What the Victorians did for us. Crime and punishment.

Presenter Adam Hart-Davis looks at the contribution of the Victorians on the subject of Crime and Punishment. The first section of the programme is about the introduction of the police force by Sir Robert Peel in London, 1829. Birmingham was the next city to get its own force in 1839 but there wasn't a countrywide police force until 1856. Adam visits the West Midlands Police Museum and dresses up in an early bobby uniform. There follows a brief look at the case of Jack the Ripper or 'The Leather Apron' in the late 1880s. The Victorians are cited as the fathers of forensic science, with the first forensic test in 1840, devised by James Marsh to test for arsenic. The test is demonstrated by Dr Andrea Sella, who tests a glass of red wine for the substance. Prison sentences for various crimes are examined. The new penal system instigated in the 1840s is illustrated by a look at the interior of a Victorian prison in Leeds. Adam explains the change from solitude and servitude to rehabilitation after the prison reform. He then demonstrates how criminals could gold-plate a silvered penny by putting it into a solution of potassium gold cyanide with electrodes. Padlocks were developed into more intricate and secure objects by the Victorians, so we see Adam helping lockmaker Andy Middlebrook to craft a bar padlock. A large, complicated lock created by the Bramah firm is taken apart at the Science Museum and there is a brief look at the Linus Yale lock.