East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1922-05-19
NO CRIME WAVE IN
ENGLAND, DECLARES
FORMER Detective
BY DAVID NJ. CHURCH

international News Service Staff
| Correspondent.
! LONDON. May 19.-Great Britain
Is in the midst of a crime wave, or
at least in the midst of wave of
criminal news.
The press of London fairly bristles
with murder stories, suicide tales. SEN
sational court cases of one kind and
another.
Yet. Sir Basil Shompson, formerly
a Scotland Yard chief, declares that
there is actually no crime wave over
Great Britain.
"ff one were to Judge from certain
superficial indications wave of GRIM
inality has swept over the country"
declares Sir Basil. Probably at no
period in our history has there been
so brisk a market for details of GRIM
inal trials.
| Just before the armistice there
were gloomy forebodings about what
would happen when men accustomed
to hold human life and property very
cheap came home. There was to he
an epidemic of murder and robbery
by violence, and when few cases
were recorded they were hailed as a
fulfilment of the rather obvious pro-
phecy.
Morbid Interest I'm Criminals.
But, in fact, there was no such
epidemic. Both during and immedi-
lately after the war there were q few
sensational murders, but there Was
nothing at all resembling the condi-
tons during the wars of the last CEN
Jury, when thousands of discharged
soldiers roamed the country as home.
less vagrants. committing crime. and
executions and transportations SEEM
ed to that generation the only pos
Isible remedy.
THE statistics ofs crime are sensi-
tive instruments for recording the
fluctuations in the social health of a
community, and an examination of
these statistics Is reassuring. ePr-
haps the morbid interest which is ta-
ken in criminals is actually a healthy
symptom There is nothing interest
| ing in a phase of life with which one
is in daily contact.
THE prevalence of crime IS imme-
diately indicated by rise in the pris-
on POPULATION We do not know what
the next two years may bring forth,
but we do know that three years after
the armistice, when we are at what
We hope is the lowest level of depres-
sion, we have been able to reduce the
prisons in the country to the smallest
number at any time in our history.
Crime Fills Newspapers.
Sir Basil may be right that there
is no crime wave but merely wave
of interest in crime. The fact remains
that crime and court news occupy the
greater part of the space in the Lon
don press at the moment. The news |
papers are featuring the case'of Ho- |
ration Bromley NJ. p, charged with |
converting the funds of a bond club |
to his own uses. Next in importance !
is the case of Captain and Mrs. owen !
Peel, scions of well-known family. |
charged with Irregularities in betting !
on the races. To add q bit of spic
to the days news, there is the case of
lbrahim Said FAIL, an Egyptian
prince. who is the central figure in a
divorce case; the case of Ronald True.
an aviator, charged with responsible
ity for the death of beautiful Gertrude
Yates; the case of Liverpool curate
who drank poison'in champagne with
n young woman in a hotel room. and
the headline, New Murders in Ire
land" is always kept standing.
Great Britain may not be in the
midst of a crime wave but its newspa-
pers indicate to the contrary.