Rehabilitating homes and humans: probation, gender and domesticity in Britain, 1907–1960

ABSTRACT

The concept of ‘home’ has been central to probation theory and practice in Britain ever since the 1907 Probation Act introduced probation as an alternative to fines and prison sentences. Rather than sending people to prison, the home was considered a more suitable environment for facilitating long-term reform and rehabilitation. However, the home had to live up to certain physical and psychological standards if this approach was to work. This article explores the ways in which probation officers’ efforts to reform probationers’ homes and behaviours within the domestic sphere impacted the everyday lives and gender relations of probationers and their families, and played a crucial role in promoting certain normative concepts of what a ‘good home’ and a ‘healthy’ domestic relationship should look like.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Probation of Offenders Act 1907(3 Edw. 7, c.25).

2 For an overview of decarceration trends see, for example, Pamela Cox and Barry Godrey, ‘The “Great Decarceration”: Historical Trends and Future Possibilities’, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice 59 (2020): 261–85.

3 Claire Langhamer, ‘The Meanings of Home in Postwar Britain’, Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (2005): 341–62; G. Crow, ‘The Post-War Development of the Modern Domestic Ideal’, in Home and Family. Creating the Domestic Sphere, ed. G. Allan and G. Crow (Basingstoke, 1989); Adrian Bingham, ‘An Era of Domesticity? Histories of Women and Gender in Interwar Britain’, Cultural and Social History 1, no. 2 (2004): 225–33.

4 For detailed histories of probation theory, policy and practice see, for example: Dorothy Bochel, Probation and After-Care: Its Development in England and Wales (Scottish Academic Press, 1976); Raymond Gard, Probation and Rehabilitation in England and Wales, 1876–1962 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014); George Mair and Lol Burke, Redemption, Rehabilitation and Risk Management: A History of Probation (Routledge, 2012); Maurice Vanstone, Supervising Offenders in the Community: A History of Probation Theory and Practice (Ashgate, 2004); Fergus McNeill, ‘Remembering Probation in Scotland’, Probation Journal 52, no. 1 (2005): 23–38; Philip Whitehead and Roger Statham, The History of Probation: Politics, Power and Cultural Change 1876–2005 (Crayford, 2006); William McWilliams, ‘The Mission Transformed: Professionalisation of Probation between the Wars’, The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 24, no. 4 (1985): 7–274; William McWilliams, ‘The English Probation System and the Diagnostic Ideal’, The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 25, no. 4 (1986): 241–6.

5 Eloise Moss, Night Raiders: Burglary and the Making of Modern Urban Life in London, 1860–1968 (Oxford University Press, 2019); Amy Helen Bell, Murder Capital: Suspicious Deaths in London, 1933–53 (Manchester University Press, 2016); Alexa Neale, Photographing Crime Scenes in Twentieth-Century London: Microhistories of Domestic Murder (Bloomsbury, 2020).

6 Jill Annison, ‘A Gendered Review of Change within the Probation Service’, The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 46, no. 2 (2007): 145–61; Pamela Cox, Bad Girls in Britain, Gender, Justice and Welfare, 1900–1950 (Palgrave, 2003); Linda Mahood, Policing Gender, Class and Family in Britain, 1800–1945 (Routledge, 1995); Paula Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860–1914 (Routledge, 1999).

7 See, for example: Cyril Burt, The Young Delinquent (London University Press, 1933); Norwood East, The Adolescent Criminal: A Medico-Sociological Study of 4000 Male Adolescents (J. & A. Churchill, 1942).

8 Mathew Thomson, Lost Freedom: The Landscape of the Child and the British Post-War Settlement (Oxford, 2013); Stephanie Olsen, Juvenile Nation: Youth, Emotions and the Making of the Modern British Citizen, 1880–1914 (London, 2015); Hugh Cunningham, The Invention of Childhood (London, 2006); Michal Shapira, The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain (Cambridge, 2013).

9 Ian Miller, ‘Ending the “Cult of the Broken Home”: Divorce, Children and the Changing Emotional Dynamics of Separating British Families, c. 1945–90’, Twentieth Century British History 32, no. 2 (2021): 165–188.

10 Liverpool City Archives, 347 MAG/1/6: Liverpool Probation Committee Annual Report 1943.

11 C.H. Stanley, ‘The Probation Officer and Conciliation’, Probation 8, no. 1 (1956): 3–5.

12 National Records of Scotland (NRS) ED20/130: The Report of the Departmental Committee on the Social Services in Courts of Summary Jurisdiction, 1936. NB: Probation officers in Scotland never formally became involved in marriage reconciliation, although they were still called upon to deal with marital disputes in relation to other aspects of their work with families

13 Manchester City Archives, GB127.M117/3/5: Manchester Probation Committee Minutes, data collected from the annual reports for the years 1939–1955.

14 John Mogey, ‘Marriage Counselling and Family Life Education in England’, Marriage and Family Living 23, no. 2 (1961): 146–54.

15 West Glamorgan Archives: S/TC4/Probation/1: Probation Committee Minutes, 29 September 1945.

16 For a more detailed analysis see, Louise Settle, Probation and the Policing of the Private Sphere in Britain, 1907–1962 (Bloomsbury, 2022).

