We Are What We Steal

August 28, 2020 11:30 PM

Crimes are a reflection of the period and society in which they occur. What happened, the objects and people involved, the location, how it was recorded - or even if it was recorded - all tell us something about the values, attitudes, and power structures of the day. This data visualisation looks at the almost 20 million words that were written in the New South Wales Police Gazette and Weekly Record of Crime from the beginning of 1860 up until the end of 1900* to see what it shows about how the people, places, and things, changed in NSW over that period.

This visualization was created by DX Lab of the NSW library system. DX Lab says their purpose is innovation. (I think it is awesome for a library to have an innovation laboratory.)

posted by CCBC (8 comments total)

See y'all next Monday, this is neat!
posted by riverlife at 12:28 AM on August 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

ooooo data! When I was getting an expensive education in England in the 1960s, late 19thC history was all about Disraeli & Gladstone and the dates of battles the Brits won. Nothing at all about ordinary life for ordinary folks. I grew up in the era of Late-Cufflink: cuff-links were the kind of thing aunties would buy for a teenage boy's birthday. But most of the shirts I wore used buttons. I've still got a tinful of these now peculiarly useless trinkets. My kids, if they know what a cuff-link is (or cd work it out from the word itself) have never seen a cuff-link . . . unless they've been rootling through my sock-drawer looking for folding money, the divils. For them cuff-links are like the moleskin trousers, patent-leather button-up boots and billycock hats of 1870s NSW. Quantitative history rocks.
posted by BobTheScientist at 4:31 AM on August 29, 2020 [5 favorites]

This is interesting, thank you for posting.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:35 AM on August 29, 2020

I hesitate to say that I enjoy things that put people in prison. But, I sure found this interesting and beautifully presented. Thanks!

(The lack of handkerchief theft - only 2550 cases, well below hats and boots - leaves me puzzled. But, this is so far from anything I actually know about, it's not surprising that I'm surprised.)
posted by eotvos at 7:56 AM on August 29, 2020

I wonder if you could trace specific authors of the Gazette and find individual effects on the exercise of police power. Probably not. The actual person doing the writing is a pretty big mid-layer between the corpus and the fact, though.

I had to look up cabbagetree hats; it’s not a shape, it’s a kind of Australian palm as material for plaited hats. Still made by a few milliners and hobbyists - hey, Australian mefites, would you recognize one on a person or is this a rare hobby?

A handsome plant! It doesn’t look like a cabbage though - I deduce the edible heart-of-palm part was nicknamed cabbage by Europeans.
posted by clew at 9:43 AM on August 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

Find in page: wage theft 0/0

Dang. I wish America could stamp out wage theft as effectively as Australia apparently has.
posted by straight at 9:53 AM on August 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

Dang. I wish America could stamp out wage theft as effectively as Australia apparently has.

I'm sure if it had happened 120 years ago nothing could have changed?
posted by onya at 12:40 AM on August 30, 2020

I throw you the link to the Sydney Justice and Police Museum. The stories and better yet, photos are just amazing. There was a police photographer whose work is really amazing and captures the human qualities of some of the hardest criminals of New South Wales. It is always good to attach faces to the data.
posted by jadepearl at 8:27 PM on August 30, 2020