Opening the data in Aberdeen Convicts – part 2

Introduction

In part one of this blog post we explained the rationale of opening up the data from the Register of Returned Convicts of Aberdeen (1869-1939) . In this second part our intern for the summer project, Sara Mazzoli, explains our methodology and our results.

How we did it

Preparatory work: designing the Google Sheets

Having made the case to open the data we then designed a process for opening that data. We considered that Wikidata would be an ideal site to upload the records. Indeed, the data uploaded on Wikidata falls under the CC0 license, which allows individuals to share it and use it freely. Moreover, Wikidata allows individuals to freely query the data, and to apply visualisation and analysis techniques.

The process consisted of a few different steps, both for the opening of records and for the opening of convicts’ pictures – to which we will dedicate a separate paragraph. First, we designed two Google spreadsheets.

The first Google spreadsheet hosted the instructions for transcribing and checking the transcribed data, which we designed before the process began, as well as a table for the volunteers to sign up to either transcribe or check the records.

The other Google spreadsheet was divided into seven further sheets, one for each decade. To determine if one record pertained to one decade or the other, we took as reference the discharge date of the prisoners. Each row contained information on the transcription and checking (the person who transcribed the record; the person who checked the record; their eventual notes – e.g., outstanding information, illegible writing in the page to transcribe, etc.); link to the page of the register; page number) as well as the data of the Register’s page – which was: registered number of the convict; age on discharge; convict name and aliases; gender of the convict; complexion; eyes; hair; height (in imperial measurement); crime; sentence; sentence date; discharge date; distinguishing marks (such as tattoos, scars); address.

Once all the data was transcribed, we took two different processes to open the convicts’ data on Wikidata and to upload the isolated mug shots on Wiki commons.

Opening the convicts’ data: upload to Wikidata

Once all the data was transcribed, we decided to create another Google sheet, since it is easier to upload data on Wikidata through this platform. Here, we designed the look-up tables, and created formulas to translate the convicts’ details from natural language (English) to Wikidata properties and items’ codes (e.g., from “brown hair” to “P1884: Q2367101”, where “P1884” is the category for hair colour and “Q2367101” is brown).

However, again, there were decisions we had to make:

Because metric measurement is more accurate and easier to understand, we designed a formula to translate the imperial measurement into metric.
Because distinguishing marks lacked a unique format, and because Wikidata needs some structure for the information that is uploaded to be machine-readable and to be queried; we decided not to upload the distinguishing marks.
As for the addresses, given that we wanted to visualize the addresses in a map, and noting all the addresses on the map would make it too cluttered, we have decided to just upload the first address for each individual.

Therefore, we created a Unique ID for all the items that we created so that they would be connected together. Also, we enriched the available information of the Register with the data collected by Phil Astley in his blog.

All the convicts are now available here: https://w.wiki/3bZn

Opening the convicts’ mugshots: upload on Wikicommons

For the mug shots, we had to take a different process.

First, we isolated the mug shots. Then, we created a Wiki Commons category for the Aberdeen mug shots, where we uploaded the isolated pictures. We also created a broader category for Images from the Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire Archives – so that it would function as a collector for possible future projects.

To upload the pictures, we created an Excel sheet to generate an automatic description for the pictures, using the available data from the register, as well as information from Phil’s blog. Once all the pictures were uploaded, we matched the picture(s) with the individual it was related to. Indeed, all Wikimedia services are related, and therefore it is easy to link a Wiki Commons image with a Wikidata item.

What we found out: results

Analysis of sentences: general

For the following visualizations, since they do not report the name of the convicts, we decided to make use of all the available data -, it was effectively possible to analyse the data from 278 records.

The graph below represents the number of convicts discharged every single year. Amongst these, it seems to us that there are 20 individuals who were probably sentenced to penal servitude twice, such as Elisabeth Wilson or Baxter. For all the data analysis, we decided to take as reference the date of discharge, rather than the sentence date. The reason for this lies in the fact that the sentence date was often not stated in the Register, while the date of discharge was always present. Therefore, it allows us to carry out a more meaningful and precise analysis.

It can be seen that, after the year 1904 (the year that splits the register in half), far less individuals were released. This means that most convictions happened in the early stages of the Register’s existence – and in particular during the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s. In fact, we counted 167 released individuals between 1869 and 1904, but only 111 individuals being released after 1904.

Another interesting feature, that can be seen here, is that no individuals were released in 1918 and 1919, as the Great War was raging.

If we look closer at the convictions, it is noticeable that all the sentences were penal servitudes (apart from one transportation, given in 1851). 83, however, are peculiar, since they included police supervision, hard labour, fortifying of license or fines.

Secondly, it is possible to see that a person could be convicted for more than one crime. For example, nine people were convicted for robbery and assault – that is why the number of offences is higher than the number of returned convicts, as it can be seen from the graph below. Moreover, each sentence could include “P.Cs” (i. e., previous convictions) and/or “hab & rep” (i. e., habit and repute – check the first blog post for more details).

