Wales and Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Annual Reports, 1885-1930. The average for the period 1918-1930 was obtained by omitting the year 1923, in which a controversial enquiry resulted in uncharacteristically low arrest statistics.
100. Departmental Committee on Persistent Offenders, Report, London, 1932, pp. 38-39.
101. See for instance William Acton, Prostitution: Considered in its Moral, Social and Sanitary Aspects (1857), London, 1972,
102. and Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, London, 1851.
103. Judicial Statistics of England and Wales.
104. Lucia Zedner, Women, Crime and Custody in Late Victorian England, Oxford, 1991.
105. These attempts included the recommendations of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the law relating to the protection young girls from artifices to induce them to lead a corrupt life, Sessional Papers, ix (448), 1881; a Bill to make further provisions for the protection of women and girls, 1884, paper 271, vol.11 page 395, sec.10; an 1888 Bill which proposed an amendment to the Vagrancy Act of 1824 to allow residents to demand police action in the case of general public nuisance and in the absence of any specific case of annoyance or solicitation, 1884, 125 VII 63; and the Sexual Offences and Criminal Law Amendment Bills of 1917 and 1918, reported on by a Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, Sessional Paper, iii (142), 1918.
106. Street Offences Act, 1959, section 1.
107. Documenting Individual Identity, ed. Caplan and Torpey, throughout.
108. Henry, Fingerprints, p. 5.