495 females did not increase to the same extent as did those carried out by men. This development has also been related to the connection with the increase of proletarianization in the towns. During the first half of the 19th century Linköping accomodated a growing number of unpropertied inhabitants, both men and women. The question is then why this development did not leave just as many traces among the women. One important explanation should be that a larger percentage of women were members of households, working as servants. Those men who were convicted had often committed more serious forms of theft, with or without burglary, and many of themwere marginals, outside the patriarchal society. When it comes to economically weak women then theft does not seem to have been the first wav out for them. Instead we find them, amongst other things, as street hawkers, with or without permission, or as owners of small legitimate or illegal inns. At the beginning of the 19th century 40-50 % of those convicted of the illicit sale of alcohol and for allowing people to stay too long in an inn were women. Another possible source of income was, of course, prostitution. On isolated occasions it can be seen from the records that prostitution existed, but it is not possible to calculate its proportions. The lowering of the female crime ratio is not explained primarily by the fact that women to a lesser extent than previously dedicated themselves to pilfering, or other illegal activities. Instead it is explained by the fact that violation of the laws governing sexual conduct were slowly decriminalized and that the number of convicted men rose sturdily in several categories, e.g. for drunkenness or other misdemeaners concerning order. But even women did, from time to time, appear in the lists of fines and inhabited the workhouses. The Unique and the Common What took place in Linköping, Gullberg, Härnösand, Säbrå and other places in pre-industrial Sweden was a product, on the one hand, of specific circumstances and on the other hand of common trends. We have been able to see that courts’ agenda and the composition of the parties involved underwent great changes, which often were representative of what happened in the rest of Sweden and in other European countries, at the same time. There was a transition everywhere, from justice dominated by local interests to justice with greater influence from central government and the experts. In Sweden this happened more through infiltration in old, existing institutions rather than by means of revolutionary innovations, and this should explain why local interests, inspite of everything, could assert themselves to a certain extent. The events which took place in Linköping at the beginning of the 19th century occurred on the one hand against the background of a development in the whole of Western Europe, but it was the local elite who primarily acted towards
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