17 Walter Stanton, Sidelights on Police Court Mission Work (Worchester, 1935).

18 Ibid., chapter three.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Marcus Collins, Modern Love: An Intimate History of Men and Women in Twentieth Century Britain (Atlantic Books, 2003).

22 For more on the companionate marriage see, for example; Claire Langhamer, The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2013); Alana Harris, Love and Romance in Britain 1918–1970 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); J. Finch and P. Summerfield, ‘Social Reconstruction and the Emergence of Companionate Marriage, 1945–59’, in Marriage, Domestic Life and Social Change. Writings for Jacqueline Burgoyne (1944–88), ed. D. Clark (London, 1991).

23 The Scotsman, 24 March 1938, 9.

24 Liverpool City Archives, 347 MAG/1/6: Liverpool Probation Committee Annual Report, 1943.

25 Teri Chettiar, ‘Treating Marriage as “The Sick Entity”: Gender, Emotional Life, and the Psychology of Marriage Improvement in Postwar Britain’, History of Psychology 18, no. 3 (2015): 270–82.

26 NRS, ED20/3: Probation of Offenders Draft Bill, 1906: Newspaper Cutting from Dundee Country and Municipal Record, 20 June 1905.

27 Glasgow City Archives, D.tc 14/2/15: Reports of the Corporation of Glasgow 1919–1920 vol. 9: Report by the Special Committee on Probation of Offenders and Recommendation as Approved by the Corporation. Evidence by Joseph Paul Probation Officer for Mary Hill division, 82.

28 Ibid.

29 Annmarie Hughes, ‘The “Non-Criminal” Class: Wife-beating in Scotland (c. 1800–1949)’, Crime History & Society 14, no. 2 (2010): 31–54.

30 For more on this subject of victim blaming see, for example: Louise Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England (Routledge, 1999); Carol Smart, ‘A History of Ambivalence and Conflict in the Discursive Construction of the “Child Victim” of Sexual Abuse’, Social & Legal Studies 8, no. 3 (1999): 391–409.

31 ECA, Edinburgh Police Court Records, 1 November 1918.

32 Ibid.

33 ECA: Edinburgh Police Court, October 1917.

34 Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence (Viking, 1988).

35 Motherwell Times, 28 September 1928, 2. N.B. The term ‘divy’ refers to the sum of money that was kept aside to pay for household necessities.

36 Ibid.

37 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 18 July 1925, 5.

38 Ibid.

39 Essex Newsman, 13 November 1925, 2.

40 Ibid.

41 For a more detailed discussion about competing concepts of masculinity see, for example; Benjamin Griffin, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity as a Historical Problem’, Gender & History 30, no. 2 (2018): 377–400; M. Francis, ‘The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century British Masculinity’, The Historical Journal 45, no. 3 (2002): 637–52.

42 The Essex Newsman, 12 September 1931, 3.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Liverpool City Archives, 347 MAG/1/6: Liverpool Probation Committee Annual Report, 1948.

46 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 11 April 1914, 10.

47 Ibid.

48 ECA: Edinburgh Police Court Records, 22 August 1922.

49 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 7 March 1925, 9.

50 Nottingham Evening Post, 12 July 1914, 1.

51 See, for example, Martin Francis, ‘The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity’, History Workshop Journal 45, no. 3 (2002): 637–52; Stephan Brooke, ‘Gender and Working-Class Identity in Britain During the 1950s’, Journal of Social History 35 (2001): 773–95; John Tosh, ‘The History of Masculinity: An Outdated Concept’, in What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World, ed. John Arnold and Sean Brady (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

52 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 19 May 1928, 19.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 Manchester City Archives, GB127.M117/3/5: Manchester Probation Committee Minutes, 1942.

57 Ibid.

58 Liverpool City Archives, 347 MAG/1/6: Liverpool Probation Committee Annual Report, 1944.

59 Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, WISEArchive, The Cohen Interviews, Interview No. 6, George Chesters.

60 Liverpool City Archives, 347 MAG/1/6: Liverpool Probation Committee Annual Report 1943.

61 Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, WISEArchive, The Cohen Interviews, Interview No. 23, Mary Wilkinson.

62 For more on juvenile justice institutions see, for example, Pamela Cox, Gender, Justice and Welfare: Bad Girls in Britain, 1900–1950 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Heather Shore, ‘Reforming the Juvenile in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England’, Prison Service Journal 197 (2011): 4–9.

63 For further details on prostitution and probation see, Louise Settle, Probation and the Policing of the Private Sphere in Britain, 1907–1962 (Bloomsbury, 2022).

64 For more on reform homes and Magdalene Asylums see, Linda Mahood, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century (Routledge, 1990); Paula Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860–1914 (Routledge, 1999); Louise Settle, Sex for Sale in Scotland: Prostitution in Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1900–1939 (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

65 Settle, Sex for Sale in Scotland, see chapter four.

66 ECA, Edinburgh Police Court Records, 9 October 1916.

67 ECA, Edinburgh Police Court Records, 23 August 1935.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louise Settle

Louise Settle is a researcher at The Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences at Tampere University, Finland. She is the author of Probation and the Policing of the Private Sphere in Britain, 1907–1962 (Bloomsbury, 2022).