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Crime And Corruption In The Elizabethan Era

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The Elizabethan Era was filled with crime and corruption throughout the entire Era. Crimes were looked at as a horrible thing during this time and led to severe punishment. Many of these punishments consisted of torture or at its worst, death. Some of the simplest crimes such as stealing another person's boots could lead to a loss of your legs. Another large issue during this time was the way that the government and court system was run. These systems were largely favored towards rich people. Anybody with enough money could bribe a judge to do anything they wanted. Altogether, The Elizabethan Era had a light side, but the dark side was extremely dark and filled with terror. There were many crimes that criminals committed during The Elizabethan …show more content…

Some of these punishments consisted of hanging, burning, whipping, branding, boiling in water or oil, and the cutting off of various body parts. Many of these are very self-explanatory and painful. In a hanging, a rope is tied around the criminal's neck and they are placed on a collapsing platform which hangs them. Whipping was very painful because the criminal was slashed multiple times and was usualyl left in extreme pain and bleeding. Branding consisted of a piece of iron getting extremely hot and then pressed against the skin of the criminal leaving a large, painful patch of flesh left in the spot that it occurred. The cutting off of body parts could have been anything from an ear to a person’s hand and came with many problems along the way in the criminal's life due to the loss of the parts. Almost every single punishment took place in front of crowds of hundreds of people who would come to the town's center to watch the criminal get what they deserved for committing a crime. If the criminal did not die, the pain and agony from these punishments left them in a horrible state for the remainder of their lifetime and is a perfect example why people should never commit a crime whether it is 1700 or

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The Elizabethan Era had many rules and laws, so many that sometimes they were hard to keep track of. The capital offenses included robbery, larceny/theft, rape, and arson (Harrison). The more frequently committed crimes included theft, begging, cutpurses, adultery, debtors, poaching, forgery, fraud, and dice-cogging (Elizabethan Crime). In a desperate effort to control how the less fortunate and homeless behaved, Parliament passed the Poor Laws, which made it illegal to beg for food and money (Harrison). These laws went so far as to make it illegal to live on the streets (Crime and Punishment).

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The most common punishment was solitary confinement, which was when prisoners were put into cells by themselves. Another punishment was the dark cell. It was a cell that was pitch black and it contained an iron cage in the middle of it, the prisoners would be chained up in the iron cage and only be fed bread and water once a day, which barely kept them alive. The dark cell was also called the snake den because prisoners started a “rumor” that the guards would intentionally drop snakes in there to harass the prisoners, they were given this punishment when they were caught possessing opium, refusing work, or stealing. There was also ball and chain, which was when the prisoners had to carry a heavy ball everywhere they went.

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