Finally, three of the sentences given in the register were of penal servitude for life. All these three were given at the start of the twentieth century, and two of them were for crimes against the person (culpable homicide and murder). The third one was for attempting to “communicate information respecting H.M.Forces with the intention of assisting the enemy”. However, all these individuals were ultimately released within 1914 and 1931.

Because these sentences were given in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they did not respond to nowadays crime categories as much. For example, convictions of “abortion”, “sodomy” or “plagium” were hard to classify. Therefore, we decided to follow a classification of the time, first developed by Hume in 1797. Indeed, Hume wrote a very comprehensive work on the classification and cases within Scots Law, which better represents the crimes present in the register.

*Categories:*	*Offences present in the Register pertaining to each category:*
Offences against property	Theft (which can be aggravated by: habit and repute, housebreaking, shopbreaking, warehouse breaking), theft by opening lockfast places, embezzlement, plagium, larceny; reset; falsehood and fraud
Offences against theperson	Culpable homicide, murder, procuring abortion; rape, indecent assault; assault, wounding
Offences against public peace	Sending threatening letters
Offences against public police or economy	Incest, bigamy, sodomy, indecency, removing a body from its grave
Offences against the State	Forgery of notes, uttering, Attempt to communicate information respecting H.M.Forces with the intention of assisting the enemy

Table 1: Offences as classified by Hume in 1797 (Hume, 1819). It is really fascinating to find out that plagium, which is still defined as a crime of “child stealing”, is classified as an offence against property; the rationale being that “the creature taken, which has no will on its own, is a thing” (Hume, 1819, p. 82).

Of course, this classification cannot be employed uncritically, as it reflects a view of the world on crime, justice, morality and human nature. Grasping this view of the world is impossible for us, but it is interesting to reflect on it and the impacts that it may still hold on the way we see and experience crime. Therefore, in suggesting that the offences in the Register are classified according to these categories, we do not aim to justify these classifications; but rather to frame those offences in the moral and social paradigms in which they belong to. As claimed by Pauw (2014, p. 9), “Crime history can provide insight into the social response to crime. In terms of social history, the study of crime provides perspective on society’s definition and expectations for moral behavior”. From this point of view, the category of “Offences against public police or economy” is quite exemplary. In fact, it comprehended all offences that went against “propriety, good neighbourhood and good manners”.

Therefore, as we also stressed in the first blogpost, it is important to underline that such classifications, despite having real effects on individuals, are constructed – and thus can and must be framed and questioned.

Taking a closer look at the offences for which individuals were convicted, it is evident that the vast majority were accused of crimes against

Property. The total number of offences against property were 246. In comparison, the number of offences against the person was just 50, and those against public police or economy were 12. The offences pertaining to the other two classes of crimes, summed together, account for less than 10 crimes. There were moreover a few sentences that we could not classify, such as “Military striking a superior officer”.

It is interesting to notice that, while most offences for other categories seem quite scattered through the register, most of convictions against public police or economy were mainly given within the last few years of the Register’s existence.

Analysis of sentences: averages and medians

With the aim of understanding how the sentences length changed over the decades, to understand if we could find out any particular pattern; we calculated the average sentence length given for each crime category, both before 1904 and after 1904. This is because the data on charges for crimes against property is the only one which allows a more granular and detailed analysis and confrontation of sentences from decade to decade.

Due to the fact that, as mentioned above, 84 sentences were containing other pieces of information (such as hard labour, police supervision, etc.), these sentences could not be included in the calculation of the average. Also, in this case, as for the mixed sentences, such as the above-mentioned “Assault & Robbery”, we could not determine whether the sentence length could be equally splitted between the two charges, and therefore decided to pair them together with “Other” in this analysis.

*Point in time*	*Against property*	*Against the person*	*Against public peace*	*Against public police or economy*	*Against the State*	*Other and mixed sentences*
Convicts released before 1904
Number of sentences per type of crime	109	17	–	3	2	12
Average sentence length (years)	6.55	7.94	–	8.33	6.5	6.33
Median sentence length (years)	7	7	–	5	6.5	5
Convicts released after 1904
Number of sentences per type of crime	64	16	1	10	2	7
Average sentence length (years)	4.57	7.5	3	4.4	12.5	5.71
Median sentence length (years)	5	5	3	4	12.5	5

Table 2: statistics on sentence length for each class of crimes, divided by point in time.

In general, sentence length for individuals released after 1904 was a bit lower compared to the penalty received by individuals released before. Calculating the average sentence length for the sentences given before 1904 (where it was possible to calculate it), we found out that convicts were, on average, sentenced to 6.73 years in prison. After 1904, that number reduced to 5.26 years. It seems that most of it has to do with shorter punishments for crimes against property, which were the vast majority and which average length for crimes against property significantly decreased for individuals released after 1904.

