Rosalind Crone

Rosalind Crone is professor of history at the Open University, and author of Illiterate Inmates: Educating Criminals in Nineteenth Century England (Oxford University Press, 2022)

An 1872 illustration from the weekly newspaper Days’ Doings shows a shoplifter being apprehended (Photo by Look and Learn/Rosenberg Collection/Bridgeman Images)

Lady swindlers: 6 women who turned to lives of crime and became queens of the underworld. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The school for girls imprisoned at Tothill Fields in the late 1850s. A dedicated schoolmistress was employed to teach that institution’s large female population; in other prisons, the matron took lessons. (Engraving from Chronicle, via Alamy)

Reading, writing and retribution: inside Victorian prison schools. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Victorian women gossip at the opera (Photo by Bridgeman Images)

Sex, sadism and sugared death: 8 scandals that rocked Victorian Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.