Re-assessing the link between war-service and crime in the post-1918 period, Cameron McKay demonstrates that many Scottish veterans had difficulty readjusting to civilian life, leading to a rise in both petty and serious criminality

Cameron McKay

The impact of military service made it difficult for many veterans to return to everyday life and the demands of family and employers

For many the relationship between war and crime is a simple one. Crime drops during wartime due to the removal of young men, the group most likely to commit crime, and then rises again following demobilisation when hostilities end. It also assumed that post-war societies experience a lasting rise in crime due to the economically and socially disruptive effects of war. In 1926 Thorsten Sellin, arguably the leading pioneer of scientific criminology, published a statistical analysis that suggested that violent crime had risen significantly in Europe since the end of the First World War. Sellin’s analysis then seemed to vindicate the conventional wisdom on crime and war. Yet while the murder rates of France, Germany and Italy saw significant rises, England and Wales broke the trend of established criminological thought and experienced only a brief rise in crime. Although in 1919 there were 123 murders known to the police, in 1921, by which point most men had been demobilised, there were only 90. Apart from the war years, this was the lowest number of murders since 1910.

This statistical trend seemed to confirm the belief that the British were an exceptionally ordered and peaceful people, especially when compared to their former allies and enemies on the European continent.

There is much debate on the causes of post-war violence, and it would be an exaggeration to conclude that increasing violent crime in Scotland was solely due to the First World War

This phenomenon has been well documented by Jon Lawrence who notes that despite the violent excesses committed by British forces in Ireland and India, placidity and a respect for the rule of law were believed to be uniquely British traits. However this particular form of British exceptionalism ignores Scotland’s own experience of post-war crime.

Scotland and crime

A cursory glance at interwar crime statistics might suggest that crime had actually fallen in Scotland after the First World War. In 1913 there were on average 2,194 male prisoners held daily, yet by 1921, when most servicemen had been demobilised, the figure was as low as 1,857, and it continued to fall throughout the 1920s. However, the declining prison population was most likely due to the practice of allowing defendants the time to pay a court imposed fine, rather than imposing a prison sentence on those who could not pay. If the statistics are examined more closely it is clear that in many categories of offence numbers rose, and in some cases this can be directly attributed to the war. Bigamy for example rose sharply during the war and continued to rise even after hostilities ended. In 1913 there were 20 males imprisoned for bigamy in Scotland, yet by 1918 this had risen to 74 and by 1919 to 103. Even by 1926 imprisonments remained above pre-war levels, and were as high as 47. There are several reasons why the First World War contributed to a rise in bigamy in Scotland. The separation allowance, a payment granted to the wives of serving men, created a financial incentive for bigamy. Men who had long been estranged from their wives married their common law wives in an attempt to gain the allowance. Why imprisonments continued to rise after the war may have been due to the detrimental impact the war had on family life. Hughes and Meek’s sampling of poor law applications in Govan found that between 1911 and 1929 applications from deserted wives rose from 30.4 per cent of all applications to 37 per cent. Veterans who were accused of bigamy even attempted to cite their war service as a mitigating factor. When Thomas Noble was tried for bigamy at Glasgow in 1918 his agent claimed that ‘the accused suffered severely from shell shock. He was at times very excitable, and it was during one of these attacks that he met the second woman and offered to marry her’. The sheriff however remained unconvinced and sentenced Noble to twelve months hard labour.