T 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 " OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 SCHOOL OF LAW 
 
 Jpi 
 
 ... - . ...."-.- . am , - 
 
 mjiim m m n m ' 
 
 -. ' - " .-" -, ' ',' - _' ' 

 
 CRIME 
 
 ITS CAUSES AND REMEDY 
 
 BY 
 
 L. GORDON RYLANDS, B.A. (LOND.) 
 
 " It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things 
 which have never yet been done can be done, except by means which have never 
 yet been tried." LORD BACON, Novuin Organutii, Aphorism VI. 
 
 Bonbon 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 1889
 
 T 
 

 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ... I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME . 12 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 AN INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFICIENCY OF PRESENT 
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME . . 47 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES ..... 73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD . 8 1 
 
 G75732 \ 
 
 LAW
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DETAILS CONNECTED WITH THE MORAL EDUCATION 
 
 OF CHILDREN .... IO3 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS . . II? 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ON THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS . 13? 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS . .198 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE LAST RESOURCE . . . .251 
 
 APPENDIX . . . . . .263
 
 CRIME. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 I. IN the course of an address on " Punishment 
 and Reformation," delivered at the London meet- 
 ing of the National Association for the Promotion 
 of Social Science, in 1862, Sir Thomas Chambers, 
 then Common Sergeant of London, gave utterance 
 to the following thoughtful remarks : 
 
 " Reasoners and moralists may dispute, yet 
 philanthropists need not delay to act, and the 
 problems insoluble by argument may be settled 
 conclusively by practice. It may be (I rather in- 
 cline to that opinion) that the State has nothing 
 to do with the individual except in his bearing on 
 the welfare of society, that any interference with 
 him on other than public grounds is objectionable, 
 and that this doctrine is applicable both to those 
 who obey and those who infringe the laws. Hence 
 in dealing with offenders, we are to proceed en- 
 tirely upon the assumption that our treatment of 
 them is to be of a nature determined exclusively 
 on public, and not at all on personal considera- 
 
 2
 
 .2 CRIME. 
 
 tions ; that no result is to be aimed at which will 
 terminate in themselves. The final object in our 
 systems of penal discipline, as in all our other 
 social arrangements, is the good of the com- 
 munity, its deliverance from some evil or incon- 
 venience, or its attainment of some substantive 
 good. In the case of our criminals, the end sought 
 in our mode of dealing with them, whatever it be, 
 is the repression of crime the diminishing the 
 number both of offences and offenders. This is 
 the matter in which the State has a direct interest, 
 and which the State may strive at securing. What 
 is the best means to be adopted for that purpose ? 
 then becomes the subject of inquiry. What appa- 
 ratus, or agency, or machinery, is most likely to 
 thin the ranks and lessen the activity of the 
 criminal classes ? That point is not to be deter- 
 mined by any consideration of what is good for 
 them for their own sakes, but of what is good for 
 the society of which they are the pests. To do 
 them good is not the final aim, but to benefit the 
 public. To secure for those who have broken the 
 law and become subject to penalties some personal 
 advantage is not, I think, a legitimate object of 
 public law, though of private Christian benevo- 
 lence it may be a plain obligation." 
 
 In these words the learned Sergeant has clearly 
 and forcibly stated the fundamental proposition (it 
 might almost be called an axiom) upon which any 
 satisfactory discussion of the crime problem must 
 be based. If criminals, in the execution of their 
 nefarious designs, and in the gratification of their 
 passions, injured themselves only, the State would
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 have no right to interfere ; although, as Sir Thomas 
 Chambers observes, individuals, whether Christian 
 or other, would be quite justified in taking such 
 action in the matter as seemed them good, and 
 to be imposed upon them by their own private 
 moral code, provided always that no other citizen's 
 liberty was infringed by such action. This propo- 
 sition ought to be self-evident, but it has not always 
 been by any means universally admitted, and there 
 are probably some who would dispute its truth even 
 now. Mr. Jonathan Dymond puts the question, 1 
 " Why is a man who commits an offence punished 
 for the act ? Is it for his own advantage, or for 
 that of others, or for both ? " To which question 
 he makes reply " For both, and primarily for his 
 own," but gives no very satisfactory reason for 
 this conclusion. Since, then, the proposition that 
 the State is justified in interfering with criminals 
 only in so far as the welfare of the State requires 
 it is not so obvious that the mere statement of it 
 compels universal assent, it may be well to give 
 briefly some of the grounds upon which its truth 
 has been asserted. 
 
 Some writers on social economy have spoken of a 
 civil contract or agreement between the individuals 
 of a community, by which their relations to one 
 another are defined. But no such contract is 
 found in nature ; at the time when men first com- 
 bined themselves into communities they must have 
 been far too rude and simple to understand what 
 was meant by private and public rights or obliga- 
 tions ; they must have felt instinctively that in 1 
 
 1 "Essays on the Principles of Morality," 1886, p. 391.
 
 4 CRIME. 
 
 combination they could better protect themselves 
 against all kinds of enemies, could hunt with 
 greater success than if isolated, and no doubt the 
 feeling of companionship was pleasing. There 
 was thus no formal agreement, and any man to 
 whom the society in which he found himself was 
 distasteful might withdraw himself from it ; but if 
 he attempted to molest his former associates they 
 would naturally treat him as an enemy. Later, 
 with increasing civilization and a more complex 
 moral code, larger restrictions and obligations 
 were laid upon each individual, tacitly imposed 
 and tacitly accepted. But the modern society has 
 imperceptibly developed out of the primitive one ; 
 no written agreement between its components 
 exists, and each man must, as in the early days 
 of the community, be held free to accept or reject 
 the conditions of membership. The state of 
 membership is, however, so advantageous that 
 nearly every man complies willingly with the 
 necessary conditions in order to obtain the ac- 
 companying benefits ; but he might, if he chose, 
 withdraw, and no one has any moral right to for- 
 bid his doing so ; if, however, after having with- 
 drawn himself from the Society, he proceeds to 
 inflict any damage upon the Society in the aggre- 
 gate, or upon any of its component individuals, 
 he places himself in the position of one of those 
 enemies for defence against which the associated 
 community was originally formed ; and the Govern- 
 ment, as the agent of the Society, is bound to take 
 the necessary steps to protect its members from 
 damage. Criminals are such persons as are here
 
 INTRO D UCTOR Y. 5 
 
 spoken of, and are thus to be dealt with by the 
 State because they have become public enemies, 
 menacing the security and prosperity of the State ; 
 but the State could not, on this view of the matter, 
 take cognisance of any private action of the indi- 
 vidual which ended completely in himself. 
 
 2. We must then in our investigations bear 
 this first principle in mind, and inquire what course 
 will bring the greatest sum of advantage to the 
 State. We must also endeavour to trace the many 
 indirect effects by which our action may be fol- 
 lowed, for a measure which may seem sure to at 
 once produce a desired result, may be attended by 
 so many indirect evil consequences as to more than 
 counterbalance the advantages which accrue from 
 it. This is a consideration which is unfortunately 
 often overlooked, and the result of this carelessness 
 or ignorance on the part of legislators is seen in 
 the very large number of Acts of Parliament which 
 are repealed after having been but a short time in 
 operation, on account of their failing to produce 
 the benefit which was expected of them. It is 
 necessary in all things to count the cost, and an 
 article or effect, which is in itself most desirable, 
 may not be worth the price asked for it. The 
 course which, other things being equal, will lead 
 to the best results, may involve so much expense 
 of time or money, and may cause indirectly so 
 much inconvenience, as to induce us to follow 
 some other course by which we shall attain a 
 result, absolutely less advantageous, but relatively 
 more so, because less costly. But in discussing 
 methods for dealing with criminals, direct results
 
 6 CRIME. 
 
 only have, as a rule, been compared, while the 
 question of cost has hardly been glanced at, al- 
 though no satisfactory reason can be found for 
 departing in this particular case from, the common- 
 sense mode of procedure. The State wishes to 
 erect a line of telegraph connecting places many 
 miles apart, and it is a question what metal the 
 telegraph wires shall be made of. The best con- 
 ductor of electricity is silver ; any person un- 
 acquainted with the technicalities of electrical 
 engineering, and looking no further than this fact, 
 might therefore suppose that silver would of course 
 be employed, but if he ventured to express such an 
 opinion he would be laughed at. Why ? Because 
 the cost of silver more than countervails its supe- 
 riority in conducting power ; copper is very nearly 
 as good, and much cheaper ; but even copper is 
 rarely used for telegraphic purposes on account of 
 its price. Low down in a list of metals arranged 
 in the order of their conductivity we find iron, 
 having an electrical resistance six times as great 
 as that of silver and copper, and yet this is the 
 metal which is almost universally used for this 
 purpose ; though far inferior to others, it will per- 
 form efficiently what is required of it, and at a 
 price which more than compensates for its infe- 
 riority in other respects. The same rule applies 
 m all cases, and the most desirable method of pro- 
 cedure is that in which the balance of advanta- 
 geous over disadvantageous results is the greatest 
 possible. 
 
 3. In applying this principle to the question 
 of the treatment of criminals, as well as to other
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 social questions, the words cost and price are not 
 to be restricted to their more ordinary meaning of 
 money value, or the pecuniary sacrifice necessary 
 for attaining a given object of desire ; but are to 
 embrace all the deductions from general wellbeing 
 which may indirect!}' follow from any given course 
 of action, money being of course included as the 
 means whereby wellbeing may be purchased, but 
 in the case which we have to consider it will be 
 found to be an almost negligeable quantity. For 
 the sums which are dishonestly obtained from pro- 
 ductive members of the community by the criminal 
 classes in order to their own maintenance must be 
 so vast, that the most expensive system of criminal 
 procedure which we could devise would be scarcely 
 likely to be a greater burden upon the State, and, 
 if the system were an efficient one, we should on 
 the whole be .gainers thereby. The number of 
 habitual criminals and suspected persons at large, 
 known to the police, was, in the year 1884-5, 
 30,252, a large proportion of whom doubtless live 
 at the expense of the State, preying continually 
 upon it like a swarm of locusts. Clearly, however, 
 of two systems equal in all other respects, but un- 
 equal in pecuniary cost, the most economical is to 
 be preferred. But the factors which go to produce 
 or to diminish crime are so complex that probably 
 no two solutions of the problem which deals with 
 these factors can be found differing only in respect 
 of money expenditure, and many other considera- 
 tions will have to be weighed. 
 
 4. In the discussion of these numerous and 
 subtle considerations great care must be exercised
 
 8 CRIME. 
 
 that the judgment be not warped by mere senti- 
 ment. Certain steps which it may be proved 
 necessary to take for the advantage of society 
 may perhaps press harshly upon individuals, and 
 the instinct of compassion possessed by every 
 humane man may make it difficult for us to 
 rigorously pursue what we know to be the right 
 course ; or again, we may be urged to perform 
 some action of which the immediate effect will be 
 the alleviation of individual distress, but which 
 may entail indirect and remote consequences far 
 more injurious and painful than the distress 
 relieved. In all questions, therefore, which affect 
 society it is our duty to endeavour to trace and to 
 weigh every result, direct and indirect, however 
 remote, which our action could have. A large 
 number of people who call themselves philanthro- 
 pists, and who have studied social science in a very 
 superficial manner or not at all, are very apt to 
 neglect this duty, and to allow themselves to be 
 influenced in the main by the most excellent, 
 when not ill-timed, feelings of generosity, compas- 
 sion, mercy, and the like. They perceive only 
 the immediate consequence of their actions, of 
 many of which, could they but foresee the long 
 and complex chain of effects, they would be 
 appalled. How thankful must we be that the 
 course of the Universe has not been directed by 
 an almighty philanthropist of the unphilosophic 
 sort ! Suppose that instead of the fittest surviv- 
 ing and the weak going to the wall, the strong, 
 the swift, the thrifty, the acute had been continu- 
 ally handicapped in order to keep in existence a
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 crowd of weak, of stupid, of vicious, of thriftless 
 creatures, would, as now, the earth be peopled 
 by animals most marvellously suited for existing 
 and propagating their species under the particular 
 conditions in which each finds itself ? Would the 
 human race have attained even to its present 
 pitch of civilization ? Nay, would the human 
 race be in existence at all ? It may well be 
 doubted. And now that man, under the stern 
 laws of inexorable Nature, has reached a com- 
 paratively high stage of development, a number of 
 well-meaning, but short-sighted persons, are put- 
 ting into practice theories which, if carried out on 
 a sufficiently large scale, must check human pro- 
 gress, if it did not even convert the present slow 
 forward movement into a retrograde one. 
 
 5. But in striving to avoid sentiment we 
 must be careful not to go to the other extreme, 
 and act with harshness and brutality. Draconian 
 legislation has ever failed of its effect ; and 
 especially must it do so in a free country, in 
 which a wrong-doer is fairly and openly tried by 
 his fellows. For any circumstance which drives 
 public opinion into sympathy with the accused, 
 and into hostility to the Government, will tend to 
 defeat the ends of justice ; and a savage criminal 
 code will have such an effect^ We have already 
 experienced this state of things in England, when 
 hanging was the penalty for the most trifling 
 delinquencies, and when the consequent frequent 
 refusal of juries to convict compelled an alteration 
 to be made in the law. It must, in fact, be 
 remembered that our only right to deal as we
 
 10 CRIME. 
 
 please with another man's person or property 
 arises from his having acted in such a way as to 
 damage or menace the persons and property of 
 orderly members of society ; and our action is 
 limited by this consideration to taking such pre- 
 cautions as may guard the community from those 
 attacks, but must not be inspired by a desire for 
 vengeance and retaliation. It is indeed highly pre- 
 sumptuous for man to take the law thus into his 
 own hands, and to tell a fellow human-being that 
 because he has committed such and such acts he 
 must therefore undergo such and such penalties. 
 We know that if any of Nature's laws are dis- 
 regarded inevitable punishment follows, and that 
 if any creature does anything that is really wrong, 
 and absolutely immoral, somebody will certainly 
 suffer for it ; but not, according to our views, 
 always the right person. The doubt may per- 
 haps suggest itself to the mind of a thinking 
 man whether our views on the subject are neces- 
 sarily correct, and whether the State is likely to 
 mend matters by interfering ; but as a conclusion 
 in the negative would certainly not recommend 
 itself to -the majority of people, who care nothing 
 for the reasoning by which a result is established, 
 but only inquire whether that result is in harmony 
 with their preconceived ideas, it is useless to carry 
 the speculation further; what we have to do there- 
 fore is, assuming the right of the State to deal with 
 criminals, to determine how we may minimize the 
 ill effects of crime, and, if possible, prevent it 
 altogether. The lines on which we must proceed 
 for the attainment of the first of these objects are
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 11 
 
 laid down by the consideration to which attention 
 has just been directed, namely, that, whatever 
 infringement of the moral law may have occurred, 
 a definite and corresponding amount of suffering 
 must ensue for somebody, and all that it is open to 
 us to attempt is to cause this suffering to fall 
 upon the proper person, that is, according to our 
 ideas, the person by whom the moral law has been 
 transgressed. But we shall probably find that no 
 machinery which we can devise for this purpose 
 will, in the language of mechanics, have an 
 efficiency of so large a value as unity ; in other 
 words, when wrong has been done, by no con- 
 trivance shall we be able to prevent the com- 
 munity sustaining loss, therefore our principal 
 object must be to get rid of crime altogether. 
 
 Before we can be in a position to say what 
 means are best fitted for accomplishing this result, 
 we must have a clear idea as to the causes of 
 crime, which question therefore we will first pro- 
 ceed to investigate.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 
 
 " Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas" 
 
 VIRGIL, Georgic II., 490. 
 
 i. IT is commonly supposed that ignorance is 
 an important cause of crime, and after trying 
 numerous and costly experiments in criminal 
 procedure, from the most brutal and barbarous to 
 some which are comparatively humane, without 
 obtaining any appreciable improvement, we are 
 now enthusiastically convinced that education is 
 the magic wand which is to convert criminals 
 into honest men, and are spending millions a year 
 with that desirable object. The School Board is 
 the power that is to regenerate the world, and 
 as the low-bred boy passes each successive 
 " standard," he will cast yet another shell of 
 pristine depravity, and emerge a pure and inno- 
 cent being. The believers in the marvellous 
 regenerative power of education are not actuated 
 by mere faith, nor even solely by a priori reason- 
 ing; they appeal with great confidence to statistics.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 13 
 
 At the meeting of the National Association for 
 
 the Promotion of Social Science, at Bristol in 
 
 1869, " Mr. T. W. Saunders, Recorder of Bath, 
 
 read a paper on ' The Influence of Education in 
 
 Diminishing Crime.' He showed the necessity of 
 
 education among the working classes, . . . and 
 
 that crimes are more and more being confined to 
 
 the ignorant. In the year 1856 86 per cent, of 
 
 our criminals could neither read nor write, or 
 
 could only do so imperfectly ; whilst in 1868 this 
 
 percentage had increased to 96. Looking at the 
 
 educated portion of our criminals, the percentage 
 
 who could read and write well was 5^ per cent. 
 
 in 1856, which percentage had, in 1868, dwindled 
 
 down to 3. He thought it was a very gratifying 
 
 fact that only three of every hundred criminals 
 
 should be educated persons ; and that it proved 
 
 education to be a sort of insurance against 
 
 criminality." 1 Excellent! Why, then, do we 
 
 longer delay, and reason and ponder as though 
 
 the question were one of infinite difficulty ? We 
 
 see from the passage just cited that it is simplicity 
 
 itself, and all we need to do is to turn all our 
 
 prisons into schools, arrest every illiterate man, 
 
 teach him to read and write, and crime will fade 
 
 away like a mirage in the desert. The proportion 
 
 of illiterate and partially illiterate to educated 
 
 criminals is the same now as it was in 1868, 
 
 according to the statement of Mr. Saunders. The 
 
 figures are thus given in "Judicial Statistics," 
 
 1885, part I., p. xxxvii. : 
 
 ' Transactions, p. 269.
 
 14 CRIME. 
 
 1885-6. 1884-5. 1876-7. 
 
 Neither read nor write 28-9 30^0 33-2 
 
 Bead, or read and write imper- 
 fectly 67-3 657 62-9 
 
 Read and write well 3-5 3'S 3-8 
 
 Not ascertained 0-3 0*5 o - i 
 
 It will be noticed that these figures remain very 
 constant, and therefore are probably not merely 
 accidental, but depend upon some law ; the ques- 
 tion is, is that law such as Mr. Saunders and 
 many others have stated ? 
 
 It has often been said that statistics can be 
 made to prove anything ; this is not true ; but it 
 is true that statistics, carefully manipulated by a 
 clever man, or clumsily and loosely put together 
 by a thoughtless one, may appear to the superfi- 
 cial inquirer to prove what they don't really prove 
 at all. A striking example of this is given by Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer, in his " Study of Sociology." 
 He says, 1 "A few years ago Dr. Stark published 
 the results of comparisons he had made between 
 the rates of mortality among the married and 
 among the celibate ; showing, as it seemed, the 
 greater healthfulness of married life. Some criti- 
 cisms made on his argument did not seriously 
 shake it ; and he has been since referred to as 
 having conclusively proved the alleged relation. 
 More recently I have seen quoted from the Medical 
 Press and Circularise, following summary of results 
 supposed to tell the same tale 
 
 " M. Bertillon has made a communication on 
 1 " Study of Sociology," 1884, p. 93.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 15 
 
 this subject to the Brussels Academy of Medi- 
 cine, which has been published in the Revue 
 Scientifique. From 25 to 30 years of age the 
 mortality per 1,000 in France amounts to 6'2 in 
 married men, io'2 in bachelors, and 21 '8 in widows. 
 In Belgium from 7 per 1,000 among married men, 
 the number rises to 8*5 in bachelors, and 24*6 
 in widows. . . The result of all the calculations 
 is that from 25 to 30 years of age the mortality 
 per 1,000 is 4 in married men, 10*4 in bachelors, 
 and 22 in widows." Mr. Herbert Spencer then 
 points out that this remarkable result can be 
 readily explained with reference to the selective 
 influence of marriage. It is clear that the strongest 
 and most healthy men are the most likely to get 
 married, and that consequently we should natu- 
 rally expect the mortality among them to be lower 
 than that of bachelors among whom remain all 
 whose ill-health debars them from matrimony. 
 We may learn from this instance that in dealing 
 with statistics it is necessary to look beneath the 
 surface and endeavour to discover the true relation- 
 ship existing between the figures stated. It is 
 found by observation that it more often rains 
 when the barometer is low than when it is high, 
 but only ignorant people conclude therefrom that 
 the state of the weather is an actual effect of the 
 fluctuations of the mercury column ; we know 
 that both are effects of the same cause, and this 
 must warn us, when investigating phenomena with 
 which we are less familiar, not to confound the 
 post hoc. with the propter hoc. 
 
 Let us then apply this principle to the present
 
 1 6 CRIME. 
 
 inquiry, viz., what is the relation of ignorance to 
 crime ? and let us consider whether there is any 
 reason to suppose that crime and ignorance are 
 connected in some other relation than that of 
 cause and effect. A very slight consideration will 
 show us that there is such a connection. For it is 
 clear that those boys, who when they should be at 
 school are playing truant for the purpose of 
 robbing orchards and taking birds' nests, and who 
 idle away their boyhood in the company of rough 
 and vicious companions, playing pitch and toss 
 and becoming familiar with vice, will grow up 
 ignorant and degraded ; and from such it is that 
 the criminal classes are recruited. 
 
 The same inherited tendencies which lead a 
 man into criminal courses make study and con- 
 tinuous applications of all kinds irksome to him, 
 and ensure his remaining in ignorance. If there- 
 fore we knew nothing further we should reason 
 from this that the criminal classes must contain a 
 far larger proportion of uneducated men than the 
 rest of the nation, and we need not be at all sur- 
 prised to find that such is in fact the case. Could 
 we devise a workable scheme for so changing the 
 habits and proclivities of these unfortunate beings 
 we should find that with the refinement of their 
 taste would come a state of mind fitted to receive 
 education and to profit by it. No one can be a 
 firmer believer in the advantages of education than 
 I am, but I am sure that its efficacy as a reforming 
 agent has been much exaggerated by certain 
 enthusiasts ; before the refining and elevating in- 
 fluence of education can be brought to bear the soil
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 17 
 
 must be prepared to receive it, and the attempt to 
 reform a degraded and brutal man by education 
 of the intellect alone would be as absurd as to 
 endeavour to make a steam engine out of iron not 
 yet smelted and purified from the ore. 
 
 2. What then are the causes of crime ? At 
 the Birmingham meeting of the National Associa- 
 tion for the promotion of Social Science, held in 
 1868, the Rev. H. Letsom Elliot, M.A., gave the 
 following table which he had compiled from the 
 results of personal observation, and which helps us 
 to answer the question just stated. 
 
 
 Number examined, who on 
 
 
 
 the occasion of 
 
 
 
 the last offence had been 
 
 
 First Convictions supposed to be 
 traceable- to 
 
 Indicted. 
 
 Summarily 
 Convicted. 
 
 Total. 
 
 
 M. 
 
 F. 
 
 M. 
 
 F. 
 
 
 i. Bad company 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 a. Acquaintances made in] 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 the street, workshop, orr 
 
 126 
 
 32 
 
 74 
 
 18 
 
 250 
 
 home, &c ) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 b. Acquaintances made in\ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 the public house, dancing L 
 
 69 
 
 O 
 
 25 
 
 7 
 
 101 
 
 saloon, &c J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2. Drink 
 
 4.1 
 
 I? 
 
 126 
 
 23 
 
 2O ( 
 
 1. Poverty .. 
 
 ^j 
 1 1 
 
 * j 
 
 6 
 
 2? 
 
 ^O 
 
 IO 
 
 W 
 
 C2 
 
 4. Opportunity 
 
 7-J 
 
 7 
 
 J 
 
 i: 
 
 2 
 
 j^ 
 77 
 
 5. Want of Principle 
 
 JO 
 
 44 
 
 / 
 II 
 
 OJ 
 
 5 
 
 7 
 
 / / 
 6 7 
 
 6. Bad Temper 
 
 7 
 
 4 
 
 ei 
 
 34. 
 
 Q6 
 
 7. Immorality or Wantonness 
 
 / 
 
 4 
 
 *T 
 
 12 
 
 j * 
 
 12 
 
 J^ 
 II 
 
 5r** 
 
 39 
 
 8. Incapacity and Imbecillity .. 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 O 
 
 ii 
 
 9. Other causes 
 
 11 
 
 I 
 
 T\ 
 
 I c 
 
 1 02 
 
 Total . 
 
 *o 
 
 
 I O 
 
 * j 
 
 
 353 
 
 88 
 
 432 
 
 127 
 
 IOOO 
 
 " 
 
 On glancing over this table we are at once 
 3
 
 1 8 CRIME. 
 
 struck by the number of those whose fall was 
 owing to bad company and to drink. On the first 
 of these two heads Mr. Elliot spoke thus : " Bad 
 company is the master-cause of crime ; especially 
 of that which is most serious in a social point of 
 view. The great majority of professional thieves 
 have been engaged in a criminal career almost 
 from infancy, and have originally fallen, not from 
 the promptings of hunger, not from any special 
 dishonesty, not from any peculiar moral obliquity, 
 but simply from the influence of bad example ; or, 
 it may be, from direct instruction in crime, at an 
 age when they were scarcely capable of discerning 
 between their right hand and their left. Of the 
 1,000 prisoners examined by me, 395 had been 
 convicted before they were out of their 'teens.' 
 They were led into crime from precisely the same 
 motives that have kept those who now hear me 
 from such a career. The examples of those older 
 than themselves, the influence of associates, the 
 love of standing well in the estimation of others 
 these are the causes which, whether for good or 
 evil, determine the career of every man." 
 
 This is a result which cannot surprise any one 
 who knows anything of the life of the children of 
 the poor in the large towns. Uncared for by their 
 parents, and even encouraged to prowl about the 
 streets for the purpose of begging, or getting in 
 anyway whatever something to assist in " keeping 
 the pot boiling," they are thrown, at an age when 
 their character is not yet formed and their nature 
 plastic, into constant companionship with other 
 unfortunates who, but a year or two before, were
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 19 
 
 as themselves, but who, having become corrupted, 
 now proceed to corrupt others in their turn. 
 There is thus, as it were, a pestilence in the social 
 community, a most infectious disease of a terrible 
 character, and while medical science has dis- 
 covered vaccination and the treatment of M. 
 Pasteur for prevention of dreadful diseases of the 
 body, moral therapeutics still looks helplessly on 
 while new centres of infection are being continually 
 formed to keep active in perpetuity the still 
 more noxious diseases of the mind. Certainly, 
 when a man has been smitten by this dreadful 
 pestilence, some feeble attempt is made at a cure, 
 though, as I shall show, with no remarkable 
 amount of success; but the centres of infection are 
 left undisturbed to propagate corruption in widen- 
 ing circles. At present we only put into action 
 the machinery of the law when the mischief has 
 been done, but make no attempt to eradicate the 
 origin of the evil. So far is this from being the 
 case that even in our prisons, which should be 
 hospitals for the relief of the morally unsound, 
 we mix together haphazard those who are but 
 slightly affected with cases of the most dangerous 
 character; the disease spreads in the very hospital 
 itself, and a man may go forth worse than when 
 he entered. One who had good opportunities for 
 observing thus expresses his opinion on this point. 
 " The two classes should be kept as much as pos- 
 sible distinct, and men undergoing punishment 
 for first offences should on no account be mixed up 
 with hardened and confirmed rogues. I speak 
 from experience. Not only have I become ac-
 
 20 CRIME. 
 
 quainted with more of what is bad and evil, 
 together with the schemes and dodges of profes- 
 sional thieves and swindlers, during the four years 
 I ' served the Queen for nothing ' than I should 
 have done in fifty years outside prison walls ; but 
 had I been a man of naturally dishonest tenden- 
 cies, I might have fallen into temptation, swal- 
 lowed the bait, and have formed alliances for a 
 future life of villainy and crime." J Our object in 
 the present chapter being merely to endeavour to 
 trace out the causes of crime, we must leave for 
 the present the consideration of the means of 
 coping with this great evil, and now pass on to 
 the second of the chief causes brought under our 
 notice by Mr. Elliot's list. 
 
 3. The first question which occurs to us on 
 this head is whether drink is a real cause of crime, 
 or, like ignorance, a concomitant result. The 
 question is not difficult to answer. No doubt a 
 man of depraved character, who associates 
 with other vicious men, spending his time with 
 them in idleness when not engaged in some 
 criminal enterprise, is likely enough to become a 
 constant drinker, and thus to a certain extent 
 drinking and criminal habits may be results of 
 the same cause : but this by no means covers the 
 whole ground ; and it is sufficiently well-known 
 that men and women frequently become habitual 
 drunkards, in whom there has been no observed 
 tendency to any other vice ; that such people 
 have, under the influence of drink, committed 
 assaults and other social offences, and have thus 
 1 " Five Years' Penal Servitude," p. 168.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 21 
 
 brought themselves into the power of the law. 
 The ensuing disgrace, coupled with the natural 
 demoralization which drink causes, drags these 
 miserable people down the first steps of a lawless 
 and vicious career, with, in many cases, increas- 
 ing acceleration, until actual crime is reached. 
 Mr. Elliot, in referring to the table already quoted, 
 states that he had satisfied himself that the first 
 crime was really a direct consequence of the cause 
 to which he had ascribed it. It will be observed 
 that while he has ascribed no first crime to simple 
 want of education, he has ascribed 20*5 per cent, 
 to the influence of drink ; and indeed this conclu- 
 sion is almost daily corroborated by reports in the 
 newspapers of proceedings before magistrates and 
 in the Law Courts, which render superfluous the 
 citation of many instances here. 
 
 The following facts may, however, be stated. 
 The Rev. J. W. Horsley gives the following 
 inscriptions from the walls of cells in Clerkenwell 
 Gaol : "I advise you to keep away from bar ; 
 be a teetotaler; " " Good-bye all. Give up drink ; " 
 " Take my advice and keep from drink, for it has 
 been the ruin of me ; it will be a warning to me for 
 life;" "I, Eliz. F., take an oath I never touch 
 drink again with the help of God ; " "A prisoner's 
 advice: sign the pledge;" "4- pint whiskey 
 brought me here took the pledge for 2 years 
 renewable for ever." J In another place the 
 same authority says: "Thursdays and Fridays 
 are our lightest days, because money runs short 
 towards the end of the week ; therefore there is 
 1 " Jottings from Jail," p. 27.
 
 22 CRIME. 
 
 less drinking ; therefore there is less crime." x 
 Again : " Crime is estival, because there is more 
 intemperance in the summer than in the winter." 
 He considers that 75 per cent, of the total amount 
 of crime is traceable to drink ; an estimate which 
 also coincides with that arrived at by Mr. Francis 
 Peek, who, in an appendix to " Social Wreckage," 
 produces overwhelming evidence to show to how 
 great extent crime is caused by drink ; and the 
 connection between them will become evident 
 more than once in the course of our further 
 investigations into the origin of crimes. 
 
 We may therefore take it as an uncontroverted 
 fact that drink is a vera caiisa of crime. 
 
 4. A good many people will probably be sur- 
 prised at the small number of first crimes ascribed 
 to poverty in the table previously quoted, these 
 being put down at 5 per cent, only ; because it has 
 been commonly supposed that the pressure of 
 hunger has driven many men to illegal methods 
 of gaining a subsistence, and years in which trade 
 is bad would by most people be expected, not un- 
 naturally, to be more marked by crime than other 
 years. This idea can be easily put to the test. 
 The following diagram, taken from the Eighth 
 Report of the Commissioners of Prisons, 2 compares 
 the number of paupers and the number of prisoners 
 in England and Wales from the year 1849 to the 
 year 1885. 
 
 It will be seen that in 1849 the number of 
 persons in receipt of relief was high, from which 
 we may conclude that times were bad for the work- 
 1 "Jottings from Jail," p. 81. 2 Appendix 6.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 23
 
 24 CRIME. 
 
 ing classes ; and indeed we know that 1849 was 
 the last of a series of years of depressed trade ; and 
 that a revival commenced in this year and con- 
 tinued for four or five years. At first we notice 
 that the number of prisoners fell, but only for a 
 very short time, and in 1850, when trade was brisk 
 and improving, crime began to increase, and in 
 1851 had reached a high point, although the state 
 of prosperity still continued. From 1859 to I 86g 
 there is certainly agreement between the two 
 curves, but from 1872 to 1877 we find increasing 
 prosperity accompanied by an increasing number 
 of persons in prison ; about the latter year there 
 is a maximum of one curve, and a minimum of the 
 other, from this point onwards, while the number 
 of paupers becomes rapidly greater, the number of 
 prisoners undergoes as rapid a decrease. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill, many years 
 Recorder of Birmingham, to illustrate the question 
 we are now discussing, quotes the following ex- 
 tract from a paper by the Rev. John Clay, read 
 before the Statistical Section of the British 
 Association for the Advancement of Science, 
 Liverpool, Sept. 23, 1854 : 
 
 " The interval between July 1824 an d July ^ 2 5 
 was one of general prosperity and comfort among 
 the labouring classes of North Lancashire ; that 
 from July 1825 to July 1826, included a period 
 of perhaps unprecedented distress. Yet in this 
 latter period, the felony list presented no augmen- 
 tation. While 40,000 to 50,000 of the poor were 
 existing upon charitable contributions, it cannot 
 be ascertained that a single theft (recorded in the
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 25 
 
 calendar) was caused solely by hunger. The few 
 persons who pleaded distress as an excuse for 
 their offences were, in every case, old offenders. 
 During the prevalence of this distress, I had many 
 opportunities of witnessing what I have often seen 
 since the fortitude and patience exercised by the 
 working classes in times of suffering, and the 
 admirable self-denial with which many, who were 
 themselves in poverty, assisted the utterly desti- 
 tute. From a table given in my Report for 1830, 
 it appeared that, during the four ordinary years 
 ending with June, 1824, the annual average of 
 committals to the sessions was 119 ; the prospe- 
 rous year, 1825, produced 177 committals; the 
 following year of distress, 172 ; and the year of 
 reviving prosperity (ending July, 1827), no I GSS 
 than 269." * 
 
 In the same paper the following table is given : 
 
 CRIME IN NORTH LANCASHIRE. 
 
 Year ending Committed Summary 
 ist July. to Sessions. Convictions. Total. 
 
 1835 ... 168 ... 642 ... 810 
 
 1836 ... 178 ... 715 ... 893 
 
 1837 ... 277 ... 627 ... 904 (a) 
 
 1838 ... 302 ... 762 ... 1064 (b) 
 
 1839 ... 361 ... 655 ... 1016 ... Bad year (c) 
 
 1840 ... 394 ... 937 ... 1331 (d) 
 
 1841 ... 485 ... 901 ... 1386 ... Bad year (e) 
 
 1842 ... 611 ... 1053 ... 1664 ... Very bad year (f) 
 
 1843 497 1215 ... 1712 ... ditto (g) 
 
 1844 433 ... 894 ... 1327 ... Goodyear (h) 
 
 1845 ... 301 ... 700 ... looi ... Good year (k) 
 
 1846 ... 289 ... 666 ... 955 (1) 
 
 1847 ... 366 ... 646 ... 1012 ... Bad year (m) 
 
 1 " Repression of Crime," 1857, p. 46.
 
 26 CRIME. 
 
 1848 ... 343 ... 843 ... 1186 ... Bad year (n) 
 
 1849 339 I2 79 1618 ... Goodyear (p) 
 
 1850 ... 325 ... 1323 ... 1648 \ 
 
 1851 ... 387 ... 1456 ... 1843 ( \r 
 
 /* J > v ery good years (q) 
 
 1852 ... 417 ... 1226 ... 1643 ( 
 
 1853 ... 442 ... 1012 ... 1454) 
 
 1854 ... 470 ... 957 ... 1427 (r) 
 
 (a) Spinner's strike, October to February. 
 
 (b) Suffering among the hand-loom weavers. 
 
 (c) Provisions dear, scarcity of employ. 
 
 (d) Increase of committals mainly attributable to the 
 establishment of the county police. No want of employment, 
 and times favourable. 
 
 (e) Trade in a depressed state. 
 
 (f) Great and prolonged suffering. 
 
 (g) The depression at its lowest point, 
 (h) Full employ. 
 
 (k) Abundance of work. 
 
 (1) Hundreds of hand-loom weavers out of employ. 
 
 (m) Great scarcity of food and of employ. 
 
 (n) The distress at its maximum. 
 
 (p) Times greatly improved. 
 
 (q) A period of great and continued prosperity. 
 
 (r) The Preston strike. 
 
 The evidence given us by this table is, like that 
 given by the former one, somewhat contradictory, 
 for we gather from it that during the period of 
 depression, 1840-1843, crimes were much more 
 numerous than in the good years which followed 
 and those which preceded the depression ; but 
 on the other hand the very good years, 1850-1853, 
 appear to have been more fertile in crime than any 
 that had preceded them. 
 
