Are we more 'enlightened' now?

We all have different outlooks and beliefs. For me, I agree that justice was harsh. If I was in charge NO-ONE would be prison bar any crimes which included violence of any kind and they’d be locked away for a very very long time, rehabilitated whilst inside and taught some form of worthwhile trade. All the rest would have sentences out in the community very appropriate to their crime, eg those vandalising make good and then go onto cleaning streets and parks for the rest of their sentence, those committing financial based or fraud crimes sent to work and repay every single penny. I’ve been inside our prisons (as part of my work), they are not pleasant, well organised or safe. Prisons need to be overhauled as do the sentences

if you look at history, is there a time when great riches are not the result of some great crime? humanity needs a great leap but how.Look at the state of politics in the past few years, trump, boris? are we progressing,if so towards what?

Hellsbelles

@nanna8
I worked in a prison . It has a book about its history . The youngest person hung there was a young lad that had been caught stealing a piglet.
The also shocking thing was his father had lifted him over the wall
and instructed him to do it. Tragic.

An interesting fact is that, when sentences were draconian, and automatic, for what seems to us to be trivial amounts, the items stolen were often undervalued by the courts so as to avoid youngsters and vulnerable people being subject to those draconian sentences. So, even then,100/ 200 years ago, there were some enlightened people around. They just need to attain a critical mass for 'enlightenment' to become a key feature of a society.

I'm agreeing with MOnica ?

I don't think we're any more 'enlightened' than our forebears... particularly with recent governments that have pandered to the most 'unenlightened' in our society.

@nanna8
I worked in a prison . It has a book about its history . The youngest person hung there was a young lad that had been caught stealing a piglet.
The also shocking thing was his father had lifted him over the wall
and instructed him to do it. Tragic.

growstuff

Records of crimes are available in historic newspapers. As far as I know, no 100 year rule applies.

I found out from www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ that my father was fined for speeding two years before I was born.

It's not just newspapers. The 1939 registration of all the people in the UK (though just adults, IIRC) done because of the war, is freely available. Also the land ownership survey done in about 1911/12 in preparation for a proposed Land Tax, was available in 2000 when I was researching a piece of local land. Ship and airline passenger manifests from less than 100 years ago are also available. The 100 year rule isn't universal.

I think there is a very definite notion of the 'undeserving poor' that hasn't moved very far from the Victorian version. We don't have workhouses, but we have a punitive benefits system and regular calls for people to have to work in created schemes for benefits. I don't see much enlightenment in that.

M0nica

It would not bother me to discover that I had an ancestor who was criminal or worse. That was them. I am me. I find all this coyness over the past and how it upsets modern sensibilities makes me feel quite queasy.

The past is the past, there is nothing you can do to affect it, anymore than any apology to those long dead is of any use to them. All it does is help people today feel better about themselves for no good reason.

I use the quote facility because I am in total agreement with this view.
The ME society seems to be taking over some countries.
Let us be practical, yes, and acknowledge that times were so different then, and rejoice that they are not that way now, but move on and live with new values.
While accepting that values will change once more in the future.

Child labour next. I suspect there is a lot of it around even in so called enlightened countries but it is secretive and hidden and not socially accepted.

In fact we are going backwards. The days when dock labour was day work and dockers jostled at the dock gates to get chosen for a days work and a days pay ended in the 1930s.

My FiL worked on the assembly line at Vauxhall, seasonal work from September to March, then dependent on casual labour over the summer. I can remember the constant industrial action in the 1950s and 1960s, for the Guaranteed Week' and steady year round employment.

Now we have the Gig Economy and Zero Hours Contracts and millions of workers are once again effectively day labourers.

Driving down a major dual carriageway this evening looking at the rows of lorries parked in laybys overnight, with lorry drivers having to sleep in their cabs dealing with the noise and vibration caused by passing goods traffic, it struck me that conditions for lorry drivers have got far worse in these 'enlightened' times.

Once the few lorry drivers whose work took them away from a home a couple of nights a week, parked their lorries and stayed in cheap boarding houses, that may well have had their deficiencies but provided proper beds, meals and baths and showers, room to stretch and some peace and quiet.

Nw lorry drivers can end up sleeping in their cabs 5 nights a week, or for international deliveries weeks at a time, limited washing facilities or toilet facilities, limited cooking facilities.

In the past lorry drivers got small subsistenc allowances to cover their accommodation costs. Now, nothing.

I think people are being very selective about 'enlightenment'

Thanks - yes, that’s exactly it ?

