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Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, Fascinating Historical Conversations from the makers of BBC

History magazine. Could children be hanged in Victorian Britain?

Were the streets of DeKensie in London haunted by organised gangs?

What tools did Victorian police have at their disposal? And was it possible

to get a fair trial in the 19th century? Well to find out, for today's everything you wanted to know episode I spoke to historian

Drew Gray about crime and punishment in Victorian Britain. Thank you for joining us

Drew to talk about Victorian crime and

punishment. I wanted to start us off with a little bit of myth busting. I think

that a lot of people might come to this subject probably through period dramas or

maybe through literature and literature I mean Dickens especially often presents

us with this idea of a Victorian underworld and putting that in quote marks, or a criminal underclass that

you know dominated London.

But how accurate was that in reality?

I think that's a really good question because unfortunately we don't have a time machine so we can't go back in time

AKA Doctor Who and do this but

Dickens is a really useful source for historians and for the rest of us in looking at

...