 A broad classification of the crimes committed 
 in certain critical years will perhaps enable us to
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 27 
 
 trace the connection more clearly ; because when 
 crime of all kinds is given in one total for each 
 year, an abnormal increase of a particular class 
 of offence may overbalance a decrease in every 
 other class, and by noticing which particular 
 offences are more or less numerous in more or less 
 prosperous years we may perhaps be put in a 
 position to determine whether poverty is really a 
 cause of crime or not. We will take the three 
 years 1872, 1877, and 1884, as being fairly repre- 
 sentative ones ; 1877 being at a minimum and 
 1872 and 1884 not far from maxima of the 
 pauper curve in our diagram. From " Judicial 
 Statistics " we take out approximately the num- 
 ber of offences against person and against property, 
 also the number of those who were brought before 
 the magistrates charged with wilful damage and 
 with being drunk and disorderly. 
 
 1872. 1877. 1884. 
 
 Property 80,000 ... 88,000 ... 81,000 
 
 Person 98,000 ... 94,000 ... 85,500 
 
 Wilful damage 21,000 ... 23,500 ... 23,000 
 
 Drunk and disorderly 183,000 ... 194,500 ... 183,000 
 
 Total 382,000 400,000 372,500 
 
 The year 1877 which, according to our diagram, 
 was a period of prosperity for the working classes, 
 is marked by a great excess of crime, and we are 
 not surprised to find that this is chiefly accounted 
 for by the increase in the number of drunkenness 
 cases. But if, as some people suppose, crimes 
 were more numerous in bad than in good years
 
 28 CRIME. 
 
 owing to the pangs of hunger driving men to steal, 
 we should expect to find that the offences against 
 property were greatest in 1884 and least in 1877, 
 but such is far from being the case, the latter year 
 being pre-eminent in this respect. Cases of wilful 
 damage were also the most numerous in this year, 
 and offences against person high. Both which 
 results we may pretty safely conclude to have 
 been direct consequences of the great increase of 
 drunkenness ; and even the unexpected pre-emin- 
 ence of this year in offences against property may 
 be due to the fact that men who had lost their 
 situations through excessive indulgence in drink 
 took to stealing for a livelihood, and generally to 
 the demoralization and idle habits induced by this 
 pernicious indulgence. 
 
 The conclusion therefore to which our data 
 seem to lead us is this : that in average years, the 
 condition of the people exerts a mean or normal 
 effect upon the statistics of crime, the principal 
 variations in which are at such times due to other 
 causes ; but in abnormally prosperous years a 
 great increase of drunkenness is followed by an 
 increase of every kind of offence ; and on the other 
 hand, in years of abnormal depression, a large 
 number of persons being thrown out of work and 
 being in idleness, are more open to temptations 
 brought to bear upon them by chance companions, 
 who have already fallen into vicious habits ; and 
 a few probably, being unable to resist the con- 
 tinual pressure of want, are at length driven to 
 satisfy their hunger with what is not their own. 
 If this is the true solution, we may expect to find
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 29 
 
 that in years of extreme depression and of unusual 
 prosperity crime will be at a maximum, and must be 
 ascribed in the first case chiefly to the temptations 
 and opportunities brought by idleness, and in the 
 latter case to drunkenness. It must, however, be 
 borne in mind that the causes of crime are many and 
 complicated, and that the action of one may at any 
 time be marked by the combined operation of all or 
 a number of the others; but, broadly speaking, the 
 facts we have examined seem to support the pro- 
 position just laid down ; and afford no ground for 
 supposing that poverty pure and simple is a cor- 
 rupter of morals to any great extent ; drunkenness 
 is again seen to be a most potent factor. 
 
 5. We now come to the consideration of two 
 influences which determine above all others the 
 amount of crime, and to one or the other of which 
 indeed all others may be ultimately reduced, 
 although, strange to say, they have hitherto 
 received but scant attention at the hands of writers 
 upon Moral Therapeutics ; perhaps because this 
 branch of Moral Philosophy, being more practical 
 than speculative, and dealing with data and 
 phenomena of a low and vulgar character, has been 
 rather despised by lofty-soaring philosophers, who 
 would certainly have recognized the potency of 
 the influences in question ; and has fallen into the 
 hands of men who believe that a practical problem 
 can be solved only by empiric formulae, and who 
 in fact have not the special knowledge which 
 would enable them to attack such problems in 
 any other way. The influences to which I refer 
 are Heredity and Environment. It will not be
 
 30 CRIME. 
 
 necessary to bring forward much evidence to 
 establish this truth. 
 
 The influence exerted by Heredity, at any rate, 
 is sufficiently obvious in every-day life to attract 
 the attention of observant men ; and to such an 
 extent is it tacitly assumed, that we may often 
 hear people discussing the question in what re- 
 spects a child takes after its father and in what 
 after its mother, and expressing great astonish- 
 ment if, in any important point, whether physical 
 or mental, the offspring appears to differ markedly 
 from both its parents. 
 
 In a paper read before the Medical Society of 
 University College, London, Mr. J. Walter Carr, 
 M.D., F.R.C.S., observed that: " If the child did 
 not inherit the result of all that had gone before, 
 with additional power of development on his own 
 part, all social growth would be rendered im- 
 possible without it there would be an end to all 
 training and development. The child of highly 
 civilized parents is at first in the same actual 
 state, as regards the higher faculties, as that of 
 untutored savages, but the potentialities of the 
 two are widely different, and the physical capa- 
 bilities of the former are simply the accumulation 
 of the mental and moral powers handed down 
 from generations of educated ancestors." 
 
 Professor Ribot has accumulated a mass of 
 evidence upon this interesting question, from which 
 the following striking facts are taken : x 
 
 A man belonging to the educated class, and 
 charged with important functions, succeeded for 
 
 1 " Heredity " Trans. H. S. King and Co. 2nd Ed.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 31 
 
 a long time in concealing his alcoholic habits from 
 the eyes of the public ; his family were the only 
 sufferers by it. He had five children, only one of 
 whom lived to maturity. Instincts of cruelty were 
 manifested in this child, and from an early age its 
 sole delight was to torture animals in every con- 
 ceivable way. He was sent to school, but could 
 not learn. In the proportions of the head he 
 presented the characters of microcephalism, and 
 in the field of intellectual acquisition he could 
 only reach a certain low stage, beyond which 
 further progress was impossible. At the age of 
 nineteen he had to be sent to an asylum for the 
 insane. 
 
 Charles , son of an eccentric and intem- 
 perate father, manifested instincts of great cruelty 
 from infancy. He was sent at an early age to 
 various schools, but was expelled from them all. 
 Being forced to enlist in the army, he sold his 
 uniform for drink, and only escaped a sentence of 
 death on the testimony of physicians, who declared 
 that he was the victim of an irresistible appetite. 
 He was placed under restraint, and died of general 
 paralysis. Quite recently, Dr. Morel had again 
 an opportunity of proving the hereditary effects of 
 alcoholism, in the " children of the Commune." He 
 inquired into the mental state of one hundred and 
 fifty children, ranging from ten to seventeen years 
 of age, most of whom had been taken with arms 
 in their hands behind the barricades. " This 
 examination," he says, " has confirmed me in my 
 previous convictions as to the baneful effects 
 produced by alcohol, not only in the individuals
 
 32 CRIME. 
 
 who use this detestable drink to excess, but also 
 in their descendants. On their depraved physi- 
 ognomy is impressed the threefold stamp of 
 physical, intellectual, and moral degeneracy." J 
 
 The heredity of the tendency to thieving is so 
 generally admitted that it would be superfluous to 
 bring together here facts which abound in every 
 record of judicial proceedings. One, but that 
 decisive, may be cited from Dr. Despine's ' Psy- 
 chologic Naturelle,' the genealogy of the Chretien 
 family. Jean Chretien, the common ancestor, had 
 three sons Pierre, Thomas, and Jean-Baptiste. 
 i. Pierre had a son, Jean - Frangois, who was 
 condemned for life to hard labour for robbery 
 and murder. 2. . Thomas had two sons : (i) 
 Frangois, condemned to hard labour (travaux forces) 
 for murder, and (2) Martin, condemned to death 
 for murder. Martin's son died in Cayenne, whither 
 he had been transported for robbery. 3. Jean- 
 Baptiste had a son, Jean-Frangois, whose wife 
 was Marie Tame (belonging to a family of incen- 
 diaries). This Jean-Frangois had seven children : 
 (i) Jean - Frangois, found guilty of several rob- 
 beries, died in prison ; (2) Benoist, fell off a roof 
 
 which he had scaled, and was killed; (3) X , 
 
 nicknamed Clain, found guilty of several robberies, 
 died at the age of twenty-five ; (4) Marie Reine, 
 died in prison, whither she had been sent for theft ; 
 (5) Marie-Rose, same fate, same deeds ; (6) Victor,, 
 now in jail for theft ; (7) Victorine, married one 
 Lemaire ; their son was condemned to death for 
 murder and robbery. 2 
 
 1 " Heredity," pp. 86, 87. 2 Ibid., p. 90.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 33 
 
 With suicidal may be ranked homicidal mono- 
 mania, which is also hereditary. We need here 
 give only one instance of this form of morbid 
 heredity, but it is one that by itself is more con- 
 vincing than a host of others. We take it from 
 the ' Annales de Hencke,' 1821. 
 
 " A woman named Olhaven fell ill of a serious 
 disorder, which obliged her to wean her daughter, 
 six weeks old. This complaint of the mother 
 began by an irresistible desire to kill her child. 
 This purpose was discovered in season to prevent 
 it. She was next seized with a violent fever, which 
 utterly blotted the fact from her memory, and she 
 afterwards proved a most devoted mother to her 
 daughter. 
 
 " This daughter, become a mother in her turn, 
 took two children to nurse. For some days she 
 had suffered from fatigue and from ' movements in 
 the stomach,' when one evening as she was in her 
 room with the infants, one of them on her lap, she 
 was suddenly seized by a strong desire to cut its 
 throat. Alarmed by this hprrible temptation, she 
 ran from the spot with the knife in her hand, and 
 sought in singing, dancing, and sleep a refuge 
 from the thoughts that haunted her. Hardly had 
 she fallen asleep, when she started up, her mind 
 filled with the same idea, which now was irre- 
 sistible. She was, however, controlled, and in a 
 measure calmed. The homicidal delirium recurred, 
 and finally gave way, only after many remedies 
 had been employed." x 
 
 The following story, which appeared injthe daily 
 1 Ibid., p. 126. 
 4
 
 34 CRIME. 
 
 papers, is a remarkable instance of the same 
 fact: 
 
 "An inquest was held yesterday on Robert 
 Evan Lloyd, aged forty-five, clerk and cashier at 
 Lucas, Blackwell, and Arkwright's Brewery, 
 Leamington, who threw himself from the Iron 
 Pier, Douglas, and was drowned on Friday night 
 last. The body was identified by friends from 
 Leamington, one of whom produced the following 
 letter, received from Lloyd on Saturday at noon: 
 
 ' Douglas, Isle of Man. Dear , when this 
 
 reaches you I shall have done what I have so often 
 threatened. It has come to a matter of Hatton 
 Asylum or death, and I prefer the latter. I beg 
 you and all my friends to remember me as I was 
 about ten years ago, until that wretch Wyllie 
 interfered with me. God help the wife and 
 children. Perhaps Mr. Lewis might do some- 
 thing for them. A small bag will be found at the 
 address on enclosed ticket, containing my watch, 
 &c. Your broken-hearted Bob.' It was stated that 
 deceased had made three previous attempts on his 
 life. His father destroyed himself by jumping off 
 Chelsea Church spire, and his sister died three 
 months ago in a lunatic asylum. His employers 
 had lent him 100 at Christmas which he had 
 never been asked to repay ; and his friends say 
 that his remarks in the letter about Wyllie are 
 totally groundless. A verdict of ' Suicide while 
 in a state of temporary insanity ' was returned." 1 
 
 It is pretty safe to conclude that a morbid 
 affection of the brain was hereditary in this 
 1 Manchester Gttardian, July 5, 1887.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 35 
 
 family, predisposing the persons affected to 
 commit suicide. The cases here cited of such 
 inherited morbid tendencies will probably be suf- 
 ficient to support a fact which is denied by few 
 who have considered it ; should any remain un- 
 convinced they are referred to Prof. Ribot's 
 able and exhaustive work upon the subject. 
 
 The conclusion, then, to which we are brought 
 is that many unfortunate persons have bequeathed 
 to them by their parents morbid affections of the 
 brain which compel some to homicide, some to 
 suicide, some to drunkenness and its consequent 
 vicious and degraded mode of life, reducing others 
 to idiocy or raving madness. In this sad class 
 of cases it is obvious enough to any one that the 
 criminal should be no less an object of our deep 
 commiseration than the man who has been seized 
 by a loathsome and painful disease. The words 
 punishment and vengeance are tragically ludicrous 
 in such a connection. 
 
 6. We now turn to the general head of En- 
 vironment, which it has been convenient to treat 
 already under some of its more important special 
 forms, such as poverty and bad company. As a 
 matter of fact, all the influences which result in 
 the formation of criminal habits may be divided 
 into subjective and objective, and ranged respec- 
 tively under one or other of the main heads 
 Heredity and Environment. Concerning the latter 
 in its more general aspect we will now say a few 
 words. 
 
 A fact of great significance is the youth at 
 which, in the majority of cases, a criminal career
 
 36 CRIME. 
 
 is commenced; the table given in Judicial Statistics 
 of prisoners' ages on commitment is misleading 
 on this point ; the number of those committed 
 between 20 and 30 is there given as greater than 
 that of those committed in any other ten years' 
 period of age. This is no doubt perfectly accurate, 
 but it must be remembered that a large number 
 of persons are recommitted more than once, and 
 many several times, some even many times, 
 between the ages of 20 and 30, and I think a 
 table giving the number of first convictions between 
 the same ages would be extremely interesting, and 
 most useful for a student of the subject upon 
 which we are now engaged. I have fortunately 
 been able to find statistics upon this point, but 
 no numerical facts collected by a private person 
 relating to a public matter of this kind can be 
 so full and accurate as those published by the 
 Government concerning the phenomena with 
 which it has to deal. I am again indebted to the 
 thoughtfulness and care of the Rev. H. L. Elliot, 
 who in the paper previously quoted, gave the sub- 
 joined interesting table. It will be seen that the 
 largest number of first convictions occurs between 
 the ages of 9 and 20, and that the ages of 15, 16, 
 17, 18, and 19 seem to be those at which boys 
 and girls are most exposed to temptation and 
 most easily led astray by it. 
 
 It is, moreover, important to remember that 
 first " conviction " is not at all necessarily 
 synonymous with first " offence," so that many, 
 for instance, of the 339 whose first conviction 
 falls between the ages of 20 and 30 must have 
 really commenced a career of vice at an earlier age.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 37 
 
 TABLE SHOWING THE AGES OF 1,000 PRISONERS AT THE 
 TIME OF THEIR FIRST CONVICTION. 
 
 Age. 
 
 Number 
 examined. 
 
 Age. 
 
 Number 
 examined. 
 
 Age. 
 
 Number 
 examined. 
 
 10 and under 
 
 19 
 
 2O 
 
 44 
 
 Between 
 
 
 ii 
 
 4 
 
 21 
 
 45 
 
 9 & 20 
 
 395 
 
 12 
 
 15 
 
 22 
 
 4i 
 
 20 ., 30 
 
 339 
 
 13 
 
 20 
 
 23 
 
 28 
 
 30 40 
 
 151 
 
 14 
 
 27 
 
 24 
 
 33 
 
 40 50 
 
 65 
 
 15 
 
 51 
 
 25 
 
 40 
 
 50 60 
 
 37 
 
 16 
 
 72 
 
 26 
 
 3 
 
 60 70 
 
 12 
 
 17 
 
 57 
 
 27 
 
 22 
 
 Above7o 
 
 I 
 
 18 
 
 75 
 
 28 
 
 32 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 55 
 
 29 
 
 24 
 
 
 
 Carried forward 395 
 
 Cd. forwd. 339 
 
 Total, 
 
 1,000 
 
 The causes of this youthful beginning of im- 
 morality are : vicious and neglectful parents, 
 absence of parent in gaol, or death of one or both 
 parents, together with great facilities for making 
 immoral acquaintance. The children of the very 
 poor playing in idleness about the slums will, out 
 of natural childish mischief and thoughtlessness, 
 do things which their more fortunate richer 
 brother does almost daily with no more serious 
 consequences to itself than a slapping, and not 
 always that, but which will lodge the friendless 
 gutter-child in prison, and thereby start it on the 
 way to a criminal career. Uninstructed in the 
 elements of morality, how can a little starving 
 wretch of 13 or 14 be expected to resist the 
 temptation if it comes to him of helping himself 
 to a mouthful of food from a barrow or a shop ?
 
 38 CRIME. 
 
 The following instances, given by the Rev. 
 Benjamin Waugh, 1 will give some idea of the 
 character of the "crimes" which under our 
 present mistaken system may ruin a man for life 
 by familiarising him with prison and branding 
 him with its stigma. 
 
 "The gravest class of those juvenile "criminals" 
 with whom I have had a somewhat intimate 
 acquaintance, and to whose acquaintance I owe 
 my correction and instruction as to their general 
 character, are fairly represented by the following 
 half-dozen cases. Remember, I am speaking now 
 only of first ' crimes.' 
 
 " (i) On the day which chronicled the capture 
 and incarceration of the first of these dangerous 
 mortals, there might have been seen, lounging 
 in a low street, a pale, shrivelled, languid-looking 
 boy of twelve and a half. His father, a water- 
 man, his mother a waterman's wife a passable 
 couple as the street went. How he was employed 
 no one knew. He was neither at school, at home, 
 nor at work. He gave no trouble to his parents, 
 and made no noise in the street. Up to the time 
 when he was taken by the police he had the good 
 fortune, singular amongst idle boys, to bear not 
 even the shadow of a reputation amongst his 
 neighbours. Why did he steal ? Listlessly 
 strolling about, he saw a tame rabbit come 
 through the open door of a walled garden. No 
 person followed it, so he " coursed " it, caught it, 
 and sold it. I believe he imagined that he had 
 found it; he is one of many who, in some unlucky 
 1 " The Gaol Cradle," 4th Ed., p. 23.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 39 
 
 moment, take what is not theirs, as the stars are 
 said to shine ' Because they've nothing else 
 to do.' 
 
 " (2) Entering a small yard by a long passage 
 leading out of a narrow, low street, we pass up- 
 stairs to the top room of a dingy, tumble-down 
 house, let out in flats. The room contains a fire- 
 grate, a window-frame, a little glazed, the rest 
 stuffed with rags or nailed up with the staves of 
 a demolished tub, a heap of filthy rags called a 
 bed, and a gaudy picture of the Saviour. This 
 murky place has a free circulation of air. Once 
 it had a ceiling, but the lath and plaster ruin has 
 ceased to be worthy of that name. The stars look 
 through the tiles, and there is no door. Here the 
 second of our young thieves lived with a younger 
 brother. He is pale and thin, and rather tall for 
 a lad of thirteen or fourteen. His mother, a 
 widow, it was supposed, got her living nobody 
 knew how. She paid visits at intervals to the 
 boys, and then settled for the room and for the 
 two pounds of potatoes served to them hot on a 
 tray every morning ; every other requisite they 
 found for themselves. The night before the theft 
 a clear, still, bitter night the thief-to-be lay 
 with his brother, coiled up in their rag bed. Rising 
 to a fireless grate and a fuelless cupboard, the 
 shivering creature set out to get something to 
 warm their den. Ice prevented his picking coal 
 at low water from the Thames bank, so he filled 
 his small bag from a coal-yard. 
 
 " (3) 111, in lodgings, with a kindly old woman 
 so reputed among homeless boys to whom he paid
 
 40 CRIME. 
 
 ninepence per week, might be seen the boy who 
 became the third thief. For some reason the 
 cruelty of his step-father he said he had left his 
 home, and had started in the world on his ' own 
 hook ' at the early age of twelve. His income 
 arose from sweeping at a crossing, and now and 
 then carrying parcels for passengers from the rail- 
 way station. Whilst laid aside his rent got a 
 fortnight into arrears. Bad times made it difficult 
 for him to meet his current wants, and impossible 
 to pay off the old score. The woman was kind, 
 but the little fellow did not like to be in her debt. 
 He stole empty wine-bottles from the yard of a 
 gentleman's house, sold them for one shilling and 
 ninepence, took the money to the woman, and 
 said, ' Here is your money, Sally ; and three- 
 pence to be going on with.' 
 
 " (4) Singing at the doors of gin-palaces might 
 sometimes be heard the voice of a tawny, foreign- 
 looking boy. His father, a box-organ grinder, 
 has been some weeks dead. He is a general 
 favourite in the neighbourhood, especially at the 
 lodging-house, where, on the morning of the very 
 day on which he attained one of those social dis- 
 tinctions which entitle to the notice of the British 
 Press, it is said that he shared his morning meal 
 with some aged tramp. And why did he steal ? 
 He was in love, and imagined his loved one would 
 look better in a brooch ; at all events, he had the 
 fatal feeling that it would gratify her to have a 
 present from him. He took the girl to a _ small 
 brooch-dealer's shop window, she selected, and 
 he romantically vowed that the next time they
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 41 
 
 met the brooch should be hers. To buy it was 
 impossible. The shop was one where the master 
 both sold and worked. Leading out of this was 
 a door, half-glazed, and the glass was half-covered 
 with a muslin curtain. Behind the door was a 
 living-room. The critical opportunity at length 
 came. The street-door was ajar, the master was 
 at dinner, the brooch within three steps and an 
 arm's length ! Softly he enters, gently he stretches 
 out his hand, the brooch is his, when, unluckily 
 for the tawny boy, something falls, the master 
 is after him, and in a few minutes, ' Love's 
 labour lost,' the lad is in the hands of the police. 
 
 " (5) The fifth is a boy of thirteen, little more 
 than skin and skeleton. Why did he steal ? 
 From sheer hunger. For a butcher was his 
 victim, and his prize he ate raw. 
 
 "(6) The last is a good-looking, eager boy, whose 
 ' theft ' was rather wilful damage. Why did he 
 steal ? A tenth-rate greengrocer in a low part 
 of the town had roused the ire of the neighbour- 
 hood by cruelty to a servant-girl. After cursing 
 the man somewhat freely the boys resolved on 
 doing him damage. At the side of his window 
 hung a board announcing the price of coals and 
 ' Orders received within.' That board must be 
 taken. One lad, addressing another, said, ' Cabb, 
 you loved her ; you're the man.' Cabb was not 
 forward to respond ; but, ' Oh, Cabb's a coward ; 
 he's a jelly-heart ; ' and ' Cabb's no coward ; 
 he's game, boys, he's game,' put the requisite 
 mettle into him. He was dared to do, and he 
 risked to suffer."
 
 42 CRIME. 
 
 Now it cannot be denied that these unfortunate 
 boys were all the victims of circumstances ; and 
 that, so far from the acts which brought them into 
 trouble being essentially immoral, in some of the 
 cases a really generous disposition and loftiness of 
 purpose was evinced, albeit obscured and mis- 
 directed by lack of training. Could each of these 
 lads have had the advantage of moral training 
 and good example, of regular work and a spirit of 
 emulation, he would probably have grown up into a 
 useful and respectable member of society. Even 
 the slight supervision exercised by parents of the 
 poorest classes over their children is found to have 
 an appreciable effect in lessening juvenile crime, 
 for, according to Mr. W. Lant Carpenter, 1 out of 
 107 boys committed to the Park Row Industrial 
 School, Bristol, from 1864 to 1868 inclusive, only 
 56, or little more than half, had both parents 
 living, and 44 only one ; in 1885 of all the boys 
 and girls committed to Industrial Schools in 
 Great Britain, only 41*2 per cent, had both 
 parents living and able to take care of them ; of 
 the rest, one or both parents were dead, criminal, 
 or had deserted their children. 2 
 
 7. Granting, however, that in very many 
 cases the commencement of a criminal career on 
 the part of children is due to the absence of those 
 who should attend to the formation in them of 
 moral habits, and is by no means chargeable to 
 
 1 Transactions of National Association for Promotion of 
 Social Science, 1869, p. 234. 
 
 2 Twenty-Ninth Report of the Inspector of Reformatory 
 and Industrial Schools, 1886, p. 29.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 43 
 
 any inherent natural viciousness or depravity in 
 the children themselves, yet in other cases there 
 is such depravity, the effect, as already pointed 
 out, of heredity ; other children, again, are of 
 a nature to be easily led by unprincipled com- 
 panions, or, being mischievous and obstinate, defy 
 their parents. Even most of these, however, 
 might, by careful and judicious training, by the 
 exercising of their higher and the suppression of 
 their lower instincts, while their natures are yet 
 plastic, be moulded into upright men and women ; 
 but few are there among the class from which 
 criminals come that are capable of so moulding 
 the characters of their offspring : some are too 
 busy, some too idle, some, having the will, possess 
 not the requisite good judgment ; some are quick- 
 tempered or harsh, and, having thus alienated 
 their childrens' affection, lose all the influence for 
 good which they might have had over them. Thus 
 we account for the 41*2 per cent, of youthful 
 offenders, both of whose parents are alive and 
 capable (physically) of taking care of them. The 
 following typical case is given by the Rev. J. 
 W. Horsley, sometime chaplain of Clerkenwell 
 Prison, in the form of an autobiography written 
 by the criminal himself. " I was born, in 1853, at 
 Stamford Hill, Middlesex. My parents removed 
 from there to Stoke Newington, when I was sent 
 to an infant school. Some time afterwards I was 
 taken by two pals (companions) to an orchard to 
 cop (steal) some fruit, me being a mug (inexperi- 
 enced) at the game. This got to my father's ears ; 
 when I went home he set about me with a strap
 
 44 CRIME. 
 
 until he was tired. He thought that was not 
 enough, but tied me to a bedstead you may be 
 sure what followed. I got loose, tied a blanket and 
 a counterpane together, fastened it to the bed- 
 stead, and let myself out of the window, and did 
 not go home that night, but met my two pals and 
 dossed (slept) in a haystack. Early next morning 
 my pals said they knew where we could get some 
 toke (food), and took me to a terrace ; we went 
 down the dancers (steps) to a safe, and cleared 
 it out. Two or three days after I met my mother, 
 who in tears begged of me to go home, so I went 
 home. My parents moved to Clapton. When 
 they sent me to school, my pals used to send 
 stiffs (notes) to the schoolmaster, saying that I 
 was wanted at home ; but instead of that we used 
 to go and smug snowy (steal linen) that was hung 
 out to dry, or rob the baker's barrows. Things 
 went from bad to worse, so I was obliged to leave 
 home again." J This lad became an habitual thief, 
 and instead of doing his duty as a citizen, which 
 he probably would have done had the twists in his 
 nature been judiciously straightened in his boy- 
 hood, he lived most of his life at the expense of 
 the community, whether in prison or out of it, 
 and probably cost society more when at liberty 
 than when kept in durance. 
 
 8. We have now passed in review the chief 
 causes which launch the youthful wrongdoer upon 
 a criminal career, and I think they are not such 
 as should make us despair ; there is not -one of 
 which it can be said that it is utterly and hope- 
 1 "Jottings from Jail," 1887, p. 5.
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 45 
 
 lessly inevitable. Heredity will certainly prove 
 the most difficult influence to contend against ; 
 for heredity is the transmission to offspring of 
 habits strengthened perhaps not only by years 
 of indulgence on the part of the parent, but 
 even through the course of several preceding 
 generations. We all know how strong a habit 
 which we ourselves have formed may grow, and 
 what determination is required to shake ourselves 
 free from it ; so much so that men of weak moral 
 fibre who have undertaken such a task frequently 
 fail in it ; how much more difficult, therefore, will 
 it be to remove bad habits which have been 
 strengthened by the growth of generations. For- 
 tunately, in childhood all these tendencies are 
 most easily modified, and there are good hopes 
 that by taking in hand boys and girls who have 
 been cursed with such an unfortunate legacy, at a 
 sufficiently early age, and subjecting them to the 
 most judicious treatment, we shall succeed at any 
 rate in greatly weakening their vicious impulses, 
 which will thus be transmitted enfeebled to their 
 children ; then, by dealing with these again in 
 their turn, a further great improvement will be 
 effected, until finally, after a few generations, no 
 evil, but only good impulses, will be transmitted 
 from parent to offspring. The only difficulty will be 
 to find the means of removing the unhappy influ- 
 ences which are directed to warp the characters of 
 the young ; and, seeing that about 40 per cent, of 
 criminals are convicted before the age of 20, and 
 of those convicted between 20 and 25 vicious 
 habits must in very many cases have been formed
 
 46 CRIME. 
 
 at an earlier age, if we can achieve success in this 
 investigation, more than half the crime of the 
 country will have been abolished and centres 
 of infection from which fresh crime may spread 
 will have been enormously decreased. 
 
 To sum up, the active causes of all kinds are 
 these : Defective training or total absence of any ; 
 immoral associates and bad example in prison as 
 well as out of it ; drink, idleness, and the here- 
 ditary transmission of evil tendencies. These 
 causes, however, frequently overlap, and one is 
 often found to be the effect of another ; the only 
 perfectly simple and absolutely final division is 
 into the two main heads, Heredity and Environ- 
 ment, which comprise all others.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 AN INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFICIENCY OF 
 PRESENT METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 
 
 " It has not failed to attract my observation, that whatever 
 has been long administered by individuals, is apt so to en- 
 gross their partiality, as to blind them to any inherent defect 
 easily discernible by others." 
 
 G. L. CHESTERTON, 
 " Revelations of Prison Life," vol. ii. p. 2. 
 
 i. IF it could be shown that our present methods 
 of dealing with crime were, on a priori grounds, 
 likely to lead us to success, or that, viewing the 
 circumstances a posteriori, considerable and satis- 
 factory results were being attained, and that the 
 total disappearance of wrong-doing is only a ques- 
 tion of time, it were superfluous to carry the 
 present investigation further. Before we proceed, 
 therefore, it will be well to inquire what measure 
 of success is attending our present efforts, and 
 what probabilities there are that the most de- 
 sirable result of all will some day be brought 
 about. 
 
 The main object of those who devised the system 
 now in operation was to deter to force a man who 
 had transgressed the laws to undergo an experi-
 
 48 CRIME. 
 
 ence sufficiently unpleasant to make him hesitate 
 before again subjecting himself to the risk of it, 
 and at the same time to warn other men by the 
 example made of the convicted offender. The 
 feelings appealed to are those of terror and self- 
 interest. Deductions were made, starting from 
 the proposition, no doubt to a considerable extent 
 true, that the criminal classes are composed of 
 men entirely selfish, and desirous of living as well 
 as possible with the least amount of labour, 
 though it be at the expense of the labour of other 
 men ; that these drones of the social hive look 
 upon thieving as a speculation wherein enormous 
 possible gains are to be placed upon one side, the 
 risk of detection and its consequences upon the 
 other. The conclusion arrived at was that detec- 
 tion must be made so sure, and its consequences so 
 unpleasant, as to induce selfish men to prefer even 
 honest labour as the least unpleasant to them- 
 selves. It was argued, these men are impatient 
 of restraint, therefore we must restrain them ; 
 they are fond of tobacco and drink, therefore they 
 must have neither ; they hate work, therefore we 
 must make them labour ; solitude will bring be- 
 fore them terrifying pictures of their criminal life 
 in the past, and of the torments of sinners in the 
 world to come, therefore they shall have plenty of 
 it. The results of this insight and acute reason- 
 ing are penal servitude and imprisonment with 
 hard labour a system of almost unadulterated 
 coercion. 
 
 2. Now, assuming that the main lines' of the 
 scheme are the best possible, a doubt arises
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 49 
 
 whether the machinery employed is the most 
 efficient : the two essentials for the success of the 
 scheme are certainty of conviction and consequent 
 conditions far more irksome to the convict than 
 those to which he is accustomed when at liberty. 
 Are these essentials secured ? 
 
 From "Judicial Statistics " we find that for the 
 years 1880-1884 the average proportion of persons 
 committed for trial to the total number appre- 
 hended for indictable offences was about 74 per 
 cent., and the average number of apprehensions 
 to the crimes committed we gather from the same 
 source to be about 42 per cent., so that the pro- 
 portion of those committed for trial to the total 
 number of indictable offences is about 32*5 per 
 cent. But of persons committed for trial all are 
 not convicted, the proportion being about 75 per 
 cent ; consequently, of those who commit indict- 
 able offences, only about 24*5 per cent., or say 
 one-quarter, receive punishment for their mis- 
 deeds, and these offences are the most grave such 
 as murder, burglary, robbery with violence, and 
 larceny. In the case of summary proceedings the 
 convictions are more numerous, being about 80 per 
 cent, of the total number of persons apprehended ; 
 but many of these cases are of a trifling character, 
 and the list is swelled by the number of drunk 
 and disorderly persons, by vagrants, and by 
 offences against the Elementary Education Act. 
 We are, then, to conclude that if a man commits a 
 burglary or a robbery with violence the chances 
 are three to one, not that he will be caught, but 
 that he will escape detection : thus the first 
 
 5
 
 50 CRIME. 
 
 essential to the successful working of the scheme 
 is certainly not secured. 
 
 The next question is, Are the conditions to 
 which a man is subjected when in imprisonment 
 such as to induce him to prefer honest work rather 
 than return thither? The author of " Five Years 
 Penal Servitude " can help us to answer this ques- 
 tion. He says, " A great many of the prisoners 
 never slept in such good beds when free men. 
 Men have told me repeatedly, especially men from 
 agricultural districts, that they were better fed 
 and had better beds in prison than ever they had 
 in their lives before." * "A farm labourer has 
 told me frequently that he worked far harder for his 
 eleven shillings a week than ever he had at stone- 
 quarrying or anything else in prison. When at 
 home he seldom, if ever, had meat of any sort, 
 and his bed was but a poor affair compared to his 
 prison couch. Here in prison, comparatively 
 speaking, he fared sumptuously every day, and I 
 can assure the reader he considered the living 
 luxurious compared to what he had at home. . . . 
 In seven years he has got used to prison life. In 
 fact, I question not only whether prison has not 
 lost all its terrors to him, but whether, when he 
 goes home and resumes his farm labouring, and 
 the difficulties of maintaining his family on eleven ' 
 shillings a week, he will not often look back with 
 regret to the soup and the meat and the com- 
 fortable bed, with comparatively little work and 
 no anxiety, of Dartmoor." 2 Even the terrifying 
 
 1 " Five Years Penal Servitude," p. 169. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 300.
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 51 
 
 effects which solitude might have upon an evil and 
 ignorant mind are alleviated or entirely prevented 
 by the diversion which the convict is allowed to 
 obtain from books ; and all are taught to read. 
 There is, however, conflicting evidence upon this 
 point ; and we have the statement of another 
 convict to place against those of the author of 
 " Five Years Penal Servitude." 
 
 " The prisoner Wright, in the course of his 
 defence, said, ' I don't mean to undergo the 
 sentence that will be passed upon me, because I 
 know what I shall have to undergo. A sentence 
 of penal servitude sends a man to what is worse 
 than the life of a dog. I don't care what sentence 
 is passed upon me, because I don't mean to do it. 
 Your lordship passes a sentence of penal servitude, 
 but you do not know what it means, and I will not 
 undergo it.' . . . Wright addressed the Court 
 again, and said, when once a man was discharged 
 from Her Majesty's prisons he had no chance of 
 obtaining a livelihood, and he was hunted about 
 like a fox in a wood. The detectives would not 
 permit him to get a livelihood, and he was com- 
 pelled to go thieving again. He concluded by 
 saying that he would not again endure the horrors 
 he had suffered, and he would take the first 
 opportunity of endeavouring to regain his liberty, 
 and if he did not succeed he would go down to his 
 grave like a dog." x 
 
 The statement of a prisoner of this man's cha- 
 racter must be accepted with reserve; if he had been 
 insubordinate in prison, and had thereby frequently 
 
 1 Standard, Sept. 17, 1884. Trial of the Hoxton Burglars.
 
 52 CRIME. 
 
 brought upon himself the unpleasant experience of 
 the punishment-cells or a punitive diet, it is likely 
 enough that he would not look back upon his stay 
 there with feelings of complacency ; but his state- 
 ments have been to some extent corroborated by 
 other ex-convicts, and, moreover, all prisons are 
 not equal in point of comfort. 
 
 " This 'ere Dartmoor is a blessed sight better 
 than Chatham, I can tell you ; there's many a 
 bloke there as is druv to suicide, it's such a 'ell 
 upon earth. One chap, while I was there, threw 
 himself down in front of the engine as works the 
 trucks of earth out of the new dock, and was cut 
 in half." ' 
 
 The following doggerel corroborates this, and 
 gives further information 
 
 " Dartmoor is a tidy place, 
 Chatham is the terror of our race, 
 Portland is not quite so bad, 
 Broadmoor is for those stark mad, 
 Pentonville is the hill of London, 
 Borstal if you're there you're undone, 
 Portsmouth is a noted shop, 
 Brixton is a regular cop." 2 
 
 Occasionally it happens that some of the warders 
 are bullies and ill-treat the men under their charge ; 
 and doubtless the sense of constraint and the 
 deprivation of luxuries must be irksome to a man, 
 however comfortable he might be in other respects. 
 But the question is, Is life in prison more irksome 
 to a man of vicious habits and naturally indolent 
 
 1 " Five Years Penal Servitude," p. 222. 
 
