Art. VI.—RECENT OCCURRENCES IN PHILADELPHIA.
The chief purpose we have in view in transferring to our pages (without, however, making ourselves at all responsible for the accuracy of the details,) the following article from a recent New York paper, is to use it as a theme for a few observations on recent occurrences in our own city.
Crime in New York City.—Fitzgerald will be hung at the Tombs to-day for shooting his wife. Neary, sentenced to the same fate, for a similar offence, is respited one week, in order that the Sheriff’s Jury may determine whether he has lost his reason. If the latter execution takes place, it will make seven in this city within the last year! In all England and Wales the whole number of executions during the year 1852, as appears by a Parliamentary report, was only nine! The population of this city is six hundred thousand; the population of England and Wales is eighteen millions. In other words, New York, with a population of only one-thirtieth as large as England and Wales, hangs seven-ninths as many in the same space of time!
The little we fail in point of number, however, is more than made up in the atrocity of the offences. Of the nine hung in England one murdered his wife, one her husband, one her mother-in-law, one his employer, who had dismissed him, one his uncle, one a stranger on the highway, one his own illegitimate child, one the illegitimate child of his wife, one the illegitimate child of his paramour; but of our seven, three murdered their wives—namely, Grunzig by poison, Fitzgerald by shooting, Neary by beating the brains out with a mallet and chisel; Stookey murdered a negro, Clark murdered a police man, and Saul and Howlett a watchman. Three of the English murders were of infants, but all of the New York murders were of full grown persons, three of whom sustained the most sacred of all relations to those who deprived them of life. But, in truth, New York of right has the precedence of all England and Wales on this score even in regard to number. Doyle, who murdered the woman with whom he boarded in Pearl street, was sentenced to be hung, and ought to have been hung, and would have been hung in England, but was sent to the State prison for life. Sullivan, who killed the man in Cliff street who endeavored to prevent his beating his wife, was found guilty of murder, and ought to have been hung, and would have been hung in England, but was sent to the State prison for life. Johnson, one of the condemned with Saul and Howlett, was sent to the State prison for life. There are now at the Tombs ten men awaiting trial for murder, one of whom, Carnell, the fiendish Dey street murderer, has already been convicted once, and is now awaiting a second trial. The whole number of arrests in this city for homicide within the last year, has been, as near as we can ascertain, about thirty-five!
The whole number of arrests in this city during the year 1852, was about 35,000; the whole number of commitments in England and Wales was 27,510. The whole number of arrests for offences committed upon the person in New York in 1852, was 5,468; in England and Wales the whole number of commitments for the same class of offences during the same period there has been about two thousand. In England last year there were 13 convictions for burglary: in New York 146 arrests for the same offence. During the last seven years there were 66 convictions for this offence: in New York during the same period over 1000 arrests. But this does not furnish the worst aspect of the case. The disparity between England and this city, is yearly becoming greater. While crime is increasing there slightly, it is here increasing with fearful rapidity. The whole number of convictions for murder in England in 1846, was 13; the whole number of arrests in New York for murder for the nine months preceding May 1, 1846, was 10. In England the convictions of 1847 were 19; in New York, during the year ending May 1, 1847, the arrests were 18. In 1849 the convictions in England were 19; in New York the arrests for the year ending November 1, were 13. In 1850 the convictions in England were 11; in New York during the fifteen months ending with the last of December, 1850, they were 16. In 1851 the English convictions were 16; the New York arrests 36. In 1852 the English convictions were 16; the New York arrests were 30. The total number of commitments for all kinds of offences in England and Wales during the last seven years, was 194,424; the total number of arrests in New York during the same period was over 200,000! We are not able to make an exact comparison between the absolute number of crimes perpetrated in England and in New York city, since the Parliamentary tables before us relate only to commitments in the case of offences generally, and to convictions in cases of murder, whereas our police tables only give the number of arrests. Of course many are arrested who are not committed or bound over for trial, but their number is by no means so great as to destroy the remarkable significance of the figures we have put in connection.
Now, what are the causes of the remarkable difference between this city and England in extent of crime? England has its immense cities, abounding with ignorant and vicious classes of population—it has its London, its Liverpool, its Birmingham, its Manchester and its Leeds, and yet this single city of New York, if we may trust official tables, exceeds not only each of them in crime, but all put together! It cannot be ascribed to any peculiar character of our people, distinct from theirs—for it is notorious that the greater part of our criminality springs from the foreign element of our population. Of the seven murderers above specified, for instance, six of them were foreigners—one being a German, three Irish, one English, and one a Nova Scotian; and the seventh, though born in this city, was of Irish parentage. The same people that chiefly commit the crime here, are found in vast numbers in every English city. Why, then, the difference in the extent of that crime? This question does not admit of either a ready or a brief answer. The causes which produce this result are various and complex, some of which we may consider hereafter. The most important of them are, doubtless, the comparative inefficiency of our police in preventing crime, the comparative uncertainty of our courts in punishing crime, the neglect of our young vagrant population, and the vast number of disorderly groggeries, licensed and unlicensed, that have all the while, without restraint, been stimulating the passions and bad propensities of all the lower classes of our population. It is time that these matters should be seriously and earnestly looked at and cared for. Our streams of crime are increasing into torrents, and they threaten to overwhelm us. The facts we have given, startling as they are, cannot be denied. Official documents prove them. Read and ponder!
It will be observed that four distinct causes are here assigned for the difference in the extent of crime in New York and in English cities. Of them all, we have had something to say at various times. The first we discussed at some length in a former number,[2] and pointed out a few of the disadvantages to which the best police system must be subject under institutions like ours. Upon the second of these alleged causes we had prepared the article in our present number before seeing the observations of the New York paper. Scarcely a number of our Journal has been without some call to more concern for our vagrant juvenile population. So that our readers will not find any thing startling in the revolting statement we have copied, unless it be the striking proximity of cause and effect.
[2] See Journal for January, 1853, Art. III.
So far from feeling surprise at the frequency and boldness of crime, we rather wonder that the few checks which are imposed on it, maintain their power. No one can carefully note the manner in which crime and its perpetrators are treated, without perceiving how much is done to provoke and countenance it, in comparison with what is done to punish and suppress it. We have neither space nor inclination to enlarge on such a subject, but it is due to the cause of humanity and the welfare of society, that the plague-spots in the body politic should be plainly pointed out.
Not long since two men were together in a drinking house. A. is influenced with liquor sold to him in violation of law. He attempts to provoke a quarrel with B. B. leaves the house, and A. follows him with taunts and threats. B. is peaceable, says he does not want to quarrel, and retreats to a distance from the house. A. pursues him and deliberately, without the slightest provocation, and in spite of B.’s attempts to avoid a quarrel, stabs him to the heart! The dead man is buried—the murderer arrested and tried, and the jury find him guilty of murder in the second degree, and, moreover, recommend him to mercy! Why did he try to provoke a quarrel before he executed his murderous purpose? Why, because he had ascertained, by watching the proceedings of the courts, that the quarrel, however picked, would mitigate the offence. “Stabbing a man in a fight, gets only five years in the penitentiary.” This was his own statement.