[217] In the course of these riots £50,000 worth of damage was done.
[218] After these riots the General Convention of Chartists issued a proclamation declaring "that a flagrant, wanton, and unjust outrage has been made upon the people of Birmingham, by a bloodthirsty and unconstitutional force from London, acting under the authority of men who wished to keep the people in degradation."—"Annals of Our Times, 1839." See also "Chronicles of Crime," Camden Pelham.
[219] Quarterly Review, No. 257, 1870.
[220] Sir James Fitzjames Stephen's "A History of the Criminal Law of England," vol. i. chap. xiv.
[221] Hale, Sum. 36, 37—I Hale, 457.
[222] From "The Commonwealth of England," by Sir Thomas Smith, 1589 edition.
[223] The County and Borough Police Act of 1856 required Rural Police Forces to furnish annual returns of all crimes committed, persons apprehended, and subsequent criminal proceedings in their respective districts, on forms of return supplied by Sir George Gray. From the materials thus supplied were the Criminal Statistics prepared until 1892, when an improved method of compilation was introduced by the "Police Returns Act" of that year—(55 and 56 Vict. c. 38).
[224] There were eighty-two cases of garrotting in London between June and December 1862; nor was the increased prevalence of crime confined to the Metropolis—most of the larger towns (especially Liverpool) suffered in the same way.
[225] Transportation to New South Wales and S. Australia ceased in 1850, to Van Diemen's Land in 1852; the last batch of convicts was sent to Western Australia in 1867.
[226] The Chatham mutiny occurred in 1861, some years after the "Penal Servitude Act" had become law, but it was due to very similar causes to those which had occasioned the earlier outbreaks.