Children in criminal proceedings in southern Ukraine in the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries

Abstract

Introductions. The history of childhood as a component of social history, the history «from below», is a field that has been extensively studied by European researchers: historians, demographers, and sociologists. Many studies are conducted on an interdisciplinary basis. Domestic achievements in historical science remain modest, but experts have already outlined promising directions. One such prospect is the active use of court materials in scholarly research. This article analyses the ‘presence of children’ in the judicial documentation of Southern Ukraine in the last quarter of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. The social history of this region at that time is only accumulating data, with a general picture gradually emerging from individual fragments. The purpose of the article is to form a general picture of society’s attitude towards children and child deviance, based on the analysis of court materials from the region, and through the everyday extremes (that is exactly what court process represents). Research methods: internal criticism of sources, historical-legal, historical-comparative, retrospective. The novelty lies in the use of group sources that have hardly been used by researchers to date. Main results. In criminal proceedings, a child could act as a victim, a criminal, or a witness. For each ‘role’ specifically related to children, there is an optimal age when there is a consensus in society. As an unconditional victim, a child was generally perceived as being up to 10–12 years old. As a criminal with a certain understanding of the crime committed, they were considered responsible from the age of 14 and bore full liability after the age of 16–17. As a witness, they were worthy of attention after the age of 10–12. The ideas of the Enlightenment, which were spreading during this period, penetrated the judicial system partially and primarily from the legislator. Society as a whole had not yet embraced them: children were not regarded as individuals, and violence against them was normalised in many spheres (the authority of parents/guardians over children, of masters over underage servants). Crimes against children were primarily assessed in terms of physical rather than moral harm. Juvenile criminals, having received leniency from the law, began to be more actively involved in crime by adults.