For crimes against the person after 1904, we see an average sentence length of 7.81 years, contrasted by a median length of 5. For convicts released before 1904 who committed a crime against the person, usually a sentence of 5 years or more was given, and thus sentences were more homogeneous – and therefore, median and average are similar. Instead, for those convicted of crime against the person released after 1904, there were four harsher sentences to 10 years or more (including the two penal servitudes for life, which lasted 15 and 30 years), and eleven sentences that lasted 5 years or less. A similar thing is true for crimes against public police or economy before 1904; where amongst those three sentences given, two were 5 years long and one, for incest, 15 years long.

Analysis of gender and age data

Amongst these 278 records that we could analyse, we found out that 37 convicts were women. Most of them were convicted for crimes against property, mostly theft. There were four however, who were convicted for a crime against the person – all of them for culpable homicide in 1886, 1893, 1923, 1929. When analysing the data for gender, it is apparent that most of women were convicted in the second half of the nineteenth century, being most of them discharged between 1869 and 1893.

In terms of how the average age of female convicts compares to male convicts, as well as to how the average sentence length given to women compares with that of male convicts; there are no apparent significant differences.

*Point in time*	*Average age on discharge*	*Average sentence*
	Female	Male	Female	Male
*Convicts released before 1904*	44	39	7.5	7.03
*Convicts released after 1904*	39	40	3.67	5.17

Table 3: statistics on sentence length and age, divided by gender and by point in time.

Analysis of addresses data

The map with the addresses was developed by Ian, and can be seen here. This visualization was created through the Wikidata queries service, and is based on the data we have currently uploaded on Wikidata. Thus, it is based on records of individuals discharged between 1869 and 1921.

Fig 1: Map with the addresses to which convicts returned. The first view on the right comprehends the whole Aberdeen urban area, while the second one below it is more focussed on the city (the represented area is that inside the black square in the first picture). The third represents Aberdeen’s city centre, where most convicts returned to (the represented area is that inside the black square in the second picture).

The yellow dots represent the address of convicts released in 1870s, the green ones is for the addresses of those who were released in 1880s, the red ones are for the addresses of those who were released in 1890s, the purple ones is for the addresses of those who were released in 1900s, the brown ones are for the addresses of those who were released in 1910s, the pink ones are for the addresses of those who were released in 1920s.

According to Smith (2000, p. 22), in 1708 Aberdeen had 5000 inhabitants. By 1800, that figure quintupled, but the city’s borders remained unchanged: “the boundaries at the time were defined by the Denburn Valley to the west, the south end of the Spital (now St Peter Street) to the north, and the tidal estuary of the River Dee to the south. […] This growth [in population] had been accommodated primarily by the infill of open space thus greatly increasing the density of the urban population”. Therefore, Aberdeen’s council decided on a plan to expand the city towards the Western areas of the Denburn valley, thereby building Union Street – which project started in 1799.

The construction of Union Street redefined the geography and the social composition of the city. While at the start of the nineteenth century, the poor and the rich more or less shared the same urban space; with the expansion of the city towards the West, the middle and upper classes moved to the newly built suburbs. The working class was thus left to live in the city centre, often in squalid and unsanitary conditions, in slum-like housing. Indeed, despite the economic prosperity experienced by the city during the second half of the nineteenth century, the living condition of the working class did not improve (Williams, 2000).

In fact, according to Williams (2000), despite the widespread poverty amongst the working classes, caused by low wages, the local government hardly ever intervened before the twentieth century. Indeed, in Victorian times, poverty was generally seen as a choice, rather than the result of social forces; and thus public intervention was not seen as a possible solution. The Victoria Lodging-House, in which 19 convicts resided as their first address – previously a residence known as Provost Skene – was opened as a result of philanthropic action, rather than from governmental initiative. The first municipal attempts to solve the housing crisis and to clear the slums are to be found at the very end of the nineteenth century and at the start of the twentieth, with the appointment of Matthew Hay as the medical officer of health. Hay denounced the conditions in which the poor lived, and suggested improving the most critical areas for the general public health interest. Therefore, the government built the Corporation Lodging House in East North street in 1899, where 17 convicts resided as their first address. It also started closing uninhabitable dwellings. More systematic attempts to overcome the indigent conditions in which the poor lived started in the Twenties, in which, for example, Guestrow was cleared. In total, the people in the Register that lived in Guestrow as their first address were 31, with the last moving there in 1913.

The high concentration of former convicts in the areas of Castlehill and Castlegate therefore may suggest that most of them lived in such conditions, and were belonging to the working class. Therefore, they might have lived in conditions of extreme poverty. This could also explain why the rate of crimes against property, which patterns usually change according to the economic cycle, remained quite high during the second half of the nineteenth century; despite Aberdeen’s economy increasing during that period.

Reflections on the project

All in all, this project has been incredibly interesting and stimulating. It represented a chance to dive into the history of Aberdeen, explore social Victorian practices, and understand and work with a platform such as Wikidata. Indeed, it was fascinating to see, for example, the way in which convicts were described. We could notice the widespread presence of tattoos, and even the presence of vaccination marks after the 1880s.

Part of the reason why the project was so stimulating, and represented an occasion to learn so much, lies in the complexity of the project itself. We had to make decisions at every stage of the project, we had to design spreadsheets and formulas, and employ tools which we had never before – and that required quite a bit of trial and error. To me, it was an occasion to understand how Wikidata, a platform born in 2012, works, and what are its potentials.

