| 1839. | 1840. | 1841. | 1842. | 1843. | 1844. | 1845. | 1846. | |
| Uneducated | 33·53 | 33·32 | 33·21 | 32·35 | 31·00 | 29·77 | 30·61 | 30·66 |
| Imperfectly educated | 53·48 | 55·57 | 56·67 | 58·32 | 57·60 | 59·28 | 58·34 | 59·51 |
| Well educated | 10·07 | 8·29 | 7·40 | 6·77 | 8·02 | 8·12 | 8·38 | 7·71 |
| Superior education | 0·32 | 0·37 | 0·45 | 0·22 | 0·47 | 0·42 | 0·37 | 0·34 |
| Unascertained | 2·60 | 2·45 | 2·27 | 2·34 | 2·91 | 2·41 | 2·30 | 1·78 |
| 100· | 100· | 100· | 100· | 100· | 100· | 100· | 100· |
This table, which on its face conclusively establishes an increase in criminals imperfectly educated, and a decrease both in those who could read and write well, and those who could not read or write at all, may be, and has been made, the subject of much pseudo-philosophical remark, as proving the injury of education. In the first place, it only shows the effects of partial education, if it shows any thing. But the misfortune of statistical results is that they are relied on too implicitly, with a narrow-minded subservience to figures and facts, whereas they require to be accompanied with explanatory circumstances, which may either enhance their value up to the point of mathematical demonstration, or may so pare them away as to render them perfectly worthless. In the consideration of the above figures, all that would seem to appear is that there was an increase of education keeping pace with the increase of population, and that in the statistics of crime the increase of imperfectly educated people would be as perceptible as elsewhere. Mere reading and writing, unaccompanied by moral elevation, will not reform mankind. Alone, they will not prevent a hungry man from satisfying his hunger. The words of Cæsar apply to criminals equally as to conspirators:
“Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’nights:
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”
Pursuing this question, and turning to the population tables of 1851, the period of the last census, we find that Middlesex was the most generally educated county, taking the signature of the marriage register as the test of education. Eighty-two per cent. signed the marriage register, yet in the list of criminality Middlesex stood third of all the counties of England. Gloucester, which was first in crime, was far from being the most ignorant. There sixty-five per cent. signed the register. The general average of the whole population by the same list is forty per cent. Here again is a qualifying circumstance. London is included in Middlesex, with its vast seething mass of human misery and corruption to swell the record of crime, while its general population is, of course, about the most intelligent of the British empire, so that in the same spot is found at once the greatest intelligence and the greatest misery. We are not aware of such qualifying circumstances in Gloucestershire.
Dr. Ryan, writing on this point, refers to the Metropolitan Police Report for 1837, by which it appears that of prostitutes arrested in that year there
| Could not read or write | 1773 | |
| "read and write imperfectly | 1237 | |
| """ "well | 89 | |
| Had received a good education | 4 | |
| Total | 3103 |
This is a tolerably fair criterion; for although, as before said, the police only interfere with peace-breakers, and all these came under the technical term of “drunk and disorderly,” still we believe the state of prostitution in London to be such that an average proportion of all classes of courtesans pass through the hands of the police during the year.
Mr. Tait, speaking of Edinburgh, confirms the view put forward as to educational influences. A large proportion of the Edinburgh prostitutes (eighty-seven per cent.) read and write. The Scottish peasantry are perhaps the best-educated in Europe, and those girls who come to Edinburgh from the country are no exception to the rule. The uneducated, Mr. Tait thinks, are city girls.
As to the religious denomination of prostitutes, for that a prostitute may have a religion we may say, in the kindly spirit of Corporal Trim, but doubtingly, “A negro has a soul, your honor.” In Edinburgh they include all sects except Independents, Baptists, and Quakers. There may be those who smile at the idea of a prostitute having any belief. How many of us are there whose actions are accordant with our religious professions? Of London we have no data on this point.