If we recollect rightly, a subsequent conditional promise was made on behalf of the guardians of order that the convict’s allegations should be thoroughly investigated, and that, if these were found accurate, the persons pointed at should be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.
Whether the promised inquiry was ever commenced we cannot say.
It is, however, an indisputable fact that but for the existence of the class of individuals to whom Peace disposed of his booty, that adroit criminal might have earned an honest livelihood as violinist in an operatic or theatrical orchestra. The receivers are always ready to the hands of the thief.
Even without the assistance of persons of Mr. Peace’s profession, the police know of their existence, their whereabouts, and their manner of prosecuting a most lucrative and not sufficiently dangerous trade; but, from a mistaken leniency in the spirit of our law, these worst of criminals are left undisturbed.
The police—often conveniently blind—are nothing if not arithmetical. Armed with a note-book and a pencil, they penetrate into the most secret recesses of a guilty commerce, and, having tabulated the number of “fences” in England and Wales, complacently suffer wrong-doing to take its course.
Either the crime of receiving stolen goods is on the increase, or the receivers are growing less fortunate; since the number of commitments for this specific offence was, according to the latest returns, four hundred and eighty in 1878, against four hundred and fifteen in 1877.
On the other hand, the known houses for the receipt of stolen goods slightly vary numerically from year to year, the average being about one thousand one hundred, and the known thieves and receivers of stolen goods and suspected persons may be roughly estimated at close upon forty-one thousand.
If the net of the law were spread, and these houses shut up and their occupants taken care of, crimes against property would at once fall to a minimum, the criminal courts would soon become idle, and respectable citizens might lie down to rest without fear of the “villainous centre-bit.”
Within the last few weeks another case has come under the notice of the police.
It would appear that, a great number of robberies having lately been committed in the Western suburbs of London, the attention of the police was called to the flourishing establishment of a marine-store dealer, of Pimlico.