The Press. — London, England, 1853-08-06 00:00:00

littraturt. Crime: its Amount, Causes, and Remedies. By Frederic Hill. London : Murray. Is this work Mr. Hill has compressed the results of sixteen years' experience as an inspector of prisons, during which time the great question of the causes and prevention of crime has, as he informs us, unceasingly occupied his attention, quickened by the ne cessity of embodying his opinions in a series of annual reports. The book is full of matter, plainly written, and suggestive as well as instructive. There is an occasional tendency to digress, produced by the nature of the sub ject, and occasionally a superabundance of details. But books in these days are written and read in equal haste ; and a little repeti tion tends to impress on the reader's mind what he might otherwise overlook. Mr. 11111 commences with an assertion as satisfactory as it is susceptible of proof— namely, that the amount of crime in the United Kingdom has of bite years very largely decreased. Much evidence is given confirma tory of this view, from which we have not space to extract. But some remarks which he makes on this head are worth notice. First, that, as the tendency of social improvement is everywhere to establish a more vigorous and effective police, the proportion of detected to undetected offences annually becomes greater. But all our statistics aro of necessity based on the number, not of offences committed, but of convictions ; whence it follows that the apparent decrease of crime as statistically demonstrated falls very far short of the real decrease ascertainable from other sources of information. Secondly, that of the gravest class of offences—namely, mur ders — far the . . larger proportion are coinmitted by fo - reigners and Irish immigrants, and comparatively few by Englishmen. Third, that, in every locality with which Mr. Hill is acquainted, the habi tual law-breakers, the criminal population, as we may term them, are few in number, and the great mass of the population is com paratively blameless. "As a great many hats " are made by a single hatter, and a great " many shoes by a single cobbler, so a great " many thefts are committed by a single thief." In one instance it was estimated that 20,000 separate breaches of law were the work of only fifteen individuals ! This may seem to mili tate against the assumed efficiency of our police ; but, as bearing on the question of public morality, it furnishes a gratifying proof of the generally peaceable demeanour of the working class. The causes of crime are enumerated as fol lows—and the enumeration of itself suggests the remedy in each case : (1.) " Bad training and ignorance." These arise from a variety of circumstances. Orphan age, or desertion by natural protectors, is not uncommon. Out of seventy prisoners, under eighteen years of age, in Glasgow gaol, fifty were found to have lost one or both of their parents. Illegitimacy, inducing early neglect, if not positive abandonment, is also a frequent characteristic of the criminal class. The children of women much employed in non domestic occupations, and thus unable to tend them, are likewise easily led into bad courses. Some are hereditary thieves, trained to their business as to any other profession, and desti tute of acquired capacity to earn an honest living. The great mass of prisoners, says Mr. Hill, " are day-labourers, butchers, carters, and " other persons engaged in employments be " speaking the lowest order of talent and " knowledge." Skilled artisans and well trained husbandmen are rarely found among the inmates of gaols : Even the mere powers of reading and writing, without reference to exercise in their intelligent use, are com paratively rare among criminals. Of more than 10,00 persons in Scotland (where education is more general than in England) received into the prisons in one year while I was inspector them, only 4,700, or less than one in three, could read well; and less than 1,200, or one in thirteen, could write well; and of the whole number only 311, or one in fifty, had learnt more than mere reading and writing. 2,400 of these prisoners could not read at all; and m,400 could not write at all. There are no authentic means of comparing these num bers with the portion of the people at large who are in a similar state of ignorance ; but my general knowledge on THE PRESS. this point, confirmed by the observation of the great body of prison governors and chaplains with whom I have con• versed, enables me to say that it is much less than this. To what an extent the simple power of reading fluently is often a protection from habits of crime may be judged of from the fact that a home missionary in Edinburgh, in whom I had full confidence (the present worthy and able governor of the prison of that city, Mr. Smith ), told me that in all his visits to the poor he never met with a single person who was at the same time addicted to crime and iu the habit of reading. But it is not by mere neglect that parents offend against their children. Some have been known, though not themselves criminals, to encourage them in habits of vice, and even to apply for sentences of transportation against them, in hope thus to be relieved from the charge of their maintenance. For this evil Mr. Adderley's admirable bill furnishes the best and only fitting remedy, by throwing on the careless or criminal father the expense of providing fur his convicted child. Parental control, without corresponding responsibility. is undoubtedly an anomaly which ought not to exist under any civilised government. But, in order to guard against the possible abuse of too sweeping an enactment, discretionary power might be left with the court to exempt the parent from such charge where he could prove that the misconduct of the child had not been created by neglect on his part. The burden of proof, however, should lie with him, responsibility being the rule, and not the ex ception. Cheap postage, cheap literature, good schools, and habits of early industry, are earnestly dwelt upon by our author as remedies for the evil here complained of. These topics, how. ever, are but cursorily touched upon, and re quire separate discussion to do them justice. (2.) The second cause assigned is drunken ness and profligacy. The ' insane fondness for drink" which prevails among the criminal population is acknowledged by witness after witness, cited in Mr. Hill's pages. "Of the " many thousand annually imprisoned," writes the chaplain at Glasgow, "it would not be " possible to find one hundred sober criminals in any one year." From Edinburgh, Pres ton, and Derby we have similar reports. Mr. Hill himself considers intoxication to be, di rectly or indirectly, responsible for four fifths of all offences, grave and light, which come be fore courts or magistrates for trial. Even ab ject destitution is a less fertile source of crime. Like testimony reaches us from the other side the Atlantic. An inquiry carried on at New York in 1.850 gave a per eentage of ninety-two drunkards and