The Portland daily press., 1873-07-02
Drink and Crime.

The connection between the excessive use
of intoxicating beverages, and the prevalence
of crime. is question that is attracting some
attention in the press, possibly growing out
of the somewhat original ground taken by
one of the PRESS correspondents, that there
was no such connection and that all such sta
tistics were baseless. Following in this line,
the New York Times takes up the subject
and begins by stating that if murder is con-
tinued in Maine, at the same ratio it has pro-
ceeded since March IA. there will be thirty
five murders in population of 1000 while
New York City, with a population of 100000
had but fifty-seven, which it concludes is not
only very flattering showing for New York
with its 1900 liquor saloons as compared with
Maine, but would seem to remove some of the
odium which has attached to the liquor traf
fic, as the chief incentive to crimes of vio-
lence. The same paper also says that more
careful study of the facts apparently strength
ened the conclusion; for in the ten murders
recently occurring in Maine, liquor is not sus-
pected as the melting cause.
The Times on further investigation, finds
no evidence that the crime of homicide, is
unnaturally frequent in Maine. 1t finds that
the last four months are entirely exceptional
in this respect; and to assume, as some have,
that because there have been ten homicides
from March to July, there will be thirty-five
during the year, is utterly absurd 1t says:
Every com nunity is at long intervals start
led by an outburst of lawlessness, which is
wholly abnormal, and by con sidering only this
condition of things, false conclusions would
be reached. In this City the statistics of
homicide are very exact, and show many such
sudden outbreaks. During the past seven
teen years, the highest number in any one
year was sixty-one in 1865, and the lowest
was thirty-four IN 1867, the average during
the whole time being forty-seven per annum.
1t is remarkable fact that there has been no
increase, year after year, in the number of
homicides in this City; and, taking our fig
ures as whole, we have conclusive proof
thatthe crime of homicide does not bear any
defined ratio to population, nor even to social
or moral conditions.
The Times then proceeds to state chat
whatever may be the case in other places,
four-fifths of the murders committed in New
York City can be traced directly to drunken
ness. 1t is not only true in the common cas-
es, but in all of the notable murders except
those committed by Real, Stokes and young
Walworth. 1t may not be true that hom-
cides and crimes of violence increase in the
same proportion as do drinking houses, but it
is true that those which do occur are traced
to them in the proportion named above.
In conclusion the Times SAYS:
In this city the statistics of homicide are
complete, and they give the results we have
stated; In Maine they are so meagre as to
afford no satisfactory data for deductions.
Human nature being much the same every
where, we must conclude that notwithstand-
ing recent events in the Pine-Tree State, in
toxicatfon is the principal cause of homicide,
and that drunkenness is one of the greatest