 2 "Jottings from Jail," p. 31.
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 53 
 
 disposition, than honest work, which itself involves 
 a certain amount of constraint and self-restraint, 
 would be ? In order that it should be so, I think 
 a system of such severity and harshness would 
 have to be adopted as would not be tolerated by 
 the people of this country. If it were brought 
 home to the minds of the people that in any 
 prison the discipline was so rigorous that men 
 were driven to suicide by it, a great outcry would 
 at once be raised. The tendency at present is 
 rather to make prisoners more and more comfort- 
 able, and so squeamish and tender-hearted has the 
 public now become that even assuming coercive 
 and deterrent methods to be the best, it is im- 
 possible to carry them rigorously into effect. 
 
 But assume that the burglar Wright spoke the 
 truth ; and grant that he found prison indeed a 
 hell upon earth. What was the result ? Did it 
 produce the desired salutary effect upon him ? 
 Was he deterred by it from further crimes ? No ; 
 he committed a burglary, accompanied by circum- 
 stances of great atrocity, and merited another 
 term of penal servitude, to which he was sentenced 
 for twenty years. 
 
 This is an instance of the well-known fact that 
 habitual criminals are not men who weigh the 
 results of their actions they act largely upon 
 impulse and trust to luck ; and the terrors of a by 
 no means certain imprisonment, however irksome, 
 look shadowy and far off when the men are free 
 and living their lawless lives. 
 
 3. We may now proceed to inquire what 
 measure of success has actually been attained.
 
 54 CRIME. 
 
 If any system is perfect or since absolute perfec- 
 tion is scarcely to be hoped for in proportion as 
 that point is approached the longer the convict is 
 subjected to it the less likely he will be to relapse 
 into his former vice ; but this is certainly not the 
 case with our present convict system. 
 
 " I know too well, that many too many by far 
 have not the remotest intention of ever trying to 
 live honestly. I have heard of men who have 
 actually committed robbery in the railway train on 
 their way home from prison." J 
 
 " I one day asked a man, who had the reputation 
 of being a most expert hand at ' slinging his 
 hook,' or picking pockets, as well as doing the 
 three-card-trick and others of a similar kind, if 
 the hard work of prison did not spoil his hands 
 for delicate manipulations. ' Oh, bless you, no ! ' he 
 replied ; ' a few bread-and-water poultices, followed 
 by wearing well-greased gloves, will set that all to 
 rights. In a week or two a man can bring his 
 hooks and feelers into full working trim again, and 
 no mistake.' " 2 
 
 " I have had several men ask me what I intended 
 to do when released from prison, and have had all 
 sorts of schemes proposed to me to join in. Two 
 men who were in the association-room with me, 
 and whose time would expire a few weeks after 
 mine, were most urgent for me to join them in the 
 very lucrative game of illicit distillation." 3 
 
 " In another case, a young thief, aged about 
 twenty-two years, who had already passed 
 
 1 " Five Years Penal Servitude," p. 358. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 259. 3 Ibid. p. 272.
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 55 
 
 six out of a sentence of fifteen months incar- 
 ceration, essayed to correspond with his asso- 
 ciate in the robbery of which both were 
 convicted. Detection followed the attempt, 
 and we read sentiments, traced in his own 
 blood, remarkable for unflinching hardihood. 
 He exhorted his pal to keep up his spirits, and 
 that advice was couched in the flash language of 
 ' hold up your pecker.' He anticipated that they 
 should yet ' work ' together, and avowed his inten- 
 tion not thenceforth to stick at trifles or to work 
 for nothing ; ' he would try for something worth 
 having next time.' " J 
 
 " In like manner are the shortsightedness and 
 want of all reasonable calculation of this besotted 
 class equally discernible. Endless detection and 
 repeated imprisonments fail to influence their 
 future schemes. It is useless to admonish or to 
 warn. In vain may you attempt to illustrate the 
 hopelessness of persevering depredation, by point- 
 ing to the notorious ill-success of antecedent 
 attempts. The dogged and scowling expression 
 assumed is clearly interpreted into contempt, and a 
 mistrust of the counsel you tender, and the habitual 
 observer can distinctly peruse the mental resolve 
 to go on, relying upon their own favourite term 
 ' Better luck next time.' " 2 
 
 That most thoughtful man, Mr. M. D. Hill, often, 
 in his Charges to the Grand Jury at Birmingham, 
 spoke in disparaging terms of our system of 
 imprisonment. 
 
 '"Revelations of Prison Life," 1856, vol. i. p. 12. By 
 C. L. Chesterton. 
 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 34.
 
 56 CRIME. 
 
 " Society is injured by taking legal notice of any 
 offence which is not visited with transportation. 
 The effect of a short imprisonment is, so far as 
 concerns the deterring of the offender and his 
 associates, as transitory as the punishment ; the 
 prisoner is a degraded man, a member of the 
 criminal class, who alone will countenance him, 
 and with whom he must stay, willy nilly." x 
 
 " I have often had occasion to remark how rare 
 it is to find any person who has had experience of 
 criminals attach weight to deterrents." 2 
 
 " But, gentlemen, the longer I sit on this bench, 
 the humbler grows my opinion of the efficiency of 
 criminal jurisprudence, especially as regards its 
 deterrent operation, either on the offender himself, 
 who is visited with the penalties of the law, or on 
 those exposed to temptation, but who have not yet 
 found their way into the dock." 3 
 
 These extracts are quite sufficientfor our purpose. 
 Here we have the evidence of three men amply 
 qualified by their position, and two of them 
 certainly by their ability, to arrive at a true 
 opinion upon this subject, and what makes their 
 evidence the more valuable is that the relation of 
 each to the object of our investigation is different, 
 and each would observe the phenomena from a 
 different point of view. One mingled with 
 criminals, and could daily scrutinize their habits 
 and their manner of thinking : they would look 
 upon him as one of themselves, and express them- 
 selves to him without reserve. We cannot suppose 
 
 1 "Repression of Crime," p. 110. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 46. 3 Ibid. p. 72.
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 57 
 
 that he had any motive for misstating what he saw 
 and heard while in prison. The second, George 
 Laval Chesterton, was many years governor of 
 Coldbath Fields Prison; and the third, Mr. 
 Matthew Davenport Hill, was many years 
 Recorder of Birmingham, in which position he 
 gained a reputation for clearness of sight and 
 marked ability. From the evidence of these men, 
 then, we learn that even when the criminal is 
 actually undergoing the deterrent treatment he is 
 meditating new crimes, and that the terrors of 
 incarceration when actually present before him do 
 not frighten him into virtue and repentance. If, 
 then, the realization of these terrors have so little 
 effect upon him as this, what effect are they likely 
 to have when they are receding into the past and 
 their recollection is becoming dim ; especially 
 since, as already proved, his chance of escape after 
 committing a crime is three to one ? Our present 
 penal system is not really deterrent, and cannot, 
 with public opinion such as it is, be made so ; even 
 if the discipline of prison could be made excessively 
 severe, we have the opinion of Mr. Chesterton and 
 Mr. Hill J that the members of the criminal class 
 are not of a character to be appreciably affected 
 by deterrents of any kind. Probably, however, if 
 detection could be made absolutely certain, and 
 imprisonment seriously unpleasant, some effect 
 might be produced ; but neither of these condi- 
 
 1 In case any one should object that the three works re- 
 ferred to are of somewhat ancient date, I give in an appendix 
 some more recent opinions to the same effect, all expressed 
 by men specially qualified to form them.
 
 58 CRIME. 
 
 tions appears to be attainable. To secure one of 
 the two conditions without the other would be 
 useless, and the first, which is far the most impor- 
 tant, is almost hopelessly difficult of attainment : 
 yet to expect satisfactory results from the deterrent 
 system with this factor omitted is absurd. In 
 fact the experiment has already been made and 
 proved a failure ; there was a time when hanging 
 was the punishment for most trifling offences, and 
 when our prisons were dens of the most filthy, 
 horrible, and pestilential kind, the unfortunate 
 inmates of which were treated with greater 
 brutality than wild animals in a cage. Capture 
 was followed either by death or by loss of liberty 
 coupled with a life of even greater discomfort than 
 those who experienced it were accustomed to when 
 free. 
 
 " A reference to various Acts of Parliament in 
 force in 1777, and to Howard's works on prisons, 
 shows that the penal and prison punishments 
 then inflicted were of the most severe and cruel 
 character. Felons were burnt in the hand, ' to 
 fix on them a lasting mark of infamy and disgrace.' 
 Transports were sold into bondage to the American 
 planters, for the terms of their sentences ; lesser 
 criminals, during their imprisonment, were publicly 
 whipped monthly at the market cross, and at 
 market hours ; prisoners of every class (except 
 successful criminals who could purchase indul- 
 gences and exemptions) were subjected to the 
 severest labour and privations. At the mere will 
 of the gaoler, they were chained and fettered, 
 lodged in dark and damp dungeons, and under-
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 59 
 
 ground cells, and exposed to disease and death 
 from the gaol distemper, and from starvation by 
 hunger or by cold." J 
 
 Yet those who had endured the horrors of im- 
 prisonment in those days were not deterred from 
 again committing crimes, while others, as yet 
 without experience in those horrors, neither by the 
 fear of death nor by their knowledge of the sufferings 
 they might have to pass through, were prevented 
 from falling into a criminal career. Still less, when 
 even murderers are not always hanged, and when 
 the health, comfort, and education of convicts 
 have become a care to a soft-hearted public, is the 
 mere terror of a possible consequence likely to 
 keep a man from a lawless life ; and if we can detect 
 any improvement at all, if there are any signs that 
 the numbers of the criminal class show a tendency 
 to diminish, and the number of crimes to become 
 fewer, then certainly we must look for the explana- 
 tion in some other fact than the deterring influence 
 of our convict system. 
 
 4. It may possibly be pointed out by some of 
 the advocates of a deterrent system that, on an 
 average, only a little over 45 per cent, of the com- 
 mittals in one year to Government local prisons 
 are recommittals, and it may be inferred that 
 imprisonment, as at present carried out, is effica- 
 cious in the case of about one-half the total 
 number. Well, if this were so, it would not be 
 much to boast of, and we ought to be far from 
 satisfied with a system which fails as often as it is 
 
 1 " Report of Select Committee on Prison Discipline," 
 1850, p. xxi.
 
 60 CRIME. 
 
 successful : but, in fact, even this result is less 
 satisfactory than on a superficial view it appears 
 to be. For, in the first place, it is not always 
 easy to discover whether a man has been pre- 
 viously convicted : criminals travel about much 
 and change their names frequently, and if a man 
 is convicted in Lancashire it may often be im- 
 possible to prove that he has previously been 
 convicted under a different name in Middlesex ; 
 so that if we estimate the number of reconvictions 
 at 50 per cent, we shall probably be under rather 
 than over the mark. 
 
 Again, some men no doubt will be reconvicted 
 very soon after liberation from their first imprison- 
 ment ; others, while the unpleasant remembrance 
 of prison is fresh, will try for awhile to live honestly, 
 but finding, possibly, some difficulty in obtaining 
 work, and becoming careless as the recollection of 
 prison becomes dim, they will return to their evil 
 courses, in which they may continue undetected 
 for a considerable time ; in these cases three or 
 four years may elapse between the first imprison- 
 ment and the second : moreover, the number of 
 recommittals includes men who have been com- 
 mitted twelve times and even more, so that twenty 
 years may, in some cases, have elapsed since their 
 first conviction ; consequently, of the 50 per cent, 
 of reconvicted men, in any given year, a number 
 may have been convicted for the first time only 
 one year previously, a large number three or four 
 years previously, and a considerable number still 
 as long as twenty years previously. It is impos- 
 sible to say what the mean length of time will be,
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 61 
 
 but we shall probably not be over the mark in 
 putting it at six years. Now, during those six 
 years, men have been dying, so that many who 
 otherwise would have been recommitted have, 
 since their first conviction, ceased to live. The 
 death-rate among men of the average age of re- 
 convicted prisoners is certainly not less than 
 15 per thousand ; consequently, during the six 
 years, convicted men will have died to the amount 
 of nearly 10 per cent. ; and, according to the 
 usual proportion, 50 per cent, of these would, had 
 they lived, have been reconvicted ; therefore we 
 must consider that if there were no deaths the 
 average number of recommittals would be, roughly 
 speaking, 55 per cent, per annum : and this is 
 probably rather an under- than an over-estimate. 
 Let us, however, consider a little further the 
 50 per cent, who are actually reconvicted in each 
 year. Now, of men who commit crimes and 
 misdemeanours there are two classes : one of 
 which comprises those who have from their youth 
 been associates of thieves, or in some circum- 
 stances which have militated against the growth 
 in them of habits of honesty and industry, and 
 who have therefore little regard for virtue and no 
 character to lose ; it is men of this class who are 
 convicted again and again ; the other class of first 
 offenders consists of men who have previously 
 borne a good character, but who, in a fit . of 
 passion, or from spite, or jealousy, or through 
 inability to resist some great temptation, are 
 hurried into the performance of some wrong 
 action ; these men, possessing, even though in
 
 62 CRIME. 
 
 some cases but weakly, the moral sense and a 
 desire to stand well with the world, are not 
 naturally prone to perform bad actions, and even 
 if unpunished for the first might never possibly 
 offend again : men of this class will obviously be 
 mostly found among the 50 per cent, who are 
 convicted but once, and the only question is 
 whether they are sufficient to account for all. 
 Now, according to " Judicial Statistics," of all 
 those who are charged with indictable offences, 
 and those who are summarily convicted, from 46 
 to 50 per cent, were previously of good character ; 
 certainly it does not follow that these men 
 and the 50 per cent, of once-convicted men are 
 identical ; but it is at least extremely probable 
 that most of them are, and even assuming that 
 30 per cent, of the once-convicted prisoners con- 
 sists of these men of previously good character, it 
 follows that out of every seventy men of greater or 
 less natural depravity with which it deals, our 
 present system can only reclaim fifteen ; and that 
 is not much to boast of. This result, however, is 
 founded upon conjecture, and it is open to any one 
 to affirm, against the probabilities, that nearly the 
 whole 50 per cent, are genuine criminals. It does 
 not matter, the point is not a vital one ; we must 
 not be satisfied with a system which, taking an 
 unreasonably favourable view, can only reclaim 
 about 40 per cent, of really immoral men. 
 
 5. In order that we may see at a glance what 
 have been the fluctuations in the amount of 
 crime in the past, and what are likely to be 
 its fluctuations in the immediate future, it will
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 63 
 
 be best to plot out the figures in a diagram, taking 
 the numbers of convictions in a given year as one 
 of our co-ordinates, and the corresponding date as 
 the other, and then to draw a curve approxima- 
 ting as closely as possible to the points thus ob- 
 tained ; this will show us at once the average 
 variation in the number of convictions from year 
 to year. First of all, we take the total number of 
 those sentenced both to imprisonment with hard 
 labour and to penal servitude. 
 
 The curve thus obtained is exceedingly interest- 
 ing and of such a marked character that there 
 shouldbe no great difficulty in determining the influ- 
 ences which have regulated it, provided there are 
 any. Unless the variation in the quantity of crime is 
 purely the effect of chance, it is evident that about 
 the year 1849 something came into operation which 
 rapidly converted an increase of crime into an 
 extraordinary decrease, which has, on the whole, 
 continued to the present time. Now, in 1849, 
 there was established at Redhill, in Surrey, a 
 " Farm School " for the reception, education, and 
 reformation of " boys and girls, who, by neglect 
 or by bad company, had fallen into crime." This 
 institution was soon followed by others, all the 
 outcome of private philanthropy and benevolence ; 
 until, in 1854, the Youthful Offenders' Act was 
 passed, giving to reformatory school managers 
 the power of detaining children who had been 
 convicted of crime. The principle came at once 
 into very general operation, and great numbers of 
 boys, who on release from prison would previously 
 have returned to their old companions and way of
 
 6 4 
 
 CRIME. 
 
 > O
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 65 
 
 life, were now detained until moral habits and 
 self-restraint had been implanted in them, and 
 until they had learnt some trade by which they 
 might earn a livelihood. The result was that 
 between 1856 and 1860 a reduction was made 01 
 nearly 6000 in the number of juveniles annually 
 committed to prison a result quite sufficient to 
 account for the rapid decline of our crime curve. 
 In 1857 a second Act was passed, entitled " The 
 Industrial Schools Act," recognizing another class 
 of schools concerning which I shall have some- 
 thing to say later. These two classes of schools 
 have been in operation since that time, and have 
 increased in number, and probably in efficiency, as 
 experience has been gained ; and the annual report 
 of them, made by the Government Inspectors, 
 proves that they are acting very powerfully towards 
 the diminishing of the criminal classes. 
 
 The curve which we have been considering, and 
 which includes all those offences of a less impor- 
 tant nature for which the penalty is imprisonment 
 with hard labour, often only for a month or two 
 months, is clearly more liable to variations depend- 
 ing upon accidental and temporal circumstances, 
 than one which represented only the graver crimes 
 to which sentences of penal servitude are assigned ; 
 such a curve would probably give a more correct 
 picture of the variation of the criminality of the 
 country ; it would be steadier and less liable to 
 sudden fluctuations. 
 
 Here, again, we find that an influence, having 
 the same tendency, comes into operation about 
 the same time ; but we are not surprised to notice 
 
 6
 
 66 
 
 CRIME.
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 67 
 
 that it does not attain its maximum effect until 
 about 1852-1854, a result we should naturally 
 expect to follow from the more stable nature of 
 this curve. 
 
 But beside the great influence which the re- 
 formation of the young has had upon the statistics 
 of crime, there are other forces at work tending in 
 the same direction ; private endeavour and com- 
 bination has now for some time been engaged for 
 the reclamation of those who have fallen, and for 
 the assistance of such as are exposed to tempta- 
 tion. In many large towns Mission Societies have 
 been formed which are doing useful work among 
 the lower classes, and numerous Prisoners Aid 
 Societies assist discharged prisoners to obtain 
 honest labour ; we must also probably credit the 
 spread of education with a certain proportion of 
 the success which has been attained. All these 
 influences combined will be sufficient to account 
 for the diminution which has of recent years been 
 taking place in the number of crimes, without 
 our needing to ascribe any appreciable proportion 
 of this result to our convict system, which I have 
 shown, I think conclusively, to be unfitted to pro- 
 duce it. I would not, however, deny that our 
 present system is far less injurious than that 
 which Howard was instrumental in removing; 
 for it certainly keeps the prisoner from brutalizing 
 influences, and from vicious habits, and, in some 
 cases, even teaches him a trade. 
 
 6. Assuming, then, that we are correct in 
 ascribing such diminution of crime as is observ- 
 able to those causes we have mentioned, the ques-
 
 68 CRIME. 
 
 tion next arises, Will crime, under the constant 
 operation of those causes, continue to grow less 
 and less, until eventually its amount becomes a 
 vanishing quantity ? 
 
 An analogy taken from physical science will 
 help us to answer this question. If full steam 
 could be admitted into the cylinders of a locomo- 
 tive just starting from a station, a certain acceler- 
 ation would be produced, the amount of which 
 might from time to time be ascertained ; and it 
 would be found that for a given steam-pressure 
 the acceleration would be greatest during the first 
 second, and would become gradually less and less 
 every second until eventually it became o, when 
 the speed of the train would be uniform ; and in 
 order to get a greater speed a higher steam- 
 pressure would be necessary. If, therefore, the 
 speed of the train under a constant steam-pressure, 
 from starting to uniform speed, be plotted out in 
 the form of a curve, it will be of this kind 
 
 Speed uniform. 
 
 Speed o. 
 
 The curve starts at a sharp angle to the hori- 
 zontal axis, which gradually becomes less, while 
 the curvature becomes flatter, until we eventually
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 69 
 
 get a straight horizontal line. Now I think tha 
 if any one will compare this curve with the curve 
 on page 66 he will be struck with the resemblance, 
 the only difference being that the curves are 
 reversed ; and since analogous effects are produced 
 by analogous causes, an investigation of the action 
 of the forces which determine the physical curve 
 may teach us something about those which deter- 
 mine the social curve. In the case of the steam- 
 engine, if the steam-power is assumed to be kept 
 constant, it is at once obvious that a progressively 
 diminishing acceleration can only be due to a 
 progressively increasing resistance. Let us, pro- 
 visionally, make a similar assumption in the case 
 of crime ; that is to say, suppose a given number 
 of reformatory influences of various kinds to have 
 been acting since A.D. 1850, constant in amount 
 and efficiency ; then, if the resistance to those 
 influences had been constant, we should have 
 found that our curve was a straight line ; but it is 
 not; it resembles the curve which we obtained for 
 the speed of the locomotive, the curvature of 
 which was accounted for by an increasing resis- 
 tance : therefore, on our assumption, it follows 
 that the resistance to reformation of criminals 
 becomes constantly greater as their number 
 decreases. But everybody knows that the refor- 
 matory influences have been increasing in quantity 
 and efficiency, so that, on the assumption we 
 made, viz., that these influences were constant, 
 our curve would have made the resistance appear 
 to be less than it is ; and since, as a matter of fact, 
 it shows it to be increasing, it must really be
 
 70 CRIME. 
 
 increasing at an even greater rate. We may 
 therefore draw this conclusion: as the criminal 
 classes yield to the reformatory influences brought 
 to bear upon them the decreasing residuum 
 becomes more and more stubborn and refractory, 
 and in a few years time our present methods will 
 only suffice to keep the numbers stationary. By 
 continuing the curve on page 66 until it becomes 
 horizontal we can determine approximately when 
 this state of things will be reached, and we find 
 that it happens at the point A, corresponding 
 pretty nearly with the year 1895. In that year, 
 then, unless some more efficient method of dealing 
 with criminals be discovered, a minimum will be 
 reached of 1,300 convicts per annum. 
 
 But there is another point to be considered. In 
 the case of the locomotive the resisting forces are 
 passive ; that is, are called forth by the action of 
 the locomotive itself not acting at all when the 
 engine is stationary, and becoming constant as 
 soon as the motion is uniform. If some of those 
 forces, besides being increasing, were active, they 
 would continue to increase after the acceleration 
 had been reduced to zero, and unless more steam 
 could be turned on the velocity of the train would 
 begin to grow less and less. At this point, then, 
 our analogy fails, and in a manner which is un- 
 fortunate for us ; for some of the forces which 
 resist the diminution of crime are undoubtedly 
 active. It is surely undeniable that if no action 
 of any sort were taken against crime, either by 
 individuals or by the state, the number and gravity 
 of crimes would increase. Stop the locomotive
 
 METHODS OF DEALING WITH CRIME. 71 
 
 and resistance becomes zero the force is passive ; 
 cease all efforts to check crime and the opposing 
 forces will increase unrestrained they are active. 
 When, therefore, by our present reformatory 
 action, we have reduced crime to the minimum just 
 mentioned, after remaining a short time stationary, 
 it will begin to grow with constantly increasing 
 acceleration. 
 
 7. Although the result we have arrived at 
 will probably have been previously unsuspected by 
 many people, there is nothing surprising in it. 
 The rapid increase of population ; the ever-growing 
 number of mouths to be fed, and consequent 
 greater difficulty of providing each with food ; 
 still more important, the enforced idleness, coupled 
 with hunger, which keener competition for work is 
 multiplying : all these things tend to the growth 
 of crime, and may be termed the active resisting 
 forces. Moreover, it is obvious that when we set 
 to work to reform a given number of men of 
 largely varying degrees of depravity, the least 
 corrupt by nature and by habit will be the first to 
 yield ; a residuum of extremely refractory material 
 will eventually remain, which may defy all our 
 efforts. An improved system will perhaps lessen 
 this again, but it is probable that a certain amount 
 of dregs will remain irreclaimable by any method 
 man could devise, and which must be dealt with 
 in a different way. The resistance here described 
 is of the character which we have called passive. 
 
 The net result of our discussion is that our 
 present system of criminal jurisprudence has been 
 found to be very little worth ; that certain re-
 
 72 CRIME. 
 
 formatory influences, very largely the outcome 
 of private endeavour, private generosity, private 
 benevolence, have very appreciably reduced the 
 amount of crime during the last thirty-five or forty 
 years ; that these influences have produced nearly 
 all the effect of which they are capable, and that, 
 unless the satisfactory decrease of crime is to be 
 ere long converted into an increase, new and still 
 more efficient methods must be adopted. 
 
 It now remains for us, therefore, to inquire 
 whether any such methods are discoverable, and, 
 if so, on what lines.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 
 
 " Put a carpenter into a blacksmith's shop, and set him to 
 forge, to weld, to harden, to anneal, &c., and he will not need 
 the blacksmith's jeers to show him how foolish is the attempt 
 to make and mend tools before he has learnt the properties 
 of iron. Let the carpenter challenge the blacksmith, who 
 knows little about wood in general, and nothing about par- 
 ticular kinds of wood, to do his work, and, unless the 
 blacksmith declines to make himself a laughing-stock, he is 
 pretty certain to saw askew, to choke up his plane, and 
 presently to break his tools and cut his fingers. But while 
 everybody sees the folly of supposing that wood or iron can 
 be shaped and fitted without an apprenticeship, during which 
 their ways of behaving are made familiar, no one sees any 
 folly in undertaking to devise institutions, and to shape 
 human nature in this way or that way, without a preliminary 
 study of man, and of life in general as explaining man's 
 life." HERBERT SPENCER, "Study of Sociology," p. 354. 
 
 i. IT would be considered the height of folly for 
 an artificer to attempt to mould and fashion into 
 a useful or ornamental article a raw material of 
 which he knew not the nature and capabilities. To 
 blow glass, to forge iron, to cleave slates, to make 
 porcelain out of clay, would be impossible before
 
 74 CRIME. 
 
 the properties of these substances had been dis- 
 covered ; and yet people seem to imagine that 
 they can devise means for converting villains into 
 honest men, without having any acquaintance 
 with the science that treats cf human nature. 
 Show a piece of glass rod to a person ignorant of 
 the nature of glass, and ask him how you are to 
 bend it at right angles ; he might reply, "Use force 
 until it bends." Thus legislators, who have never 
 .studied psychology, on having to solve the problem 
 of the deflection of a human character from crooked 
 into straight courses, have hit upon no other 
 method than constraint and the use of force. We 
 still persist in the application of the deterrent 
 system, although thoughtful men who have been 
 brought into close contact with criminals declare 
 that such persons are not of a character to be 
 acted upon by deterrents; and facts have been 
 given in the previous chapter which amply corro- 
 borate this opinion. 
 
 2. If we wish to devise a really philosophical 
 method, the important truths which have been 
 established by psychologists must not be over- 
 looked. Now of all the laws which have been 
 formulated with regard to the human mind, the 
 most important for our purpose is that which has 
 been called, in its different bearings, the Law of 
 Relativity, Change, or Transition, which, simply 
 stated, is this : that no second occurrence of any 
 stimulus, or shock, or experience, whether of 
 pleasure, pain, or mere excitement, is ever fully 
 equal to the first, even though a considerable time 
 may have elapsed between the two; and if the
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 75 
 
 same stimulus or experience comes repeatedly in 
 rapid succession, the mind at last becomes quite 
 unconscious of it. 1 
 
 This psychological truth depends upon a physio- 
 logical fact, namely, that every impression made 
 upon our senses from without, being conveyed by 
 means of the nerves to the ganglia and cells of the 
 brain, cause a chemical change to take place in 
 the cell, which never afterwards becomes recon- 
 stituted as before, but retains, so to speak, a 
 memory of the impression it received, and thus 
 remains predisposed to receive a similar impres- 
 sion, and will receive it with a slighter shock and 
 disturbance of consciousness. Our minds are thus 
 being constantly modified by impressions from 
 without, and a great part of the change takes 
 place unsuspected by ourselves, through the 
 means of great numbers of very slight impres- 
 sions which we are continually receiving. A 
 man's character is thus slowly and imperceptibly 
 changed by his surrroundings, since every ex- 
 perience leaves a memory, technically called a 
 " residuum," in the nervous matter of his brain, 
 and by these " residua " his future conduct will 
 be modified. Any one may recall instances of the 
 operation of this law. It is well known that a 
 soldier in his first battle feels a certain com- 
 punction to kill, which afterwards entirely passes 
 away ; miners become quite indifferent to the 
 dangers to which they are constantly exposed, 
 and often pay for their carelessness with their 
 lives ; railway servants are killed because the 
 1 Prof. Bain, " Mind and Body." chap. iv.
 
 76 CRIME. 
 
 familiar roar of an approaching train has made no 
 impression upon their consciousness. Similarly 
 habits become formed in human beings, a devia- 
 tion from which at once brings a feeling of 
 discomfort ; we have heard of boys who always 
 held a particular button, or put their hands in a 
 particular position when saying their lessons, and 
 could not remember them otherwise ; there is a 
 well-known story to the effect that Dr. Johnson, 
 when walking through the streets, was ill at ease 
 unless he struck every post which he passed with 
 his stick. 
 
 3. The same thing applies to crime. Every 
 man inherits certain characteristics by which he 
 is predisposed, more or less strongly, to good 
 or bad actions ; but in childhood, when, as we 
 know, the mind is most open to impressions, the 
 character may be greatly modified by the forma- 
 tion of habits. Every cultivated man has his 
 character carefully moulded into certain habits of 
 civilized life, and these become to such an extent 
 a part of his nature that a departure from them 
 causes discomfort. Thus when a man has had 
 ingrained into him the simple habit of washing 
 his hands before a meal, he cannot eat with any 
 pleasure if he notices that his hands are dirty ; 
 but the honest labourer will eat his bread and 
 cheese with grimy fingers, and enjoy it. To see 
 a vulgar person disregarding the amenities of civi- 
 lized life, even though what he does is perfectly 
 harmless in itself, always jars upon a man in 
 whom habits of refinement have been inculcated ; 
 and the repulsion which dishonour and crime
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 77 
 
 have for a virtuous man is of precisely the same 
 kind. The first act of dishonesty by a previously 
 honourable man is attended with great mental 
 anguish, the second is much more easy, and, if the 
 practice is continued, a completely demoralized 
 nature is the result, and the most disgraceful acts 
 are at length performed without compunction. 
 Now, if the temptation comes to a man while yet 
 of tender years and before habits of rectitude have 
 been ingrained in his nature, the mental pain 
 accompanying the dishonourable action will of 
 course be much less, and the resistance made to 
 the temptation much more slight ; and this even 
 in the case of a boy who was born of virtuous 
 parents much more would a boy who had in- 
 herited vicious tendencies, and had received little 
 or no training, succumb easily to temptation. 
 The children, therefore, of the criminal classes, 
 naturally prone to vice, and never having had 
 fostered in them the habit of right-doing, will sin 
 without compunction and almost without knowing 
 it ; and, if they are allowed to remain among the 
 same surroundings, the habits of wrong-doing 
 will become their nature, and grow stronger with 
 their growth, until to do right is as irksome to 
 them as to do wrong is to a virtuous man. 
 
 4. We may conclude from this that what has 
 been called conscience is really habit. Some people 
 seem to imagine that every man has, at birth, an 
 inward entity of some mysterious kind which 
 makes him uncomfortable whenever he does 
 wrong, and whose admonitions become gradually 
 weaker as they are disregarded. If so, every man
 
 78 CRIME. 
 
 ought to start fair with a conscience of equal 
 activity and alertness, which is not the case. 
 The children of vicious parents have no con- 
 science to speak of, and the children of virtuous 
 people, naturally predisposed to virtue, get a con- 
 science of greater and greater efficiency the longer 
 they persist in the habit of doing right. This fact 
 has lately been curiously corroborated by some 
 experiments in hypnotism made by M. Voisin, one 
 of the physicians at the Salpetriere. The subject 
 of the experiments was a criminal lunatic of a most 
 depraved character, to whom, after having with 
 some trouble hypnotized her, M. Voisin suggested 
 the performance of orderly actions ; the operation 
 was daily repeated, modest and regular habits 
 being gradually impressed upon her while in the 
 state of trance, until they at length became a part 
 of her nature, and she was discharged cured of 
 her insanity and of her vice. Other experiments 
 of a similar character, and equally successful, were 
 made. 
 
 5. Let us apply the result we have attained 
 to the solution of our problem. We have found 
 that what makes vice repugnant to virtuous men 
 is the force of habit, and that habits are most 
 easily formed when a man is young ; it follows, 
 therefore, that if criminals are to be reformed, we 
 must give them a conscience in other words, we 
 must implant in them the habit of doing right, 
 and if, since prevention is better and easier than 
 cure, we wish to check the manufacture of 
 criminals, we must take measures for preventing 
 the formation of vicious habits in children, for
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 79 
 
 eradicating such evil tendencies as they may have 
 inherited, and for fostering in them habits of 
 industry, honesty, and self-control. 
 
 6. There can be no doubt that this is feasible. 
 Shakespeare has truly remarked, " How use doth 
 breed a habit in a man ! " And why not a habit of 
 being virtuous as much as any other habit ? 
 Habits of all kinds are affections of the mental 
 state, and may therefore be reasonably employed 
 to affect that particular state of mind which we 
 call a disposition to crime. Use or custom will 
 breed in any man the habit of doing any action 
 to such an extent that not to do it becomes most 
 difficult, and those actions which we call virtuous 
 cannot be excluded from the operation of this law ; 
 and since, on the other hand, by the law of 
 Relativity, a new experience causes a greater 
 shock to consciousness than one which has been 
 several times renewed, the first step in the direction 
 of crime will be most difficult for a man whose 
 mind, by training, has been impregnated with the 
 feeling thatdishonourable actions are to be avoided, 
 and in whom, by use and custom, behaviour of an 
 opposite character has become a habit. 
 
 7. We observe that every consideration leads 
 us to the necessity of dealing with the young. We 
 found in a previous chapter that probably half, 
 possibly even more, of those who enter into a 
 criminal career, committed their first crime or 
 misdemeanour at an early age ; and now, having 
 found that virtue and vice are essentially habits, 
 we see the importance of cultivating habits of 
 rectitude at an age when the mind is receptive
 
 8o CRIME. 
 
 and before we are anticipated by the formation of 
 habits of vice. 
 
 In order to effect this purpose we must have 
 schools of a special character to which those 
 children who are likely to be exposed to temptation 
 may be sent, and to a certain, but limited, extent 
 this system is at the present time in operation, 
 there being in different parts of the country 
 reformatory schools for the reception of young 
 criminals. It will be well to inquire what success 
 these schools have had, and whether the system 
 may be advantageously extended.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. 
 
 "Thus arose the science of prophylactic medicine the 
 highest development, though not always the most appreci- 
 ated part of medical science a branch which is yearly 
 making rapid progress, and to which, rather than to the 
 curative medicine, we must look for the greatest advance 
 and for the most beneficent results of the so-called healing 
 art." Extract from a Paper read by Dr. Walter Carr before 
 the Medical Society of University College, London. 
 
 i. THE first attempt at the reformation of the 
 young who had fallen into crime was made in 1818 
 by the establishment, at Stretton-on-Dartmoor, in 
 Warwickshire, of an industrial school. Mr. M. 
 D. Hill, when Recorder of Birmingham, paid this 
 school a visit, and it is from his report * that the 
 following facts are taken. The building was a 
 farmhouse of a humble description, but the 
 arrangements were clean and orderly, and the 
 boys who were its inmates had the advantage, 
 perhaps for the first time in their lives, of ex- 
 periencing the comforts of a well-regulated home. 
 The boys were taught trades, such as tailoring, 
 1 " Repression of Crime," p. 52, et seq. 
 7
 
 82 CRIME. 
 
 shoemaking, and others ; their food was good and 
 wholesome, but not luxurious ; books were of 
 course provided for instruction and amusement, 
 and the influence which was mainly relied upon in 
 dealing with the boys was the effect of kindness 
 and confidence. There was no attempt at im- 
 prisonment, nor any continual spying upon the 
 boys' movements, yet we are told that desertions 
 were rare, and only happened in the case of new- 
 comers. The results of this asylum were satis- 
 factory, and many boys were permanently re- 
 formed. But if England was the country which 
 set the example in this direction, a reformatory 
 school established in France at Mettray, in 1839, 
 was the first to demonstrate most conclusively on 
 a large scale the feasibility of reclaiming youthful 
 criminals, and probably its success had a good 
 deal to do with the extension of the reformatory 
 system in England. The asylum was founded by 
 M. Demetz and the Vicomte de Bretigneres de 
 Courtelles, men admirably fitted for the arduous 
 and important work they undertook. And I should 
 like to observe here that, next to having a good 
 system, the most important thing is to get a com- 
 petent man to work it ; the one without the other 
 is quite worthless. Human nature is a delicate 
 and complex material to deal with, and it is by no 
 means everybody who is competent to handle it or 
 work with it, but there are men who are naturally 
 endowed with instincts and with a temper which 
 fits them for this duty ; and it is essential that any 
 system which has been devised for dealing in any 
 way with the characters of human beings, should
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. 83 
 
 be entrusted for its carrying into effect to one of 
 these persons, otherwise complete failure is certain, 
 no matter how perfect the system may be. M. 
 Demetz was pre-eminently fitted for such a work, 
 and his endeavours were crowned with great 
 success. The method he adopted was the division 
 of the boys under his care into families, consisting 
 of 40 each, presided over by a suitable man who 
 was called the father, and who taught his wards 
 a trade ; in order to rouse a healthy spirit of 
 emulation, each family was divided into two 
 sections, and these chose from among their number 
 an " elder brother " to preside over it, and who 
 became entitled to certain privileges. The dis- 
 cipline was strict, but not suspicious or irksome, 
 and it was tempered by humanity and justice. 
 The principle of the system was simply the foster- 
 ing of self-respect, and of habits of industry and 
 honesty. The results were most satisfactory, the 
 percentage of reformed being 85 against 15 unre- 
 formed, and the nett cost per head per annum being 
 but 14 ; the profits of the boys' labour, of course, 
 went to reduce the expense. Both these experi- 
 ments proved that much more may be done by 
 placing confidence in boys than by physical re- 
 straint and galling supervision ; much more by 
 kindness than by harshness; and the remarkable 
 extent to which the boys of Mettray justified the 
 confidence reposed in them was proved by a cir- 
 cumstance recorded in the Journal d'lndrc et Loire 
 for November 20, 1856, from which the following 
 passage is an extract : r 
 
 1 " Repression of Crime," pp. 133, 134.
 