only eight sober men among the prisoners there undergoing sentence. Nor is this propensity confined to professedly law less characters. Notwithstanding education, cheap reading, and temperance societies, it is still the one great reproach of our nation. Mr. Porter's tables have made familiar to all statis ticians the amount of taxation imposed on us by love of strong drink. From 65,000,0001. at the highest computation, to 57,000,000/. at the low est, are the various estimates of our annual ex penditure on this one item. It is satisfactory to see by recent returns (not quoted or alluded to in the work now before us) that this vast outlay is diminishing, and that the consumption of tea, coffee, and the like, presents a correspond ing increase. But no longer ago than 1847 Mr. Clay could write thus from Preston : We see, that taking any 100 or 140 well-employed work men, each of them, on the average, devotes to the pleasures of drink more than 2.5 per cent. of his earnings ; that many married men thus squander 40 or 50 per cent., and that some are so infatuated as to throw away. weekly, in drink, fl&s., out of 40s. wages. I have minutely examined the official returns by the gentlemen respec tively superintending the County, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Preston, and Wigan police, and I find that, in the year 1 5 40, more than 15:200 persona appeared before the magistrates charged with drunkenness; and upwards of 10,000 more accused of " breach of the peace " and " assaults ; " offences implying drunkenness in almost every ease. I do not now notice those moie terrible offences, manslaughter, rape, robbery, which are almost always produced by the same cause. It is the knowledge of facts like these which renders credible the calculated expenditure in the United Kingdom. in intoxicating drink, viz., more than sixty•rive millions of pounds sterling annually ! Ten times the usual amount of the English poor rates ! Experience shows that this enormous use of stimulants is in almost every instance preju• dicial, and that the total discontinuance them produces no injury to health. This rt.- suit is tested by the practice of all prisons, SATURDAY, where they are invariably forbidden. Tempe rance societies have worked much good ; but these are open to the double charge, first, of injuring by exaggeration the cause which they support, confounding as they do the most moderate use of liquors with gross intempe rance ; and secondly, of substituting nothing for what they prohibit. "No institution," said Napoleon 1., speaking of France, "is effectu ally destroyed until it is replaced by another." And so with popular customs. To root out habits of vicious indulgence it is necessary to put something better in their stead. Excite ment is a necessity of life, and to none more than the labourer or artisan, who finds in his daily routine of mechanical toil a total want of all that can employ the higher faculties. The want of amusements—a national defect with all classes—is with the labouring class one principal cause of intoxication, and hence, in directly, of crime. Among minor remedies, Mr. Hill suggests the following :—(l.) Pay ment of wages elsewhere than in public-houses. (2.) Payment on some other day of the week than Saturday, the coincidence of the weekly holiday with that period when the working man's purse is fullest being in itself a tempta tion to waste and debauchery. On another subject of great interest, as connected with public morality, our author shall speak for himself: Much, I believe, would be done towards securing the virtue of the female sex, and towards the general dimi nution, therefore, of profligacy, if the practical injustice were put an end to by which women are excluded from many kinds of employment for which they are naturally qualified. The general monopoly which the members of the stronger sex have established fur themselves is surely most unjust; and, like all other kinds of injustice, reacts on its perpetrators. Why are our streets still crowded with prostitutes, to the ruin of the health and morality of the poor creatures themselves, and to the deep injury of those who yield to the temptations which it is their degraded trade to present? To a great degree, because the payment fur the labour of females iu this country is often so small as to demand, for obtaining an honest living, a greater power of endurance and self control than can reasonably be expected; whereas let the male sex but forego any slight additional remuneration which they may obtain fur their labour by the exclusion of females, and whilst thousands of women would be saved from degradation, the young physician, clerk, or artisan, aided by the income of the woman to whom he is attached, would often find that, with• out imprudence, he might, at a much earlier age than at present, take upon himself the duties of a husband and father, and partake of the happiness and moral security which marriage, when based on affection and mutual esteem, is so eminently calculated to afford. The occupations suggested as fittest for women are printing, cabinetmaking, copying, and clerk's duty generally ; as also attendance in shops. It may be noted that this part of Mr. Hill's theory clashes with his previously quoted remark, that the employment of females in non-domestic labours tends to demoralise their children. The practice of the two great industrial nations with which we can compare our own differs materially in this respect. In France a great deal of hard work is done, and well done, by women ; in America they are ex empted from all but the most necessary details of household duty. There is a medium in all things, and not improbably the demand for women in the colonies may suffice to remove the evil of which Mr. Hill complains, without the necessity of so violent a change in our social system as he desires to see introduced. Hood's song, and the well-known story of the sempstresses, have created an undue prejudice against employers of female labour, thus tend ing to aggravate what the benevolent inter meddlers desired to cure. Mr. Hill says, Sen sibly and shortly : - - • It seems to me to be more than idle to blame the person who pays for female work only what the labour market enables him to give, however small the pittance. So far as his act operates, he assists in raising, and not in de pressing, the reward for female labour, even if he give but a few halfpence for making a shirt. • (3.) In the list of incentives to crime our author reckons poverty, which, by extracts from Sir F. Eden and others, he satisfactorily demonstrates to be on the decrease. One good test is the rise in servants' wages, which are now about four times what they were sixty years ago, anti twice what they were thirty years ago. As such persons are taken from the labouring class, and supplied with all ne• cessaties except clothing, the larger amount of pay received by them is a fair measure of the improvement in their condition, and conse quently in that of their class. The connection It A: 1 3