Since its foundation, Wikidata has since grown with projects like this one. In fact, as Ian told me, the project has been a great occasion to also help shape and change Wikidata’s way to categorize convictions. Indeed, the way in which data can be stored in the platform is quite flexible and fairly easy to change.

Many scholars, activists and Wikimedians have highlighted the possibilities unfolded by the opening data using Wikidata. For example, Evans (2017) has claimed that Wikidata can provide better access to datasets, and can better connect collections together. In fact, being just one platform, it potentially allows for the datasets’ items to be linked also with other items in other datasets. Therefore, Wikidata can be defined as a platform to publish linked open data (LOD), and as such can provide us with more insights on the data compared to a single institution’s website (Allison-Cassin & Scott, 2018) – since that website probably does not offer the same possibility of linking the institution’s data with that of other institutions.

Furthermore, as Ian explained to me, employing Wikidata is free, and thus far less costly than maintaining an institution’s website on which to open the data. Indeed, there is a very small risk of Wikidata being closed, as it is with any site, but the datasets on the platform can always be downloaded and backed up, and this risk is much lower than a project website set up by a local authority whose funding may be cut in future. Therefore, Wikidata can potentially represent a great opportunity for the GLAM sector, which data is so crucial to understand the history of the places where we live in. Of course, I would argue that this data must be framed and contextualized, and the choices that were made must also be made as transparent as possible. Also, it is noticeable that there are limits to which data can be opened, and how. Since the data to be opened still requires some uniform formatting, it was not possible for us to open the distinguishing marks yet. Nonetheless, for the GLAM sector Wikidata can represent an occasion to engage with the local community, and to co-create meaningful projects.

Ultimately, on this note, we want to thank once again the volunteers who took some time to help us with the project. We couldn’t have done it without your kind collaboration.

References

Allison-Cassin, S., & Scott, D. (2018). Wikidata: a platform for your library’s linked open data. Code4Lib Journal, (40).

Evans, J. [Wikimedian in Residence – University of Edinburgh]. (2017, November 7). Wikidata loves Galleries. Libraries, Archives & Museums – Jason Evans, National Library of Wales [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf6OG2QTvT4&t=1406s

Hume, D. (1819). Commentaries on the Law of Scotland, Vol. 1

Pauw, E. (2014). Reports of Criminality: The Aberdeen Journal and the Presentation of Crime, 1845-1850 (Doctoral dissertation).

Smith, J. S. (2000). The Growth of the City. In Aberdeen, 1800-2000: A New History (pp. 22-46). Tuckwell Press.

Williams, N. J. (2000). Housing. In Aberdeen, 1800-2000: A New History (pp. 295-322). Tuckwell Press.

Opening the data on Aberdeen Convicts – part 1

A guest blog-post by Sara Mazzoli, a post-graduate student at Edinburgh University, who has been interning at Code The City for the last three months. During this project she has worked closely with us and with the Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives.

Introduction: what is the Register of Returned Convicts?

Historical context, use and description

The Register of Returned Convicts of Aberdeen (1869-1939) is a fascinating, “small-but-chunky” (Astley, 2021) volume contained in the Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire Archives, comprising a total of 279 entries. It is located in the Grampian police collection of the Archives. Out of these entries, about sixty feature mug shots – which can be seen here.

As suggested by the register’s title, the register was used to take note of convicts’ addresses upon release. In fact, Phil Astley – Aberdeen’s Archivist – explained to us that this register contains information on convicts that were sentenced to Penal Servitude (often noted in the register as P.S.).

The Penal Servitude Act, enforced in 1857, was meant to substitute transportation with a prison sentence. This specific sentence consisted of three parts: solitary confinement; labour and release on licence. This latter element meant that individuals sentenced to P.S. had to report monthly to the police during their licence time. Also, they had to report any change in address within 48 hours.

A typical page of the Register looks like this:

As it can be seen, at the top of each page of the register, information was noted on convicts’ physical traits and age upon release, as well as conviction and sentence. In the “Marks” section, anything noteworthy – such as tattoos, scars, deformities and moles – was written down. In fact, according to Phil Astley the industrialisation process determined a high incidence of accidents in factories. Therefore, disfigurements were common amongst workers.

At the bottom half of the page, the register featured information on the convicts’ addresses after their sentence ended. Most of the addresses of the people noted in the register were in Aberdeen. However, some also moved to nearby towns and villages – such as Dundee – or to bigger cities, such as Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Moreover, Phil suggested that there are other two particular acts that shaped the register.

The Habitual Offenders Act 1869.
The Prevention of Crimes Act of 1871. This act

Simply put, these two acts tightened former criminals’ liberties, and enhanced police monitoring of these individuals. These laws were in fact especially crafted to fight habitual criminals (Radzinowicz and Hood, 1980): with increasing urbanization, authorities were concerned with what they labelled as “criminal classes”, an expression by which they referred to individuals who mainly lived through criminal activities. The Register can ultimately be understood as an example of the attempt to monitor the movements of these repeat offenders.