 84 CRIME 
 
 " C'est ici, Messieurs, le moment de vous parler 
 du concours qui nous a ete si genereusement donne" 
 par la Colonie de Mettray. 
 
 " Le 2 me Juin, dans la matinee, M. Blanchard, 
 Inspecteur de la Colonie, vint, en 1'absence de M. 
 de Metz, nous offrir le concours de ses jeunes 
 colons (the occasion was a great flood of the Loire, 
 which threatened the city of Tours with destruc- 
 tion), concours que nous acceptances avec recon- 
 naissance. Quelques heures apres, au moment 
 ou la place de 1'Hotel de Ville etait en- 
 combree de curieux oisifs d'habitants qui hesi- 
 taient encore a aller travailler aux levees, on vit 
 deboucher par le pont, musique au tete, armes de 
 pelles et pioches, et marchants avec la precision 
 d'une troupe militaire, 300 jeunes colons de 
 Mettray, sous la direction de 1'honorable M. 
 Blanchard. 
 
 " Us etaient accourus a la nouvelle du danger 
 qui nous menagait, et apres s'etre reposes un 
 instant et avoir pris nos instructions, ils se 
 rendirent sur la levee du canal, ou ils etablirent 
 un chantier qui a pu servir de modele pendant le 
 reste de la journee du Lundi, pendant toute la 
 nuit suivante, et pendant la journee entiere du 
 Mardi, 3 Juin. 
 
 " Honneur a eux, honneur a cette belle institu- 
 tion de Mettray, qui regenere de jeunes gens egares 
 au point d'en faire des hommes d'elite ! " 
 
 The Municipal Council of Tours, in gratitude 
 for the services rendered by the Colonie, caused 
 a medal to be struck commemorating the 
 event.
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. . 85 
 
 2. The possibility of reforming young criminals 
 thus having been demonstrated, schools for this 
 purpose were founded in England by philanthropic 
 persons, and have gradually increased in numbers 
 up to the present time. They are of two kinds, 
 both of which have been recognized by Act of 
 Parliament, and are called Reformatory and 
 Industrial Schools respectively. In order that a 
 boy or a girl may be sent to one of these schools 
 it is usually first necessary that the law should be 
 broken ; the culprit being brought before a magis- 
 trate, is then, according to the discretion of this 
 officer, sent either to a reformatory or to an 
 industrial school, but he may, of course, be sent to 
 prison. The discretion of the magistrate is, how- 
 ever, limited by the proviso that no boy who has 
 been previously convicted may be sent to an 
 industrial school. The reformatory schools for boys 
 usually have a farm or garden, and often both, in 
 which the boys are taught to work, and in many of 
 the schools clothes and boots are made and repaired 
 by the inmates. The girls' schools are fitted with 
 a laundry ; and sewing, cooking, and the duties of 
 domestic servants are taught. Elementary edu- 
 cation is attended to in all these schools. The 
 inmates of the boys' industrial schools are taught 
 various trades and handicrafts, such as tailoring, 
 shoemaking, carpentry, printing, and others. 
 The industrial training at the girls' industrial 
 schools is similar to that given at the reforma- 
 tory schools. Education is properly attended 
 to. 
 
 The actual results attained have been most
 
 86 CRIME. 
 
 satisfactory ; for the years 1882, 1883, 1884, the 
 following figures are given by the inspector. 1 
 
 Number discharged in trie three years was 
 4,920; viz., 3,998 boys and 922 girls. 
 
 Of these, in had died, viz., 91 boys and 20 
 girls, leaving 3,907 boys and 902 girls to be 
 reported on. 
 
 Of the 3,907 boys 
 
 3,000, or about 77 per cent., were doing well. 
 8 1 3 were doubtful. 
 569 ,, 14 had been convicted. 
 257 6 were unknown. 
 
 Of the 902 girls 
 
 660, or about 73 per cent., were doing well. 
 97 ii were doubtful. 
 46 ,, 5 had been convicted. 
 99 ii were unknown. 
 
 In the case of industrial schools the following 
 figures are given. 
 
 The total discharged in these three years, omit- 
 ting deaths, transfers, and committals to reforma- 
 tory schools, was 9,893 ; viz., boys 8,066, girls 
 1,827. 
 
 Of the 8,066 boys, 178 had since died, leaving 
 7,888 to be reported on. Of these 
 
 6,507, or about 82^5 per cent., doing well. 
 220 3 ,, doubtful. 
 
 355 ,, 4-5 convicted. 
 806 10 unknown. 
 
 1 Twenty-ninth Report of the Inspector of Reformatory 
 and Industrial Schools, p. 21.
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. 87 
 
 Of the 1,827 girls, 42 had since died, leaving 
 1,785 to be reported on. Of these 
 
 1,473, or about 83 per cent., doing well. 
 143 8 doubtful. 
 
 26 i convicted. 
 
 143 8 unknown. 
 
 3. The averages of these three years approxi- 
 mate very closely to those of preceding and follow- 
 ing years, and may be taken as representing the 
 normal results of the reformatory treatment em- 
 ployed in these schools. The system is clearly 
 the right one, and we can now readily understand 
 how a considerable proportion of the decrease of 
 crime which has taken place since 1850 may be 
 accounted for, and we must be encouraged to 
 advance yet further in the same direction. We 
 find that the percentage of reformations in the 
 case of juveniles discharged from industrial schools 
 is considerably higher than in the case of those 
 discharged from reformatory schools ; and the 
 cause is obviously this : that in the latter case 
 the subjects of treatment had already been con- 
 victed at least once, and had been subjected to 
 the demoralizing influence of prison. Now it is 
 certainly not likely that a boy will invariably, or 
 indeed usually, be detected and convicted in his 
 first lapse from the path of virtue, and therefore 
 we may safely assume that out of a hundred boys, 
 all of whom have been convicted at least once, 
 a large proportion have broken the law several 
 times ; consequently we infer that the young 
 people who are placed in reformatory schools are
 
 88 CRIME. 
 
 more hardened in vice than those who are sent 
 to industrial schools. The figures given by the 
 inspector are therefore a corroboration of a toler- 
 ably obvious assumption that the earlier we apply 
 remedies to the diseased mind of one who has 
 fallen into a career of vice, the more easily shall 
 we effect a cure ; and greatest of all will our 
 success be if we can take such measures as will 
 prevent that career ever being entered upon at 
 all. 
 
 At present it seldom happens that a juvenile 
 is sent even to an industrial school until a breach 
 of the law has been detected, which, as just pointed 
 out, probably implies several others undetected ; 
 we have, therefore, abundant scope for the exten- 
 sion of the present system, and great encourage- 
 ment to attempt it. For we have seen that boys 
 and girls to whom the system is applied on their 
 first conviction are less refractory than those to 
 whom it is applied after they have been at least 
 once previously convicted ; and we may proceed 
 to draw the conclusion that greater still would be 
 our success could we deal with these young 
 people before any crime has been committed by 
 them at all. 
 
 4. There is yet another and an important 
 consideration. We have already found reason to 
 believe that about 50 per cent, of adult criminals 
 became corrupted in youth, probably before the 
 age of twenty-one ; and we may conclude from this 
 that numbers of juvenile law-breakers are not 
 detected until they have passed the age at which 
 they can be sent to a reformatory school, and
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. 89 
 
 have become so hardened in vice that they would 
 with great difficulty be reformed by any means. 
 
 As Cardinal Manning has said : " There is no 
 doubt that in every great city there will be a 
 refuse of the population who, through their own 
 perverse will, blind conscience, and evil passions, 
 gather together into a demoralized and dangerous 
 horde. But it is also certain that each was once 
 an innocent child. The bloated and brutal man, 
 if he had been nurtured by a loving mother in a 
 pure home fit for man to live in ; if he had grown 
 up in the consciousness of a Divine law and pre- 
 sence ; if he had lived in honest labour, ... he 
 would not have become the wreck in body, mind, 
 and speech which we may see in our streets every 
 day. If parents, teachers, pastors, had been 
 faithful, if the legislation and administration 
 of public and social law had been conceived and 
 carried out, not with a view to money, . . . but 
 for the moral and domestic life of the people, 
 though some men will always wreck themselves, 
 society would not be guilty of the ruin of its 
 offspring." ' 
 
 Could influences have been brought to bear upon 
 these persons sufficiently early, and of the requisite 
 nature, we may suppose that at least as large a 
 percentage of them would have been preserved 
 from sin as are cured by the reformatory school 
 treatment ; and this is an unfavourable assump- 
 tion, because the subjects of the supposed treat- 
 ment would not yet have been demoralized even 
 to the extent of having committed one breach 
 1 Nineteenth Century, vol. xxiii. p. 329.
 
 9c CRIME. 
 
 of the law, whereas the inmates of a reformatory 
 school must, most of them, have done so many 
 times ; but even in the latter case the number 
 of reformations is about 75 per cent., so that we 
 are justified in hoping that, could we take young 
 people in hand before they have yielded to temp- 
 tation at all, we should achieve a very remarkable 
 success and reduce the criminal classes by one- 
 half. 
 
 5. But this is not all. There are in all large 
 towns men who have done little all their lives 
 but loaf about, looking for odd jobs, sometimes 
 begging, sometimes in the workhouse, seldom 
 doing any really useful work. Such a man begins 
 as a boy by carrying bags and parcels for com- 
 mercial travellers and others to and from the 
 railway station for a few pence ; he runs after 
 cabs to open the door and lend a hand with the 
 luggage ; he always has a pinched hungry-looking 
 face and is scarcely covered by rags ; one is 
 almost inclined to feel astonished that he has 
 been able to procure anything to put on at all. 
 Now, even supposing that this wretched being 
 never illegally helps himself to what does not 
 belong to him, he is certainly supported during a 
 considerable portion of his life by the State ; and 
 when he dies from insufficient nourishment and 
 starvation, he leaves society very little better for 
 any work that he has done during his life, while 
 he has certainly been a consumer, though not a 
 great one. He has been a drone a creature which 
 the intelligent bees will not tolerate in their hive, 
 although men, who pride themselves upon their
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. 91 
 
 intelligence, will tolerate it in theirs. It may 
 be urged that claims of humanity override the 
 theories of political economy in such a case ; but 
 this objection is not to the point, because I do 
 not for a moment attempt to limit the private 
 benevolence of any person whose humane im- 
 pulses may induce him to assist any less fortunate 
 human being, I only object to the support of 
 useless creatures by the State. But even on this 
 I am not insisting now, my wish being to draw 
 attention to the great desirability of dealing with 
 these men, when quite young, in such a way as to 
 prevent the formation in them of ingrained habits 
 of idleness, which is only a step short of crime, 
 and inculcate instead thereof habits of industry 
 and thrift, so that they may become useful mem- 
 bers of the community, and may produce, by their 
 labour, useful articles of such value as to pay the 
 State a good interest upon the money originally 
 laid out upon them, and may be to the State not 
 a drain but a source of profit. 
 
 I started by assuming that the class of men 
 just considered is nothing worse than idle ; but 
 this is certainly not quite true ; for idleness leads 
 to drunkenness, and drunkenness we have found 
 to be the most prolific cause of illegality, and we 
 found reason to believe that idleness pure and 
 simple itself not infrequently leads to the same 
 result ; and, further, temptation to steal will 
 undoubtedly be resisted with far the most diffi- 
 culty by a hungry man, unless he be of high 
 principle ; but men of the class we are now con- 
 sidering are often hungry and very rarely of high
 
 92 CRIME. 
 
 principle. We have, therefore, good reasons for 
 believing, what is antecedentally probable, that 
 members of this idle class are continually drifting 
 into the criminal class ; and by dealing with the 
 former in the manner proposed, a source of recruits 
 for the criminal horde will be cut off. 
 
 6. We conclude, therefore, that if we can take 
 in hand at an early age all such as are likely to 
 develop into drones or criminals, the only remain- 
 ing means whereby the criminal class can be 
 swelled, will be by those who prove refractory 
 under our treatment, and those who, having been 
 at any rate passably honest and industrious, sud- 
 denly, from some cause or other, commit a crime or 
 fall away into a vicious career. These latter will 
 probably not be numerous, and we have found 
 reason for believing that the former will be very 
 few indeed. Should we succeed, then, crime will 
 be enormously diminished, and such a prospect 
 ought surely to invite us to great efforts, grudging 
 neither labour nor expense. Now there is one 
 way, and one only, by which embryo criminals may 
 be caught and dealt with before inherited ten- 
 dencies have had time to develop or evil example 
 to make itself felt, and that is, for the State to 
 take under its own absolute control all children 
 found in the streets without visible means of sub- 
 sistence, or who seem to be neglected by their 
 parents. If the State is to interfere in the matter 
 at all, it cannot logically stop short of this. At 
 present any boy may be brought up partly at the 
 expense of the State, obtaining the advantages 
 which he no doubt afterwards appreciates, if
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. 93 
 
 not at the time resulting from technical know- 
 ledge and habits of industry ; but in order to 
 qualify for these advantages it is, as a rule, first 
 necessary that he shall commit a crime, or, at 
 least, break the law : should he prefer to remain 
 honest, he may starve ; let him steal a loaf and be 
 caught doing it, and he will probably be comfort- 
 ably provided for for some years. I do not sup- 
 pose that the premium thus placed upon youthful 
 delinquency has, in practice, any appreciable 
 effect upon the amount of juvenile crime ; it is, 
 however, an injustice and an inconsistency ; and if 
 we have once admitted the principle that the 
 State may take and educate and train children, we 
 cannot logically limit the enjoyment of this great 
 advantage to those who have done wrong ; still 
 less ought we to do so now that it has been shown 
 how great an advantage it would be to the State, 
 by extending the system, to substitute for a lazy 
 or criminal class a body of industrious and trained 
 workmen. 
 
 There is really nothing at all new or startling 
 about this suggestion, as may be shown by the 
 following extract from the Industrial Schools Act: 
 
 " Section 14. ANY PERSON may bring before two 
 Justices or a Magistrate any child, of either sex, 
 apparently under the age of 14 years, that comes 
 within any of the following descriptions, namely : 
 
 "That is found begging or receiving alms 
 (whether actually or under the pretext of selling 
 or offering for sale anything) or being in any 
 Street or Public Place for the purpose of so 
 begging or receiving Alms ;
 
 94 CRIME. 
 
 " That is found wandering and not having any 
 home or settled place of abode, a proper Guardian- 
 ship, or visible means of Subsistence ; 
 
 " That is found destitute, either being an orphan 
 or having a surviving Parent who is undergoing 
 Penal Servitude or Imprisonment ; 
 
 " That frequents the company of reputed thieves. 
 The Justices or Magistrate before whom a Child 
 is brought as coming within one of those descrip- 
 tions, if satisfied on inquiry of that fact, and that 
 it is expedient to deal with such child under this 
 Act, may order it to be sent to a Certified Indus- 
 trial School." 
 
 This important Section has not been at all 
 thoroughly enforced, and we may perhaps find the 
 reason for this in the two first words of it, "Any 
 Person"; for it is proverbial that any person's 
 duty is no person's duty ; so that the Act should 
 be amended either by giving this duty to some 
 class of persons already organized, or by appoint- 
 ing a special body of men for the purpose. 
 
 7. Power should therefore be given to the 
 police, or some other body especially appointed, 
 to take all obviously destitute children, between 
 certain ages, whom they may see idling, begging, 
 or hawking matchboxes and other small articles in 
 the streets, and lodge them temporarily in some 
 place provided for the purpose not a prison cell 
 until inquiries have been made as to their place of 
 abode, whether they have any parents, and if so 
 whether they are properly cared for by them, with 
 any others that may be thought necessary ; the 
 child should then be brought before a magistrate
 
 THE PROPH YLA CTIC ME THOD. 9 5 
 
 and the results of the investigations which have 
 been made laid before him, and he, at his discretion, 
 would either discharge the child or commit it to 
 an industrial school. The distinction between 
 industrial and reformatory schools would still be 
 maintained, with this modification : that children 
 who were detected in a breach of the law would 
 be sent to the latter, but to the former only those 
 would be committed who had not yet transgressed 
 at all. Of course this would necessitate the 
 building by the State of more industrial schools 
 than at present exist, besides involving expenditure 
 in other directions. 
 
 8. This scheme may perhaps appear to some 
 to be of an heroic or even impracticable character. 
 It is, however, certainly not unprecedented ; for at 
 Sparta, under the discipline instituted by Lycurgus, 
 all Spartan children were at a certain age separated 
 from their homes and reared and educated by the 
 State a custom which in no small degree con- 
 tributed to the pre-eminence which Sparta long 
 enjoyed among the other Grecian States. It is no 
 doubt a sound principle that the less power 
 government has of interfering with private indi- 
 viduals the better, and such a system as that once 
 in operation at Sparta is now quite inadmissible, 
 for such an interference with the freedom of 
 children is really an interference with the freedom 
 of their parents or guardians, who may naturally 
 feel aggrieved at being deprived of the pleasure of 
 watching the gradual growth of little ones whom 
 they love, and of putting into practice their own 
 pet theories upon moral and intellectual education ;
 
 96 CRIME. 
 
 the Government can do nothing but mischief by 
 thus meddling with persons who do not shirk their 
 moral obligations, and it has no right to say to any 
 individual, " I can rear your child better than you 
 can ; give it to me." But when -persons endeavour 
 to shirk those moral obligations the case is 
 different. With respect to all those children 
 who are quite neglected by their natural guardians, 
 or who have lost them by death, the State may 
 not improperly consider itself to stand in loco 
 parentis ; and, so far from such a course being any 
 infringement of individual liberty, the disregard 
 of its responsibilities towards orphans and 
 neglected children must be held to be culpable 
 carelessness on the part of the State. That 
 Parliament has not disclaimed this responsibility 
 is proved by the reference already made to the 
 Industrial Schools Act. 
 
 It may be objected that if such a system were 
 in operation, parents, in order to relieve themselves 
 of the trouble and expense of bringing up their 
 children, would simply neglect them, and thus 
 throw upon the State the burden of supporting 
 them. No doubt it would have that tendency, but 
 it is one against which preventive measures may 
 very easily be taken, as I shall hereafter show. 
 
 9. We have next to consider the question of 
 expense ; and for this purpose it will be necessary 
 to know how many children would come under the 
 operation of the system a number not easily to 
 be determined, but, by making certain assumptions, 
 we may approximate to it. In the first place let 
 us assume that all the idle and neglected children
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. 97 
 
 of whom I have spoken become either paupers or 
 criminals ; this will, of course, not be the case, but 
 others will become pauper or criminal who made 
 a tolerable start in life, and this excess will pro- 
 bably roughly balance the deficiency. Now the 
 average number of convicted persons at the pre- 
 sent time is, as we have already seen, about 
 10,700 ; the number of paupers in England and 
 Wales on January i, 1887, was 817,700 ; x the 
 number of criminals at large, known to the police, 
 is about 35,000 : 2 
 
 Paupers 817,700 
 
 Convicted criminals 10,700 
 
 Habitual criminals at large 35>ooo 
 
 Total 863,400 
 
 The average age of these persons will be about 
 30, and the average death-rate between the ages 
 of 15 and 30 is about 8 per 1,000, therefore we must 
 add 7,000 to allow for deaths, making approxi- 
 mately 870,000. This is probably a minimum limit. 
 We may estimate the number in another way. 
 It is a tolerably safe assumption that children 
 of the class we are considering, many of whom 
 have already committed a breach of the law at 
 twelve years of age and even less, habitually 
 shirk attendance at school. Now the " estimated 
 number of children of the class usually found in 
 elementary schools " between the ages of 10 and 
 15 is 2,575,736,3 and the number actually on the 
 
 1 "Statistical Abstract," 1887, p. 209. 
 
 2 "Judicial Statistics." 
 
 3 Reportof Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools. 
 
 8
 
 98 CRIME. 
 
 registers of annual grant schools is 1,535,273 ; 
 difference, 1,040,463 a number which differs by 
 only 130,000 from that which we have previously 
 obtained, and probably 1,000,000 will not be very 
 wide of the mark. 
 
 Now the type of school to which these children 
 would be sent, should be of the character of those 
 which are known as industrial schools ; and in 
 these the average cost of maintenance of boys and 
 girls per head, including all charges, ought not to 
 exceed 15 175. 6d. Consequently the cost of 
 maintaining 1,000,000 would be 15,894,000 
 
 At the present time nearly one-tenth of the cost 
 of the industrial schools is covered by private 
 subscriptions and legacies, and surely it is not too 
 much to expect that, if the system were extended 
 as here indicated, rich benevolent people, who are 
 seeking for good objects upon which to exercise 
 their charity, will come forward in yet greater 
 numbers to assist ; and that such private effort 
 might suffice at least to wipe off the odd 894,000. 
 
 Parents also are now required to contribute to 
 the maintenance of their children in reformatory 
 and industrial schools, but the levying of this 
 contribution should be far more stringently carried 
 out ; even after making allowance for orphans and 
 children whose parents cannot be discovered, at 
 least one-tenth of the amount required should be 
 obtained from this source. If this were done, 
 13,500,000 would be the sum left to be accounted 
 for. 
 
 Now the whole argument for the adoption of this 
 system, and the sole justification for it, is that it
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. 99 
 
 would practically break up the criminal class by 
 cutting off the supply at the source, that it would 
 at least halve the annual commitments of adults 
 to prison, and would tend to diminish the number 
 of paupers ; and as far as this can be proved by 
 figures it has been done. If any one disputes the 
 validity of the reasoning it is useless for him to 
 proceed further, but by those who will admit its 
 force it must now be granted, for the sake of further 
 argument, that those results will actually follow 
 from the adoption of the system. 
 
 The total number, then, of the criminal classes 
 at large, known to the police, including suspects, 
 is 35,227. These men live by plundering the public; 
 they do no honest work to speak of, and whether 
 in prison or out of it they live at the expense of 
 the State. Suppose that on an average they cost 
 25 a year each, then if, by judicious treatment of 
 them when young, their number is permanently 
 reduced to one-fourth its present amount, there is 
 a saving to the State of nearly 700,000. Further, 
 the cost of local prisons and of criminal prose- 
 cutions is about 379,000, and of convict prisons, 
 after deducting the value of convict labour, about 
 200,000 : and these might be made to disappear 
 entirely by making prisons self-supporting, which 
 certainly can and ought to be done. From the 
 three last-mentioned sources, therefore, there 
 would be a saving of 1,279,000, which, being 
 set against the original sum to be paid, leaves 
 12,221,000. 
 
 Again, the number of paupers would be con- 
 siderably diminished ; but the present Poor Law,
 
 ioo CRIME. 
 
 and the whole system of relief, is so rotten, and 
 even injurious, that if it were absolutely abolished, 
 and nothing substituted for it, a balance of advan- 
 tage would accrue to the State. This proposition 
 needs no argument here in its support, for it has 
 been firmly established 'by several able writers, 
 foremost among whom is Mr. Herbert Spencer ; 
 while recently Mr. Francis Peek, in a thoughtful 
 little book entitled " Social Wreckage," has re- 
 demonstrated the worse than uselessness of our 
 Poor Law ; and from his position on the Metro- 
 politan School Board and the Howard Association, 
 this last-named gentleman is well qualified to 
 express an opinion on the subject. The repeal of 
 the Poor Law should, therefore, form a part of our 
 new system, 1 by which 8,300,000 would be saved 
 to the taxpayers ; and the nett amount to come 
 out of their pockets on account of the children will 
 thus be 3,921,000: It may, however, be objected, 
 even by those who see clearly what mischief is 
 wrought by the Poor Law, that were that law re- 
 pealed, the saving which would result would not 
 have been effected by the establishment of indus- 
 trial schools, and could not, therefore, legitimately 
 be placed asja set-off against the cost of them. I do 
 not press this point. But, anyhow, it is a known 
 fact that pauperism is hereditary, and that children 
 who are brought up in workhouses invariably turn 
 out badly, becoming either paupers or criminals ; 
 consequently, if all such destitute and orphan 
 children as are now brought up in workhouses, 
 together with all children of the same class found 
 1 See chap. viii. 2.
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC METHOD. 101 
 
 wandering in the streets and slums, were properly 
 educated at industrial schools, and on their 
 discharge placed in some suitable situation, all 
 connection with their former haunts and associates 
 being cut, there can be no doubt that the per- 
 manent pauper population would at once be 
 greatly decreased. Further, these children, who 
 would in their turn naturally become the parents 
 of pauper children, will, if properly cared for, rear 
 an honest and industrious offspring, and thus 
 effects, reacting upon causes, and becoming causes 
 in their turn, will from generation to generation 
 reduce the number of destitute children to be 
 tended by the State. We might fairly estimate 
 an annual saving on these two accounts amount- 
 ing to 4,000,000. And surely a nation which is 
 willing to spend four millions annually on the 
 intellectual education of its poor children, and has 
 been willing to waste over eight millions on a 
 rotten system of poor relief, will not shrink from 
 the expenditure of eight millions with an object 
 the most important of all the moral education of 
 its poor children, and the eradication of an infec- 
 tious disease from the body politic. 
 
 10. It must be borne in mind, moreover, that 
 in preventing a thousand children from becoming 
 criminal, we have done much more than relieve 
 the State from the expense of their support and the 
 terror of their unforeseen attacks: we have pre- 
 sented the State with a thousand honest producers, 
 able to bear their share of the common expendi- 
 ture, and to contribute to the country's wealth ; and 
 we have removed a thousand centres from which,
 
 102 CRIME. 
 
 by precept and example, fresh vice may spread. 
 The state of the case is, therefore, not fairly re- 
 presented by the mere setting against original 
 outlay of the saving which results from a decrease 
 in the number of criminals and paupers; there 
 remains an unseen but very real advantage, which 
 will more than cover the eight millions in cash 
 which has gone out of the pockets of the citizens ; 
 not spent, however, but well invested.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DETAILS CONNECTED WITH THE MORAL 
 EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. 
 
 " How is it that we are always so ready to conjure up the 
 worst imaginable evils when any new proposal is offered to 
 us, and always draw some picture of abuses and horrors 
 when we begin to think of any great change, as if there 
 were no abuses and horrors which called for the change ? "- 
 Dr. JESSOP, Nineteenth Century, vol. xix. p. 519. 
 
 i. WHENEVER any new scheme is propounded it 
 is always easy for objectors to raise difficulties on 
 points of detail ; and many plans for affecting 
 social improvements, which have at length been 
 put into practice after much opposition, have 
 proved most successful, although they have pre- 
 viously been pronounced impossible by a number 
 of confident critics. But the scope of human 
 ingenuity and human determination is almost un- 
 limited ; and if a sufficient number of thoughtful 
 men have been convinced that a scheme is in 
 principle sound, and may reasonably be expected 
 to work for good, difficulties of detail will quickly 
 disappear. It is, therefore, my present object to 
 endeavour to win assent to a principle, knowing 
 that if this object is attained, points of detail will 
 certainly be afterwards arranged, and that if it
 
 104 CRIME. 
 
 should not be attained, a minute discussion now 
 of .details will be time wasted. There are, how- 
 ever, as a rule, certain more important, and even 
 vital, questions of detail, which it is incumbent on 
 the advocate of a new or revived scheme to treat 
 of to an extent sufficient to forestall obvious 
 objections, and make out a case for the con- 
 sideration of his proposals. 
 
 2. Now the most obvious objection to such an 
 attempt at the wholesale moral education of the 
 children of the streets as has been suggested in 
 the previous chapter, and one which was actually 
 made when the first Youthful Offenders Bill was 
 brought before Parliament, is this, that if you 
 give to children who are neglected by their 
 parents the benefits of education, moral, intellec- 
 tual and industrial, of wholesome food and 
 healthy lodging, you behave unfairly to those 
 who are willing to make sacrifices in order to 
 discharge their parental responsibilities, you 
 tempt the idle and unprincipled to shirk those 
 responsibilities, and you remove a salutary check 
 upon the too rapid increase of population. These 
 objections are all sound, and must be met ; and 
 this can easily be done. Means must be adopted 
 for placing the negligent in the harder position, 
 and for putting a premium upon a proper atten- 
 tion on the part of parents to the mental and 
 bodily welfare of their children. This may be 
 effected by rigidly enforcing the rule that parents 
 must contribute to the State education of their 
 children exactly as much as the education and 
 rearing of the children would cost them at home;
 
 MORAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN, 105 
 
 and if it be proved that the parent really has not 
 the means of doing this, so large a proportion of 
 the whole must be collected as will be decidedly 
 irksome. Negligent parents will thus be placed 
 at a disadvantage, for, in addition to having to pay 
 for the maintenance of their children, they will 
 lose any money which the children might have 
 made in some situation or trade, and the assist- 
 ance which they might have rendered at home ; 
 and instead of being anxious to throw their 
 responsibilities on to the State, parents will be 
 more careful than now to pay at least as much 
 attention to the proper rearing of their chil- 
 dren as will secure them from coming under the 
 control of the State. 
 
 Something is now done in this direction in the 
 case of children sent to reformatory and industrial 
 schools, but not nearly enough. In the north of 
 England, however, at any rate, on the first 
 passing of the Acts, the importance of the prin- 
 ciple was fully recognized, and the following letter 
 from J. Dunne, Chief Constable of Newcastle, 
 August 16, 1856, to the Hon. Secretary of the 
 National Reformatory Union, is evidence in 
 favour of its efficacy : 
 
 " Sir, As I hold the appointment from the 
 Secretary of State for the Home Department to 
 proceed, under the Acts of Parliament, 18 and 19 
 Vic. c. 87, and 17 and 18 Vic. c. 86, with the 
 view of enforcing parental responsibility in con- 
 nection with the children confined in the reforma- 
 tory establishments of the north of England, I 
 shall be most happy to supply you with any
 
 io6 CRIME. 
 
 information which I can give in connection there- 
 with ; and perhaps I may be permitted to say, 
 that I know, from my own personal knowledge 
 and observation, that, since parental responsibility 
 has been enforced in the district, under the direc- 
 tions of the Secretary of State, the number of 
 juvenile criminals in the custody of the police 
 has decreased one -half. I know that many of 
 the parents, who heretofore were in the habit of 
 sending their children into the streets for the 
 purpose of stealing, begging, and plunder, have 
 quite discontinued that practice, and several of 
 the children so used and brought up as theives 
 and mendicants, are now at some of the free 
 schools of the town, others are at work, and there- 
 by obtain an honest livelihood ; and so far as I 
 can ascertain, they seem to be thoroughly altered, 
 and appear likely to become good and honest 
 members of society. ... I attribute, in a great 
 measure, this salutary change to the effects 
 arising, in many respects, from the establishment 
 of reformatory schools ; but I have more par- 
 ticularly found that greater advantages have 
 emanated from these institutions since the 
 parents of the children confined in them have 
 been made to pay contributions to their mainten- 
 ance, for it appears beyond doubt that the effect 
 of the latter has been to induce the parents of 
 other young criminals to withdraw them from the 
 streets, and instead of using them for the purposes 
 of crime, they seem to take an interest in their 
 welfare." J 
 
 1 "Repression of Crime," p. 358. HILL.
 
 MORAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. 107 
 
 If, as there is every reason to believe, the 
 assumption by the State of the right to deal with 
 neglected children, coupled with the enforcement 
 of a sufficient pecuniary contribution from the 
 parent, had the effect of making parents more 
 willing to take proper care of their children, the 
 number at which we arrived in the last chapter, 
 namely, one million, would be much diminished, 
 and consequently the expense of educating these 
 children would be less than we estimated it. 
 
 3. Another objection may be made. It may 
 be said that a child might be brought before a 
 magistrate, and prove, on inquiry, to be sufficiently 
 well cared for, and consequently be discharged ; 
 that not long afterwards the same child might be 
 brought up again, and again discharged, and that 
 this might occur repeatedly, causing a waste of 
 time and money, and an inconvenience to respect- 
 able people. I think such a thing would not be 
 likely to occur if a special staff of men, carefully 
 selected, were to be organized for this special 
 duty ; they would not need to be very numerous, 
 and if each man were appointed to a particular 
 district he would soon get to recognize all the 
 children in his district, and would not be likely to 
 take the same child twice. There would also be 
 another great advantage in the fact that such a 
 plan would take the matter out of the hands 
 of the police. At present the education of 
 a child in an industrial school is looked upon as 
 a criminal process, and is felt to involve some 
 disgrace. It is most important that everything 
 which tends to produce such a feeling should be
 
 io8 CRIME. 
 
 swept away, for self-respect is one of the most 
 important factors which tend to keep a man in 
 the path of virtue ; in our treatment of youth in 
 such schools as are here spoken of, the cultivation 
 of self-respect must be one of our chief objects, 
 still more must we be careful to avoid doing any- 
 thing which may have the effect of weakening it. 
 
 Mr. Ed. Shepherd, Governor of Wakefield 
 House of Correction for over eighteen years, in 
 the course of his examination by the Select Com- 
 mittee on Prison Discipline in 1850, being asked 
 the question (2,307), "Do you think the mere fact 
 of a boy having become a criminal, and being 
 treated as such, has an injurious effect upon his 
 mind, inasmuch as it leads him to regard himself 
 as belonging to the criminal class, and therefore, 
 to a certain degree, out of the pale of society,? " 
 replied, " I have no doubt that that has a great 
 influence with regard to the majority of boys who 
 come to prison " ; and very many persons have 
 expressed the same opinion. 
 
 Therefore industrial schools must be disasso- 
 ciated completely from all ideas of criminality, of 
 punishment, of anything that suggests disgrace ; 
 it would be better that they should be removed 
 from the control of the Home Office, and placed 
 under that of the Education Department, as has 
 been suggested by Lord Norton, and that the 
 police should have no part in the execution of any 
 Act which might be passed for the purpose we are 
 now discussing. Lord Norton has clearly recog- 
 nized J the fact that committal to an industrial 
 1 Nineteenth Century, January, 1887.
 
 MORAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. 109 
 
 school is at present felt to involve some disgrace, 
 and his suggestion that such schools should be 
 placed under the control of the Education Depart- 
 ment is good so far as it goes, but it will never be 
 sufficient so long as it is generally necessary for a 
 child to commit a technical " crime " in order to 
 qualify for admission to one of these schools. 
 
 4. A certain class of schools, to which the 
 name Industrial Schools may very properly be 
 given, must be set aside for the reception of chil- 
 dren who have not yet broken the law, but are in 
 danger of being led to do so, and there must be 
 nothing to suggest that detention at one of them 
 in any way means punishment or involves the 
 slightest disgrace ; every care must be taken to 
 make it clear that their object is education simply 
 and solely. A second class of schools which may 
 well enough be known as Reformatory Schools 
 must be appointed for the reception of boys who 
 do not appear to have become hardened in vice, 
 but who have broken the law ; such boys must on 
 no account be sent to prison first, and no boy, who 
 is not so hardened in vice as to seem likely to 
 corrupt the other inmates of the reformatory, 
 must be sent to prison at all. Every one who has 
 studied the subject is emphatic about this, and Mr. 
 Edwin Waugh J gives, from his own experience, 
 a typical case illustrating the baneful effect of this 
 practice : 
 
 " A quick-witted, cast-eyed, tall boy of sixteen, 
 returned from gaol less damaged than any of 
 the ex-prisoners it has been my fortune to know. 
 1 "Gaol Cradle," p. 131.
 
 i io CRIME. 
 
