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Ports and Pilferers: London’s Late Georgian Era Docks as Settings for Evolving Material and Criminal Cultures

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Abstract

The chapter proposes that the securitisation of London’s dockland architecture, which gathered pace during the late Georgian era (1799–1815+), imposed a particular form and discipline on port commerce. The construction of enclosed wet docks introduced new monopolistic privileges while removing others; moves justified as promoting the common good but also casting types of property crime such as pilfering as an intrinsic evil. The chapter proposes that London’s new dockyard walls helped frame a moral economy that shaped relations between material and criminal cultures for a period when the age-old customary rights of port workers to a share of the material gains of trade were transformed into more recognisable forms of wage labour.

The author gratefully acknowledges the research assistance and support provided by Oenone Rooksby and Joely-Kym Sobott. Research was also supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    (1799) Act for Rendering More Commodious and For Better Regulating the Port of London (London: House of Commons), p. 1.

  2. 2.

    See I.S. Greeves (1980) London Docks, 1800–1980: A Civil Engineering History, (London: T. Telford) and D. Smith (2001) Engineering Heritage: London and the Thames Valley, (London: Thomas Telford Ltd/(UK) Institution of Civil Engineers), pp. 93–106.

  3. 3.

    See L. Shepherd (2012) The English Monster, (London: Simon & Schuster).

  4. 4.

    J. Broodbank (1921) History of the Port of London, (London: Daniel O’Connor), 2 vols.

  5. 5.

    See P. Newland (2008). The Cultural Construction of London’s East End: Urban Iconography, Modernity and the Spatialisation of Englishness, (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 37–56; R. Porter (1998) London: A Social History, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

  6. 6.

    T. De Quincy, ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 21 February 1827, 200–213, and Newland, Cultural Construction of London’s East End, p. 45.

  7. 7.

    Shepherd, English Monster, p. 15.

  8. 8.

    Broodbank, History of the Port of London, pp. 4–11 and 507.

  9. 9.

    H. J. Robinson, ‘The History of the Port of London’, The Contemporary Review, 1 July 1922, p. 228; ‘The History of the Port of London’, The Economist (Issue 4122), 26 August 1922, 363.

  10. 10.

    See P. Linebaugh (2003) The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century, (London: Verso), and D. Taylor (1998) Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1750–1914, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

  11. 11.

    T. Miller, ‘Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present. Chapter VI – London Docks, Sailors, and Emigrants’, The Illustrated London News, 29 July 1848, 54.

  12. 12.

    P. Colquhoun (1800) Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames (London: Joseph Mawman), pp. 420–21; see also J. Pudney (1975) London’s Docks, (London: Thames and Hudson), pp. 14–21.

  13. 13.

    Colquhoun, Treatise, pp. 39–81; see also P. Quennell (1950), London’s Underworld [selections from works by Henry Mayhew], (London: William Kember).

  14. 14.

    ‘A Looking-Glass for London’, Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1 July 1837, p. 252.

  15. 15.

    R. D. Brown (1978) The Port of London, (Lavenham, Suffolk: Terence Dalton), p. 52.

  16. 16.

    See ‘London Dock Bills’, Oracle and Daily Advertiser, 16 February 1799.

  17. 17.

    ‘Mr Ogle’s plan, for mooring vessels, in the River Thames, from London Bridge to Deptford, on an improved system.’ (1796), Object ID G218:9/78, National Maritime Museum archives.

  18. 18.

    R. Walker (1799) Plan for extending free quays at St. Catherine’s Dock, The National Archives, Kew, ref no. Work 38/377.

  19. 19.

    ‘London Wet Docks’, The Caledonian, 15 September 1800.

  20. 20.

    ‘London Dock Bills’.

  21. 21.

    See ‘Wet Docks’, Oracle and Public Advertiser (Issue 19) 9 February 1796.

  22. 22.

    W.C. Russell (1884) English Channel Ports and the Estate of the East and West India Dock Co., (London: Sampson, Low Marston, Searle and Rivington), p. 67.

  23. 23.

    S. Smiles (1862) Lives of the Engineers, vol. 2 Harbours, Lighthouses and Brides, (London: John Murray), p. 352.

  24. 24.

    J. Herbert (1947) The Port of London, (London: Collins), pp. 14–15.

  25. 25.

    Herbert, Port of London, p. 16.

  26. 26.

    R. D. Brown (1978) The Port of London, (Lavenham, Suffolk: Terence Dalton), p. 51. For more on Vaughan see W. Vaughan (1793) On Wet Docks, Quays, and Warehouses for the Port of London; with hints respecting Trade, (London), and W. Vaughan (1839) Memoir of William Vaughan, Esq. F.R.S. with Miscellaneous Pieces Relative to Docks, Commerce, Etc. (London: Smith, Elder).

  27. 27.

    M. Ball, and D. Sunderland (2002) Economic History of London, 1800–1914, (Hoboken NJ: Taylor and Francis), p. 219.

  28. 28.

    Ball and Sunderland, Economic History of London, pp. 220–22.

  29. 29.

    M. Foucault (1979), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. from the French by Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth: Penguin), pp. 135–230.

  30. 30.

    Colquhoun, Treatise, p. 261.

  31. 31.

    Observations on a Late Publication Intituled [sic] A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis by P. Colquhoun, Esq. (London: H. D. Symonds) no date, p. iv.

  32. 32.

    ‘London Dock Bills’.

  33. 33.

    C. Emsley (1991) The English Police: A Political and Social History, (London: Longman), pp. 15–16.

  34. 34.

    See A.T. Harris (2004) Policing the City: Crime and Legal Authority in London, 1780–1840, (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press), pp. 38–39.

  35. 35.

    ‘The West India Docks’, Survey of London. Volumes 43 and 44: Poplar, Blackwall and Isle of Dogs, (London: London County Council) 1994, pp. 247–248.

  36. 36.

    Linebaugh, The London Hanged, p. 404.

  37. 37.

    Taylor, Crime, Policing and Punishment, p. 41.

  38. 38.

    See Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 195–230, and J. Semple (1993) Bentham’s Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary, (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 192.

  39. 39.

    Brown, Port of London, p. 56.

  40. 40.

    Ball and Sunderland, Economic History of London, pp. 223–6.

  41. 41.

    Colquhoun, Treatise, p. 584.

  42. 42.

    J. Harriot (1807) Struggles Through Life […], (London: J Hatchard), p. 337.

  43. 43.

    Colquhoun, Treatise, p. 420.

  44. 44.

    ‘St. Katharine’s Docks’, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, 2 January 1826, 8–10.

  45. 45.

    Broodbank, History of the Port of London, pp. 153–54.

  46. 46.

    ‘St. Katharine’s Docks’, p. 10.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia

    William M. Taylor

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  1. William M. Taylor
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  1. University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

    Brad Beaven

  2. School of Social, Historical and Literar, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

    Karl Bell

  3. School of Social, Historical and Literar, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

    Robert James

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Taylor, W.M. (2016). Ports and Pilferers: London’s Late Georgian Era Docks as Settings for Evolving Material and Criminal Cultures. In: Beaven, B., Bell, K., James, R. (eds) Port Towns and Urban Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48316-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48316-4_8

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-48316-4

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