The mugshots and the “habitual criminal”

The camera was developed in the first half of the Nineteenth century, and was initially seen as a tool to represent bodies in a realistic manner. Indeed, photography was depicted as an objective and neutral representation of reality, and therefore authorities started using this tool for law enforcement since the 1840s: “Given its material features and its cultural value as an objective form of representation, the camera provided the perfect tool for the documentation, classiﬁcation, and regulation of the body within the carceral network” (Finn, 2009, p. 29).

Indeed, at first, as the concept of “mug shot” was developing, photos of individuals in the Register lacked a unique formatting, which started to appear in the 1890s. Indeed, as claimed by Finn (2009), mug shots developed from the Nineteenth-century portrait. These portraits featured an individual sitting, with no facial expression, and were usually taken from the front. As it can be seen, the first few mug shots look more like portraits compared to the later ones. For example:

Fig 1: two mug shots from the Register of the Returned Convicts (1869-1939). The first one, depicts Ann Mc Govern, released in 1872. The second one is the mug shot of John Proctor, discharged in 1893.

According to Holligan and Maitra (2018, p. 173), mug shots were established and developed in a milieu of “pessimism about classes of society”. Moreover, the development of criminal anthropology led to a more wide-spread use of photography in carceral settings. Scholars of this field of studies, such as Cesare Lombroso, believed that certain physical characteristics could yield the identification of criminals. The believed objectivity of photography meant that mug shots could further inform these studies; as characteristics found in mugshots could be analysed by criminal anthropologists. At the same time, the popularity of criminal anthropology led this field of studies also to shape law enforcement practices; first and foremost, by shaping the practices of mug shots taking and of noting distinguishing marks.

Specifically, mug shots were introduced in the UK thanks to the above-mentioned Prevention of Crimes Act of 1871: “Under the section 7 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1871 it was recommended that convicted prisoners be photographed before release, full and side face,measurements in millimetres and feet and inches to be made of length and width of head, and lengths of arms,feet and left middle finger including the papillary ridges of the ten fingers as well as distinctive marks by position on body” (Holligan & Maitra, 2018, p. 177). Indeed, Holligan and Maitra (2018) contend that the development of criminal anthropology led to the belief that “habitual criminals” could be identified by some specific marks; such as the length of imbs. Some of these marks were collected and published by the British Registry of Distinctive Marks, which regulated and influenced the ways in which authorities saw and noted distinguishing marks on prisoners.

Ultimately, we aim to argue that this Victorian construction of crime and of the criminal influenced the way in which the register is composed as well, and that the meaning of “crime” and “criminal” are dictated by moral and social standards. Indeed, many were arrested due to charges of Theft “Habit & Repute” which, according to Dr. Darby, means considering someone’s as having a “bad character, a bad name for theft specifically, and that other witnesses considered him a bad person”. Analysing the register means considering those social rules that shaped the way in which the register is written.

It is in our opinion fundamental to acknowledge such dimensions of the register as we open its data. It is in fact important to recognize that “Registers are political” (Ziegler, 2020), and that therefore the categories of the register are constructed. However, it must also be acknowledged that their construction does not make these categories any less impactful on individuals’ lives. Indeed, this is why we embrace attempts such as that of Phil, who tried to retrieve the humanity of the individuals in the register by associating their mug shots to stories; as we shall argue in the next paragraph.

Why this project is important: how did everything start?

Phil Astley explained that the interest in the register was built up during the 2019 and 2020 Granite Noir festival exhibitions, to which the Archives provided 19th century wanted posters, photos of 1930s crime scenes, as well as mug shots contained in the Register.

Indeed, the mug shots had attracted a positive response, and Phil started the Criminal Portraits blog, in which he started exploring the stories of returned convicts whose mug shots are contained in the register. Therefore, Phil has published more than 50 blog posts, drawing on heterogeneous sources, such as newspapers of the time and censuses. The blog has attracted more than 20 thousand views.

In discussing the plans for this project with Phil and Ian Watt of Code The City we agreed that opening up the data contained in the register – making it available as Open Data – would have social and other benefits.

According to the Open Data Handbook, open data is data that can be easily available and re-usable by anyone. There are many values pertaining to open data. Indeed, it can allow for more transparency, and therefore institutions’ or organizations’ accountability. Moreover, it can also prompt economic participation and investment by private companies. Finally, open data can enable citizen participation and engagement, as it is with this project.

In this specific case, we decided to open data from the register precisely because of the public interest it attracted. Not only is the life of the individuals contained in the register fascinating in itself, but we would argue that opening up this data has also a greater social value. For example, it would allow for individuals with a genealogical interest to find out more about their possible ancestors; or it could be useful for researchers who are carrying out their work on criminality in Scotland.

In any case, opening up data from the Archives could lead to more interest towards their rich collections, as well as to a more thorough understanding of these collections’ communal utility.

