Granite Noir: The Curriculum of Crime

Granite Noir: The Curriculum of Crime

Phil Astley, City Archivist and Dr. Dee Hoole, Honorary Research Fellow in History, University of Aberdeen.

Among the many remarkable records held by Aberdeen City & Aberdeenshire Archives is a scrapbook containing documents compiled by Alexander Thomson (1792-1862) a member of the Aberdeen County Prison Board during the 1840s and 1850s. A section of these documents relate to juvenile delinquents, both boys and girls, who were incarcerated in Aberdeen Prison during this period, some of whom were as young as eight years old. Vivid descriptions of the characters of these young offenders appear, alongside details of their family backgrounds and where they lived. The talk will take a closer look at what these original records reveal about the children, the efforts that were made to keep them out of jail and the urban landscape of the nineteenth century city which formed the backdrop to their young lives.