Crime during the nineteenth century in England was being redefined as and industrialization and urbanization increased. The social ramifications of overcrowding, poverty, immigration, and a growing disparity between rich and poor created new and inventive kinds of crime; as a result, as London approached the 1840's crime increased to new heights, and the community reacted accordingly. The metropolitan police, although established in 1829, began to expand and change its role due to increasing stratification of crime. By the 1840, larceny, pick pocketing were the most prevalent crime. As a direct result of this, houses and property were consequently being locked. Contemporary newspapers were running advertisements for locks. Most of the ads boasted locks that could not be picked. That kind of ad was most striking, for new London society was changing. It also illustrates that, indeed, all types of crime had become rampant. Further, it showed the need for locked doors, windows, cellars, etc.
During the early modern period, there were frequent panics about crime and more general delinquency. These concerns resulted in legislation and some institutional initiatives, until fears about vagrants, disorderly apprentices and idle youth again subsided. However, in Britain there seems to have been a wholesale transition of such panics into a much more central place in political policy. This was partly a response to mass urbanization and the pervasive and seemingly relentless presence of the poor and criminal. Policing, prisons, and punishment were the subjects of various text and commentaries. Writers began to publish their controversial report. Such publications appeared at a time when a backlash toward public execution; and the death sentence had begun to engender the search for the secondary punishment.
There was an invention of juvenile crime during the nineteenth century. Children were still sentenced to death during the early nineteenth century.