It was agreed that we would use Wikidata as the place to host the data, given Code The City’s and Ian’s knowledge of, and enthusiasm, for this platform.

How we made the data available

In the second part of this blog we will detail how we transcribed the data, prepared it for Wikidata, uploaded it in bulk, published mugshot photos and linked those.

References

Astley, P. [Aberdeen Performing Arts]. (2021, February 23). Phil Astley – Criminal Portaits Webinar – Granite Noir 2021 [Video]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFcOG_7Cv0I&t=2346s

Darby, N. (2014, 11 28). The ‘habit and repute’ thief in Scottish law. Retrieved from Dr Nelly Darby. Criminal Historian:
www.criminalhistorian.com/the-habit-and-reute-thief-in-scottish-law/

Finn, J. M. (2009). Capturing the criminal image: From mug shot to surveillance society. U of Minnesota Press.

McLean, R., Maitra, D. E. V., & Holligan, C. (2017). Voices of quiet desistance in UK prisons: Exploring emergence of new identities under desistance constraint. The Howard journal of crime and justice, 56(4), 437-453

Open Knowledge Foundation. (n.d.). Open Definition: Defining Open in Open Data, Open Content and Open Knowledge. Retrieved from Open Knowledge Foundation:
https://opendefinition.org/od/2.1/en/

Radzinowicz, L., & Hood, R. (1980). Incapacitating the habitual criminal: The English
experience. Michigan Law Review, 78(8), 1305-1389.

Ziegler, S. L. (2020). Open Data in Cultural Heritage Institutions: Can We Be Better Than Data Brokers?. Digital Humanities Quarterl, 14(2).

Using Wikidata to model Aberdeen’s Industrial Heritage

Saturday 6th March, 2021 was World Open Data Day. To mark this international event CTC ran a Wikidata Taster session. The objectives were to introduce attendees to Wikidata and how it works, and give them a few hours to familiarise themselves with how to add items, link items, and add images.

The theme of the session (to give it some structure and focus) was the Industrial Heritage of Aberdeen. More specifically the bygone industries of Aberdeen and, more specific still, the many Iron Foundries that once existed. I chose the specific topic as it is still relatively easy to spot the products of the industry on streets and pavements as we walk around the city, photograph those and add them to Wiki Commons, as I have been doing.

We had thirteen people book and eight turn up. After I gave a short presentation on how Wikidata operates we divided ourselves into three groups in breakout rooms. This was all on Zoom, of course, while we were still under lockdown.

The teams of attendees chose a foundry each: Barry, Henry & Cook Limited; Blaikie Brothers, and William McKinnon & Company Ltd. I’d already created an entry for John Duffus and Company in preparation for the event and to use as a model.

I’d also created a Google Sheet with a tab for each of the other thirteen foundries I’d identified (including those selected by the groups). I’d also spent quite a while trying to figure out how to access and search the old business and Post Office Directories for the city which had been digitised for 1824 to 1941. I eventually I built myself a tool, which I shared with the teams, which generated an URL for a specific search term for a certain directory. They used this, as well as other sources, to identify key dates, addresses and name changes of businesses.

By the end of the session our teams had created items for

They had also created items for foundry buildings – linked to Canmore etc, as well as founders. We enhanced these with places of their burial, portraits and images of gravestones. I took further photos which I uploaded to Commons and linked the following Monday. I created two Wikidata queries to show the businesses added, and the founders who created the businesses.

The statistics for the 3 hour session (although some worked into the afternoon and even the next day) are impressive. You can see more detail on the event dashboard.

We received positive feedback from the attendees who have been able to take their first steps towards using Wikidata as a public linked open data for heritage items.

I hope that the attendees will keep working on the iron founders until we have all of these represented on Wikidata. Next we can tackle shipbuilders and the granite industry!

Mapping Memorials to Women in Aberdeen

This project, which was part of CTC20, grew from a WMUK / Archaeology Scotland join project carried out by Scottish Graduate School of Arts & Humanities intern Roberta Leotta during lockdown 2020. More details about the background to the project can be found here.

It’s often touted that there are some cities in Scotland (coughEdinburghcough) where there are more statues to animals than there are to women. In my own work transferring OpenPlaques data to Wikidata I’ve observed that there are more entries for Charles Rennie Macintosh than there for women in Glasgow. So in this light, it’s somewhat refreshing to work on a project that celebrates all kinds of memorials to women in Scotland.

The Women of Scotland: Mapping Memorials project began in 2010 as a joint project between Glasgow Women’s Library, and Women’s History Scotland. It’s similar in many ways to OpenPlaques, but using Wikidata could add an extra dimension – let’s increase the coverage of women’s history and culture on the Wikimedia projects by getting these memorials and the women they celebrate into Wikidata, use that to identify gaps in knowledge, and then work to fill the gap.

Over the two days, here’s what we did:

Data collection

We scraped the initial list of data from Mapping Memorials website manually, and created a shared worksheet based on a model that’s been used previously for other cities. (The manual process is slow, and a bit fiddly, and is the one thing that I wouldn’t do again. We’re in contact with the admin so going forward, I’m hopeful that we wouldn’t need to repeat this step in the future.)

