Known to the Police

by Thomas Holmes

For these women prisons had proved useful sanatoria, and frequent sentences times of recuperation.

Small wonder, then, that new methods should at length be tried. The Habitual Inebriates Act came into being in 1898.

The Act adopted the definition of a much earlier Act as to what constituted the habitual inebriate, which was as follows:

"Those who, by the excessive use of intoxicating drink, are unable to control their affairs or are dangerous to themselves or others."

I quite believe that if the framers of this Act had realized the character of those who would come within its provisions, a far different definition would have been found. But the Act also conditioned that only those who were charged four times during the year with drunkenness should be dealt with, the great mistake being that no attempt was made previously to inquire into the character and condition of those that happened to be charged four times in the year. I suppose it was a natural inference that anyone so frequently charged must be of necessity a confirmed and regular inebriate. But the reverse proved true, for the worst inebriates, dipsomaniacs, and sots, escaped the meshes of the net so carefully spread.

They at any rate did not fall into the hands of the police so frequently; indeed, many of them did not at all. But the Act netted a very different kind of fish—a kind that ought to have been netted many years previously, and dealt with in a far more effectual manner than was now proposed.

The Act gave power to local authorities and philanthropic societies to establish inebriates' reformatories, which, after satisfying the requirements of the Home Office, were to be duly licensed to receive habitual inebriates qualified under the new law. These institutions were to be supported by an Imperial capitation grant for every inebriate committed, the local authorities being empowered to draw upon the rates for the balance.

Magistrates were given power to commit to these establishments for one, two, or three years, when the persons charged before them pleaded guilty to being habitual inebriates, and desired the question settled without reference to a higher court; but magistrates could not deal with them until they had been charged four times within the year.

If consent was refused, magistrates were empowered to send them for trial before the Judge and jury. Early in 1898 I took considerable pains to ascertain the exact character and condition of the persons who came within the provision of the Act. I found, as I expected to find, that they were idle and dissolute persons, nearly all of them women, and such women as only the streets of our large towns could furnish.