 In him a disposition, always easeful and kindly, 
 survived ' six weeks with hard labour ' in an 
 altogether exceptional manner. From the day 
 on which his name was struck off the register of 
 his school, up to the day on w r hich it was inscribed 
 on the register of the gaol, his occupation had 
 been that of all poor, idle boys ' hobjobbing 
 about.' His crime was stealing. The very day 
 of imprisonment he was compelled to work, and 
 he needed no compulsion. With a will he stitched 
 at the appointed shoe; if his work was clumsy, it 
 was the fault of muscles dead with idleness ; 
 honestly he applied awl and needle, and cast many 
 a thought on the future prosperity of the family. 
 Thirteen weeks gone, he left the gaol, and unaided 
 started hopefully on an industrious life. How de- 
 lusive his hope, all who know anything of efforts 
 for ex-prisoners' employ can too well conjecture, 
 and the victim himself soon learnt. Accompanied 
 by his mother, he tried to get work at shoemakers' 
 shops, then tried to bring it to his home, innocently 
 resolving that should he get anything to do, he 
 would try to borrow some tools to do it with ; but 
 the fatal ' gaol ' kept tools from his house and him 
 from a shop/' 
 
 But gaol inflicts greater injuries upon the youth 
 who has to endure it than this which has been 
 illustrated by Mr. Waugh. Most important of all 
 is loss of self-respect and a sense of degradation, 
 which will make the committal of a second crime 
 far more easy ; and a feeling of desperation, coupled 
 with resentment against authority and against a 
 law which has visited with such frightful harsh-
 
 MORAL EDUCA TION OF CHILDREN. 1 1 1 
 
 ness a mere piece of boyish mischief, or some act 
 that was only the result of youthful thoughtless- 
 ness or ignorance, will go a long way towards the 
 complete ruin of a character which perhaps only 
 required a little judicious training. 
 
 Mr. Charles Lister in a letter to The Man- 
 chester Guardian, dated September 21, 1887, wrote : 
 " With an experience extending over twenty-five 
 years, and after conferring with many governors 
 of prisons, I am satisfied that nothing is so calcu- 
 lated to entirely ruin a youth, or first offender, as 
 to sentence him to a term of imprisonment, how- 
 ever short. The associations he forms in gaol, 
 and the part he is compelled to take there, nay, 
 the very insight of a prison, though only for seven 
 or fourteen days, or a month, effectually blunt all 
 his better feelings, renders him callous as to the 
 future, and almost invariably causes him ulti- 
 mately to become a confirmed criminal." 
 
 Again, gaol loses more than half its terrors when 
 it has been once experienced ; dread of the un- 
 known, which always exerts a powerful influence 
 over ignorant minds, has a salutary effect in keep- 
 ing the children of the streets from bringing them- 
 selves under the notice of a policeman ; but this 
 salutary restraint is enormously weakened by the 
 actual experience of a month in gaol where fami- 
 liarity has bred contempt ; and the longer we can 
 hold over the head of the youthful offender the 
 vague terror of an unendured imprisonment the 
 better. 
 
 5. If it should seem to a magistrate before 
 whom a boy has been brought that his nature has
 
 112 CRIME. 
 
 become so far morally diseased that there is serious 
 risk of his infecting other boys if he were to be sent 
 to a reformatory school, probably the best course 
 to adopt would be to order him a number of 
 strokes with the birch-rod. With regard to the 
 advisability of flogging adults there is much dif- 
 ference of opinion, but I think those who have had 
 experience of youthful offenders are practically 
 unanimous that the birch-rod is highly efficacious ; 
 it should, however, not be resorted to so long as 
 reformation seems practicable by gentler methods. 
 When a boy has been two or three times birched 
 and still continues in his evil courses, nothing will 
 remain but to send him to prison. 
 
 6. There has recently been some doubt ex- 
 pressed as to the efficacy of reformatory schools, 
 and one or two mutinies which have broken out 
 in them have been referred to as a proof of the 
 unreformed character of the inmates. 
 
 No doubt some are much better managed than 
 others ; however excellent a system man may 
 devise for dealing in any way with human beings, 
 if the working of the system is entrusted to an 
 injudicious person, it is foredoomed to failure. 
 This will at once be admitted by all who have had 
 any experience of a public school, and have seen 
 that the same boys who in one class are quiet and 
 attentive, in another are unruly and careless ; a 
 fact which can only be explained by supposing that 
 the master of the orderly class knows how to 
 manage boys, while the other master does not. 
 Similarly, if a reformatory is presided over by a 
 man who does not possess the requisite qualifica-
 
 MORAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. 113 
 
 tions, it is likely enough that the system will be a 
 failure, and that mutinies among the boys may 
 take place. 
 
 But in addition to this there are in the present 
 working of the system weak points which have al- 
 ready been ad verted to: these schools are too penal 
 in their character ; boys far advanced in depravity 
 are mingled with others comparatively innocent ; 
 and most boys are not taken in hand until well- 
 started on a career of vice ; all which things 
 militate against the success of the reformatory 
 system, but would be obviated by an amendment 
 of the system and its further extension in the 
 direction already pointed out in the Youthful 
 Offenders Act. 
 
 Let us, however, even grant that the Govern- 
 ment inspectors are seriously partial, that their 
 reports of the efficiency of reformatory and in- 
 dustrial schools are too favourable, that the good 
 results said to be produced by them are greatly 
 over-estimated. This will prove nothing but the 
 truth of a statement which I have just made, 
 namely, that in schools of this kind nothing is of 
 so much importance as the character of those 
 who preside over them ; for we know that under 
 good management astonishing transformations 
 have been effected by agencies of this kind. The 
 great success of the endeavours of M. Demetz at 
 Mettray, is well attested, and, I think, undented ; 
 in England we have Dr. Barnardo, Father Nugent, 
 and others, of whom the former, by his own 
 exertions, has built up a number of homes for the 
 training of outcast boys and girls, which have 
 
 9
 
 ii4 CRIME. 
 
 been productive of the greatest good, over 6,000 
 children having been rescued from ruin by their 
 means. 
 
 The success of M. Demetz and of Dr. Barnardo 
 has been largely owing to the fact that they have 
 endeavoured to make their institutions as much 
 like " home " as possible, giving to the children 
 under their care that wholesome family life which 
 does so much to ingrain habits of rectitude into 
 the characters of the children of the upper classes, 
 and the want of which is so ruinous to the cha- 
 racters of the children of the streets ; this, with the 
 absence of all suggestion of disgrace or ignominy, 
 will account to a considerable extent for the suc- 
 cess of these agencies ; and if the industrial schools 
 of the future could be formed upon these models, 
 with the advantage in respect of funds which the 
 State has over private individuals, not the most 
 captious critic should be able to pick a hole in 
 them. 
 
 Of course it may be said that private endeavour, 
 even crippled by limited means, is always superior 
 to State interference, though aided by almost 
 unlimited wealth ; and there is much truth in this. 
 But how many English people will agree to the 
 proposition that as a State we ought not to deal 
 with criminals at all ? and if people are practically 
 unanimous that crime must be dealt with by the 
 State, then consistency requires us to give the 
 State a free hand, and not to ruin a system by a 
 half-hearted application of it, and by restricting 
 State interference with individuals for the object 
 of eradicating crime within certain limits, to
 
 MORAL ED UCA TION OF CHILDREN. \ 1 5 
 
 make such interference as we do allow quite use- 
 less. 
 
 At the same time, the more we can limit State 
 control without damage to the system adopted the 
 better ; and, perhaps, it would be advisable that 
 men like Dr. Barnardo should be encouraged to 
 prosecute a work for which they are peculiarly 
 fitted by a generous subsidy from the State, pay- 
 ment being proportionate to results, rather than 
 that the State should have absolute control of 
 such schools ; of course there would be dangers 
 to be guarded against, and great care and dis- 
 crimination would have to be exercised by the 
 minister under whose supervision these schools 
 were placed ; and the authority of Government 
 would have to be applied to the collection from 
 parents of a sufficient proportion of the expense 
 of their child's education and rearing. 
 
 7. A complete reformation should also be 
 made in the present practice of bringing up orphan 
 and destitute children in workhouses, for children 
 so brought up nearly always turn out badly ; 
 if they do not become criminal they remain 
 paupers, and are a burden upon the State for the 
 whole of their lives. Mr. Francis Peek in " Social 
 Wreckage " has given sufficient evidence of this 
 to satisfy any one ; and has stated many strong 
 arguments in favour of the practice of boarding- 
 out such children. When old enough they should 
 be sent to industrial schools. 
 
 8. If this system, which is even now sanctioned 
 by law, were fully and vigorously carried out, and 
 if parents were compelled to contribute a due
 
 Ii6 CRIME. 
 
 proportion of the cost of the State education of 
 their neglected children, poor children would prob- 
 ably be so much better cared for that the number 
 coming under State control would fall far short of 
 that which we have anticipated, and when we 
 consider what is implied by the conversion of even 
 500,000 idlers and depredators into industrious 
 and honest citizens, we must admit that such a 
 result is worth some pains and gives us a large 
 margin for expenditure, since the sums of money 
 saved to the State by it would be enormous. But 
 the enforcement of sufficient payments by parents 
 is a sine qua non ; and if it should really prove that 
 the collection of such payments is quite imprac- 
 ticable, the system must be given up ; for nothing 
 can justify us in giving to negligent and dishonest 
 parents an advantage over thrifty and conscien- 
 tious ones. If this practical difficulty can be 
 surmounted, and with sufficient determination I 
 am sure it can, no other objection can be raised 
 against the sufficient employment of a method 
 whose partial and imperfect application has been 
 proved to have wrought so much good.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 "And as for drunkenness, you'll never bind it 
 By all the laws the strictest lawyer pleads." 
 
 BYRON (Slightly altered). 
 
 i. NEXT after the presence of evil example, and 
 the absence of proper training in youth, drink has 
 been found to be the most effective cause of crime ; 
 and if these two causes could be entirely removed 
 the amount of crime would probably shrink to less 
 than 20 per cent, its present figure. It is not, 
 therefore, surprising that the drink-question is 
 such a burning question at the present moment. 
 A remedy is believed to have been found, namely, 
 Local Option ; and as this principle has now been 
 officially adopted as part of the Liberal programme, 
 and the carrying of it into effect being, therefore, 
 merely a question of time, we shall soon be able 
 to test its efficiency by experience ; consequently, 
 it seems rather superfluous to say much about it. 
 Still, a few words with regard to it may not be out 
 of place here, and even a superficial discussion of 
 the drink-question would be incomplete without 
 some reference to it.
 
 ii8 CRIME. 
 
 2. A law of this character has been objected 
 to by some on the ground that it is very unjust 
 to prevent sober persons from buying beer because 
 some other persons get drunk ; and to the re- 
 minder that the majority of people in any given 
 place will have it in their own power to prohibit 
 or to allow the sale of intoxicating liquors, they 
 rejoin that the majority have no right to bind 
 the minority in such a matter. It is clear that 
 the rights of majorities are not unlimited ; for 
 example, it would not now be tolerated that a 
 majority should impose upon the minority some 
 particular form of religion, with the imposition 
 of penalties should any one refuse to conform to 
 it. If, then, the rights of majorities are not un- 
 limited, what forms their limit ? Some will say 
 expediency; and, of course, if it were not expected 
 that the measure known as Local Option would 
 work a great reformation in the drinking habits of 
 the people, it would not have obtained much sup- 
 port. So that, granting expediency to be a suffi- 
 cient justification for the coercion of a minority, 
 we have to inquire whether the expectation that 
 it will be expedient is well founded. 
 
 3. Our aim must, of course, be to abolish ex- 
 cessive drinking entirely, and so long as we are 
 short of attaining this result we must not rest 
 satisfied while any possible plan remains untried. 
 Local Option, though it may diminish drinking to 
 a greater or less extent, cannot possibly abolish 
 it. For, in the first place, since the prohibition of 
 the sale of drink will be optional, we cannot suppose 
 that it will be universally enforced, and the Act
 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS. 119 
 
 will therefore be a dead letter so far as concerns 
 those towns which are not willing to accept it ; 
 thus the operation of the measure can at best be 
 but partial, though it is impossible to tell yet how 
 far this will be the case. Again, even in the 
 places where it is strictly enforced, its efficiency 
 will be far from absolute : the ingenuity of those 
 who are determined to sell intoxicating liquors, 
 assisted by the craftiness of those who are deter- 
 mined to get drink somehow, will succeed in 
 eluding the vigilance of the authorities in England 
 as they have done elsewhere. It will, indeed, be 
 far easier for vendors of spirituous liquors to evade 
 such a law than it is for smugglers to introduce 
 contraband articles into the country, and we know 
 how ingenious these latter people are in forming 
 schemes by which to hoodwink the custom-house 
 officers ; but they have difficulties to encounter to 
 which the difficulties in the way of selling al- 
 coholic liquors secretly are mere trifles. The 
 people mostly affected will be poor, sober people 
 who send out now and then for a quart or so of 
 beer or stout to drink with their midday meal, but 
 the resolute drunkard will find means of providing 
 himself with drink which such people would never 
 resort to. This is not mere prophesying without 
 knowledge, because similar measures have been 
 actually tried in various countries. Mr. Grant 
 Allen, for instance, thus gives his personal ex- 
 perience of the working of the Scott (Local Option) 
 Law in Upper Canada : x 
 
 " As regards the general drinking public, how- 
 ' Pall Mall Gazette, Feb., 1887.
 
 120 CRIME. 
 
 ever, the universal testimony of all with whom I 
 conversed, and of my own eyes, largely exerted 
 upon the phenomena, willy nilly, was simply this 
 that there was somewhat less drinking than 
 formerly, but a great deal more besotted drunken- 
 ness. Every day or two excursion steamers and 
 excursion trains brought in crowds of people from 
 the surrounding villages and the back country to 
 Kingston, apparently for no other purpose on 
 earth than to get drunk and then go home again. 
 And get drunk they did without any doubt 
 drunk to a man in immense phalanxes. On such 
 occasions the whole town was sometimes given 
 over bodily to a vast orgie, a saturnalia of un- 
 obstructed and undeterred drunkenness. Nobody 
 seemed inclined to interfere ; the police were 
 powerless. ' It's the Scot Act,' they said, with a 
 tolerant shrug, when one spoke to them about 
 the nuisance ; ' you can't prevent excursionists 
 going to the saloons and having a square drink 
 now and then when they can get it.' In the days 
 before the Act these people would have gone 
 alone nightly to the bar of the local tavern in 
 their own village, and have drunk on the average 
 as much as was good for them, with perhaps oc- 
 casionally a trifle over. But on the excursions 
 they came accompanied by their wives and daugh- 
 ters, their sweethearts and their mothers ; and, 
 though the women seldom took anything female 
 drunkenness not being fashionable in the States 
 of Canada they went home at night in company 
 with their male friends, who were, every one of 
 them, more or less intoxicated. This surely is
 
 ON THE PRE VENTION OF DR UNKENNESS. 1 2 1 
 
 not a desirable state of things for the public 
 generally. On one occasion I saw an excursion 
 steamer come back to the village of Gananoque 
 with six or seven hundred people on board, and 
 every man was distinctly, to the naked eye, the 
 worse for liquor. On Orangeman's Day, and at 
 other great gala seasons, the entire male popu- 
 lation of the country seemed to reel about the 
 streets en bloc in a high state of vinous exhilaration. 
 Altogether it was quite clear that if the poorer 
 people did not get liquor so regularly and frequently 
 as they did before, they got it at longer intervals 
 and in larger quantities, and with far worse con- 
 sequences both to themselves and to the morals 
 and comfort of their women-folk and children. 
 One opinion was everywhere expressed by un- 
 prejudiced observers ' The Scott Act is a total 
 failure.' Illicit whisky-shops also existed in 
 abundance, and did a roaring trade at all the 
 recognized picnicking places and popular resorts. 
 These shops were of course known more or less 
 to the inspectors, and sometimes visited, and the 
 liquor confiscated ; but in the intervals they were 
 very good business. I have seen excursionists 
 return from one of these picnicking places, within 
 the county where the Act was in force, bearing in 
 their faces, speech, and gait, unmistakable traces 
 of having imbibed something stronger than water. 
 The law does not effect its purpose ; it only alters 
 the place and time of sale, and substitutes spas- 
 modic drunken orgies for moderate or slightly im- 
 moderate drinking. ... I had intended to say 
 something about other experiences in the United
 
 122 CRIME. 
 
 States, but space prevents, and I shall only add 
 the testimony of the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon (an 
 unimpeachable witness) as to the non-prohibitory 
 effects of prohibition in Maine itself the parent 
 of liquor laws which exactly coincides with my 
 own observation. Dr. Bacon spent an hour at 
 Portland in the City Liquor Agency the licensed 
 safety-valve for that part of Maine where the 
 community itself turns purveyor of spirits ' not 
 to be drunk on the premises ; ' and he saw many 
 persons served with whisky whom 'a conscientious 
 licensee ' would have been amply justified in re- 
 fusing to supply ; ' and the only application I saw 
 refused,' he says, ' was that of a grave, elderly 
 man (evidently a member of the American Board 
 of Missions then in session) who came in doubled 
 up with colic, and, having paid for a dose of 
 brandy, begged for a glass in which to take it, but 
 was told that it was against the law.' Dr. Bacon's 
 paper in last month's Forum, the New York Nine- 
 teenth Century, ought to be read by all advocates 
 of Local Option. His observation quite coincides 
 with my own that prohibition does not and 
 cannot prohibit, but only changes drinkers into 
 drunkards." 
 
 These statements are so exactly what, with our 
 knowledge of humanity, we should expect, that we 
 cannot doubt the accuracy of them ; and they are 
 corroborated by the evidence of other people with 
 regard to the effect of Local Option laws in other 
 places. For instance, here is a report of the work- 
 ing of a Sunday prohibition law in Scotland; 1 "The 
 1 Weekly Dispatch, May 27, 1888.
 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS. 123 
 
 shocking disclosures made before the Poor Law 
 Board of the City of Edinburgh do not go to prove 
 that repressive liquor laws improve the morals of 
 the people. The Scotch law, as we all know, 
 prohibits the sale of liquor on Sunday. The re- 
 sult is that on that day the poor people go to the 
 druggist for their drink instead of to the publican. 
 But the intoxicating substances sold in druggists' 
 shops are too dear for a poor man to buy with 
 one exception, i.e., methylated spirits. The poor, 
 accordingly, began to buy and consume this most 
 nauseous and fatal of alcoholic poisons, and 
 gradually a queer kind of artificial appetite was 
 created for it. Among certain classes in Edin- 
 burgh methylated spirits is now the favourite 
 beverage on week-days as well as Sundays, and 
 is preferred even to the choicest and oldest brands 
 of such historic mountain stills as ' Long John ' 
 or Glenlivet. The result is that in Edinburgh 
 drunkenness assumes a terribly lurid form. The 
 drunkard of the gutter is either a comatose 
 animal or a raving and furious maniac, utterly 
 beyond control. We have long been aware that 
 Sunday closing in Scotland had led to the use of 
 cheap alcoholic poisons. But we always believed 
 that it did so only in individual cases, and that 
 these were so few that the great benefit which 
 the Forbes Mackenzie Act conferred on the com- 
 munity at large was more than a fair offset 
 to its evils. But the disclosures relating to 
 the growth of methylated spirit drinking in Scot- 
 land necessarily tend to modify that opinion 
 very seriously." It is no doubt perfectly true
 
 124 CRIME. 
 
 that in proportion as you make it difficult to 
 obtain liquor you diminish the amount of liquor 
 drunk, but even granting that in any given place 
 where Local Option is established, drunkenness 
 is diminished by 25 per cent, of its original 
 amount, would this be a result with which we 
 should rest satisfied ? We ought not to be satis- 
 fied with such a result, and yet, judging from the 
 reports which have been made by impartial 
 persons on the subject of prohibitory legislation 
 in practice in various places, we cannot expect a 
 more favourable result than this. When we also 
 take into consideration the improbability that 
 prohibition of the sale of alcoholic liquors will be 
 universally enforced, we are bound to be dissatis- 
 fied with such a measure until we have exhausted 
 our ingenuity in the attempt to devise a better one. 
 The advocates of Local Option or of prohibition 
 will, of course, reply to adverse criticism, by point- 
 ing to certain places where the system appears to 
 have had a very considerable measure of success ; 
 for instance, Sweden and the town of Gothenburg. 
 This argument would be good against any one who 
 utterly denied all usefulness to such a system ; 
 but I am willing to admit that to remove temp- 
 tation and to make drink more difficult to procure 
 is bound to produce a good effect. Such a course 
 is good so far as it goes, but in addition to the 
 men who drink simply because they cannot pass 
 the public-house door without entering, there are 
 those who are possessed by a craving for alcohol 
 and will employ the utmost ingenuity to obtain 
 it. So long as such persons exist, the combined
 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS. 125 
 
 ingenuity of those who are willing to supply and 
 of those who are determined to procure, will 
 certainly evade the law. Let the English people, 
 if they like, regulate and restrict the sale of 
 spirituous liquors, but let them not think that 
 drunkenness will thereby be absolutely abolished, 
 and that no further steps need to be taken. We 
 must not rest until one of two conclusions has 
 been established, namely, either that the approxi- 
 mately complete abolition of drunkenness is im- 
 possible, or that by certain specified means it 
 can be accomplished. 
 
 4. At present drunkenness per se is not a 
 criminal offence, and no notice is taken of drunken 
 men and women in the streets unless they make 
 themselves obnoxious to other persons ; if, how- 
 ever, besides being drunk they are disorderly or 
 violent, they bring themselves into the power of 
 the law. The punishment for this offence is im- 
 prisonment. The fatuity of those who have made 
 and of those who preserve unchanged our criminal 
 code, which shows itself chiefly in an immovable 
 belief in prison's magical capability of regenerating 
 mankind and checking the commission of crimes, 
 amazes us most of all when it is applied to the 
 treatment of drunkards. To imagine that a month's 
 imprisonment, even many times renewed, will cure 
 a confirmed drunkard is quite childish. Any 
 physician could have taught our legislators this 
 elementary fact, and now experience is dinning it 
 into their ears ; but to the voice of theory and to 
 the voice of practice they are equally deaf. The 
 Rev. Mr. Horsley thus gives his experience : J 
 1 " Jottings from Jail," p. 35.
 
 126 CRIME. 
 
 " I knew a woman who, during 1880, suffered no 
 less than nine separate imprisonments of a month 
 each for being drunk and disorderly. And many a 
 poor creature really longs for a period of restraint 
 and abstinence that would give some chance of 
 physical improvement. Often have I heard : ' What 
 is the use of giving me a month ? it will only be 
 the same thing over again ! ' or, ' It is cruel to be 
 always letting me out only that I may return ; 
 why can't the magistrate give me time in prison 
 to get straight ? ' or, ' Why can't the Government 
 or somebody keep me here till I am cured ? ' 
 Again, '4,391 men and 8,946 women have been in 
 prison more than ten times ' for being drunk and 
 disorderly." 
 
 Here is a case which was reported in The Echo, 
 November 14, 1887 : " Margaret Cain, 48, a 
 wretched-looking woman, who has been convicted 
 some two hundred and thirty times, was charged 
 at the Thames Police Court to-day with being 
 drunk, disorderly, and using obscene language ; 
 Constable 254 H proceeded to give evidence, when 
 the defendant exclaimed: 'Oh, shut up! Give 
 me a month. That is always what Lushington 
 gives me. Look sharp about it.' Mr. Lushing- 
 ton : ' As I have told you before, I will keep you 
 from drink as long as possible. One month's 
 hard labour.' Defendant : ' I told you what was 
 coming.' ' Now, it is perfectly certain that this 
 woman would not be out of prison long before she 
 returned to receive her two hundred and thirty- 
 first conviction for the same offence ; and the 
 same farce is repeated at the law-courts almost
 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS. 127 
 
 every day, though no doubt the case just given is 
 an unusually bad one. 
 
 The legislature, in not making simple drunken- 
 ness an offence, has rested upon the ground that 
 the law is not to interfere with a man's actions 
 until he begins to injure some other person ; 
 and I suppose the month's imprisonment, which 
 is the penalty for disorderly behaviour consequent 
 upon drunkenness, is really only intended as a 
 punishment, to warn individuals that they must 
 respect the persons and property of others. But 
 when the individual in question committed the 
 offence he was not master of his actions, and is 
 no more responsible than a madman or a person 
 who is delirious. So that really, though not 
 nominally, he is being punished for getting drunk. 
 Here comes in the inconsistency. In one man 
 drunkenness is no offence, in another man, on 
 account of certain circumstances not within his 
 own control, it is an offence. The whole question 
 turns upon this point, whether drunkards are or 
 are not responsible for their indulgence ; in other 
 words, whether drunkenness is a vice or a disease. 
 If it is a vice, and if indulgence in it has led to 
 the injury of an inoffensive citizen, then it is itself 
 punishable, and not the injury of which it has 
 accidentally been the cause. There is no harm in 
 firing off a gun under certain circumstances, but if 
 a man fires a gun in a crowded thoroughfare, even 
 if he hits no one, he is justly liable to punishment 
 for endangering the lives of other people. Similarly, 
 if drunkenness is a vice and is dangerous to others, 
 it is in itself punishable.
 
 128 CRIME. 
 
 5. But many authorities of weight are now 
 beginning to hold the opinion that drunkenness is 
 a disease. Of these Dr. Norman Kerr, President 
 of the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety, 
 is among the best known, and is recognized in the 
 medical profession as an authority on the physical 
 aspect of drunkenness. This gentleman was in- 
 terviewed by a representative of The Pall Mall 
 Gazette, and the following is a report of the 
 interview : J 
 
 " Dr. Kerr : I think the physical aspect of 
 inebriety has not been fully recognized either by 
 the State or by the temperance or religious world 
 in this country. In America, on the other hand, 
 Dr. Benjamin Rush, a hundred years ago, dis- 
 tinctly taught that inebriety was a disease, and 
 ought to be treated in special hospitals. In 
 America there are now a large number of such 
 institutions, many of them largely supported at 
 the public charge by the various States in which 
 they are situated. In some States a considerable 
 part of the receipts from licences go to the support 
 of these homes. In addition to that the magis- 
 trates have the power of giving persons convicted 
 of being drunk the alternative of being treated at 
 one of these homes instead of going to prison. 
 
 "And which do they generally prefer? As 
 many prefer the prisons as the homes. 
 
 " That does not say much for the homes. On 
 the contrary it does. 
 
 " How do you make that out ? Because they 
 know they will be cured of drunkenness if they go 
 1 Pall Mall Gazette, Dec. 20, 1887.
 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS. 129 
 
 to the homes, and it is because some of them do 
 not want to be cured that they prefer to go to 
 prison. 
 
 "And the treatment in these American homes. 
 How does it differ from the treatment in English 
 ones ? The treatment in all genuine and intelli- 
 gently conducted homes for inebriates is much the 
 same. But, I may tell you, there are homes and 
 homes. Some are mere commercial speculations, 
 without any attempt at cure or reformation, in- 
 dulgence in liquor being winked at, and even 
 encouraged in certain cases. Then there is a 
 second class of homes, both in America and Eng- 
 land, which may be called in popular phraseology 
 purely " faith-cure " homes, where the physical 
 conditions of the inebriates are entirely ignored, 
 and the only means used are moral and religious 
 influences. The first class are not genuine at 
 all ; the second are genuine in the sense of being 
 honest and well-intentioned, although the treat- 
 ment is defective. Then there is the third class, 
 which is honest and, at the same time, intelligent, 
 because in this class both the physical and moral 
 aspects of drunkenness are recognized. In this 
 class the bodily disease is dealt with by appro- 
 priate medical and hygienic treatment directed to 
 the cure or alleviation of the particular state of 
 each patient, and to building up healthy brain and 
 nerve tissue. Moral and religious influences are 
 at the same time employed to strengthen the self- 
 control, the loss of which is, perhaps, the most 
 difficult thing we have to cope with in dipsomania 
 Indeed, considerable emphasis is laid on the moral 
 
 10
 
 130 CRIME. 
 
 and religious influences, because of their elevating 
 and purifying effect on the depravity of inebriates 
 in whom, in the diseased state, selfishness, lying, 
 and deceit are generally met with. 
 
 " Where is there such a home in England ? 
 The Dalrymple Home at Rickmansworth. It is, 
 indeed, the only one licensed under the Habitual 
 Drunkards Act, conducted without pecuniary profit 
 to the proprietary, and publishing its records in 
 scientific form. 
 
 " But has not the Habitual Drunkards Act been 
 a failure ? Not quite. Although imperfect, it 
 has yet done some good. For example, eighteen 
 gentlemen have voluntarily entered this home for 
 the full period of twelve months each. 
 
 " Don't you find that few people give their 
 consent to entering ? Yes. The ordeal of de- 
 claring oneself an habitual drunkard before two 
 justices of the peace is most formidable, especially 
 to ladies. But in America, and in some of our 
 colonies, patients can enter on a simple agreement, 
 and once they are in the home, the conductor has 
 the power to detain them, abuses being guarded 
 against by frequent inspection. 
 
 " And the practical results of the treatment in 
 these homes? In all genuine and intelligently 
 conducted homes, like the Dalrymple Home, one- 
 third of the patients have been permanently cured. 
 
 " Then you consider, Dr. Kerr, that drunken- 
 ness is really a disease ? Undoubtedly. In a 
 very large number of cases as clearly a disease as 
 gout, or rheumatism, or insanity. 
 
 " How comes this disease generally ? Through
 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS. 131 
 
 certain physical degenerations of body and brain, 
 which may be inherited or may be acquired. 
 
 " Do you mean that a craving for alcohol is 
 often inherited, just as gout or cancer is? 
 Perhaps that is hardly the correct way to state 
 the facts. The disease of inebriety, apart from 
 the act of drunkenness, consists either in an un- 
 healthful craving for, or an unhealthful impulse 
 to, intoxication. In some cases the taste for 
 alcohol is inherited, but in the majority of cases 
 a physical tendency to intoxication is inherited, 
 which tendency, on the application of an exciting 
 cause, such as a glass of liquor, leads to an out- 
 burst of drunkenness, even in cases where people 
 hate the taste of the intoxicant itself. 
 
 " Do you really mean to say that there are 
 people who hate the taste of liquor and yet drink 
 to excess ? Yes ; I have met very many of them. 
 
 " If they hate the taste, why do they drink ? 
 Because overpowered by a diseased impulse or 
 craving. 
 
 " You mean that people who hate the intoxica- 
 ting agent yet crave for the intoxicated condition 
 which it produces ? Precisely ; that is just what 
 I do mean. 
 
 " How do you account for that ? Because of a 
 condition of pathological unrest, or a diseased 
 and overpowering mental and physical uneasiness 
 which is impossible to describe, but which demands 
 relief even at the price of adding to the trouble. 
 
 " What is your remedy ? Absolute and uncon- 
 ditional abstinence from all intoxicants whatever 
 under all circumstances.
 
 132 CRIME. 
 
 " What ? Even at the Communion would you 
 prohibit wine ? Yes ; fermented wine. Intoxicants 
 are so dangerous to many reformed drunkards 
 and also to total abstainers who have inherited 
 the disease of inebriety. Many distressing cases 
 of relapse have occurred from a sacramental 
 intoxicant. 
 
 " Dr. Norman Kerr, who, together with Dr. B. 
 W. Richardson, is one of the honorary consult- 
 ing physicians to the Dalrymple Home at Rick- 
 mansworth, then permitted the writer to visit 
 that establishment, which he found to be a 
 country mansion called ' The Cedars,' standing 
 on a terrace thirty feet above the river Colne, 
 which flows through five acres of charming 
 grounds belonging to the place. A theatre, 
 billiard-room, reading-room, tennis-lawn, quoit 
 and bowling-alley, gymnasium, workshops, and 
 skating-rink all belonging to the house, which 
 has accommodation for twenty patients showed 
 that amusements were not forgotten as part of 
 the treatment, the result of which may be 
 summed up in the verdict of the Government 
 Inspector as contained in his last report : ' The 
 success of this retreat is very marked.' The 
 Dalrymple Home is really a scientific experiment, 
 on which the future treatment of inebriety in Eng- 
 land will largely depend, as Dr. Crothers, editor 
 of the American Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, has 
 pointed out. It is, therefore, interesting to notice 
 that its records indicate an intimate connection 
 between drunkenness and disease. For instance, 
 out of 103 cases treated there the habit of
 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS. 133 
 
 drunkenness had been caused in 49 cases by 
 injuries to the nerves, head, or spine. In 44 
 cases some complaint or disease was present, 
 dyspepsia claiming the largest number of victims, 
 and insanity coming next; while in 43 cases 
 hereditary tendency to inebriety had been traced, 
 and in 59 cases no family history at all was 
 obtainable. By far the largest number of the 
 patients were described as ' gentlemen of no 
 occupation,' but only in eight out of the whole 
 103 cases was ' want of employment ' the ex- 
 citing cause of the drunkenness, which in thirty 
 cases was attributable to ' sociability,' in six to 
 ' business temptation,' in nine to * domestic 
 trouble,' in eight to ' business and professional 
 worry,' in one to ' over-study,' in two to ' over- 
 work,' in one to ' sunstroke,' in one to ' fear of 
 conscription,' in two to ' college life,' in one to 
 ' colonial life,' and three to ' travelling.' So 
 much for the statistics of the Dalrymple Home, 
 to which may be added Dr. Kerr's opinion that 
 changes of climate, loss of friends or fortune, 
 sudden changes of surroundings, and shocks 
 to the nervous system are among the things 
 which sometimes cause sober people to become 
 drunkards. The importance of Dr. Kerr's views 
 need not be insisted upon, seeing that if they are 
 right most of our temperance legislation must be 
 wrong." 
 
 The fact that in a very large proportion of cases 
 habitual drunkenness is demonstrably the result, 
 directly or indirectly, of physiological disturbance, 
 proves it to be a real disease or morbid symptom
 
 134 CRIME. 
 
 in all those cases, and we may infer without 
 violence to probability that it is so in every case. 
 Several other homes in different parts of England 
 have been founded besides the one just described, 
 in some of which excellent results have been 
 attained. Why all are not equally successful has 
 been pointed out by Dr. Kerr in the interview 
 quoted. 
 
 Probably the best course to adopt at present 
 would be for the House of Commons to appoint a 
 Commission to inquire into the working of the 
 Habitual Drunkards Act of 1879. Each one of 
 the homes founded under the provisions of the 
 Act should be carefully inspected, the treatment 
 employed in each and the results attained closely 
 investigated ; by which means knowledge would 
 be secured of the most satisfactory method. 
 Should the report of the Commission be favour- 
 able to the treatment of drunkards in practice at 
 the best of these homes, two important questions 
 would have to be considered first, whether the 
 number of such homes should be increased, and, 
 if so, whether they had better be founded by 
 Government, and kept entirely under Government 
 control, like prisons; or whether private individuals 
 should be encouraged to found such homes, and 
 be assisted by Government grants, of which the 
 amount would be regulated by the success of the 
 institution ; and, secondly, whether magistrates 
 should have the power of committing persons to 
 these homes against their will, no option being 
 allowed to the individual in question. 
 
 6. To give a man or a woman a month or
 
 ON THE PREVENTION OF DRUNKENNESS. 135 
 
 two months of imprisonment again and again is 
 worse than futile, for it is wrong thus to waste 
 public money in boarding and lodging a worthless 
 man, who is finally discharged no better than he 
 was when he entered the prison cell. If we can- 
 not do better than this, we had better leave 
 drunkards alone altogether. We must not be 
 deluded by the shadow of a specious consistency 
 into a real and grave inconsistency ; grant that a 
 man may harm himself as much as he pleases, 
 and that the State has no right to hinder him 
 from so doing, yet if it can be shown that the 
 man's act endangers the lives or property of 
 others, it must be considered an offence, and 
 dealt with accordingly. Again, should it be ad- 
 mitted that drunkenness is a disease, and the 
 conclusion deduced therefrom that we ought not 
 to infringe individual liberty by compelling men 
 to undergo a particular treatment with a view to 
 their cure, even if they may not themselves 
 approve of it, we may meet this objection by 
 instancing the case of dangerous lunatics, which 
 shows that the right is by no one denied to the 
 State of dealing in the best possible manner with 
 those who are equally incapable of judging for 
 themselves as to what is good for them and of 
 refraining from actions which may, or probably 
 will, injure other persons. This description is no 
 less applicable to confirmed drunkards than to 
 lunatics, and for the same reason it ought to be in 
 the power of a competent authority to commit 
 them nolentes volcntcs to proper institutions until 
 such time as they shall have been perfectly cured.
 
