CRIME IN ENGLAND.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 417, 22 October 1861, Page 3

CRIME IN ENGLAND.

The members of the • dangerous classes' whom we are about to introduce to their patrician brethren a>e dirty, tagged, thicklipped, beetle-browed, square-jowled ruffians, whose beau ideal of a banquet is plenty of tripe and plenty of gin ; they are shock-headed, callow, hali-naked brats; they are sunburnt, dust-covered vagabonds, whose tattered jackets come from the Union workhouse, and torn trouseis i'< om the county gaolj they are haggard» brazen,

horse-voiced drabs, who have been ciadled in the kennel and weaned in the stews.

After the ' Court Guide,' and the ' Peerage,' and the ' Opera Piogramme,' let those who desire to have a catholic knowledge of their Fellow-Cieatures turn to the figures we will give them from the annual volume of 'Judicial Statistics of England and Wales," which has just been issued. It comes down to as recent a period as last Michaelmas, and contains the police returns of the number of crimes committed, and the proximate number of criminals.

There were 50,405 indictable offences in the judicial year 1860. Among these were i) 9 -murders, 38 attempts to murder, 466 cases of wounding with intent to do bodily harm, and 188 cases of manslaughter. 1,357 inquests were held on persons who had committed suicide ; while of attempted self-murders they were 174. Of the crimes inter Christianos non wominandum, there were 142; of bigamy, 109; of criminal assault on /women, 476- The vast remainder were made up of forgeries, larcenies, misdemeanors, and more trival offences. The number of persons apprehended was 24 862! so that more than fifty per cent, seem to have eluded justice; while of those really taken into custody, 8659—0r more than athird—were discharged by the magistrates. No less than 384,918 persons were charged summarily at the police courts, of whom about two-thirds were convicted.

It is a very curious fact, and one that does not say much for the results of education and religious training, that of the whole number of 409,780 persons arraigned in 1860 on indictable and non-indictable offences, 137.574 w«re persons of previous good character; 144,485 were not 'known to the police,' and only 127,721 were of bad, suspected, or notoriously loose characters.

Amounting, as these patent black sheep do, to the third of the army of scoundrels, the police, it is clear, must have a tolerably extensive acquaintance; but their knowledge of human character extends far beyond this. They tell the compilers at the Home Office that they are aware of 24,711 • houses of bad character;' of thieves at large, 37,914: of receivers of stolen goods, 4440. Of suspected persons—bullies, sharpers, card-cheats, and vagabond lads we presume—the police say that there are 35,206; together with 30,800 common prostitutes—about a-third of the great aggregate of harlotry—and 22,664 vagrants and tramps, or persons without visible means of subsistence.

This catalogue, succinct as it is, contains man)' appalling features; but we may yet find matter in it for some slight modicum of consolation and of hope. There were only 48 capital convictions in 1860, 'the smallest number yet recorded. Of these 17 vveie for murder, and in ten cases only the murderers were hanged. On the number of indictable offences there is a decrease as against 1859 of 3*l percent. In two-thirds of the convictions which took place the sentence was only a fine, thus showing that the offences could not have been of a very heinous nature; and only 201 8 per cent, were punished by imprisonment. Scarcely more than half of the charges against women were followed by conviction—a fact which we would willingly put down to the balance of virtue being in favour of females, but which may be equally ascribed to the natural lenity of jurors when the weaker sex is concerned. On the drunken charges a decrease of 1 and a fraction per cent, is shown; on aggravated assaults on women a diminution of 7 per cent. In the criminal classes known to the police a falling off of 35 per cent, is set down for adults, and of 84 per cent, among juveniles under 16. The bad houses are also said to have diminished in number; and from the vagrants and tramps, the prostitutes, and the persons without visible means of subsistence—at whose numbers the police can, after all, make only a serifs of shrewd guesses—we may be warranted, we presume, in deducting at least 15 j^er cent, in favour of the results of reformatories, ragged schools, and refuges.

Black enough in all conscience, horribly stained and begrimed, is this page of the moral ledger; but, at least, the balance against us does not grow larger, and next year will, we trust, exhibit a decrease even more appaient in the census of crime.— Telegraph.