The Criminal & the Community

by James Devon

While no ratio can be traced between the amount of drinking or the degree of poverty and the number of crimes or offences in Scotland, there is a very definite relationship between the density of the population and the incidence of breaches of the law. Not only is there more crime in the city than in the country, but from the densely populated parts of the city there are more committals than from the less crowded districts. The sanitary reformer has shown us that our city slums are breeding-places for diseases that do not confine their operation to the people who dwell there, but may easily infect those who live under more wholesome conditions; and substituting vice and crime for disease and death the statement is equally true.

By letting in light and fresh air to the houses where so many dwell we are able to save lives which would otherwise be crippled or destroyed by the insanitary conditions in which they are placed; and just as surely we could break up the aggregations of people whose acquired way of living is fatal to the proper development of an enlightened civic spirit, if we were as eager to prevent as we are to punish wrongdoing. There they are; born into little boxes of houses which are packed together in rows and built in layers one above the other in the air. Their home life is passed in similar boxes; and when they die they are put in smaller boxes and placed in layers under the earth. The health officer would speedily interfere if we tried to house as many pigs to the acre as human beings; but we eat the pigs and cannot permit them to be raised under conditions that would be likely to result in their contracting disease. Also there are fewer people making a living by furnishing accommodation for pigs than for men; and it is easier to regulate an occupation when those who are engaged in it are not influential, than when they are; for we have a traditional dislike to interfering with the rights of property. It is therefore much easier to punish a slum-dweller for breaking our sanitary regulations than a slum landlord for living off rotten dwellings.

It is well known that the worse the building is, the bigger the rent charged in proportion to the accommodation supplied. If a man owns house property he expects to make a profit when he lets it, from the difference between what he has paid for it and the rent he receives from it. X 16 is an old woman who is past work and has no resources. She has been in the poorhouse, but will not stay there, though better housed and better fed and kept cleaner than when outside. She is too old to settle down to the ordered life of the institution, and when all its advantages are enumerated to her and all available eloquence has been expended on her with a view to persuading her that in her own interest she ought gratefully to accept its shelter, she sullenly and silently shows that her opinion of the place as a desirable residence does not coincide with that of those who are in no danger of being forced to live there. She rents a small house and takes in lodgers, intending to make her living from the difference between what she pays and what she receives in rent. Under the Glasgow sanitary regulations certain houses are “ticketed”; that is to say, their cubic content is measured, and a card is fixed on the door stating the number of cubic feet in the place and the number of persons who may be lodged therein. One adult is the allowance for every 600 cubic feet; and half that space is allowed for every person under twelve years. The sanitary inspector is entitled to demand admission at any hour in order to ascertain whether there is overcrowding. He calls one night and finds that the limit has been exceeded, and she is sent to prison, in default of paying a fine, for overcrowding. Of course there is a difference between her and her landlord, for she has broken the law. Precisely; but what kind of law is it that can reach only the poorer transgressor and allows the partner in profits to escape?

X 17 is a woman of forty-two who has never been in prison before, and is under sentence for overcrowding. On a midnight visit the sanitary officer found six adults in a room ticketed for three and a half—a bad case. The woman’s story was that her daughter had been married to a young man some twelve months previously. He was an iron-worker and seemed decent enough. He lost his situation through bad trade and was unable to get another. Meantime a child was born. The young people wrestled along for a time; but after exhausting all the channels of aid which were open to them, they were turned out of their house for failing to pay the rent. Their furniture had been disposed of. The girl’s mother took them in to shelter them. She admitted she had kept them in lodgings for some weeks before the “sanitary” came down on her, and I suspect she had been warned, but as she said, “What was I to do?” Asked if she had informed the magistrate of the facts, she said she had not. “I pleaded guilty, because if ye dae that ye get aff easier.” She could not even make the best of her case, but if she had been able to employ a lawyer she would not have required to transgress the law; and as for stating her own case, that is what few are able to do—till by experience they learn. Even when a person of education and means finds himself in conflict with the law, if he is prudent he gets an experienced lawyer to appear for him and present the truth in the way that will appeal most strongly to the judge.

Overcrowding not only breeds disease, but it tends to destroy the sense of decency, and affords opportunities for the commission of crime which ought not to exist. Now and again cases come before the courts that have to be heard with closed doors, and in every one of them this factor of overcrowding is present, affording the opportunity and inducing to the commission of the crime. The subject is so foul that it cannot be adequately treated here without grave occasion of offence. Unspeakable corruption is easy and possible, and it goes on because it is unspeakable.

