Crimes, disorders, and transgressions: Lisbon at the end of the Monarchy

Abstract

Lisbon has a central place when we analyse crime and transgressions, particularly between the end of the 19th century and the  beginning of the 20th century, because it was in this city that crime had its highest incidence, unparalleled in Portugal as a whole.  This article outlines a characterisation of crime in Lisbon in the last decades of the Monarchy. To this end, it makes use of existing  studies and analyses a diverse range of sources, in particular crime statistics produced by the police and judicial authorities. The  study of transgressions relies above all on analysing the documentation kept at the Lisbon Municipal Archive. The aim is to present a general framework of the imposition of the law and the municipal rules that regulated daily life in Lisbon and how the failure to  comply with them by the population who lived and worked in the city, due to inability, ignorance, or refusal, contributed to a sharp  increase in the number of crimes and offences recorded in Lisbon. In addition to the regulations to which the urban space was  subject, Lisbon was also the place with the largest and most effective police force in the country, which favoured the detection and  repression of illegalities that occurred there.