Doodledog Fair enough to keep them on record - to do otherwise would be censorship - but my point is that the rather prurient sharing of them on social media, with 'Look at her - she was probably starving, poor child' comments to show the compassion of the poster is unpleasant.
I think I'm getting your point (at last) which is not the records themselves but the sharing of them on social media. Sorry if I didn't get that before, I was more hung up about the availability of these records for researchers. I definitely do NOT like them being shared on social media for people to ogle like a freak sideshow. I think you should complain to the website that this is disrespectful to the people and should be removed. I'm afraid this is the downside of digital records being available on the internet. Some people have no respect and just share without thought.

I think I'd rather not see them.
Rather like those people who know you've been ill, put their head on one side and say "and how are you?" in a sickly, faux-sympathetic voice?

I know what you mean, but honestly - you'd need to see the comments to know what I mean. I'm going to leave it there, as I can't put it any differently, and I know I'm not making much sense.

I think prefer to think of the children who stole bread to feed
their siblings and themselves as survivors.

Much better than just passively starving to death

Is it faux sympathy or is it empathy?
Some of us have more empathy than others.

Doodledog I don't understand why you think people are showing 'faux sympathy' for these poor souls. We know they were real people who had real lives. What do you expect people to do other than express their sympathy? It's up to each individual as to whether they actually feel the sympathy or just mouth about it. We should be able to see images and stories from the past and then people can make up their own minds what they take from them.

Does that apply to children, though? There is a reason why young people 'can't be named for legal reasons'. Admittedly the ones in my photo above won't have their lives ruined by having their pictures on social media today, but it's the same principle - they are young, and young people do stupid things sometimes and then see the error of their ways.

One of the cornerstones of justice in this country has always been that justice should not only be done, but be seen to be done - and that meant not only did those crimes become a matter of public record, but were very often reported in the local press. I should know, it was my job for more than 30 years and if I had £1 for every time someone had asked me to keep their name out of the paper, I could have retired a long time ago!

Records of crimes are available in historic newspapers. As far as I know, no 100 year rule applies.

I found out from www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ that my father was fined for speeding two years before I was born.

Callistemon21

^with 'Look at her - she was probably starving, poor child'^

Which is exactly what I said upthread about my 3xGGrandfather! Although he was a grown man with a family.
The social injustice of it made me very cross when I found out.

Someone in our family died only recently, he was well over 100. However, I can't imagine him ever doing bad thing in his life ?

I'll try once more to explain what is probably a confused point of view, as it's more of an emotional reaction, and I don't want to drag it out or expect anyone to agree, or to really understand what I'm getting at unless they have seen the same local history groups in action.

The 'look at her, she was probably starving' comments are similar to the ones the same people make when posting street scenes with barefoot children - 'oh, those poor things - I bet they went hungry - they must have wished they had never been born' and so on. There is no recognition that they are real people who are being defined in terms of one aspect of their lives on the day of the photo (no shoes/stealing sweets) and judged on that basis in a simplistic sort of way that makes the posters feel superior. It's poverty porn.

Lots of people had no shoes, but they laughed and cried just as we do. They fell in love, they argued with neighbours, they had children and grandchildren. Their lives were about far more than the fact that they had no shoes as children, but none of that matters in the comments. Some will have had shoes, but they were stiff and uncomfortable, so saved them for Sundays and played out barefoot. Also, it's only because people can buy cheap shoes made abroad by people (including children) on poverty wages that we don't see barefoot children nowadays.

All that's happened is that we've exported the problems, yet people still enjoy posting their faux sympathy for the lives of poor children, or the draconian sentences, without recognition that while deprivation and inequality may manifest differently nowadays, and we don't see barefoot children or imprison them for minor offences, it is very much still there, and it is clear from other comments in the groups that many of the people clutching their pearls over the Victorians vote for regimes that foreground 'self reliance' and 'law and order' today.

I agree 100% with Chestnut's last post on this.

The 100 year rule is so that information about living people is not available. That applies to census returns and also records of hospitals, asylums and I assume criminal records. No-one except their descendants would know who any of these people are, even with their names included. I would imagine those descendants who are researching would want to know these details. Other descendants will have no interest whatsoever and will not even know of their existence, and many of these people will not even have descendants.

with 'Look at her - she was probably starving, poor child'

Which is exactly what I said upthread about my 3xGGrandfather! Although he was a grown man with a family.
The social injustice of it made me very cross when I found out.

Someone in our family died only recently, he was well over 100. However, I can't imagine him ever doing bad thing in his life ?