It has often been said that poverty and destitution are not likely to lead to the commission of crimes against the person, but rather to crimes against property and a priori there is something to be said for the statement; but whatever the likelihood we need not concern ourselves with it when the facts are before us for examination. In the first place, the great majority of persons in prison for committing assaults of all descriptions are poor persons. It is a rare thing for one in a good position to be convicted of assault, and even the most cursory examination of those who are in prison for assaulting others will show that their social condition was a factor in the causation of the crime. I have pointed out the part that drink plays in the matter, and incidentally shown that it is mainly operative under the conditions which exist in closely populated districts; but many of the minor assaults are committed by persons who are not under the influence of drink. Next to drink, among the women, the most common cause assigned by them for their imprisonment is “bad neebors.” They do not lose their tempers and fight with each other because they are poor or destitute, but poverty makes strange bedfellows and forces people to rub against one another in such a way as to give occasion for trouble; and to leave the fact out of account is simply to attempt to study man apart from his surroundings and to ignore the effect they have on his conduct.

In some parts of Glasgow—much as it has been improved during the last generation—there is literally no room for the people to live. A place to sleep in, to afford shelter from the weather, to take food in? Yes. Room for recreation or for quiet rest? No. The forbearance, the good-humour, the willingness shown to stand aside and allow another member of the family to monopolise the scanty accommodation, are wonderful; and they are the rule. Now and then, here and there, a breakdown occurs; and if it result in a breach of the peace, we are not concerned to recognise the cause, but only to punish the wrongdoers. “What’s done we partly may compute, but know not what’s resisted,” and are not disposed to find out.

A stair-head quarrel is a stock subject for the humorist; but try to live for a week in such close and constant contact with anyone, earning your living the while with exhausting labour, and your wonder will be that the peace is so well kept. The fact is that those people put up with a great deal more than their censors would stand, and that is one reason why they are so badly off. If they were as impatient of our smug mismanagement as we are of their transgressions we should have learned how to regulate our cities long ago. There is a great effort made to evangelise the poorer classes, and it is well supported by earnest men who are better off; it would not be a bad thing if the slums returned the compliment and started a mission to the West End. The a priori reasoner would then perhaps learn that while he might expect that crimes against property would in part be the result of poverty and destitution, because such crimes would relieve the poverty, though in an illegal way; crimes against the person are also frequently a result of poverty, not that they are committed with a view to its relief, but because discomfort, irritability, impatience of restraint, and other mental conditions which lead to assaults, are as much an outcome of poverty as it exists in the slums of our great cities as are hunger and want.

There is no slum district in Glasgow that does not contain a larger number of well-disposed than of evil-disposed persons; but a tenement may get a bad name through the misconduct of one or two of its inhabitants, and a street may be regarded as wild although there is only a minority of rowdy people living in it. We take no account of those who do not annoy us, and when the noisy people anywhere assert themselves we forget all about the others. When we interfere officially it is to find that, good and bad, they stand by one another. In this respect they are like gentlemen; they do not give one another away to outsiders; and it is an interesting sidelight on their view of the law that they do not look on its representatives as their friends. So often its interference results in making their condition worse that they distrust it; and it is often a greater terror to those who do well than to the evil-doer. It is no uncommon thing to see a woman who has been assaulted by her husband plead with the court to let him go, and make all sorts of excuses or tell the most incredible story to account for her injuries. Then we hear exclamations and reflections on the power of human love and the forgiving spirit of even a degraded woman. Human love is wonderful, but it is no more marvellous than human stupidity; and in these cases the woman is moved not so much by love of the man as by knowledge of the results to her and hers of our way of dealing with him. On the whole, she prefers to run the risk of ill-usage from him when he is at liberty, being assured of his protection against the ill-usage of others, to having to wrestle on in his absence and suffer from the disapproval of others who are as badly off, because of her disloyalty. See that her condition is really improved by his conviction and she will be less likely to perjure herself in the attempt to save him from the penalty of his brutality.

In every slum district there are some living who could afford to go elsewhere, but who remain where they are because it has never occurred to them that they should remove. They have gone to the district in its better days, and the change in its character has been so gradual that they have not taken much notice of it. They stay on just as men stay on at business after the need has passed, because they cannot think of doing anything else and are loth to seek fresh fields. It is not good for them that they should do so, but it is not bad for the slum; for old inhabitants of this kind exercise a good influence on many of the others.