English, Statistics of Drunkenness.

Cromwell Argus, Volume VI, Issue 272, 26 January 1875, Page 3

English, Statistics of Drunkenness.

The official returns just published of the number of persons charged before Magistrates in England and Wales with being drunk, or both drunk and disorderly, during the year ending at Michaelmas, 1873, contain some remarkable figures. During the ten years then completed, the number of these persons has almost doubled, having risen from 94,845 to 182,941. The increase has been principally during the last six years of the decade, and especially during the last one of all, in which the increase was no,less than 32,000. Whether this remarkable spurt is due to the passing of a now Intoxicating Liquors Act, to greater police activity, the higher wages paid to the working classes, or to all these causes combined, it is scarcely possible to definitely determine, Jttead in the light of a paper contributed to the Social Science Congress by Dr Gibb, medical officer of the Monkland Iron Co., the statistics would seem to point to the increased pay of the working classes as the principal agent in swelling tlie list of drunkards. Dr Gibb’s paper showed that in the extensive mining districts near Glasgow, the increase in wages in 1873 as compared with 1872 was concurrent with an increase in crime of from 111 to 260 per cent., and an increase of fines of from 163 to 500 per cent. There is no reason to think that the Lanarkshire miners were miners above all their brethren in the Kingdom, and the Conclusion therefore seems in • evitable that, in spite of all that is said about the enlightenment of the classes who live by manual labour, and in spite of all that has been done to inspire them with nobler aims than the gratification of their animal appetites, too many of them still find their chief enjoyment in lowering themselves below the level of the brute creation.