 136 CRIME. 
 
 The questions, What is a confirmed drunkard ? 
 and To whom shall the power to commit them be 
 given ? are points of detail which may well enough 
 be left for consideration until the principle just 
 laid down has been generally accepted.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 ON THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 " As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care, 
 On savage stocks inserted learn to bear ; 
 The surest virtues thus from passions shoot, 
 Wild nature's vigour working at the root. 
 What crops of wit and honesty appear 
 From spleen, from obstinacy, hate or fear ! 
 See anger, zeal and fortitude supply ; 
 Ev'n avarice, prudence ; sloth, philosophy ; 
 Nor virtue, male or female, can we name, 
 But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame." 
 POPE. " Essay on Man," Ep. ii., 11. 181, et seq. 
 
 i. WHEN we have radically reformed and largely 
 extended our methods of dealing with destitute 
 and neglected children ; when we have abolished 
 that pauper manufactory, the workhouse ; when 
 we have dealt thoroughly and rationally with the 
 drink-question, it is probable, from statistics 
 which have been given in former chapters, that the 
 criminal classes will be broken up and the number 
 of law-breakers greatly reduced. We cannot, 
 however, anticipate that crime will thus be
 
 i3 CRIME. 
 
 absolutely abolished ; for there will be some 
 youths who will pass unreformed through our 
 system of moral education ; there will be 
 drunkards who will relapse after undergoing the 
 most enlightened treatment ; there will be men 
 who, having lived tolerably respectably in their 
 youth, will succumb to temptation in their 
 maturity : so that adult criminals will still have 
 to be dealt with, and we shall be too sanguine if 
 we expect their number to be reduced by the 
 methods suggested in the foregoing chapters by 
 more than 75 per cent. What then is to be 
 done with the remaining 25 per cent. ? 
 
 2. We have found that the principle at 
 present adopted, namely, the attempt to deter, is 
 a false principle, and quite incapable of giving 
 satisfactory results in practice. It is, therefore, our 
 duty to endeavour to discover the true and perfect 
 principle, which must be in conformity with the 
 laws of nature and of political economy, which 
 latter however much some distinguished per- 
 sonages, irritated by its iron rule, may rail against 
 it and revile political economists as the authors of 
 the existence of such a " dismal science " is a 
 very real force, not invented by any man at all, 
 punishing severely all who infringe its laws, and 
 not to be evaded by the ostrich-like expedient of 
 shutting one's eyes to it. 
 
 Now the following may be considered a law. 
 both of nature and of political economy which is 
 fundamental to the problem we are endeavouring 
 to solve : it is to the interest of a community that 
 every individual who wishes to enjoy the advan-
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 139 
 
 tages of membership of the community should 
 contribute something to its support, and every 
 community which admits the claims of its 
 members upon it for support in return for no 
 adequate services rendered, recognizes a principle 
 which is damaging to itself in proportion as it is 
 put into practice, and, if carried out on a sufficiently 
 large scale, absolutely fatal. It is self-evident that 
 if all the inhabitants of a country were kept in 
 idleness by the State, the State would soon be 
 ruined ; therefore, the rule may be laid down that 
 no one is to expect to be supported by the State 
 unless good and sufficient reasons can be given for 
 his being so supported in preference to any other 
 citizen whatever. Because if it is admitted that any 
 citizen is entitled to State support who may choose 
 to apply for it, the State stands in continual risk of 
 destruction in the event of the whole population 
 becoming lazy, and demanding, as a right, food, 
 drink, and shelter. This extreme case is certainly 
 never likely to arise ; still, the recognition of its 
 physical possibility shows us that it is both unjust 
 to the industrious, and, to a greater or less extent, 
 injurious to the State, that such a right should be 
 admitted. Therefore, before any person is to be 
 considered as entitled to food, drink, raiment, and 
 lodging at the public expense he must show why 
 he, more than any other citizen, can reasonably 
 claim such a privilege. 
 
 Now, if a man, either in defending his country 
 against enemies, or in perfecting some great inven- 
 tion which will save his country money and make 
 it more wealthy and his fellow-citizens more com-
 
 140 CRIME. 
 
 fortable, or in producing grand works of genius 
 which will bring his country honour among the 
 nations and afford intellectual enjoyment to his 
 fellows, or even in labouring long and assiduously 
 in the public civil service if, I say, in doing any 
 one of these things a man has well earned the 
 gratitude of his country, it is a graceful thing for 
 his fellow-citizens to show their gratitude and 
 appreciation of his services by providing generously 
 for his old age. Again, if people really think that 
 their country is benefitted by keepinga king or queen 
 and a number of princes and princesses, they will 
 be consistent in allowing these individuals to live 
 at the public expense, because they will be of 
 opinion that they are getting some equivalent for 
 their money. But supposing a man who has 
 never rendered the State the slightest service 
 should apply for subsistence, and when asked the 
 grounds of his application, should reply, I am 
 stupid and cannot learn a trade; or, I am a drunkard 
 and no one will employ me ; or, I am indolent and 
 do not choose to work surely every sensible com- 
 munity will reply, these are no recommendations : 
 if we accept such grounds as valid we encourage 
 idleness, drunkenness, and improvidence, we are 
 acting unjustly lo the sober, the industrious, the 
 thrifty, and we are admitting a principle which 
 may ruin us if there are in the community a large 
 proportion of persons such as you ; we must of 
 course absolutely refuse such an absurd and im- 
 pudent application. One would think that a 
 people which, on the contrary, acceded to such a 
 request must be in its dotage, and did not deserve
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 141 
 
 to survive ; and yet this is precisely what the 
 English people do by means of their Poor Law a 
 people which pride themselves upon being the 
 most intelligent of all peoples ; and no less than 
 eight million pounds annually are spent in 
 England in subsidizing worthless, drunken men 
 and shameless women, and demoralizing the lower 
 classes. 
 
 If any private person, having means, chooses to 
 assist a deserving individual, who, through mis- 
 fortune, has fallen into temporary distress, he acts 
 in a most commendable way ; or if a number of 
 persons unite themselves into a society with the 
 object of discovering and relieving such cases of 
 undeserved destitution, and if they perform this 
 work in a judicious and cautious manner they do 
 a service to the State and to humanity. But it is 
 not only no part of the State's business, but most 
 injurious to it, to proclaim that every man who, 
 for any cause, has fallen into want may demand 
 subsistence as a right. The appalling mischief 
 which is being daily wrought by our system of 
 poor relief has been sufficiently exposed by writers 
 upon that special subject, and there is no need for 
 me to repeat what has been said. 
 
 3. But if it is absurd that men who are simply 
 idle or incapable should be kept at the public 
 expense, still more amazing is it to find that in a 
 highly civilized and intellectual community, men 
 who have not merely not assisted, but even 
 damaged, the community, are provided for months 
 and sometimes years, with clothes, food, and 
 lodging at the public expense. Why should a man
 
 142 CRIME. 
 
 who has robbed, assaulted, or otherwise injured a 
 fellow-citizen, be entitled to these privileges ? It 
 will of course be replied that he is also made to 
 submit to certain disagreeables which more than 
 counterbalance the advantages just referred to. 
 No doubt ; but that is not the point. It is right 
 enough that he should have to submit to disagree- 
 ables, but it is not right that because when at 
 liberty he was an expense to the State he should 
 be kept in durance at a further expense. If it 
 could be shown that such a course was necessary 
 in order that the offender might be reformed we 
 should have to acquiesce in it, but since it has 
 been proved that although he is kept by the State, 
 he is usually not reformed, we are bound to protest 
 very strongly against such a waste of public 
 money. 
 
 We may lay down this simple principle, that 
 every man must support himself; and if he will 
 not support himself in freedom, but endeavours to 
 live upon others, then he must be made to support 
 himself in prison : certainly the fact that he 
 wishes to live in freedom at the expense of the 
 community is no reason for keeping him at the 
 expense of the community in prison. 
 
 4. It has always been recognized that there 
 are two ways in which criminals may be dealt 
 with in order to keep them from further crime ; 
 one way is to deter them and the other is to re- ' 
 form them. Now, it has already been shown that 
 the first of these methods neither has yielded, nor 
 is likely to yield, satisfactory results, and that to 
 the fact that hitherto it has been placed first,
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 143 
 
 must probably be ascribed our small success in 
 dealing with crime. The second has only very 
 occasionally had fair play, but in a few instances 
 where a reformatory method pure and simple, 
 uncramped by any inane attempts to deter, has 
 had fair play, a very astonishing measure of 
 success has resulted. In two different countries, 
 inhabited by people of very dissimilar natures, the 
 experiment has been made, and has demonstrated 
 in each case that very few men are so bad as not 
 to have some vague appreciation of the beauty of 
 virtue, by working judiciously upon which a 
 strengthening of their better, and a gradual 
 atrophy of their worse, impulses may be effected. 
 
 In the year 1853 a pamphlet was published, en- 
 titled " Prison Discipline," by C. M. Obermaier, 
 Governor of the Munich State Prison. Trans- 
 lated by M. Rehbann, with a Prefatory Notice by 
 Alexander Baillie Cochrane. London : James 
 Ridgway. In the preface referred to Mr. Baillie 
 Cochrane says : 
 
 " While I was residing last year at Munich 
 my attention was particularly invited to the 
 system of prison discipline practised in the State 
 prison, under the intellectual superintendence of 
 M. Obermaier a system, as explained to me, so 
 opposed to all my preconceived notions and 
 apparently founded on such Utopian ideas of the 
 perfectibility of human nature, that it required the 
 most minute investigation to satisfy me of the 
 accuracy of my information. 
 
 ' Some twenty years have elapsed since M. 
 Obermaier first denounced the prison system
 
 144 CRIME. 
 
 which prevailed in Germany. Unlike many re- 
 formers of the age, he did not rest contented with 
 pointing out existing evils, but he lost no time in 
 urging upon the attention of the government all 
 those reforms which have since been carried out 
 in different districts, and for the full development 
 of which the State prison of Munich afforded the 
 widest scope ; it is not surprising if, in the first 
 instance, his suggestions were received as the 
 aberrations of an amiable visionary, for he started 
 a theory which many years since was received, 
 even in this country, with doubt and mistrust 
 namely, that the worst of criminals will commonly 
 be found possessed of some one good quality, and 
 that a system of prison discipline, based rather on 
 pity than harshness, and appealing to the nobler 
 and not the brutal instincts of human nature, 
 would tend to raise men's self-respect, and thus 
 gradually work upon their moral qualities ; that it 
 was at once wiser and a more humane policy to 
 sympathize with the force of temptation to which 
 the criminal had yielded, than to visit with undue 
 severity its guilty consequences. 
 
 " When M. Obermaier first arrived at Munich, 
 he found from 600 to 700 prisoners in the gaol, in 
 the worst state of insubordination, and whose ex- 
 cesses, he was told, defied the harshest and most 
 stringent discipline ; the prisoners were all chained 
 together, and attached to each chain was an iron 
 weight, which the strongest found difficulty in 
 dragging along ; the guard consisted of about 100 
 soldiers, who did duty not only at the gates and 
 around the walls, but also in the passages, and
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 145 
 
 even in the workshops and dormitories ; and 
 strangest of all protections against the possibility 
 of an outbreak or individual evasion, twenty to 
 thirty large savage dogs, of the bloodhound breed, 
 were let loose at night in the passages and courts, 
 to keep their watch and ward. According to his 
 account the place was a perfect Pandemonium, 
 comprising, within the limits of a few acres, the 
 worst passions, the most slavish vices, and the 
 most heartless tyranny. 
 
 " It was his work to purify this den of corrup- 
 tion, and he set gallantly to it. His first object, 
 he told me, was to enlist the sympathies, and to 
 win the confidence of some of the best of the men; 
 afterwards to bring these men together, and, sub- 
 sequently, so far as they were concerned, to relax 
 the severity of the prison rules. These men, in 
 their turn, exercised a very gradual, but very 
 marked, influence over others until they formed a 
 body willing to co-operate with him in his schemes 
 of improvement. As the characters of these men 
 became improved, their cheerfulness seemed to 
 increase ; as he lightened the weight of the chains 
 on their limbs, so did the weight on their hearts 
 appear to be removed. M. Obermaier admitted that 
 the process was a long and painful one ; but that 
 the result is most satisfactory must be admitted 
 by all those who have taken the trouble of visiting, 
 this remarkable establishment. 
 
 " Although all I had been told led me to antici- 
 pate a great relaxation of ordinary prison pre- 
 cautions, I certainly scarcely expected to see the 
 prison gates wide open, without any sentinel at 
 
 1 1
 
 146 CRIME. 
 
 the door, and a guard of only twenty men idling 
 away their time in a guard-room off the entrance- 
 hall ; from this hall two long corridors led right 
 and left to the various offices and workshops. 
 These workshops were of various dimensions, 
 capable of holding from twenty to sixty men, none 
 of the doors were provided with bolts and bars 
 the only security was an ordinary lock, and, as in 
 most of the rooms the key was not turned, there 
 was no obstacle to the men walking into the 
 passage, and I have already observed that there 
 were only twenty soldiers to prevent them 
 stepping from the passages into the road. Over 
 each workshop some of the prisoners with the 
 best characters were appointed overseers, and M. 
 Obermaier assured me, that if a prisoner ever 
 transgressed a regulation, his companions 
 generally told him, ' Es ist verboten ' (it is for- 
 bidden), and it rarely happened that he did not 
 yield to the opinion of his fellow-prisoners. Few 
 of the men wore chains, and the chains, when 
 worn, were so light that they produced no 
 practical inconvenience. 
 
 " Within the prison walls every description of 
 work is carried on ; the prisoners, divided into 
 different gangs, and supplied with instruments and 
 tools, make their own clothes, repair their own 
 prison walls, and forge their own chains, producing 
 various specimens of manufacture which are 
 turned to most excellent account ; the result 
 being that each prisoner, by occupation and in- 
 dustry, maintains himself ; the surplus of his 
 earnings being given to him on his emancipation,
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 147 
 
 avoids his being parted with in a state of destitu- 
 tion a very necessary and important consider- 
 ation, as, from having something to fall back 
 upon, he may be prevented resorting to those per- 
 nicious habits and propensities which had brought 
 him within the sphere of the criminal code. 
 
 " There were discharged between the years 1843 
 and 1845, 298 prisoners, sentenced for various 
 periods of from one to twenty years. 
 
 "Of these, 246 have been restored improved to 
 society; those whose characters are doubtful, 
 but have not been remanded for any criminal act, 
 26; again, under examination, 4; punished by the 
 police, 6 ; remanded, 8 ; died, 8." 
 
 The other experiment of a similar character to 
 which reference has been made was tried in Spain, 
 at Valencia, by Colonel Don Manuel Montesinos. 
 The public prison at Valencia during the govern- 
 ment of this gentleman, which commenced in 
 1835, contained from 1,000 to 1,500 prisoners, it 
 was of faulty construction and the classification of 
 the prisoners was consequently very imperfectly 
 carried out. The method of Colonel Montesinos, 
 which was so successful that in 1856 the number 
 of recommittals to the prison had been reduced 
 from 30 and 35 percent, to less than I percent, per 
 annum, is explained in a work, published in 1851, 
 by G. A. Hoskins, Esq., entitled " Spain as it is." 
 
 The following details are taken by Mr. M. D. 
 Hill, 1 from the above-named book, and from a 
 pamphlet published in 1846 by Colonel Montesinos 
 himself: 
 
 1 "Repression of Crime," pp. 552-555.
 
 148 CRIME. 
 
 11 If the vices and passions of a southern people 
 prevail in a place where, until the last few years, 
 a strong government has not been enjoyed, it is 
 greatly to the credit of the city of Valencia that it 
 can boast of one of the best conducted prisons in 
 Europe. This being one of the great social 
 questions of the day, I made particular inquiries 
 about it. There are a thousand prisoners, and 
 in the whole establishment I did not see above 
 three or four guardians to keep them in order. 
 They say there are only a dozen old soldiers, and 
 not a bar or a bolt that might not be easily broken, 
 apparently not more fastenings than in any private 
 house. 
 
 " The governor, a colonel in the army, has 
 established military discipline, and the prisoners 
 are divided into companies. The officers stand as 
 stiff, when you pass, as soldiers presenting arms. 
 The sergeants and inferior officers are all convicts, 
 who, of course, are acquainted with the temper and 
 disposition of their companions, and best able to 
 manage them ; and the prospect of advancement 
 to higher grades is an inducement to all to behave 
 well. When a convict enters he is asked what 
 trade or employment he will work at or learn, and 
 above forty are open to him, so that he has the 
 means of devoting his time to any he knows, or, 
 if ignorant of all, to one he feels an inclination 
 for, or which he is aware will be useful to him 
 when he is liberated. If he declines to work at 
 any he is sent to the public works, or employed 
 in carrying wood. 
 
 " The convicts are not allowed to talk to each
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 149 
 
 other during their work, but this rule does not 
 seem to be very strictly enforced, and they may 
 speak to their instructor, who is often one of 
 themselves, and ask each other for tools or any- 
 thing requisite for their work, and every night 
 after prayers they are allowed to converse with 
 each other for an hour. 
 
 " They were all most respectful in their de- 
 meanour, and certainly I never saw such a good- 
 looking set of prisoners; useful occupation (and 
 other considerate treatment) having apparently 
 improved their countenances. The governor 
 found it was impossible to induce the prisoners to 
 work heartily without giving them an interest in 
 their gains ; but when once he had by this en- 
 couragement established industrious habits, it 
 was more easy to correct their principles. Honour 
 among thieves is really found here the prisoners 
 keeping the accounts, and no attempts made to 
 deceive. 
 
 " A visitor expressing his doubt as to such feel- 
 ings of honour existing among convicts, the 
 governor asked the worst class in the prison 
 men sentenced to ten years to select a messenger, 
 and he gave him an onza to change in the city, 
 which is such a labryinth of narrow streets, that 
 escape was most easy. Great was his astonish- 
 ment when the man returned with 3 6s. in small 
 money." 
 
 These examples have not been given with the idea 
 that they ought to be copied in the management 
 of English prisons in every detail, but merely to 
 show what results a reformatory system is capable
 
 150 CRIME. 
 
 of yielding if judiciously carried out, and what a 
 contrast it offers to the effect of deterrent systems, 
 under which men, while in prison, plan villainies to 
 be executed on their liberation. 
 
 Mr. George Clifton, when Governor of Portland 
 Prison, also testified to the reformatory effect of 
 interesting employment. 1 He said : " I think that 
 the reformation of convicts depends upon the 
 amount of work performed by the different trades. 
 I never have any difficulty with men who are 
 employed at trades ; they hardly ever get a scratch 
 of the pen against them, and they take a great 
 interest in learning those trades ; but it is the 
 drudgery of the stone-dressing, at which hundreds 
 must be employed, which is distasteful." 
 
 We have, then, arrived at these two principles 
 first, that no man who has not merited it by dis- 
 tinguished public service must be kept wholly, or 
 in part, at the public cost ; second, that a vicious 
 man may, as a rule, be reformed, but that deter- 
 rents, more especially when there is a very fair 
 chance of escaping detection, have little effect 
 upon him. 
 
 5. Now, of course, the object of those who 
 have at heart the welfare of the State is to en- 
 deavour to bring about that every member of the 
 community shall be in perfectly normal relation- 
 ship with the other members : that each man and 
 woman shall so act that happiness may come to 
 him or her without injury to any other person ; 
 that no one shall aggrandize himself at the ex- 
 
 1 " Penal Servitude Acts Commission, 1878." Report, 
 vol. ii. p. 170.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 151 
 
 pense of any one else ; that every individual shall 
 contribute something for the augmentation of the 
 common prosperity. If any member of the body 
 politic acts in a manner contrary to this, morbid 
 relations are established, and the community 
 suffers. Thus, when a large body of depredators 
 maintain themselves at the expense of law-abiding 
 persons, causing insecurity to lives and property, 
 a disease exists which detracts from the comfort 
 and prosperity of the whole body. Now, we wish 
 to substitute for this morbid state of things one 
 which shall be normal, or as nearly so as possible. 
 To bring about a perfectly normal set of relation- 
 ships it would be necessary to convert these 
 depredators into producers, acting in harmony 
 with all the other producers and consumers 
 according to the laws of Social Economy. If we 
 take each of these men, when we can catch him, 
 and shut him up in a box by himself, absolutely 
 cutting, for a lengthy space, every tie which binds 
 him to society, and keep him thus, to any extent, 
 at the public charge, we may have made a change 
 for the better, but it is quite obvious to the most 
 simple understanding that such a state of things 
 is still far from normal. If it could be proved, 
 however, that this were only a transition stage, 
 and that in time a complete cure would be 
 wrought thereby, we might acquiesce in it ; but it 
 has been proved that there is every probability of 
 its permanency, consequently it becomes our duty 
 to endeavour to discover a substitute for it. It is 
 clear that to put men into prison at all is to 
 institute morbid relations between one class of
 
 152 CRIME. 
 
 men and the rest of the community ; and if we 
 could reform a bad man while leaving him still 
 in perfectly free intercourse with his fellows we 
 ought certainly to do so ; but since this is im- 
 practicable, we must endeavour, in our treatment 
 of him apart, to keep intact as far as possible the 
 bonds which connected him with society, when at 
 liberty, while cutting away all those morbid 
 growths which rendered him a plague-spot in the 
 social body. 
 
 Before he is allowed to consume he must pro- 
 duce ; the value of his labour must, as far as 
 possible, be determined by the influences which 
 regulate the value of free labour; his mental 
 faculties must not be impaired, nor his moral 
 strength lessened by long confinement in a box by 
 himself, but he must be taught to associate with 
 others in a manner that may be advantageous for 
 himself and for them, so that when he returns to 
 the world the habits he thus acquires may enable 
 him to fall naturally into his proper social posi- 
 tion ; and generally, so far as is practicable with- 
 out interfering with our main object, namely, the 
 reformation of the criminal, we must make the 
 prisoner as little unlike a free man as possible. A 
 more minute discussion of this point, and as to 
 the manner in which the result indicated may be 
 brought about will be better left until we come to 
 treat of the details of prison management ; and 
 we may now pass on to the general question, 
 whether prisons may be made remunerative 
 instead of a burden on the State. 
 
 6. In seeking a reply to this question we
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 153 
 
 are met by the encouraging fact that in other 
 countries prisons have been made remunerative, 
 and there is no very obvious reason why a similar 
 success should not be possible in England. In 
 Canada and America convict labour is let out to 
 contractors in various branches of industry, 
 among which the chief are brick-making, broom- 
 making, and the manufacture of wooden utensils 
 a system which not only results in a profit to the 
 State, but is also found to exercise a beneficial 
 effect upon the minds of the prisoners. 
 
 In 1850 Mr. Charles Pearson, M.P. for Lam- 
 beth, presented to a committee appointed by the 
 House of Commons a complete scheme for the 
 similar utilization of convict labour a scheme 
 which he had worked out to the minutest details 
 and not only was he able to show that prisons 
 might be made to yield a good profit, but he 
 even brought before the committee a contractor 
 of standing who declared himself willing to take 
 from the Government a large piece of land and 
 the labour of 1,000 convicts at a price which 
 would more than repay the Government for all 
 the expenses connected with the custody of the 
 men. The report of the committee upon the 
 plan runs thus : 
 
 " That this Committee does not feel justified, 
 without longer time for the consideration of such 
 extensive details, in attempting to pronounce a 
 definite opinion upon the plan which has been 
 submitted to them, with much ability and laudable 
 exertion, by Mr. Pearson ; but they consider that 
 plan to be entitled to serious consideration by any
 
 154 CRIME. 
 
 department of Her Majesty's Government to 
 which the regulation of Prisons may be entrusted, 
 and especially in connection with the recommen- 
 dation for the establishment of District Prisons." 1 
 
 Mr. Pearson also read to the committee an 
 account of the prison of Ghent, prepared by Mr. 
 Rawson, the Secretary of the Statistical Society. 
 It was to this effect : " The Government formed, 
 towards the end of 1820, a council for the regula- 
 tion of civil and military prisons, which, after 
 three years of continuous labour, succeeded in 
 completing and introducing the new system into 
 all the prisons, under which the condition of the 
 prisoners is greatly ameliorated, at a very moderate 
 expense to the State. The prisons at Ghent pro- 
 duce annually a clear income of "5,000. In those 
 now referred to the inmates are principally 
 employed in weaving linen, and in making shirts, 
 pantaloons, and gaiters for the army and colonies. 
 On entering the building there is heard a noise of 
 looms and machinery, which causes the visitor to 
 imagine himself in a large active manufactory, 
 rather than in a gaol. About 350 weaving looms 
 are in full work, which gives employment to 700 
 individuals ; the other male prisoners are employed 
 as spinners, winders, &c." 
 
 In reply to the question whether there was any 
 note of the average period of confinement with 
 regard to those prisoners, Mr. Pearson said: 
 " There is not ; but from notes I took at the 
 time, my impression is that the average may be 
 
 1 Report of the Select Committee on Prison Discipline, 
 July, 1850, p. v.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 155 
 
 a year, perhaps a little more ; perhaps it may be 
 eighteen months. Here is an account of the 
 Belgian prisons in 1845. I obtained these facts 
 when I was at the Congres Penitentiere at 
 Brussels, in the year 1847, from Monsieur Due 
 Petiaux, an official party there connected with 
 the prisons : ' The official memorial in support of 
 the projet de loi upon the Belgian prisons, pre- 
 sented to the Chambers of Deputies on the 3rd of 
 December, 1844, states that during the two years 
 1841 and 1842 the profit of the work of the 
 prisoners in the five central prisons of that 
 country had risen for one of those years to 
 149,600 francs, and for the other to 195,620 
 francs, after deducting the charges of administra- 
 tion and management.' " x 
 
 Mr. George Breakspear, superintendent of the 
 tailoring department in the Coldbath Fields 
 Prison, being examined by the same committee, 
 stated that forty prisoners, nearly all novices, 
 who worked at tailoring in the prison, made by 
 their labour a net profit of 17 43. i^d. per man 
 per annum ; and that an average of thirty-five 
 men working in the shoemaker's shop earned 
 15 6s. each per annum. These men only 
 worked 7^ hours a day, so that a larger profit 
 could have been made if the prison regulations 
 had allotted more time to labour. 
 
 Although nearly forty years have elapsed since 
 Mr. Pearson demonstrated the possibility of 
 rendering productive the labour of prisoners, for 
 
 1 Report of the Select Committee on Prison Discipline, 
 July, 1850, p. 518.
 
 156 CRIME. 
 
 various reasons nothing substantial has been done 
 with a view to the attainment of this most desir- 
 able end ; and the Government local prisons 
 alone cost the country upwards of 400,000 per 
 annum. In the convict prisons, certainly, the 
 labour of the prisoners is utilized, and, so far as it 
 goes, the experiment has been followed by results 
 sufficiently satisfactory to warrant further steps 
 in the same direction. According to the Report of 
 the Directors of Convict Prisons, for the year 
 1882-83, * the total expense of maintenance of the 
 prisoners at Portsmouth was completely covered 
 by the value of their labour ; while at Portland the 
 net annual cost of each prisoner was only 173. id. 
 These, however, were exceptional cases ; and 
 though in each one of the other convict prisons a 
 certain deduction is made on account of convict 
 labour, the net annual charge per prisoner varies 
 from 4 55. to 30. 
 
 7. It has been stated that the value of the 
 labour performed by convicts for the Admiralty is 
 much over-estimated in the Government Returns, 
 and that the cost of the prisons is therefore 
 really greater than it appears to be. This is prob- 
 ably true, for at Portsmouth it is the custom to 
 distribute the men into gangs of twenty or twenty- 
 five for purposes of discipline, and seeing that it 
 may well happen that twenty is too large a num- 
 ber of men to execute some given piece of work, 
 it naturally follows that in order to keep the 
 whole gang employed work of an unnecessary 
 or profitless kind must, for the time being, be given 
 1 Part i. appendix, p. xxxii.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 157 
 
 to some of the men; but the value of every man's 
 day's labour is estimated on the assumption that 
 he has been occupied on useful work the whole 
 time. Consequently it is probable that the 
 expenses of Portsmouth Prison are not really quite 
 covered by the produce of the convicts' labour, 
 and that in the case of some of the other prisons 
 the adverse balance is greater than it appears to 
 be. Nevertheless, sufficient has been achieved to 
 make success probable, and to encourage a further 
 extension of the principle. 
 
 There are several reasons why the labour of 
 convicts in the cases where it is at present 
 utilized has not sufficed to pay all expenses con- 
 nected with their maintenance. Of these the 
 first is that prisoners will not work as hard as 
 free men. It stands to reason, that when a man 
 knows that, so long as he is not. palpably indolent, 
 the amount and quality of his day's work will not 
 affect himself either advantageously or disadvan- 
 tageously, he will have no incentive to taking 
 pains. If a prisoner's work is grossly defective 
 in quantity or quality, or both, he will lose his 
 mark, which will entail a lengthening of his 
 term ; he will soon find by experience the exact 
 standard of excellence which will be just sufficient 
 to insure him his eight marks a day; and knowing 
 that, by improving upon this, he will not only not 
 ameliorate his own condition, but will, to some 
 small extent, enrich that Government and that 
 society to whom he considers he owes his mis- 
 fortunes, he will very naturally refrain from 
 exerting himself beyond the necessary point.
 
 158 CRIME. 
 
 This inferiority of enforced, as compared with 
 free, labour has frequently been remarked by 
 those who have been in a position to observe 
 closely the operations of convicts. The author 
 of "Five Years' Penal Servitude" says: 1 "A 
 convict's day's work will bear no comparison with 
 that of an outdoor free man. What the outside 
 gangs on the bogs may do I know not, but I 
 always considered a prisoner's day's work say, 
 for instance, a blacksmith or a carpenter not 
 more than equal to one-half or two-thirds of that 
 of a tradesman outside. Of course there is no 
 heart in a slave's or a prisoner's labour. Every 
 man does as little as he possibly can. So long as 
 what he does will pass muster, and he gets his 
 marks, it is all a man cares for." This ex- 
 prisoner is able to speak only as to the value of 
 convicts' indoor labour, or labour at handicrafts ; 
 but competent witnesses are forthcoming to give 
 similar evidence upon the value of their labour 
 out-of-doors. Mr. E. A. Bernays, superintend- 
 ing civil engineer at Chatham Dockyard, made 
 the following statement in evidence before the 
 Penal Servitude Acts Commission, July, 1878 : 
 " I think that two convicts will do the work of 
 one free man on day-work, and that three convicts 
 will do the work of a free man on piece-work." 
 Mr. H. Wood, who filled a corresponding office 
 at Portsmouth, also in evidence before the same 
 Commission, expressed the opinion that, "taking 
 the able-bodied class, he would assess three con- 
 victs as equal to two ordinary labourers, whilst in 
 1 P. 348.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 159 
 
 the light labour party he would take two convicts 
 for one free man." Again, with regard to the 
 value of prisoners' labour at handicrafts, the 
 opinion of the writer already quoted is corrobo- 
 rated by a statement of Mr. T. W. Harris, steward 
 and manufacturer at Brixton Prison, who, on 
 being questioned as to the inferiority of prison, as 
 compared with free, labour, replied : " I should 
 say that it is something like 33 per cent. less. A 
 man will not work in the prison unless he has 
 some inducement ; that is the fact of the matter." 
 Of course the analogy between convict labour and 
 slave labour is very close, both being compelled to 
 work by the employment of force, whether moral or 
 physical ; neither enjoying the fruits of their own 
 labour ; both being driven to work for the benefit of 
 those whom they consider their natural enemies ; 
 and both being cut off from all intercourse with 
 their relatives and friends, and treated more like 
 brute animals than men a group of conditions 
 which must have a numbing effect upon the 
 intellectual faculties, make the men dogged and 
 careless, and considerably lessen their value as 
 beasts of labour. The state of the case with 
 regard to slave labour has thus been concisely put 
 by John Stuart Mill: 1 "It is a truism to assert 
 that labour extorted by fear of punishment is 
 inefficient and unproductive. It is true that in 
 some circumstances human beings can be driven 
 by the lash to attempt, and even to accomplish, 
 things which they would not have undertaken 
 for any payment which it could have been worth 
 1 " Principles of Political Economy," bk. ii. cap. v. 2.
 
 160 CRIME. 
 
 while to an employer to offer them. . . . But 
 after allowing the full value of these considera- 
 tions, it remains certain that slavery is incom- 
 patible with any high state of the arts of life and 
 any great efficiency of labour. . . . Hopeless 
 slavery effectually brutifies the intellect ; . . . 
 and even the animal strength of the slave is, on 
 an average, not half exerted. . . . The mildest 
 form of slavery is certainly the condition of the 
 serf, who is attached to the soil, supports himself 
 from his allotment, and works a certain number 
 of days in the week for his lord. Yet there is but 
 one opinion on the extreme inefficiency of serf 
 labour." Doubtless the condition of a convict, 
 lightened as it is by a certain leaven of hope, is 
 superior to that of a slave, who can expect 
 nothing but a lifetime of the same monotonous 
 hardship and toil ; but when all deductions are 
 made, the analogy between enforced work in 
 captivity and enforced work in slavery is suf- 
 ficiently close for the words of Mr. Mill to be 
 applied almost equally well to the former and to 
 the latter. 
 
 The conclusion to which we are brought by the 
 consideration of the foregoing facts is that, in 
 order to get the full value of convict labour, the 
 men must have a personal interest in accomplish- 
 ing as much work as possible in the most efficient 
 manner. 
 
 Again, the cost of superintendence is much 
 greater in the case of prisoners than in that of 
 free men ; not only must there be trades instruc- 
 tors and overseers, but also discipline officers to-
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 161 
 
 see that no improper communications take place 
 between the prisoners, and that none of the prison 
 regulations are broken. Further, the prison regu- 
 lations themselves sometimes interfere with the effi- 
 cient performance of the industrial operations ; as 
 we have already seen to be the case on the public 
 works at Portsmouth, where operations have had 
 to be performed in an uneconomical manner, owing 
 to the division of the convicts into gangs of not 
 less than twenty or twenty-five men each. If 
 by any means we could get rid of these draw- 
 backs, without introducing any evils or impairing 
 the necessary discipline, it is clear that the profit 
 resulting from convict labour would be increased. 
 Again, prisoners only labour on an average at the 
 present time for rather more than 7^ hours a day, 
 so that, by lengthening the time, about 20 per 
 cent, more work could be got out of them. We 
 see, therefore, that if there should prove to be no 
 objection to making certain alterations in the 
 conditions which at present limit the labour of 
 convicts, the Government prisons in which such 
 labour is at present utilized might be made profit- 
 able instead of there being a smaller or larger 
 debit balance each year. 
 
 Taking a mean of all the estimates which have 
 been given of the value of convict labour, we may 
 conclude that three convicts are equivalent to two 
 free men ; that is to say, if we could get from 
 prisoners the full amount of labour of which they 
 are capable, the value of their productions would 
 be about 30 per cent, greater ; but then it must be 
 remembered that a certain loss will result owing 
 
 12
 
 1 62 CRIME. 
 
 to the inexperience of newly-convicted men who 
 have not previously worked at any trade or indus- 
 trial occupation. This may partly be got over by 
 putting such men to unskilled labour, choosing 
 of course the dullest for such work, and upon 
 the rest the loss will not be great, for experienced 
 persons have stated that, as a rule, convicts are 
 quick at learning handicrafts ; still, some allow- 
 ance must be made for this inexperience, so that 
 probably we should not be justified in expecting, 
 under the most favourable circumstances, a greater 
 increase than 20 to 25 per cent, on the present 
 value of convict labour. We will for the present 
 leave the question of the expense of superintend- 
 ence, and merely add to the above increase of 
 20 per cent, the further increase of 20 per cent, 
 which would result from an extension of the hours 
 of labour, making 40 per cent, in all. 
 
 Now, the gross total expenses of the English 
 convict prisons for the year 1882-3 was 327,964, 
 and the value of the convicts' labour was esti- 
 mated at 211,012. But the male prison at 
 Woking is largely used for the custody of invalids 
 and lunatics, and the bulk of the prisoners there 
 are of little value as labourers, so that it is not 
 fair to take account of it in the present calcula- 
 tion ; we will also exclude the female prisons at 
 Woking and Fulham, the work done in which is 
 of comparatively small value, but which might 
 probably be made much more valuable by in- 
 creasing the range of employments at which the 
 women are made to work. Having made these 
 deductions we get the following figures :
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 163 
 
 Gross cost of maintenance of able- 
 bodied male prisoners in English 
 convict prisons .276,180 
 
 Present value of labour of the above 
 
 prisoners ,201,660 
 
 Add 40 per cent 80,664 282,324 
 
 Estimated profit ,6,144 
 
 The result of this calculation gives us grounds 
 for confidently asserting that English prisons may 
 be made self-supporting. 
 
 8. We have, therefore, established the follow- 
 ing propositions : namely, that under a system of 
 prison discipline, according to which prisoners 
 are taught handicrafts and are employed in profit- 
 able labour, a feeling of self-respect, a sense of 
 emulation, and a gradual humanizing of the 
 brutal instincts may be produced, resulting in a 
 complete reformation of all but a few of the most 
 degraded of mankind ; that for able-bodied men to 
 be kept in idleness or occupied in useless labour 
 at the expense of the State is the perpetuation of 
 a social condition only one degree less abnormal 
 than the existence of the same men as free depre- 
 dators, and is totally opposed to a system of 
 sound political economy; finally, that the labour 
 of prisoners can be made profitable. 
 