Once we had this list, we could create a more automated process to deal with gathering the other pieces of information we needed to create new, good quality Wikidata items, although some (description, for example) needed a human eye.

Wikidata identifiers

We were using two main identifiers on Wikidata – P8048 (Women of Scotland memorial ID) and P8050 (Women of Scotland subject ID). The former for the entries to the memorials themselves, and the latter for the women they celebrate. Where the women didn’t have entries, we could create those, and then link them to the entries for the memorials.

Both identifiers use the last part of the URL for each entry on the Mapping Memorials site, so that was fairly easy to do in Google docs. Once we had that info, it’s an easy enough step to bulk-create items either using Quickstatements or Wikibase CLI.

Creating items & avoiding duplicates

There’s a plug in for Google Sheets called Wikipedia and Wikidata Tools which has some useful features for projects like this – WikidataQID for looking up whether something already exists on Wikidata, and WikidataFacts, which tells you what that item is. The former is ok if you have an exact match, the latter is really useful for flagging anything which might lead to a disambiguation page, for example.

Ultimately we did end up with a few duplicates that needed to be merged, but this was pretty easily managed, and it really showed how useful it is to have local knowledge involved in local projects – there were a couple of sets of coordinates that were obviously wrong, but also some errors that wouldn’t have been spotted by someone unfamiliar with the area.

Coordinates and dates

I really like Quickstatements, but there are a few areas in which it’s fiddly, including coordinates and dates. I’m really interested in looking further into Wikibase CLI for dates in particular, as the process there for dates (documented here) looks to be substantially easier in terms of data prep than it does in Quickstatements. Many thanks to Tony for that work, as his expertise saved us a lot of time! He also used that tool to create items for those women commemorated who were missing from Wikidata, documented here.

As with dates, coordinates are entered into Quickstatements in a different format than that which you’d use manually inside Wikidata itself, hence the formatting you’ll see in column Q on the Data collection tab. Most of this we had to grab from Google Maps, which again is a bit fiddly.

Quickstatements

Once we had a master list of QIDs for the memorials we were working with, we could use Quickstatements to bulk upload sets of statements to those items.

For example, matching the memorials to the women commemorated, using this format:

Screenshot of a spreadsheet showing QID for memorials and the women they commemorate

The Q numbers on the left are those of the memorials, P547 is “commemorates”, and the Q numbers on the right are those of the women celebrated. We were also able to add P8050 (Women of Scotland subject ID) to some women who already had entries on Wikidata, but no WoS ID.

Screenshot of a spreadsheet showing each memorial QID and its type

The Q number on the left again is the memorial, P31 is “instance of”, and the Q number on the right corresponds to a type of thing – a commemorative plaque, a garden, or a road, for example.

Once you’ve got the info in this format, it’s just a case of copy & pasting into QS, clicking import, and then run. (Note – you do need to be an autoconfirmed user to use QS, which means that your account must be at least 4 days old, and having more than 50 edits.) It’s relatively easy, and I was pleased that one of our relatively-new-to-Wikidata participants had the chance to make her first bulk uploads (description & commons category) using the tool over the weekend.

Photos

This project grew out of a desire to increase the coverage of Scottish heritage on Wikimedia Commons, so it was great to take some time on this. Mapping Memorials does have some images, but they’re not openly licensed, and others are missing. After Wikimedia Commons, our next port of call was Geograph, where many images have been released on Wiki-compatible Creative Commons licenses. Using Geograph2Commons, images can easily be transferred over to Wikimedia Commons, so that they can be used in any Wikimedia Project. Geograph also links to this feature from their site – click on “Find out how to reuse this image”, and then scroll down to “Wikipedia template for image page”, then click on the “geograph2commons” link. Really simple. Our group did some detective work for images, and then added them to Commons, and linked them manually to the Wikidata item.

This gave us a list of missing images… which is fine, but wouldn’t it be better to see them on a map?

Visualisation and filling the gaps

Thanks to Ian’s tutorial on how to create a custom WikiShootMe map, we were able to create a custom map that showed us which of the memorials we were working on had images, which didn’t, and where they were. That map is here, and it was great to see it slowly turn more green than red over the weekend as we found more images, or as volunteers headed out across Aberdeen between days to take missing pictures.

A screenshot of a clickable map where people can upload photos of monuments

One of the small, but very satisfying, things you can do with these kinds of images is to integrate them into relevant Wikipedia articles. I added images from the project to the articles for Aberdeen Town House, Caroline Phillips, and Katherine Grainger. At the time of writing, around 2500 people have viewed those articles since I added the images.

Next steps

Over the course of the weekend we added 77 new memorials, and 26 new women to Wikidata, as well as a whole host of new photos. These entries all had some quite rich data, and as complete as we could make it.

We were surprised to see some of the individuals who didn’t have a Wikipedia article – and of course, we can use the Wikidata query service to identify those gaps. The queries below could give us a great starting point for an editathon, or indeed, for any Wikipedia editor interested in writing Women’s biography.

