In addition to the three classes we have named, the common thief, the pickpocket, and the burglar, there is another class of low ruffians who frequently cohabit with low women and prostitutes, and commit highway robberies. They often follow these degraded females on the streets, and attack persons who accost them, believing them to be prostitutes. At other times they garotte men on the street at midnight, or in the by-streets in the evening, and plunder them with violence. This class of persons are generally hardened in crime, and many of them are returned convicts.
The habitual crime of the female portion of the community is in most cases associated with prostitution. We learn from statistics collected by the metropolitan constabulary for 1860, that there are nearly 7000 open prostitutes or street-walkers in London, three fourths of whom we have reason to believe are addicted to stealing. While many of these belong to our native-born felon population, a large proportion have been seduced from the ranks of honest and industrious people in London, or have come up from the provinces, while a few of them are from the Continent.
We believe that the most effective means of checking the crime of the metropolis is to have an efficient machinery of ragged schools in those low neighbourhoods, where neglected children are to be found, similar to the ragged school in George’s Yard, and to train them in honest employment, as in the shoeblack brigades or industrial schools.
We learn from the statistics of the constabulary of the metropolis that juvenile crime has been considerably reduced within the past ten years. Several of our police inspectors have laboured with untiring industry to reform the lodging-houses and to introduce cleanliness and decency, where immorality and filth formerly prevailed. And noble exertions have been made by Christian societies to illumine these dark localities with the light of Christian truth.
Yet much still remains to be done. And it is a problem worthy of our highest and wisest statesmen to consider whether adequate means to elevate this abandoned class are to be provided by voluntary effort, or by the paternal care of our Government from the public treasury.
It is far easier to train the young in virtuous and industrious habits, than to reform the grown-up felon who has become callous in crime, and it is besides far more profitable to the State. To neglect them or inadequately to attend to their welfare gives encouragement to the growth of this dangerous class. On the other hand how noble the aim, to adopt wise and vigorous measures to provide for these children of adversity and misfortune, and to transform them into useful members of society!
Our national reformatories are very useful in reclaiming those juveniles who have fallen into crime; but ragged schools efficiently conducted would be of still higher value—as prevention is better than cure. In providing those noble machineries by voluntary effort, or by the State, we would wisely act as the minister of Divine Providence, and would thereby promote the best interests and prosperity of our country.
We have also endeavoured to give a cursory sketch of the swindlers of the metropolis, who are generally of a different class from our felon population. They consist of persons embezzling the property of their employers; of sharpers plundering their dupes by tricks at card-playing, skittles, or otherwise; and of rogues abstracting the property of the public by false pretences. Many of these formerly belonged to the ranks of the honest and industrious working and middle-classes, and not a few of them are well connected, and have lived in fashionable society. By improvidence, extravagance, or dissipation, they have squandered their means, and have now basely adopted a course of systematic dishonesty rather than lead an industrious life. Some of them have led a fast life in the metropolis, and are persons of ruined fortune. Others are indolent in disposition, and carry on a subtle system of public robbery rather than pursue some honest occupation or calling.
It may throw considerable light on the crime of London to look to the criminal statistics of the Metropolitan Police Force. We find a statement of those who were apprehended or proceeded against in the year ending 29th September, 1860.
Under the class of persons proceeded against on indictment there are:—