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One was called by her companions, on former occasions not then, for they were extremely serious-but formerly, "cross-eyed Bet." She has since been transported under the following circumstances. She was in Clapham Park at night, and an Inspector of Police stopped to make some remark to her, to order her to move on; she had chloroform in her handkerchief, and instantly applied it to the inspector's face, who was immediately rendered incapable of resistance. She then robbed him of his watch, and was decamping, when two detective officers, who were on the other side of the hedge, at hand, immediately pursued and captured her. She was transported.

Whilst exercising all due commiseration on behalf of a hapless class, we must beware of levelling the distinction between virtue and vice, and also of undervaluing laws enacted against criminals, and punishments awarded to them. After all, the strong arm of the law is a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to those who do well. I am now speaking of the criminal classes as a whole, and of the preventive as well as punitive action of the law. Who can reasonably doubt that the great probabilities of detection are the means of preventing the committal of numerous murders, robberies, etc.? How many unprincipled men and women are only hindered from robbing their employers by the fear of detection and punishment!

As respects the classes already habitually criminal in the eye of the law, and who subsist by plunder, they appear reckless; repeated imprisonments and ultimate transportation I have found to be a type of their career. All I apprehend that can be done for these most difficult classes of the community is fully to carry out in prisons,—

Discipline,
Classification,
Employment, and

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION,

and to take care they are furnished when they leave prisons with some asylum which, if really so disposed, shall afford them a chance of obtaining a livelihood, by teaching them trades, or placing them, by emigration, where, on reformation, they can gain their bread honestly.

One of the most desperate criminals of late years was a young man named Cooper, who was executed for the murder of a policeman at Highbury; he also seriously wounded two other persons before captured.

He had for some time infested the neighbourhood, and committed various highway robberies, his lair being Hornsey Wood. On my appointment to the Cow Cross District I found his

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family resident there, and visited them for several years. His mother was so much affected by her child's untimely end, that she never appeared wholly to recover the shock it occasioned to her mind. She has repeatedly shown me the Bible given to him by the Lady Mayoress, and cried.

I mention this man's case to illustrate the difficulty of parties who have lost their character earning their living. Having been imprisoned various times, he became considerably known to officers of police; he afterwards, I am informed, apparently wished to abandon the nefarious practices he had followed, and repeatedly obtained employment, and was dismissed again through constables informing his employers of his bad character. I wish it distinctly to be understood that I am very far from mentioning this as constituting any reflection upon the police, but it illustrates the point to which reference is made.

The period of life to which the greatest amount of crime falls is between 15 and 20 years of age. The sum of crime committed at that period to the sum total is 6,236 to 25,107. Its proportion, therefore, is very nearly one-fourth of the whole. The juveniles," aged 15 and under 20,” form not

quite one-tenth of the population, but they are guilty of nearly one-fourth of its crime.

These statistics are from a Blue Book, "Tables showing the number of criminal offenders in the year 1846, by Mr. Redgrave, of the Home Office." Mr. Worsley's £100 Prize Essay on Juvenile Delinquency, contains many other statistics on the subject; also the "Ragged School Union Magazine," May, 1850.

As respects juvenile delinquents, we shall best seek to benefit this class by increasing Ragged Schools, and Ragged Infant Schools, and by disseminating amongst the parents a knowledge of Christianity, which, when it vitally impresses the heart, will lead them to bring up their children in the right way.

Upon this affecting subject the Government Inspectors of Prisons make the following judicious remarks, (10th Rep. Home Dis., Introduction):

"It is well known that the principal causes which lead to the offences of criminal youth, may be traced to the absence of parental care and control, their destitution, and from the want of early and proper training, arising from the extreme poverty, ignorance, and DEPRAVITY of their parents and natural guardians. The pressure of indigence under which vast numbers of the poorer classes live-the necessity of their toiling hard, early and late, for their daily subsistence-their

unavoidable absence from home, and their consequent inability to prevent their children from having intercourse with bad associates-frequently preclude even the most honest and industrious from bestowing on their families that attention which is indispensable to preserve them from criminal practices. But among the offspring of persons in the yet lower ranks of poverty, the temptations to crime are still more powerful. The many thousands who, when they rise in the morning, know not where to find a meal for the day, and who are therefore absorbed in the means of obtaining a subsistence, can bestow no moral care whatever on their children, who necessarily become an early prey to their vicious propensities; while, it is needless to add of adult criminal offenders, that their children are from infancy systematically initiated into crime, and become trained to the practice of nearly every species of iniquity. From the two last classes emanate a large body of deserted, or orphan children, who may be daily seen begging in the streets, or wandering about with no other object than that of plunder. They are frequently committed to an ordinary prison, where they are generally rendered worse by their confinement. On their liberation, being friendless, they resume their predatory habits, corrupting, or being still further contaminated by those with whom they associate, until after frequent imprisonments their career is arrested by transportation."

In former years the imperfect administration of laws appears to have been sought to be made up for by their severity. The tyrant, William I., made it forfeiture of prohis preserve perty and imprisonment to disable a wild beast, and loss of eyes for a stag, buck, or boar. Of these laws, the Roman Catholic clergy were

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