1. Persons stiled End-Gatherers, buying, collecting, or receiving Ends of Yarn in the Woollen Branch, against the stat. 13 Geo. I. cap. 23.
2. Persons, who being Rogues and Vagabonds, have escaped after being apprehended, or who shall refuse to be examined by a Magistrate, or who shall give a false account of themselves after being warned of their punishment
3. Persons who shall escape out of any House of Correction before the period of their imprisonment empires
4. Persons, who being once punished as Rogues and Vagabonds, shall again commit the same offence.
☞ There are a great many other trivial Offences denominated Misdemeanors, subject to pecuniary Fines, which it is not easy to enumerate. Since almost every statute, whether public or private, which passes in the course of a Session of Parliament, creates new offences—the shades vary as Society advances, and their number is scarcely within the reach of calculation.
The crimes mentioned in the first and second classes of the foregoing Enumeration (except Petty Larceny) are always tried by the Superior Courts:—The offences specified in the third class, as also Petty Larceny, and every species of misdemeanor and vagrancy, are generally tried, (with some few exceptions) by the Justices in their General and Quarter Sessions, where, in certain cases in Middlesex, they act under a commission of Oyer and Terminer. The Magistrates in Petty Sessions, and in several instances a single Magistrate, have also the power of convicting in a summary way, for a variety of small misdemeanors, and acts of vagrancy: and of punishing the delinquents with fine and imprisonment.
It generally happens in the Metropolis, that out of from 2000 to 2500 prisoners who are tried for different crimes, in the various Courts of Justice, above 5-6th parts are for larcenies, acts of vagrancy, and smaller offences; where the Benefit of Clergy, either attaches, or does not apply at all. The major part are, of course, returned upon Society, after a short imprisonment, or some corporal punishment, too frequently to renew their depredations on the public.—But a vast proportion (as has already been shewn) are always acquitted.[132]
In order to form a judgment of the proportion of the more atrocious offenders tried at the Old Bailey: the number acquitted; and the specific punishments inflicted on the different offences in case of conviction, one year has been selected; a year in which it was natural to expect from the immense, and indeed, unparalleled bounties which were given for seamen and soldiers, that the number of thieves and criminals would be greatly reduced,—namely—from the month of April, 1793, to the month of April, 1794,—including eight Sessions at the Old Bailey—