 9. To these strong arguments in favour of 
 the utilization of prisoners as producers for the 
 benefit of the community certain replies have been 
 from time to time made. It has been said that 
 the work done by malefactors ought not to be 
 brought into competition with the work of free
 
 1 64 CRIME. 
 
 men to the detriment of the latter. But let it be 
 remembered that in a perfectly normal state of 
 things a state which it is the object of all our ap- 
 paratus of criminal jurisprudence to bring about 
 these very men would be honest producers, com- 
 peting with each other and with all who are 
 occupied in profitable labour ; and that, conse- 
 quently, by making these men produce in prison 
 we are only instituting a state of things which 
 ought naturally to be in existence if there were no 
 prisons at all. This argmnentum ad genus homimim 
 is now getting somewhat threadbare ; it was urged 
 long ago by the supporters of protective duties, 
 and its fallacy demonstrated in that special case ; 
 but the proposition is a general one, that injury 
 done to one particular class affords no pretext for 
 refusing a measure which is for the common good. 
 In fact, the injury inflicted upon the class is in 
 such cases only superficial and temporary; for 
 whatever benefits the community in general must 
 indirectly and eventually prove advantageous to 
 every particular class, and, indeed, to each indivi- 
 dual. If it were possible to adopt some plan by 
 which every citizen could get boots and shoes gratis, 
 would the injury thus inflicted upon bootmakers 
 justify its non-adoption ? If so, the same reasoning 
 must be logically applied to each single handicraft 
 and trade, which would lead to this absurd result 
 that if a community could obtain every commodity 
 for nothing, every class of producers, and there- 
 fore, practically, the whole community, would be 
 ruined ; and that consequently a community, which 
 has either to purchase or to produce all its com-
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 165 
 
 modities, is in a more opulent condition than one 
 in which each member can procure any article he 
 may require for nothing ! 
 
 The fact is, that the loss to society which results 
 from the existence in its midst of a horde of 
 beings, partly idle and partly aggressive, is many 
 times greater than that which society would 
 sustain, through certain of its constituent classes, 
 by the conversion of these beings into industrious 
 citizens ; indeed, it can be asserted with confidence 
 that in the latter case a greater profit than loss 
 would, on the whole, ensue, especially when we 
 consider that the commodities produced in prisons 
 would be so small a proportion of the total 
 quantity of similar commodities manufactured 
 throughout the country, and imported into it, that 
 the market could not be very sensibly affected. It 
 is not found to be so in America ; and Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Jebb, Surveyor-general of Prisons, ex- 
 pressed the opinion in 1850 that the profitable 
 labour of prisoners in English prisons would be so 
 small a fraction as compared with the labour 
 market, that it would not at all interfere with it. 1 
 
 The replies to such objections to the utilization 
 of prison labour were forcibly and clearly summed 
 up by Sir John Bowring, in an address which he 
 delivered in 1869 before the National Association 
 for the Promotion of Social Science. 2 He said : 
 " The most common fallacies urged against the 
 extraction of pecuniary profit from the labour of 
 
 1 Report of the Select Committee on Prison Discipline, 
 1850, p. 26. 
 
 2 "Transactions," p. 247.
 
 i66 CRIME. 
 
 convicts are first, that the work done in prison 
 ought not to be brought into competition with the 
 labour of the honest workman. But, if it be 
 remembered that the convict, if out of prison and 
 honestly employed, would be a far more formidable 
 competitor than when employed in prison, and, 
 farther, that the cost of maintenance of a convict 
 to the public is far greater than that of the honest 
 labourer to himself, it is certain that the honest 
 labourer, being the master of his own arrange- 
 ments, comes into the field of competition with 
 advantages superior to those of the prisoner, and 
 that the loss to the whole community is much 
 greater in the case of prison labour than of the 
 loss to the free labourer. Were it the case that 
 prison labour tended to the lowering of prices, 
 that would be an undoubted benefit to the con- 
 sumer ; but this lowering of prices could only be 
 brought about at the public expense. The whole 
 amount, however, of prison production can be but 
 very trifling in the general market, and can but 
 triflingly affect prices. Again, it is said, that to 
 teach the prisoner a trade in prison is to make 
 him, when he is dismissed from prison, a formid- 
 able rival to the honest man who has never been 
 in prison. And why not ? Had he remained 
 among the ranks of the honest, and been taught 
 an honest trade a state of things which every 
 one must acknowledge is much to be desired, 
 because society is better off without criminals or 
 crime than with them it is clear the public 
 interest would have been saved by his remaining 
 out of prison. And if, thanks to prison discipline,
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 167 
 
 he can be placed in the position he might have 
 occupied but for his offences, and instead of an 
 idler, or sinner against the laws, he becomes a 
 good citizen, a producer of wealth, a contributor 
 to the public prosperity, who can deny that in his 
 case a good work has been done ? " 
 
 10. It has also been objected that in the case 
 of large numbers of prisoners the term for which 
 they are sentenced is so short that they could not 
 possibly become sufficiently proficient at any trade 
 for their labour at it to become profitable. There 
 are two ways of meeting this difficulty, both of 
 which would be advantageously employed. The 
 one is to put a certain number of the prisoners to 
 unskilled labour, such as agricultural labour, in 
 conformity with some such plan as that of Mr. 
 Pearson ; and the other is to sentence men for 
 longer terms. A certain number of prisoners are 
 already acquainted with some handicraft ; for 
 instance, it has been estimated that one in ten 
 may be a professed shoemaker, and that one in 
 twelve may be a professed tailor, and so on ; with 
 these there would clearly be no difficulty: a certain 
 number of unskilled labourers would profitably be 
 utilized, who would naturally be selected from the 
 men with the shortest sentences. There would 
 be a residue which, no doubt, under present con- 
 ditions, could not all be employed profitably ; but 
 if the length of their term of imprisonment were 
 increased they might be so employed. 
 
 Mr. William Gibbs, manufacturer and steward 
 of Pentonville Prison, stated, in 1850,' that men 
 
 1 Report of the Select Committee on Prison Discipline, 
 p. 191.
 
 1 68 CRIME. 
 
 who had previous to their conviction worked at no 
 trade might generally become profitable in three 
 months. I think that if the hours of prison labour 
 were extended so as at least to equal those of free 
 labour, the period required would be less than 
 three months ; however, it is certain in order to 
 efficiently utilize the labour of such men the term 
 of imprisonment should ordinarily be much longer 
 than this ; a change which is also to be desired 
 on other grounds. 
 
 As a rule it will be impossible to very appreci- 
 ably affect the character of a vicious man in so 
 short a period as three months ; a fortiori will it 
 be absurd to expect to do so in two months or one 
 month ; it is only wasting public money to send 
 the same man repeatedly to prison for short terms, 
 as is the custom at present ; and it would be a 
 matter for astonishment that such a practice 
 should continue to exist were not the slowness of 
 the public to imbibe new ideas a well-known fact, 
 an extension of the terms for which criminals are 
 sentenced having long ago been advocated by the 
 highest authorities. For instance, Mr. Charles 
 Pearson, M.P., in the course of his examination 
 before the Select Committee on Prison Discipline, 
 in 1850, said : J " I have adopted the opinion which 
 every witness 2 examined here, and which every 
 writer 2 upon this subject adopts that short im- 
 prisonments are bad, and that no sound system 
 of prison discipline can be persevered in which 
 does not contemplate an increased duration of 
 sentences." 
 
 1 Report, p. 479. ~ The italics are mine.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRININALS. 169 
 
 Mr. Pearson also made the following statement 
 upon the same subject : x " As I hope that this Com- 
 mittee will arive at some practical result, I take leave 
 to refer to the proceedings of the Committee of the 
 House of Lords in the Session of 1847. I do so 
 with more confidence because the references which 
 I am about to make convey the short opinions in 
 writing of Judges of England, Ireland, and Scot- 
 land, upon a question put to them by the orders 
 of the Committee. The question sent round is, 
 ' Does your Lordship consider that any refor- 
 mation can be worked on offenders by a short 
 imprisonment as for three or even six months ? ' 
 Mr. Justice Wightman, Mr. Baron Parke, Mr. 
 Justice Patteson, Mr. Justice Maule, Mr. Baron 
 Alderson, the Lord Justice General, the Lord 
 Justice Clerk, Lord Mackenzie, Lord Cockburn, 
 Lord Medwyn, Mr. Justice Crampton, Chief Justice 
 Doherty, Mr. Justice Jackson, Chief Baron Richards, 
 Lord Wood, Mr. Sergeant Adams, Mr. Hill, the 
 Recorder of Birmingham, Mr. Bullock, the Judge 
 of the Sheriffs Court, and various other persons to 
 whom similar letters had been addressed, replied, 
 that in their judgment, a less term than three 
 or six months (most of them fixed it at six months) 
 would fail to produce a reformatory effect upon 
 the persons subjected to imprisonment for that 
 period." 
 
 ii. But we shall be wrong in inferring that 
 
 the scale of punishments now in vogue can be at 
 
 all adequately reformed by simply increasing all 
 
 penalties in some definite proportion, or by fixing 
 
 1 Report, p. 503.
 
 170 CRIME. 
 
 a minimum limit at six months ; the problem is 
 by no means so simple, for the existing scale is 
 formed upon an entirely false principle, and some 
 factors which should be of the first importance in 
 fixing the term of imprisonment in any given case 
 have been quite overlooked. Having been led to 
 the conclusion that the only way to turn criminals 
 into honest men is to reform them, and recog- 
 nizing the fact that the habitual law-breaker is 
 one who is morally diseased and requires to be 
 cured by proper treatment, we see at once that 
 our criminal code, as it stands at present, is 
 absurdly irrational and must be simply revo- 
 lutionized. For now, if a man, having gradually 
 drifted into the criminal class, and having lived 
 undetected for a considerable period at the public 
 expense, is at length caught in the act of picking 
 a pocket, he will get, perhaps, one month's im- 
 prisonment ; at the end of which time he will fly 
 back, like a piece of stretched elastic, to his old 
 courses, will again and again find his way back to 
 gaol, and eventually be safely landed for five years 
 in a convict prison. Mr. George Clifton, Governor 
 of Portland Prison, stated, in 1878, that out of a 
 total of 1,177 men under his charge, then under- 
 going first sentences of penal servitude, 873 had 
 previously had sentences of a summary nature or 
 imprisonment, and that, in addition to these, there 
 were 358 who had had former sentences of penal 
 servitude. 1 Such men are criminals in the true 
 sense of the word, and the figures given by Mr. 
 1 Report of the Penal Servitude Acts Commission, vol. ii. 
 p. 206.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 171 
 
 Clifton prove that upon men of this class short 
 sentences, especially of a deterrent character, have 
 no appreciable effect. 
 
 On the other hand, a poor clerk, who has lived 
 uprightly all his life, under the influence of some 
 great temptation, embezzles some money, falsifies 
 the books he has to keep, or forges his employer's 
 name : he is soon detected ; the publicity of his 
 disgrace, the ignominy of a trial attended or read 
 of by persons who have known and respected him, 
 the sorrow, possibly, of a loved father or mother, 
 the sense of degradation by which a dishonourable 
 action must always be followed in those whose 
 habits have previously been of an opposite cha- 
 racter all these, or even some of them, would give 
 rise to such bitter emotions as alone to suffice to 
 restrain man}', if not most, such men from again 
 committing a fault of a like character, and would 
 make not a few shrink from the very thought of it 
 as a burnt child from the fire. But on the top of 
 all this anguish is piled, possibly, a sentence of five 
 years' penal servitude, during which the offender, 
 if young and not of strong moral fibre, runs some 
 risk of becoming infected by association with 
 vicious men, or hardened by the treatment which 
 he will experience. 
 
 Now in the first of these supposed cases, as is 
 inferable from such statistics as those just now 
 quoted, and as any one who knows anything of 
 professional thieves and men of that class could 
 have foretold, the man will simply continue to 
 return to prison at intervals for years ; to give 
 such a man a month is quite' useless, he will
 
 i?2 CRIME. 
 
 probably come to penal servitude at last, and it 
 would be better for himself and for the country 
 that he should have a sufficiently long imprison- 
 ment at first in short, being morally diseased, he 
 must be sent into the hospital for a sufficient 
 length of time to admit of his being cured. In 
 the second case the man was not morally diseased, 
 but was suffering from temporary aberration ; 
 possibly the moral sense was not very strong in 
 him, without his being in the slightest degree 
 vicious or depraved ; indeed, numbers of respect- 
 able men who die with a clear conscience might, 
 if subjected to the same temptation, have suc- 
 cumbed in the same way. No lengthy curative 
 treatment is required in this case, a short but 
 sharp and unpleasant experience, coupled with 
 the ignominy of the exposure, or even the latter 
 alone, will ordinarily be effective in bracing up 
 the man's moral nature to a sufficiently high 
 pitch to keep him from similarly falling again. 
 This is the class of convict which is deterred by 
 imprisonment, to which reference has been made 
 in chapter iii. 4 : it is such men who are only 
 convicted once, and in their case three months or 
 six months will be as efficacious as five years. 
 
 The distinction between sentences must be no 
 longer based upon mere crimes committed, these 
 are quite superficial, and are no reliable index to 
 a man's real character. If our object is to get rid 
 of criminals, and if the only means of doing this 
 is to reform them, so soon as we catch one we 
 must deal with him in no pettifogging way, but 
 employ adequate means to really reform him ; the
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 173 
 
 particular act which brought him within the power 
 of the law is nothing when he has been in the 
 habit of committing breaches of the law more or 
 less grave from his youth up, until he chanced to 
 be found out in the commission of this particular 
 one. For such men must our reformatory system 
 be devised, and it must be applied for a sufficient 
 length of time to be effective ; for the previously 
 respectable man who in a weak moment has suc- 
 cumbed to temptation, must be reserved the short 
 but sharp and deterrent sentence, which will 
 brand him with ignominy and be a warning to 
 him for a lifetime. 
 
 12. It may, however, be objected that a 
 judicial sentence is intended to deter not only the 
 man who has committed a crime from offending 
 again, but also others who may be exposed to 
 similar temptation from offending in a similar 
 way, and that a severe sentence of five years' 
 penal servitude would be more likely to attain 
 this end than a short imprisonment of six months. 
 This must be largely a matter of opinion, but to 
 me the objection appears to be groundless, and 
 some reasons, which are not without considerable 
 force, can be urged against it. Now, the deterrent 
 effect of a sentence, in so far as it can have any, 
 admittedly depends upon the severity of it ; let us, 
 therefore, consider what will be the consequences 
 to a man, occupying the position I have indicated, 
 who has been convicted of a dishonest action. 
 
 In the first place, he will picture to himself that 
 all his acquaintance and his relatives, who have 
 believed him to be an honourable man, will be
 
 174 CRIME. 
 
 discussing his case, some pitying him, some dis- 
 paraging him, some, perhaps, abusing him, and he 
 will be covered with shame at the thought. He 
 may have a wife, and possibly children, and the con- 
 templation of the disgrace, and very likely ruin, 
 that he has brought upon them, will be torture to 
 him ; then to appear in open court, to be tried 
 before the curious gaze of many who have pre- 
 viously known him, will be a dreadful ordeal ; 
 finally, when he comes out of prison, and cannot, 
 owing to a blemished reputation, find employment 
 such as he had formerly engaged in, and sees 
 himself driven to manual labour for a living, and 
 that miserable compared with what he has been 
 accustomed to, precarious at the best, and perhaps 
 aggravated by the thought that he has dragged 
 down with himself some who are most dear to 
 him, the climax of his torment is reached ; and 
 he has suffered so intensely, quite irrespective of 
 any judicial sentence, that the mere term of his 
 imprisonment is trifling in comparison. The 
 habitual criminal feels none of these things, and 
 on that account a sentence of penal servitude 
 must be less severe to him than one of six 
 months' imprisonment to one who has previously 
 been an honourable man ; and for this latter the 
 sum-total of the punishment is very slightly 
 increased by prolonging the term of imprison- 
 ment. 
 
 Again, it is very doubtful whether such a man, 
 before he does wrong, considers the length of 
 imprisonment he is likely to get. Since the shame 
 of the exposure and the other consequences of it
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 175 
 
 which have just been sketched are most to be 
 dreaded by him, the question which he chiefly 
 considers is whether he is likely to be detected or 
 no ; and this fear of detection may make many a 
 man hesitate before he takes the fatal step. But 
 hope springs eternal in the human breast, and 
 therefore some unfortunates, being hard pressed, 
 and in a state of desperation, or it may be over- 
 mastered by cupidity, trust to luck and their own 
 wits and make the plunge ; but the fact that their 
 sentence, should they be detected, is likely to be 
 five years or six months does not weigh with 
 them, for they rely on escaping detection alto- 
 gether. 
 
 The opinion here expressed is strongly sup- 
 ported by a statement made before the Penal 
 Servitude Acts Commission of 1878, J by Mr. 
 William Tallack, then Secretary of the Howard 
 Association, who said : " The question of the 
 antecedents of prisoners is one of the utmost 
 importance. I was talking, not long ago, to an 
 experienced prison official, and he said that he 
 considered that society owed a very great debt of 
 consideration to many of our criminals, more than 
 society recognized. The antecedents, the tempta- 
 tions, the privation, the ignorance, the parental 
 neglect . . . these antecedents are of such import- 
 ance that they ought to be taken more into regard 
 than they are in the sentences, especially the sen- 
 tences to penal servitude ; and I have one practical 
 suggestion to make on that point, which is this 
 that whenever judges have before them prisoners 
 
 1 Report, p. 226.
 
 176 CRIME. 
 
 charged with offences for which they are liable to 
 penal servitude, they should be requested . . . 
 not to pass sentence immediately, but to let an 
 interval of at least twenty-four hours elapse, during 
 which period they should be provided, by some 
 responsible officer, with a statement of the 
 prisoner's antecedents and general character, and 
 that those should be more considered than they 
 are at present before passing sentence ; for I do 
 believe that for want of this reasonable and con- 
 siderate regard to the antecedents of many of our 
 prisoners, many of them find their way into our 
 convict prisons where they ought not to be." 
 
 13. The gravity of the crime must not, how- 
 ever, be absolutely disregarded, for it will be, to 
 a certain extent, a clue to the man's character 
 who committed it. There are men who would, in 
 particular circumstances and in a particular state 
 of mind, commit a forgery, who are incapable of 
 murder or of any kind of violence. The fact that 
 a man's record up to the time of his first convic- 
 tion can be proved to be a clean one, certainly 
 places him in a category very widely removed 
 from that in which we class the habitual criminal ; 
 but in that category we may recognize a subordi- 
 nate classification indicated by the nature of the 
 crime committed. Even among those who have 
 committed one single crime murder, for instance 
 very marked distinctions must be recognized, as 
 is even now done to some extent in our own judicial 
 courts, where, leaving out of account the case of 
 manslaughter, technical murderers are often not 
 dealt with according to the strict letter of the
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 177 
 
 law, effect being given to a recommendation to 
 mercy by the jury. Some countries carry out 
 this principle further, making a legal distinction 
 between murder of the first and murder of the 
 second degree, &c. 
 
 Thus, while character is to have the first con- 
 sideration in determining the severity of a judicial 
 sentence, the one act which has brought a man 
 under judicial observation must have its due 
 weight as a datum, by the aid of which the man's 
 character may be more accurately inferred. The 
 questions whether a murder or other personal 
 injury has been committed owing to an in- 
 sufficiently restrained temper, or from a cal- 
 culating spirit of revenge, or from cupidity, or 
 from jealousy, or out of pure brutality, are very 
 important ones, and must be given their proper 
 weight when the penalty for the crime is being 
 fixed. To say generally that every act which is 
 at present called murder deserves death is a very 
 crude statement ; and the fact that up to now the 
 taking of human life has been classified under 
 only two main heads, manslaughter and murder, 
 argues, as yet, a small development in us as a 
 nation of the analytical faculty. 
 
 The mistake which the legislature has made 
 has been the recognition solely of one datum as 
 sufficient for the determination of a penalty, 
 whereas it is with a man's whole character, so far 
 as we can ascertain it, that we have to deal, and 
 the one fact which has hitherto been all in all 
 must simply take its proper place as one clue, no 
 doubt often an important one, to assist us in this 
 
 13
 
 i?8 CRIME. 
 
 investigation. For the sake of example let us 
 suppose that three men are brought to trial under 
 the following circumstances. All three are about 
 the same age thirty-five years ; it is proved that 
 they have previously led no worse lives than the 
 average of people who die without ever standing 
 in the dock ; nothing worse than the peccadilloes 
 to which our weak human natures are prone can 
 be proved against them. Number One, however, 
 has been unfortunate, he s has made bad invest- 
 ments, has lived above his income, has borrowed 
 money, and his creditors are pressing, he has a 
 wife, and ruin stares them in the face ; in despera- 
 tion he borrows a sum of money from his employer 
 without that employer's knowledge and consent, 
 but, unluckily, before he could return the sum, 
 which he honestly hoped to do, the deficiency is 
 discovered, his loan is qualified by the ugly name 
 of embezzlement, and he is prosecuted. Number 
 Two starts in a position in life similar with Number 
 One, but his life is by no means similar in its 
 course, money seems to stick to his fingers, he 
 speculates and is successful, but love of money 
 has grown with the growth of his income, his 
 expenditure is large, his avarice increases, his 
 wealth does not accumulate fast enough, and he 
 forges a cheque for a large amount. Number 
 Three starts life in the same position as the former 
 two, he lives moderately, is steady, obtains the 
 confidence of his chief, earns a fair salary, and 
 saves money ; one day, while disputing with an 
 acquaintance, he flies into a passion, strikes the 
 man who has angered him upon the temple, and 
 kills him with the blow.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 179 
 
 Now, from all the facts which are known con- 
 cerning the previous career of the three men, it 
 might be impossible to infer much difference in 
 their characters, but a consideration of the nature 
 of the acts of which they are convicted will make 
 it clear that they are fundamentally of different 
 dispositions. The case of Number One has 
 practically been considered in n ; there is no 
 evidence of vice or of a depraved nature ; a short, 
 deterrent sentence, possibly a month only, but 
 the severity of which will partly be determined 
 by what is learnt in evidence as to the amount of 
 temptation to which the offender has been ex- 
 posed, sometimes even a mere taking of sureties 
 to be of good behaviour will meet the require- 
 ments of this case. But the commission of the 
 crime of which Number Two has been guilty un- 
 doubtedly pre-supposes some perversion of the 
 moral nature ; it may be safely concluded that 
 avarice and dishonesty, excessive egotism and 
 lack of sympathy with the misfortunes of others, 
 have taken tolerably firm root in the mind of a man 
 who could calmly, when unspurred by need, thus 
 defraud other men of the fruits of their honest 
 labour. A sufficiently long sentence must there- 
 fore be given to enable a reformatory effect to be 
 produced, and to admit of habits of self-restraint, 
 self-denial, and frugality to be produced; and yet not 
 so long a sentence as would now probably be given, 
 for the position of this man is such that deterrent 
 methods would not be without considerable effect 
 upon him. Many men have impulses to evil ; as 
 Diderot has truly said, " Le coeur humain est tour
 
 i8o CRIME. 
 
 a tour un sanctuaire et un cloacque," and even 
 the very best of mankind must occasionally be 
 disturbed by the promptings of those brutal and 
 savage parts of their natures, which have come 
 down even to us civilized beings like an heirloom 
 from a remote ancestry. But such men do not 
 respond to these savage impulses because they 
 have learnt to command themselves, or their for- 
 bears have gradually done so and transmitted to 
 their offspring the results of this great lesson : 
 and thus it might very well be that another man, 
 in an exactly similar situation with him whom 
 we have called Number Two, might feel an 
 equally strong impulse to the commission of the 
 same wrong act, but, having his impulses under 
 better control, might abstain therefrom ; many, 
 again, are saved from sin by their desire to stand 
 well with the world, and the self-restraint which 
 perpetually results from this feeling becomes in 
 time more or less habitual and really elevates the 
 moral nature. An effect of this latter kind may 
 be produced by deterrent methods upon the forger 
 whose case we are considering, or upon any man 
 who has done wrong under similar circumstances; 
 the shame, and the irksomeness of imprison- 
 ment to one who has been accustomed to live 
 luxuriously or even comfortably, would make such 
 an impression upon his mind that, even wer his 
 real character quite unchanged, the remembrance 
 of former unpleasant consequences might be 
 sufficient to induce him to put a check upon his 
 selfish impulses. In his case, too, the effects of 
 the exposure would be more severe than even a
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 181 
 
 long imprisonment, so that probably the requisite 
 reformatory and deterrent effect would be pro- 
 duced by a year's incarceration. 
 
 Number Three has been guilty of murder, and, 
 according to our laws, has deserved death, which, 
 if extenuating circumstances should appear, would 
 be commuted to penal servitude for life; but many 
 a man might lose his temper and strike as heavy 
 a blow, and yet not kill nor even wound very 
 severely the person struck ; how, then, is it that 
 of two men who have performed identical acts, 
 one has merited death and the other possibly 
 only a few months' imprisonment ? Surely there 
 is here some inconsistency. Without doubt there 
 is; and it arises from the mistaken practice of 
 basing penalties chiefly upon results, whereas 
 the motive is much more important, and the 
 offender's general character most important of 
 all. There have been known instances of men 
 who had been in the habit of giving way to 
 temper, at length, in a blind fit of passion, in- 
 flicting some serious injury upon a friend, and 
 then having been so overcome by sorrow and 
 remorse as to have successfully undertaken the 
 subjugation of their hasty temper ; and thus a man 
 who has committed murder under the circum- 
 stances supposed, might not only never again 
 strike a fellow-creature, but might, owing to the 
 bitter punishment of remorse, become even more 
 temperate and self-restrained than many others 
 who had never similarly lost their self-control. 
 Now, if we could feel perfectly assured that any 
 individual who has committed a murder is no
 
 1 82 CRIME. 
 
 more likely to commit another than any other 
 person, it would be unnecessary to confine him 
 or to deal with him in any way whatever ; but 
 though a large proportion of the murderers of the 
 class now considered would never commit a second 
 murder, some might ; and in the absence of any 
 means of distinguishing these, a certain term of 
 imprisonment must be given to all, which, accord- 
 ing to a perfect system, should not be limited, 
 but of indefinite length, to be determined by the 
 after-behaviour of the convict. Scope should be 
 given to him for the exercise of self-control, and 
 a close watch kept upon his words and actions by 
 a person possessed of the requisite tact, know- 
 ledge of human nature, and other qualifications, 
 and as soon as it is reasonably certain that the 
 man has obtained the mastery over himself, he 
 ought to be discharged, in order that he may again 
 fulfil the duties of a good citizen. Six months 
 might in some cases be sufficient for this, in 
 others two years or even more might be neces- 
 sary. 
 
 These typical cases have been somewhat en- 
 larged upon, that they might serve as examples 
 of the manner in which it is proper that dis- 
 tinctions should be made between the treatment 
 of those who, not being really vicious, commit 
 what may be termed casual crimes, and those 
 who are criminals by nature, in the true sense of 
 the word. To entirely eradicate vicious habits of 
 thought and act from the minds of these latter, 
 and to supplant them by virtuous habits, will 
 clearly demand in most cases a long period of
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 183 
 
 judicious treatment, and in some cases a lifetime 
 will not suffice for the attainment of this result. 
 If this view of the matter is correct, the sentences 
 now given to the former of these two classes are 
 often too long and never determined by just con- 
 siderations, while those given to the latter are 
 almost invariably much too short ; and even if it 
 can be said (and I do not think it can) that the 
 first half of this proposition is merely matter of 
 opinion, it cannot certainly be denied that the 
 second half is the statement of a fact of which 
 proofs have in a former section being given. z 
 
 14. Here is a case which appeared in the 
 evening papers in April, 1888 : " David Miller is 
 not exactly a customer after the publicans' own 
 heart. When he entered the 'Sir Sidney Smith,' 
 in Dock-street, Whitechapel, he was evidently 
 inebriated, and the landlord thus very properly 
 refused to serve him. This was enough. Off 
 came his coat, and out went his fist in close 
 proximity to a neighbour's face. In a moment he 
 had assailed the landlord, and when that worthy 
 endeavoured to eject him he kicked, and then 
 tried to bite him. However, he was held under 
 until P.C. 85 H arrived. P.C. 85 H soon had 
 a taste of his violent quality in a blow in the eye, 
 which blackened it. P.S. 33 H now came to the 
 assistance of 85 H ; three other constables fol- 
 lowed 33 H. P.C. 461 H immediately received a 
 kick on the thigh, which raised a bruise as big as 
 the palm of his hand. At last Miller was got to 
 the station, and while in the dock he, in the words 
 1 10.
 
 1 84 CRIME. 
 
 of one of his victims, ' landed 79 H full in the eye.' 
 For all of which Mr. Saunders sentenced him at 
 the Thames Court to four months' imprisonment." 
 
 Now it is quite conceivable that had one of the 
 blows or kicks fallen upon a vital part, one of 
 these policemen might have been killed ; for a 
 violent blow which, delivered upon some parts of 
 the body would only cause a bruise, falling upon 
 some other parts would cause death, either im- 
 mediately or after sufferings more or less pro- 
 longed ; from which considerations it follows that 
 the event of a promiscuous encounter such as that 
 just described, is entirely dependent upon chance. 
 Consequently, two men may behave in precisely 
 the same way, their actions may be identical in 
 every respect, and yet for these actions one may 
 be visited with death or penal servitude for life, 
 while the other escapes with four months' im- 
 prisonment ; and which of the two shall be hanged 
 and which shall go free is a matter of pure luck ! 
 I say that a system from which such an illogical 
 result as this can- come must be rotten somewhere. 
 
 Most of those who have discussed the bearing 
 of punishment upon the amount of crime, have 
 held it to be of the first importance that a given 
 conduct should infallibly be followed by a given 
 penalty, and they have maintained that the cer- 
 tainty of this consequence would be a far more 
 potent factor in diminishing crime than .the 
 severity of punishments. 
 
 Thus Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill x has written : 
 " That crime will be repressed in proportion to 
 1 " Repression of Crime," pp. 4-5.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 185 
 
 the certainty of the detection and punishment of 
 the criminal, is an obvious truth. And experience 
 has at length taught us, that a certain punish- 
 ment, though slight, is far more effectual to deter 
 from crime, than the terror of the heaviest penalty 
 that man can inflict when the chances of escape 
 are numerous." 
 
 We are therefore driven to wonder that a method 
 which has been designed to deter, should leave so 
 much to pure chance, although competent authori- 
 ties have declared that chance is fatal to deterrent 
 methods. Even though we have been led to the 
 conclusion that a reformatory system is the best, 
 yet we would not reject such assistance as the 
 deterrent action of penalties can afford, and on 
 this ground alone would have to protest against a 
 practice which so seriously vitiates the efficiency 
 of an instrument in itself sufficiently weak ; but 
 chiefly we must condemn it because it is incon- 
 sistent, unjust, and opposed to fundamental 
 principles. 
 
 David Miller is a drunkard and a brute. We 
 have found that a few months' imprisonment are 
 powerless to produce sobriety ; and to expect to 
 convert a brute to a human being in four months 
 is obviously absurd. It is simply wronging the 
 public to again turn loose upon them a wild and 
 dangerous animal after it has once been safely 
 secured, and should be as much an offence as if 
 one of the keepers at the Zoological Gardens 
 deliberately opened a cage-door and allowed a 
 tiger to spring out into the midst of a crowd of 
 people. There are prowling about many savage
 
 1 86 . CRIME. 
 
 brutes in human form, which from time to time 
 make their appearance in the police-courts, and 
 are relegated to cages for ridiculously short terms ; 
 and if, as is likely enough, one of these monsters, 
 after having been once in the hands of the police, 
 either when drunk or in a fit of passion, or out of 
 pure brutality, should kill some one, the law is 
 reponsible for that loss of life. 
 
 15. The fact is that the sentences passed upon 
 casual offenders, or first offenders, are usually as 
 much too long as those passed upon true crimi- 
 nals vicious men and women, and beasts in human 
 shape are too short. These two propositions 
 cannot really be dissevered, for both are deduced 
 from the same fundamental principle ; they are 
 either both true or both false, and if the truth of 
 one be admitted the truth of the other is ipso facto 
 admitted also. But the first has recently been 
 partially recognized by the legislature itself, and 
 the necessity for taking previous character into 
 account has been admitted to such an extent as 
 to make it impossible to consistently refuse assent 
 to the truth of the principle in its full bearing 
 upon the treatment of every class of criminals. I 
 refer to the First Offenders Act which received 
 the Royal assent on the 8th of September, 1887. 
 This Act, after reciting that it is expedient to 
 make provision for cases where the reformation of 
 persons convicted of first offences may, by reason 
 of the offender's youth or the trivial nature of the 
 offence, be brought about without imprisonment, 
 goes on to provide that the court may have regard 
 to the youth, character, and antecedents of the
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 187 
 
 offender, to the trivial nature of the offence, and to 
 any extenuating circumstances under which the 
 offence was committed, and instead of sentencing 
 him at once to any punishment may direct that he 
 be released on entering into a recognizance, with or 
 without sureties, to appear and receive judgment 
 when called upon, and in the meantime to keep 
 the peace and be of good behaviour. 
 
 In the case of first offenders, then, the legis- 
 lature has decided that so much weight is to be 
 attached to a man's previous character that it 
 shall, if good, completely counterbalance the 
 gravity of the particular .offence ; and, having 
 once admitted the justice of this principle, it will 
 be impossible to restrict it to a special case ; it is 
 certain that in time it must be extended so as to 
 regulate all penalties inflicted by the law-courts 
 in the manner suggested in the foregoing pages. 
 It is greatly to be hoped that magistrates will 
 take advantage of the option thus given them, and 
 not allow so excellent an Act to become a dead 
 letter. It may be well to give an instance which 
 appeared in The Morning Post * of the way in 
 which this Act works, from which we may see 
 how a young man, who formerly might have been 
 ruined for life, may now retrieve his character, 
 and has still a chance of living an honourable and 
 useful life. 
 
 " At Greenwich Police Court, yesterday, Sydney 
 
 Herbert Francis, thirty years of age, clerk, was 
 
 charged with absconding with ^30 belonging to 
 
 his employers, the Agricultural Association, whose 
 
 1 September 22, 1887.
 
 1 88 CRIME. 
 
 offices are in Creek Road, Deptford. Mr. Green- 
 ing, the managing director, said that the prisoner 
 had been a clerk in the service of the Association. 
 A cheque of 30 was given to him by the cashier 
 on August 5, and he cashed it, but never returned. 
 After giving further details, Mr. Greening said 
 that the Association did not wish to deal hardly 
 with the prisoner. The prisoner pleaded guilty. 
 Mr. Montagu Williams said he feared it would 
 not be sufficient to deal with the prisoner under the 
 First Offenders Act, and committed him for ten 
 weeks with hard labour. Subsequently, Mr. 
 Greening made an application to the magistrate 
 to commute the sentence, saying that the Associ- 
 ation would be satisfied if the prisoner were dealt 
 with as the magistrate had hinted he had power 
 to do. Mr. Montagu Williams said he would 
 deal with the prisoner under the First Offenders 
 Act, which was an excellent measure, as it gave 
 persons who once offended a chance to retrieve 
 their character. It was very difficult for a young 
 man after being sent to prison to obtain another 
 situation. He accepted the prisoner's own recog- 
 nizances in ;ioo to come up for judgment if 
 called upon." 
 
 But if good character is to be allowed entirely 
 to outweigh a single offence in some cases, how 
 can we consistently refuse to allow the considera- 
 tion of it largely to mitigate the severity of 
 sentences in other cases ? and why should not an 
 offence committed by a person of bad character 
 be considered to require to be visited by a sentence 
 of increased severity even to the extent of giving,
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 189 
 
 in certain cases, very heavy sentences for compara- 
 tively trifling offences ? The truth of the principle 
 that character is the thing to be considered, 
 having once been admitted and the principle 
 partially applied, the extended application of it 
 has become inevitable, and absolutely required by 
 consistency. 
 
 16. There is yet another, and entirely .indepen- 
 dent, reason for advocating the extension of terms 
 of imprisonment in the case of really abandoned 
 persons. In the course of our investigation into 
 the causes of crime we found that heredity is a 
 very important factor in the determination of 
 every man's character. Now hereditarily acquired 
 impulses, or instincts, as they may be called, are 
 really habits acquired by a man's forbears and 
 transmitted to their offspring in greater or less 
 intensity : but there is no doubt that habits, 
 whether acquired or inherited, can become much 
 weakened from desuetude, and new habits may 
 gradually be formed. These processes, however, 
 are slow, and often demand considerable periods 
 of time for their complete effection ; in some 
 instances, possibly, a lifetime is too short. If, 
 therefore, the nature of a man's offence and what 
 is known of his previous conduct prove that he 
 has inherited habits of an immoral character, 
 society is called upon for two strong reasons to 
 keep him secluded for a tolerably lengthy period : 
 of which reasons the first is that such immoral 
 habits may, by long and forced desuetude, become 
 atrophied, and new and social habits formed by a 
 proper treatment and the second that he may
 
 190 CRIME. 
 
 be prevented, while in a morally diseased con- 
 dition, from begetting beings to whom his vicious 
 habits may be transmitted. It being exceedingly 
 probable that the bulk of the criminal classes are 
 the descendants of criminals, and are what they 
 are partly on account of inherited tendencies and 
 partly owing to the unfavourable moral atmo- 
 sphere in which their childhood is spent, the 
 inference is that the numbers of criminals will 
 not sensibly diminish until some remedy is applied 
 which may be adequate to remove these two 
 sources of disease. How the second may be dealt 
 with has been indicated in chaps, v. and vi. ; 
 the force of the first will also be much lessened by 
 those methods ; and we now see that their effect 
 may be supplemented by awarding to vicious men 
 terms of imprisonment of such length as to leave 
 them no opportunity of injuring the State by 
 means of a vicious progeny. 
 