Wikidata query for women with a Women of Scotland subject ID, a memorial in Aberdeen, but no enwiki article: https://w.wiki/YVH
Wikidata query for women with a Women of Scotland subject ID, but no enwiki article: https://w.wiki/YVG

Huge thanks to the team, and to Code the City for another great hack weekend!

Dr Sara Thomas
Scotland Programme Coordinator, Wikimedia UK

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Header image: The Grave of Jessie Seymour Irvine by Ian Watt on Wiki Commons (CC-BY-SA)

Aberdeen Plaques – Part One

On Saturday 14th December 2019 we ran a one-day mini hack event. The idea behind it was for people to come along for a day to work on their side projects and, if they needed support, attempt to persuade others to assist them.

That’s what I did with my Aberdeen Plaques project: something I’d had on the back burner for more than a year.

Why do it?

The commemorative plaques which are dotted around the city are a perfect candidate for open data. They have a subject, usually some dates, are located somewhere, and are of different types etc. Making that all available as open data would open up a whole range of possibilities.

If we captured all of that well then we could do analysis on the data (ratio of women to men, most represented professions), create walking routes (maybe one for the arts, one for the sciences and so on), create timelines to see what periods are more represented.

Having recently trained as a WikiMedia UK trainer – and having experimented with some of the tools (Wiki Commons, Wiki Data, Wikipedia, Histropedia) I was convinced that these were the right way to go.

Pre-event prep

So, in advance of the hack day I’d done a bit of prep in the two weeks running up to the day iteself.

I’d created a spreadheet which recorded the
* subject (person or ‘thing’)
* Gender if known
* the link to the now-retired city council plaques system (hidden from public view)
* The location if known
* The geo coordinates (to be determined)
* Whether the subject had a Wikipedia page (tbd)
* Whether there was an image of the plaque on Wiki Commons (tbd)
* Whether the subject of the plaque was represented on Wiki Data (tbd)
* Any identifiers on Open Plaques (tbd)
* Any external links (eg to Flickr for photos)

I’d then populated some of the data (eg whether there were images of the plaque on Wiki Commons) as well as some other bits. But most cells were blank.

As a keen walker and photographer I had also photographed and uploaded seventeen plaque images to Wiki Commons in the lead up, so that we would have some images to work with.

How to use our time most effectively on the day?

Our aim for the day was then to find out what data / info / images existed, fill in the gaps, and explore how to use WikiData to store and retrieve data, and how we could potentially create maps, timelines and similiar new products.

What we did on the day

At the start of the event we pitched our project ideas, and I managed to persude five others (Angela, Mike, Stephen, James and Steve) to join me in working on the plaques project.

Angela and Mike, and later Angela and Stephen would go out and take photographs. Steve, James and I would work on the data capture, completing research on what existed, creating new entries for the data on Wiki Data, and testing queries on the Wiki Data query service.

How we did it

We used the spreadsheet that I had set up to capture all of the data we’d gathered – and as it eveolved it would show progress as well as what was still lacking. We had no expectations that we would do it all on the day, but we could pick away at it in future weeks and months.

In the run-up to the event I’d discovered The Pingus’ album of plaques photographs on Flickr. Sadly these had not been published with a licence that would allow us to use them. I’d sent a request, a few days before CTC18, for them to change the licence for the Aberdeen plaques pictures to a CC-SA one. This would have allowed our republishing on Wiki Commons. Sadly it didn’t elicit a response. But the album did show that there were many more plaques than the old ACC system listed. And it was possible to get co-ordinates from them. So the number of plaques to deal with kept growing.

During the day James filled in loads of gaps in which subjects were on Wikipedia and which on Wikidata.

Steve and I experimented with capturing and querying the data. Structuring that in a way that aids recall through Wiki Data Query Service was an interative process. Firstly I tried adding a statement ‘commomorative plaque image’ (P1801) into the wikidata record for the subject as you can see in this first example https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2095630. But that limited what we could do.

So, we discovered that we could create a new object which was an instance of commemorative plaque. Our first attempt was https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q78438703 and we evolved what we captured there – adding statement, and Steve discovered the ‘openPlaques plaque ID'(P1893). Incidentally we also tried ‘openplaques Subject ID’ (P1430) but adding that to the plaque object throws an error. The latter should be added to the person record not the plaque.

At the end of CTC18

We ended the day with

138 plaques listed.
57 sets of co-ordinates identified
68 Wikipedia articles identified as matching plaque subjects (and eleven plaques subjects who had NO wikipedia page)
36 Images in WikiCommons
77 WikiData entries for the subject of the plaques (existing or created)
11 new wikidata entries for the plaques themselves

This was a great leap forward in one day and would pave the way for future work.

What next?

Since CTC18 ended, I’ve got firmly stuck into this project over the xmas break. Over the last three weeks I have now photographed over a hundred plaques (plenty of walking) and have created wikidata entries for most plaques and also their subjects in wikidata.

I’ll cover all of that, and how we can now use the data in part two, coming soon.