The Press.
London, England, 1854-01-14 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

instruction. The child grows up, alternately
beaten and indulged, according to the humour
of its parents; totally untrained, and, except
where a favourable natural organisation may
interpose, incapable of self-control. Is it
strange that many of these neglected infants,
left to run about the streets, should fall into
the hands of professional thieves, recruiting
sergeants for their trade ? We have spoken
here only of the ease of youths whose fathers,
though untaught, are honest. To such must
be added all the progeny of the criminal
class, which of course grows up in the paternal
habits, knowing no other. Nor arc these the
solo influences at work. A numerous class, not
professedly dishonest, nor under the watchful
eye of the police, pass lives which render it
physically and morally impossible for them,
let them wish it as they may, to give their
sons even a chance of growing up in
respectability. The costernionger, whose
history is told in MAYHEW'S "London Poor"—
all of the labouring class whose occupations
involve the necessity of moving frequently
from place to place—are occasional inmates
of the lowest and worst class of lodging-
houses, where the ordinary decencies of life
cannot be preserved, where propriety and self-
respect are almost necessarily lost, and where
immorality of the grossest character is publicly
and notoriously practised. Here the lessons
of vice are learnt, and here accordingly the
regular thieves of our great towns are on the
watch to pick up accomplices. Vagrancy—by
which we mean habitual begging—is another
cause of juvenile crime. Infants are brought
up to it as to a regular calling ; and it is sel-
dom that the professional mendicant does not
combine with his comparatively innocent em-
ployment that of thieving also. Again, many
young persons in all classes are left orphans
and unprotected. In the wealthier grades
of society these are sure to be provided for
well, indifferently, or ill, as the case may be,
but still provided for, by relatives or neigh-
bours. It is not so—it cannot be so—with
the poor; and from this source the ranks of
crime are early and largely recruited. Once
more, the precarious nature of those pursuits
which are followed in the metropolis, and
generally in crowded communities, deserves
to be noted. Mr. MAYHEW states that " three
" wet days will bring the greater part of 30,000
" people to the brink of starvation "—from
the necessary interruption of their usual avo-
cations. It is not as in a small rural district,
where the demand for labour is as regular and
constant as the supply is limited. The evil
may be inevitable, but it is not the less real.
We have thus touched—it was impossible to
dwell—on the chief causes of what we may
designate as involuntary juvenile delinquency.
We purposely exclude from consideration
those causes with which the will and free
choice of the delinquent have anything to do—
such as drink, gambling, betting-houses, penny
theatres, anti the like. Enough if in this
article we have demonstrated, not merely the
actual existence of a large criminal population
composed of children or youths scarcely past
childhood—that is patent to all eyes—but the
existence of permanent causes creating, or
tending to create, such a class, and which
render its total disappearance from society
something more than improbable.