CRIME IN FORMER DAYS
Every week a host of young lads were hanged for theft, and the spectacle of a criminal riding through the streets to Tyburn, and getting as drunk as he conveniently could upon the way, was too common to attract attention. London was called the City of the Gallows, for from whatever joint you entered it, by land or water, you passed between a lane of gibbets, where the corpses of felons hung, rotting and bleaching in the light. Nor was crime supprest by this stringency of the law. Highwaymen rode into town at nightfall, coolly tying their horses to the palings of Hyde Park, and executed their plans of robbery in the very presence of the impotent protectors of the public peace. London was infested by gangs of youths, whose nightly pastime was to bludgeon inoffensive watchmen, and to gouge out the eyes of chance travelers. Dean Swift dared not go out after dark, and Johnson wrote:
Prepare for death, if here at night you roam,
And sign your will before you sup from home.
Ludgate Hill swarmed with mock parsons, and thousands of spurious marriages were celebrated every year.—W. J. Dawson, “The Makers of English Prose.”
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Crime Prevented—See [Science Preventing Crime].
Crime Traced—See [Misery an Educator].
CRIME UNPROFITABLE