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CHAPTER VI.

THE CRIMINAL POPULATION.

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Changes in the character of crime in England-Ancient Sokes - Further allusions - Hounslow Heath-Metropolitan Police-Chloroform-Inadequacy of the existing Female Penitent Refuges-A day's perambulations-Highway robbery of a police inspector by one of these outcastsImprovements in prison discipline-Severity in former ages-William I.—, -Arnold's Chronicle-The curfew-A better curfew, the Early Closing Movement-Statement of an old officer-Townsend's evidence in 1816-Trading Blood money justices Executions Difficulties in writing this chapter-Causes of criminality-Inspectors of Prisons' 10th Report-Divine promise respecting early training Reformation of a juvenile delinquent — His letters from Australia-Testimony of an aged WesleyanTerrible ungodliness-Arcana of vice-Reflections-Particulars respecting two young thieves-Relinquishment of thievery by one-Awful depravity-Suicide-Another case -Impossibility of entering into further details-A juvenile "sneaksman"—Philosophy of Missionary efforts-The swallow-Outward reformation of a desperate character.

THE character of crime in England has, during the lapse of ages, undergone considerable alteration.

By the presence of a dense population, by the cultivation and habitation of former forests and wastes, no organised banditti can here lurk unmolested, as in former times, in wild spots and hiding-places known only to themselves, or to a sparely scattered peasantry, their willing or awed accomplices.

We know nothing of the systematic and daring brigandage of Italy, the ladrones of Mexico, or the banded Indian depredators of the western wilds.

But in former ages England was far differently situated. There was a period when a wolf's head was current coin in payment of taxes. In the twelfth century the historian Fitzstephen, alluding to my district and its neighbourhood, speaks of fields and meadow land. "There are excellent springs," says he, "at Clerkenwell, etc., visited by the youth of the City when they take their walks of a summer's evening." Sokes or seigniories, also, abutted on my district, such as Castle Baynard, or the soke of Lord Fitzwalter, close to the Fleet ditch. Criminals were protected on these sokes from the arms of justice. Thus London was divided "into a number of little feudal principalities, over which the owners

respectively exercised their cherished powers." There was no organised police in those days, capable of bringing several thousands of men to bear upon one spot in the space of an hour.* The civic force was quite inadequate to the maintenance of order, and as a last resort, we read, the great bell of St. Paul's was wont to be tolled, a signal that the city was in danger from lawless violence.

In 1595, London was placed under martial law, chiefly on account of the irrepressible tumults of the London apprentices.

In passing on to notice the general state of society in the metropolis during the last half of the eighteenth century, we find the old fashioned burglaries, with the robberies and rogueries of the highway, were still perpetrated. A walk out of London after dark was by no means safe, and therefore at the end of a bill of entertainment at Bellsize House, in the Hampstead Road, St. John's Wood, there was this postscript, "For the

* On 1st of January, 1852, the number of persons belonging to the Metropolitan Police Force was 5,549. One inspecting superintendent, eighteen superintendents, one hundred and twenty-four inspectors, five hundred and eightyseven sergeants, and four thousand eight hundred and nineteen constables. The total sum paid for the police in the year 1851, amounted to £422,299. 5s. 4d. The City Police in 1850 numbered five hundred and sixty men.

security of the guests, there are twelve stout fellows, completely armed, to patrol between London and Bellsize, to prevent the insults of highwaymen and footpads who infest the road."

To cross Hounslow Heath or Finchley Common after sunset was a daring enterprise, nor did travellers venture on it without being armed, and even ball-proof carriages were used by some.*

I was in one of the prisons some years since, for the purpose of seeing a prisoner I had been requested to instruct, and was conversing with one of the turnkeys upon religious matters, whilst waiting, another party, connected I believe with the prison, entered, and began to converse respecting prisons and prisoners many years since, at the period when he was a young man. "Ah!" said he, "it is altered. I was doctor's boy to old Dr. at Hounslow, and I recollect, one night, after dark, I was sent with a bottle of physic across part of the Heath. They hadn't taken old Jerry Abershaw's bones down then, and

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*See "Cromwell's History of Clerkenwell" and "Knight's London." The reader is also referred to an extremely interesting and cheap little volume, published by the Religious Tract Society, entitled "London in Ancient and Modern Times."

he was swinging away on the gibbet; how I did

run!"

Townsend, a noted Bow Street officer, said before the Parliamentary Police Committee, in 1816::

...

"There is one thing which appears to me most extraordinary, when I remember in very likely a week there would be from ten to fifteen highway robberies. I speak of persons on horseback. Formerly there were two, three, or four highwaymen, some on Hounslow Heath, some on Wimbledon Common, some on Finchley Common, some on the Romford Road. As I was observing to the Chancellor at the time, I was up at his house on the Corn Bill. He said, 'Townsend, I knew you very well so many years ago.' I said, 'Yes, my lord, I remember your first coming to the bar, first in your plain gown, and then as king's counsel, and now Chancellor. Now your lordship sits as Chancellor, and directs the executions on the Recorder's report; but where are the highway robberies now?' And his lordship said, 'Yes, I'm astonished. They used to be ready to pop at a man as soon as he set down his glass, that was by banditties. People travel safely now by means of the horse patrol that Sir Richard Ford planned."

At Kensington, and other villages in the vicinity of London, at the period to which Townsend referred, it was customary on Sunday evenings to ring a bell at intervals, to summon those who were returning to town, to form themselves into bands for mutual protection as they wended their way homewards. Town itself did

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