 17. The difficulty is that it would be im- 
 possible for a judge to tell exactly how long a 
 time would be requisite to produce the desired 
 result in each particular case ; so that some men 
 might be released from prison still unreformed, 
 while others would be kept there longer than 
 necessary; and it has been proposed by many that 
 the sentence of imprisonment should be more or 
 less of an indefinite length, to be determined by 
 the convict's behaviour in prison. Captain 
 Maconochie, sometime Governor of Birmingham 
 Prison, a man of large and enlightened views on 
 prison management, proposed that a certain 
 number of marks should be assigned for a given
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 191 
 
 quantity of labour, and that prisoners should be 
 sentenced, not for a fixed term, but until they 
 should have earned a certain number of marks, 
 and that marks should be forfeited for bad con- 
 duct. Even in this case, however, though the 
 plan is a great improvement upon our present 
 system, there is necessarily a minimum term, 
 namely, the shortest period in which the marks 
 can be earned, which can be indefinitely lengthened 
 by idleness or bad conduct, but which cannot be 
 curtailed, even were it absolutely certain that any 
 individual prisoner was really reformed when he 
 had earned half the appointed number. 
 
 The theoretically perfect plan would be for 
 convicts to be condemned to remain in prison 
 until it should appear to certain competent 
 persons in a position to closely observe the 
 prisoners, that they were really reformed. The 
 only question is whether such a system is really 
 practicable. Fortunately, the experiment is being 
 tried, and, so far, it appears to have been attended 
 by a complete and well-merited success. The 
 system is thus sketched by the Rev. J. W. 
 Horsley: 1 " The last annual report of the New 
 York Reformatory at Elmira is now to hand, and 
 certainly its principles and practice are remark- 
 able, and even unique. It is a prison for males 
 between the ages of sixteen and thirty, with about 
 500 inmates, and has been in use some six years. 
 It introduces features into criminal jurisprudence 
 and treatment which are new not merely to New 
 York, but to the world ; and here we see in opera- 
 1 "Jottings from Jail," p. 173.
 
 1 92 CRIME. 
 
 tion what all prison reformers desire the first 
 step to classification ensured by sending the more 
 youthful, venial, and susceptible prisoners to a 
 separate establishment for peculiar treatment. 
 But the chief novelty is in the principle which 
 prompts the action and treatment by the State. 
 A prison, they say at New York, exists not chiefly 
 for punishment, nor even primarily for reforma- 
 tion, but for the protection of society from those 
 who have been obnoxious or injurious to it, while 
 that probability of noxiousness remains, and no 
 longer. Hence an Act of 1887 takes from the 
 courts the power of fixing or limiting the period of 
 punishment, and sentences offenders simply to be 
 detained in prison until it appears to the managers 
 of Elmira Reformatory that they have so im- 
 proved, intellectually and morally, that they may 
 be let out on parole or ticket-of-leave for a pro- 
 bationary period of six months. A safeguard, 
 however, against undue detention (which, of 
 course, on these principles, might be life-long), is 
 found in the clause that provides that no im- 
 prisonment shall exceed the maximum term pro- 
 vided by law for the crime for which the prisoner 
 was convicted. These " indefinites," as they are 
 called, can secure, by consistent and progressive 
 good behaviour, a conditional release on parole in 
 one year, and an absolute release in eighteen 
 months, from the date of their admission, without 
 regard to punishment or to the particular crime 
 they have committed. And hereby it trades on 
 that love of liberty which is next to love of life in 
 strength among human motives. Let a young
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 193 
 
 burglar or post-office embezzler get his five years, 
 and he knows he must " do " at least four of the 
 five, and thereby he naturally falls into a heavy, 
 unambitious, and dogged condition, that is careful 
 only to avoid additional punishment, but has no 
 incentive to moral and intellectual growth. At 
 Elmira, however, he is made to feel, as he daily 
 works out his own salvation or freedom, how 
 profitable is virtue ; and the mark system, which 
 we use simply as a bribe to the abstention from 
 ill-doing, is there, in an extended and improved 
 form, productive of progressive well-doing in the 
 three departments of industry, mental and moral 
 culture, and renders unnecessary any punishment 
 save in the the third or lowest grade, which never 
 exceeds 15 per cent, of the whole." x 
 
 Further on * he says : " Passing from principles 
 to details, it is interesting to notice that the 
 average detention is sixteen months, though, 
 under the old law, the minimum allotted to the 
 offences of some of the prisoners was five, or 
 even ten years, and that out of 1,205 treated in 
 five years as ' indefinites,' only 37 are known to 
 have relapsed into crime, and if half of those 
 ultimately lost sight of be added, the number is 
 only 121." 
 
 Those who have had the patience to accompany 
 me thus far will perceive that this system is 
 founded upon true principles ; and that, like all 
 those plans which spring from a knowledge of 
 human nature,, and treat men as human beings 
 and not as brutes, such as the plans of Colonel 
 1 "Jottings from Jail," p. 177.
 
 194 CRIME. 
 
 Montesinos, M. Obermaier, Captain Crofton, and 
 Captain Maconochie, it has been crowned with a 
 success which effectually demonstrates the supe- 
 riority of all such systems over our present 
 deterrent methods, which, however, in spite of 
 both a priori and a posteriori demonstration remain 
 as a monument of the conservatism of the English 
 people. 
 
 18. It may, perhaps, be observed that if such a 
 system as this came into operation in all our 
 prisons, the functions of a judge would be almost 
 entirely transferred to certain prison officials. 
 Well, if this were so, it would not be a sufficient 
 ground for objecting to the inauguration of a 
 system which promises such excellent results. 
 But, as a matter of fact, such would not be the 
 case; for it would still be necessary that a man of 
 acute understanding, of a logical mind, of im- 
 partial judgment, and imbued with a deep know- 
 ledge of the law, should preside over our courts of 
 justice in order to see that the accused has fair 
 play, and to sum up the pros and cons in a calm 
 and unbiassed address to the jury at the termina- 
 tion of the case. Moreover, it is not proposed to 
 leave absolutely to certain prison officials the deter- 
 mination of the length of a convict's detention, be- 
 cause, as has been pointed out in previous sections 
 of this chapter, 1 a consideration of an offender's 
 previous character will make it advisable that, in 
 some cases no imprisonment should be inflicted at 
 all, in others a maximum of a few months only, 
 while in the case of a really vicious and immoral 
 1 See also on this point, cap. ix. 7.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 195 
 
 person a sentence of indefinite length must be 
 pronounced ; a proper determination of which will 
 require, on the part of judges, certainly, no less 
 thought and discrimination than now. 
 
 Then, against the adoption of the system of 
 considering a man's character more than the 
 actual offence for which he is charged, may be 
 urged the objection, that it will often be difficult, 
 and sometimes impossible, to discover what the 
 offender's real character is, and that an immoral 
 man might bring up as witnesses to character un- 
 principled persons who would perjure themselves. 
 There will be no doubt a great difficulty on this 
 account in some cases, and great caution and 
 penetration on the part of the judge will be 
 necessitated by it; but the difficulty is by no 
 means so great as to be a real objection to the 
 plan proposed. For in cases where the offender is 
 being tried for the first time, and has previously 
 occupied a respectable position in society, there 
 will really be no difficulty at all ; and when the 
 first offender has lived among drunkards, thieves, 
 beggars, and persons of that description, the 
 counsel for the prosecution will surely not find it 
 hard to bring forward evidence of the fact, and 
 should no specific acts of immorality be proved 
 against the prisoner, it may safely be taken that 
 his character is shown by the company he kept; 
 at any rate, the judge will probably be able to 
 determine from such evidence whether the prisoner 
 is a vicious man or not. There will, however, 
 doubtless be cases in which it will be impossible 
 to conclude with any certainty that the offender
 
 196 CRIME. 
 
 has previously lived a moral life, while no trust- 
 worthy evidence of previous vice is forthcoming. 
 In these cases the judge, using his discretion, 
 might give the prisoner a definite, probably not 
 lengthy, term, based partly upon the nature of the 
 offence and partly upon what little he has been 
 able to gather with certainty with regard to the 
 prisoner's character. Should the offender's cha- 
 racter really be bad, it will not be long before he 
 commits a second offence, whereupon, his first 
 being proved against him,- he will be adjudged a 
 person of bad character and sentenced accordingly. 
 19. Reasoning and experience, therefore, seem 
 both to point to this that in assigning penalties, 
 no less than in the method of carrying them out, 
 our object must be, not to retaliate upon a man 
 for the commission by him of some special act ; 
 not to be guided by a spirit of revenge ; not to 
 endeavour to terrify the culprit with the mistaken 
 desire to make him an example to others, but with 
 the actual result of lowering his self-respect and 
 numbing his mental and moral faculties : rather 
 must it be this to go to the root of the evil, and 
 deal with the offender's moral nature, and to pre- 
 vent contamination of the hitherto innocent by 
 keeping apart every immoral person who has come 
 within the scope of the law, until there is good 
 reason to believe that his discharge will be a 
 benefit rather than an injury to the State. If the 
 English people can only be persuaded to abandon 
 the worse than useless system at present in vogue 
 for the treatment of offenders, and if, by examining 
 carefully all those schemes which have by far-
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 197 
 
 seeing men been either propounded or carried out in 
 practice, selecting the best pointsof each, and learn- 
 ing by experience, they would formulate a great, 
 humane, consistent, scientific, and natural scheme, 
 the number of gaolsmightbeimmensely diminished, 
 their cost reduced to nil, and a horde of creatures, 
 who now prey upon society, causing a feeling of 
 insecurity and large annual loss, converted into 
 producers and contributors to the wealth and 
 prosperity of our great Empire. Having, in past 
 times, been so often the pioneer among the nations 
 of magnificent social, and industrial undertakings, 
 let us no longer placidly submit to this great blot 
 upon the fair face of our social institutions, but 
 show the world that we have discovered the secret 
 of converting locusts and drones into ants and 
 bees, by turning to the advantage of our State 
 men, who, owing to neglect and improper treat- 
 ment, were an impediment about the feet of our 
 progress.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS 
 SOME DETAILS. 
 
 " To make vicious and abandoned people happy it has 
 generally been supposed necessary first to made them 
 virtuous. But why not reverse this order ? Why not make 
 them first happy and then virtuous ? If happiness and 
 virtue be inseparable, the end will as certainly be attained 
 by one method as the other ; and it is most undoubtedly 
 much easier to contribute to the happiness and comfort of 
 persons in a state of poverty and misery than, by admoni- 
 tions and punishments, to improve their morals." COUNT 
 RUMFORD. 
 
 i. HAVING established certain fundamental 
 principles, it now becomes my duty to endeavour 
 to found upon them the more important details of 
 an improved system of prison discipline a work 
 requiring much circumspection, and upon which I 
 enter with considerable diffidence, and with the 
 preliminary declaration that the suggestions I am 
 about to make are merely tentative, and designed 
 to be a rough outline which may be revised and 
 filled in by persons more competent to do so than 
 myself. 
 
 The systems of prison discipline hitherto in
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 199 
 
 general operation may be classified under three 
 main heads the Solitary System the Separate 
 System and the Silent Associated System ; con- 
 cerning the respective merits of which eager dis- 
 cussions have from time to time arisen. The 
 object of all is the same namely, to keep 
 prisoners from communicating, and thus contami- 
 nating one another. The solitary system was 
 never in favour in England ; it has been tried in 
 America, but though it certainly answers the 
 purpose of preventing intercourse between 
 prisoners, its effect upon the mind and health of 
 those subjected to it, is exceedingly deleterious, of 
 which fact an instance is given in the appendix. 
 
 There remain, therefore, the Separate and the 
 Silent Systems, and it is upon the respective advan- 
 tages of these two that opinion in England has 
 been divided. 
 
 2. Upon the general reformation of prison 
 discipline after the disclosures of Howard, the 
 separate system was the favourite, but it was 
 found to be open to the same objection as the 
 solitary system, though, of course, to a much less 
 extent. Nevertheless, many persons of experience 
 and high authority continued to advocate it on the 
 ground that it is the only really efficacious method 
 of preventing intercourse between prisoners, and 
 for sentences of imprisonment for periods of one 
 month up to two years, it is still more or less 
 strictly in operation. In the Government convict 
 prisons, however, with the exception of Penton- 
 ville and Millbank, the system has been discarded ; 
 and, indeed, it has several grave defects.
 
 200 CRIME. 
 
 In 1850, Captain Donatus O'Brien, Director of 
 Government Prisons, was examined before the 
 the Select Committee on Prison Discipline, when 
 the following interrogation took place : 
 
 " 1530. [Sir J. Pakington] : I understood you 
 to have said, in reply to a former question, that 
 this system of passing the whole time in cells, 
 with the exception of the time they are in chapel 
 and at exercise, in your experience produces an 
 injurious effect upon the health of the prisoners, 
 after a period of six or nine months ? From that 
 time a difference in their appearance is observable. 
 
 " 1531. What difference do you mean ? They 
 look whiter, and they lose muscular power ; but I 
 do not know that I am justified in going to the 
 extent of saying that they actually lose health ; 
 they are not so robust as they all would be if out 
 of prison. 
 
 " 1536. When you used the expression that 
 prisoner's lost tone, did you refer at all to the 
 mental powers of the prisoners? No; yet I have 
 no doubt that the mental powers are affected, more 
 or less, by the physical condition of the men ; but 
 I can hardly say how far they are affected." 
 
 J. G. Perry, Esq., Inspector of Prisons, and 
 Fellow of the College of Surgeons, in the course 
 of his examination by the same Committee z ex- 
 pressed himself thus : " I think that if the 
 separate system is pursued without great care 
 and observation on the part of those who have to 
 administer it, and for a long term, prisoners 
 having a tendency to insanity will be more likely 
 1 Report, p. 122.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 201 
 
 to become insane. But I am not supported by 
 my observation in saying so much as that. . . . 
 The chief effect which I have observed from it 
 has been the softening of the character, and 
 the increased susceptibility of the prisoners a 
 susceptibility to impressions of all kinds. And 
 that effect of it I consider to be a valuable 
 preparation for the reception of the good im- 
 pressions which are conveyed to them by the 
 discipline of the prison. But, at the same time, it 
 must be obvious that the susceptibility to good 
 impressions must be accompanied also by a 
 susceptibility to bad ones ; and I think a man, 
 discharged from a prison conducted on the 
 separate system, and driven into association again 
 with bad characters, would be more likely to be 
 led into mischief in consequence of the increased 
 susceptibility of his mind, notwithstanding the 
 religious impressions which he had received in 
 the prison, and the theoretical virtue, as I may 
 call it, which he had imbibed there. I think he 
 would not be able to stand against the arts of 
 other persons of stronger mind so well as he 
 had been before." 
 
 Mr. Pearson read an extract from a paper by 
 Dr. Howe, of Boston, corroborating the opinion 
 expressed by Mr. O'Brien : J " While in confine- 
 ment the convicts are removed from temptation, 
 and the simple diet and regular life of a prisoner 
 lower the tone of their physical frame, and reduce 
 the violence of their animal appetites and passions. 
 In this condition they are more susceptible of 
 1 Report, p. 143.
 
 202 CRIME. 
 
 moral and religious impressions, and they will 
 often become unaffectedly penitent. Those who 
 have common sense will see that crime is poor 
 policy, and form resolutions of amendment ; those 
 who* are more imaginative will have their feeling 
 wrought upon, and pass through what is called a 
 religious conversion. But when they go out into 
 the world, and are stimulated by excesses, then 
 the dormant passions are aroused like wild beasts 
 from their lair, and the first temptation often 
 witnesses their fall. The exceptions to this are 
 so rare that prison-keepers and persons most 
 acquainted with convict life seldom have con- 
 fidence in the reformation of adult criminals, and 
 to a fearful extent their scepticism is well-founded." 
 
 A few more opinions may be quoted as to the 
 effect of separate confinement upon the health of 
 prisoners. 
 
 Captain J. R. Groves, Governor of Millbank 
 Prison, on being asked the question : * " Do you 
 find that the prisoners who are kept in separate 
 confinement, and who, you say, are not in such 
 separate confinement for more than five or six 
 months, suffer at all, either in their health or in 
 their minds, by such separate confinement ? " 
 replied, " Taking the mass of prisoners who are 
 so subjected, I think they do ; they suffer in both 
 mind and body." 
 
 "2483. Although the average term is not more 
 than five or six months ? Although the average 
 term is not more than five or six months at the 
 outside." 
 
 1 Report, p. 169.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 203 
 
 In 1878 Captain W. F. V. Harris, Governor of 
 Dartmoor Prison, gave evidence before the Penal 
 Servitude Acts Commission, and the following 
 questions and answers are reported : 
 
 " 8253. Do you observe that prisoners coming 
 from separate confinement at Pentonville or Mill- 
 bank are not quite equal to hard labour when 
 they first arrive ? They do not appear to be so ; 
 they appear to be languid and listless, and hardly 
 in good health I should say. 
 
 " 8254. [Chairman] : I rather gather from you 
 that you would not be of opinion that the period 
 of nine months' separation could be extended 
 with advantage ? I hardly think that it could be 
 safely done, speaking from my own experience." 
 
 It is unnecessary to quote further evidence on 
 this point, though pages might be filled with such 
 expressions of opinion as those just given; all 
 who have been in a position to observe the working 
 of the separate system seem to be in agreement 
 as to its eventual injurious effect upon the health 
 of the prisoner, the only difference of opinion 
 being as to the length of time for which it is safe 
 to apply it, some fixing the limit at five or six, 
 others at twelve, months." 
 
 But another, and perhaps greater, objection to 
 the system is that it conflicts with the principle of 
 making remunerative the labour of prisoners. No 
 doubt there are some handicrafts which can be 
 carried on in solitude, but if a profit is to be ex- 
 tracted from the work done in prisons throughout 
 the country a larger scope will be required for 
 prisoners' energies than solitary labour can afford;
 
 204 CRIME. 
 
 for instance, it will be quite necessary to employ 
 in agricultural labour a large number of men who 
 come into prison without any technical experience, 
 and others will be taught trades more efficiently 
 and at a less expense in association than in 
 separate cells. This practical difficulty has com- 
 pelled the prison authorities to allow convicts to 
 work in association in the Government prisons, 
 but having still a hankering after the separate 
 system, they have combined the two by providing 
 that every man who has been sentenced to penal 
 servitude shall undergo a preliminary period of 
 separate confinement. The considerations which 
 have so endeared the system to the official mind 
 are three in number : first, it has the undoubted 
 advantage of preventing the promiscuous inter- 
 communication of prisoners; second, it is supposed 
 to be peculiarly deterring ; and third, it is sup- 
 posed to have a reformatory effect. As we have 
 now decided to abandon the attempt to deter real 
 criminals, it is necessary only to consider how far 
 the reformatory influence of the system is a real 
 one. This point has already been adverted to, 
 and some evidence given with regard to it. It is 
 imagined that the mind of a prisoner being 
 subdued and chastened by a term of separate 
 confinement is more open to the beneficial effects 
 of religious teaching. The fact is, the nervous 
 system of a man in separate confinement be- 
 comes morbidly sensitive to external influences, 
 periods of deep depression may be suddenly 
 followed by periods of excessive elation, hope and 
 despondency rapidly alternate, producing an un-
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 205 
 
 healthy mental condition in which the emotions 
 are unduly exalted, and in which the prisoner 
 will easily be moved to tears or laughter, to re- 
 repentance and remorse. Now, religion being an 
 influence which appeals mainly to the emotions, it 
 is natural that a person in the condition supposed 
 will be affected by it, and being subjected to no 
 temptation, and having no means of putting his 
 newly-formed resolutions to the test, will honestly 
 believe that he is regenerate, and capable of lead- 
 ing a new life. But the man's real nature, the 
 nature which he has inherited, and which has 
 been slowly modified by the constantly recurring 
 impressions of years, is unaltered, it cannot have 
 been altered : no new habits have been formed ; 
 no distaste for vice by the constant performance 
 of virtuous acts and the resistance of temptations 
 has been produced ; there has been no opportunity 
 for anything of the sort ; the man's moral being 
 has been propped up by artificial supports ; from 
 all those means of strengthening his moral 
 faculties which are afforded by the exercise of 
 self-control, temperance, unselfishness, he has 
 been carefully warded, an abnormal nervous state 
 the result of an abnormal treatment has been 
 worked upon, and it is supposed that the man is 
 reformed. Experience and statistics give the lie 
 to this supposition; and it is, indeed, only natural 
 that as soon as the man is restored to normal 
 conditions his emotional exaltation with the fair 
 blossoms that have been grafted upon it should 
 die away; but the man is fundamentally the same, 
 the appetites and passions which formerly ruled
 
 206 CRIME. 
 
 him were only dormant, their long sleep is only 
 likely to be followed by a reaction to proportionate 
 excesses, and, as Mr. Perry and Dr. Howe have 
 pointed out, the abnormal susceptibility with 
 which he is temporarily affected leaves him as 
 open to bad impressions on his discharge as in 
 prison he was to good ones. It may be that in a 
 few cases, where the prisoner's character was not 
 naturally very bad, and when he is successful in 
 obtaining a situation soon after his release, thus 
 coming into the midst of influences which tend to 
 preserve in his mind the effect of the religious 
 teaching of the prison chaplain and the force of 
 the good resolutions he has made, a permanent 
 reformation is effected ; but this is only because, 
 in the environment into which the man is for- 
 tunately placed, corrupting examples are wanting 
 and conditions exist favourable to the acquirement 
 of those habits of industry and upright dealing 
 which, under a proper system of prison discipline, 
 he ought already to be imbued with on his dis- 
 charge. 
 
 The plea, therefore, that the separate system 
 is a reformatory one cannot be made good, neither 
 is it found in practice to be appreciably deterrent, 
 while it is open to grave objections which may be 
 thus summed up : it is unnatural, it is unecono- 
 mical, it is dangerous to health, it is unjust to the 
 prisoner " because it throws him back into society 
 with diminished physical ability to encounter the 
 variableness of climate, the severity of labour, 
 and the pinchings of want, to which, as a labourer 
 in the market of competition, he must be ever
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 207 
 
 liable ; " * it is not really reformatory, but, on the 
 contrary, turns the prisoner loose in a condition of 
 mind particularly liable to be impressed by the 
 incitements to evil of stronger-minded men ; it is 
 not philosophic, the prisoner is not exposed to any 
 temptation, and his character is not tested; finally, 
 it has been tried and found wanting. 
 
 3. We come now to a consideration of the 
 system known as the Associated Silent System, 
 the chief advocate of which was the late George 
 Laval Chesterton, to whom reference has already 
 been made in these pages ; by him the system was 
 probably more rigorously carried out in practice 
 than it has ever been before or since his time, 
 though the system is now nominally in operation 
 in the Government convict prisons. It is at once 
 evident that this system is free from many of the 
 objections which can be urged against the separate 
 system : there is no fear of injury to health ; by 
 associated work the employment of the prisoners 
 can be more economically carried on, and the state 
 of things is altogether more normal and natural. 
 Mr. Chesterton has given some examples which 
 bring out very markedly the effect which each 
 system is apt to exercise upon the minds of those 
 subjected to it, the irritating effect of long solitude 
 producing an abnormal nervous state, in contrast 
 to the natural frame of mind produced by associa- 
 tion with other human beings. In the Report of 
 the Select Committee on Prison Discipline, 1850, 
 the following questions and answers appear : 
 
 1 Mr. C. PEARSON. Report of the Select Committee on 
 Prison Discipline, 1850, p. xxvii.
 
 208 CRIME. 
 
 "8470. [Mr. C. Pearson] : I believe you have in 
 the mat-making room a man of the name of 
 Clarke, who came from Newgate, having been 
 sentenced for a murderous attack upon a keeper 
 in Pentonville Prison ? [Mr. Chesterton] : I have. 
 
 "8471. What did you understand was the attack 
 which he made upon his warder in Pentonville ? 
 He was working at mat-making, as I understand, 
 in a separate cell, and when the warder opened 
 the door he assailed him with a stool ; he broke 
 it, and would have killed him, no doubt, if assist- 
 ance had not been at hand. 
 
 "8472. The Pentonville system has been de- 
 scribed as soothing and tranquillizing ; when this 
 man came to you under sentence for the murderous 
 attack in Pentonville, what did you do with him ? 
 I put him immediately into association, but I 
 gave him a very friendly caution as to his conduct. 
 I had been informed that he had used threats of 
 violence towards us in Newgate, and I first told 
 him of our power to repress any violence, and the 
 very heavy punishment which would await him if 
 he attempted it ; then I pointed out to him, as 
 earnestly as I possibly could, the duty incumbent 
 upon him to behave peaceably and quietly and 
 submissively ; the man fell at once into an orderly 
 frame of mind, and has continued in the best frame 
 of mind ever since. 
 
 " 8473. [Sir J. Packington] : How long has he 
 been with you ? About nine months. 
 
 "8475. [Mr. C. Pearson] : Your system being 
 described as irritating, do you allow him weapons 
 and instruments in his trade as a mat-maker ?
 
 THE TREATMENT. OF ADULT CRIMINALS, log 
 
 Every instrument that is necessary for his work ; 
 a sharp-pointed knife. 
 
 " 8477. I believe some years since a prisoner did 
 make an attack upon one of your warders ? He 
 did ; he killed him. 
 
 " 8478. Was the prisoner at that time in congre- 
 gation, or was he in a separate cell ? He was in 
 a cell." 
 
 But although this system is a decidedly 
 nearer approach to the natural state of man, and 
 therefore preferable to complete separation, it is 
 clearly yet far from a perfect system in that 
 respect, and it has the further objection a great 
 one, when viewed in connection with the desire to 
 make prisons self-supporting that a large staff of 
 warders is required to keep silence. In the 
 Government prisons the inefficiency of the staff 
 much impairs the effectiveness of the system as a 
 bar to communication between prisoners, and there 
 is plenty of evidence that improper communica- 
 tions take place. The author of " Five Years' Penal 
 Servitude " has testified to this fact, and another 
 ex-convict, Henry Harcourt, has stated that " as a 
 matter of fact the present system encourages 
 filthy talk, nothing will stop it. There is a great 
 deal of talking. Take the case of the parson 
 whom I mentioned to you ; if he did speak, it 
 would not be filthy and disgusting language that 
 he would make use of. If he heard a disgusting 
 remark he would try to give good advice ; I have 
 heard him do it, although he rendered himself 
 liable to be punished for doing so. ... I have 
 heard the prisoners talk of all the things in Eng- 
 
 15
 
 210 CRIME. 
 
 land. Under the present system the talk which 
 they make use of would not be tolerated in a well- 
 regulated brothel. To try to prevent prisoners 
 talking in association is only to give officers an 
 excuse for reporting those prisoners whom they 
 dislike, no matter what they are talking about, 
 whether it be their work or not. If prisoners 
 were allowed to talk, a well-disposed prisoner 
 would check and discourage evil talk, and an 
 officer would be able to hear whether the language 
 made use of deserved punishment or not ; and if 
 it did deserve punishment, the officer could report 
 the offender and have him punished. The present 
 system fosters filthy talk." x 
 
 Many witnesses who were examined by the 
 Royal Commission, in 1878, testified to the same 
 effect; e.g., Mr. T. W. Harris, steward and manu- 
 facturer at Brixton Prison, Mr. T. B. LI. Baker, 
 Captain J. C. A. Lewis, Governor of Pentonville 
 Prison, and others ; another ex-convict, who gave 
 evidence before the Commission, stated that in the 
 blacksmith's shop in which he was working at 
 Parkhurst, a robbery was planned, and was exe- 
 cuted in less than three months after the man was 
 liberated and got to Birmingham. 
 
 If the supervision is sufficiently strict the num- 
 ber of punishments for talking rise to an enormous 
 height, which is not a desirable accompaniment 
 of any. system ; for instance, in 1848 there were 
 11,624 punishments in Coldbath Fields Prison, 
 where the system was carried out with the utmost 
 
 1 Report of the Penal Servitude Acts Commission, 1879, 
 vol. ii. p. 357.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 211 
 
 stringency, and 9,153 punishments in West- 
 minster Bridewell, where it was also in operation ; 
 while at the House of Detention for the county of 
 Middlesex, a separate system prison, there were 
 135 punishments, and in Reading Prison 272, 
 during the same year. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton himself fully recognized the 
 practical difficulties in the way of properly apply- 
 ing his favourite system, and has left the following 
 record of his matured views with regard to it : x 
 " Highly as I value the silent system, patiently and 
 sternly administered, I do not think it adapted to 
 the prisons of the country at large, and especially 
 under their present organization. In the first 
 place, its efficacious enforcement demands so large 
 a staff of officers as positively to alarm economical 
 administrators ; whereas, without the materials 
 for ample supervision under every possible con- 
 tingency, the whole effort will prove abortive. 
 Secondly, even with the requisite staff of super- 
 visors, the unswerving perseverance and determi- 
 nation, are scarcely to be expected in a promiscuous 
 body of governors selected from various dissimilar 
 sources. Thirdly, not only must the chief officer 
 prove prompt, decisive, and indefatigably zealous, 
 but his deputy must also be of the same stamp, 
 and the subordinates must continue to be weeded, 
 until you are enabled to retain men who are at 
 once patient, just, and vigilant, and who are 
 capable of appreciating the public utility of their 
 arduous task." 
 
 Although the two latter of these conditions will 
 1 " Revelations of Prison Life," vol. ii. p. 2.
 
 212 CRIME. 
 
 require to be complied with for the proper adminis- 
 tration of any really satisfactory system of prison 
 discipline, the first undoubtedly forms a serious 
 objection which is peculiar to the silent system. 
 
 This system, therefore, in so far as it is an 
 association system, is satisfactory ; but in so far 
 as it is a silent system, it involves practical diffi- 
 culties, and, though more natural and philosophi- 
 cal than the separate system, falls far short of the 
 ideal which we have set before us. 
 
 4. We now see what is the problem which 
 offers itself for our solution. It is this : to devise a 
 system which shall have all the advantages of the 
 associated silent system without the grave defects 
 which result from compulsory silence. There is 
 but one solution a solution which has already been 
 more than once proposed, but not yet acted upon 
 and that is, by a classification of prisoners ; and 
 the new scheme for the determination of sentences 
 sketched in the last chapter gives us a basis for 
 such classification. Convicts (giving the word a 
 broad signification) were there divided into three 
 classes first offenders, whose previous character 
 was provably good ; first offenders, whose previous 
 character was doubtful ; and habitual criminals and 
 first offenders, whose antecedents were provably 
 bad or extremely suspicious. This plan would 
 not be open to the objection which has been urged 
 against the proposal to divide prisoners into two 
 classes, placing in the first class those who have 
 never previously been convicted, and in the second 
 those who have one or more previous convictions 
 recorded against them ; with reference to which
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 213 
 
 proposal it has been justly urged by Sir E. Du Cane, 
 and others, that a man who has been convicted for 
 the first time may very possibly be exceedingly 
 corrupt, and a few of such men, placed in free 
 association with other once-convicted prisoners, 
 might corrupt many of these. But if ascertained 
 character is made the basis of classification, and 
 those whose character is at all doubtful are placed 
 in a category by themselves, this danger will be 
 avoided. 
 
 Of course, it may very truly be said that in this 
 intermediate class both corrupt and uncorrupted 
 men may be mingled ; but if reasonable care be 
 taken in the investigation of a prisoner's antece- 
 dents, which the proposed new method of deter- 
 mining sentences will make very important, it is 
 not likely that either very moral or very vicious 
 men will be placed in the intermediate class ; for 
 the cases will surely be quite exceptional in which 
 the former will not have connections or acquaint- 
 ance of obvious respectability to testify as to their 
 character ; and a man of more than the average 
 depravity among prisoners will nearly always have 
 been provably connected with thieves, or persons 
 of undoubted anti-social tendencies. Grant, how- 
 ever, that notwithstanding all precautions, some 
 very bad men found their way into the " doubtful " 
 class, it is quite certain that by proper supervision 
 they would be discovered by the prison authorities 
 before they had had time to do much harm, and 
 might then be transferred to the class to which 
 they properly belonged. Mr. George Clifton, 
 Governor of Portland Prison in 1878, has left on
 
 214 CRIME. 
 
 record an opinion to this effect, and even went to 
 the extent of saying that the ease with which a 
 prison governor could discover the real character 
 of such men would render harmless even the system 
 of dividing criminals into only two classes, accord- 
 ing as they had been convicted once or oftener. 
 He said: * " I think that the prison officers would 
 very soon detect them (i.e., really corrupt men), 
 from their general knowledge of prison life, and so 
 on ; I think that in a very short time the governor, 
 with the assistance of his officers, would be able 
 to find out whether any of them had been criminals 
 before, and then they should be drafted off to the 
 prisons where men were undergoing first, second, 
 third, fourth, and fifth sentences." 
 
 In reply to the question, " Supposing that the 
 conduct of these men in prison was good, should 
 you then be able to draft them off ? " Mr. Clifton 
 said : " I think that they would show what they 
 were by their manner, and by their coming in 
 contact with the others ; and with the assistance 
 which is rendered to a governor by the convicts 
 themselves, he would have an opportunity of dis- 
 criminating and finding out the men who were 
 really criminals in disguise undergoing first sen- 
 tences." 
 
 5. Thus the intermediate class would be in a 
 continual state of flux ; so soon as it became cer- 
 tain that any given man might safely mingle with 
 men of good character without in any way dis- 
 gusting them or corrupting the morals of the 
 
 1 Report of the Penal Servitude Acts Commission, 1879, 
 vol. ii. p. 167.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 215 
 
 weak-minded among them, he would be promoted 
 into the superior class ; and any prisoner who was 
 found to be of a really vicious and immoral 
 character would be degraded into the habitual 
 criminal class. From this latter class, again, men 
 who seemed to deserve it by their good conduct 
 and moderation in speech might be promoted into 
 the intermediate class, and finally even into the 
 superior class. Much more can be done with 
 prisoners through hope than by repression ; and 
 so increased comforts and indulgences might, with 
 great advantage, be permitted as the prisoner rose 
 from class to class ; if he abused the privilege 
 accorded to him he would be at once degraded ; 
 and it would probably be wise to sentence con- 
 victed men to a minimum term of imprisonment 
 which should be subject to an indefinite prolonga- 
 tion until the prisoner had remained for so many 
 weeks or months in the superior class. 
 
 The three classes should be kept in separate 
 prisons ; there would be so many first class, so 
 many second, and so many third class prisons, the 
 number of each to be determined as experience 
 might direct. If thought advisable, certain prisons 
 might still be set apart for lunatic and infirm 
 criminals, but all other existing distinctions should 
 be abolished. 
 
 . 6. Of these, the principle is the distinction 
 between " prisoner " and " convict," the former 
 term being applied to those who are sentenced to 
 imprisonment, with or without hard labour, and 
 are subjected to the operation of the separate 
 system, and the latter to those who are sentenced
 
 216 CRIME. 
 
 to penal servitude, and who, after spending nine 
 months in separation, are treated according to a 
 lax form of the associated silent system. If the 
 system of prison discipline here advocated were 
 adopted, the raison d'etre of the above-mentioned 
 distinction would disappear. According to present 
 regulations, the most severe sentence of imprison- 
 ment is for two years, howbeit, in extreme cases, 
 two such sentences, to run successively, may be 
 passed ; but in general, two years of the separate 
 system is considered to be as much as a man can 
 stand without serious injury to his health, and 
 even to this extent, as we have seen, it has been 
 pronounced dangerous by many persons competent 
 to form an opinion upon the subject ; a fortiori 
 are two such sentences, equivalent to one sentence 
 of four years' imprisonment, dangerously severe. 
 A gentleman who had to undergo twelve months' 
 imprisonment, and had opportunities of learning 
 how such a sentence is estimated by habitual 
 criminals, has stated that " This sentence of four 
 years' imprisonment is said to be the severest 
 punishment, with the exception of death, known 
 to the English law. I have heard on very good 
 authority that a learned judge I think it was 
 Baron Bramwell after passing this sentence upon 
 a man, turned to the high sheriff and remarked, 
 * I have only passed that sentence twice before ; 
 in the one case the man died, in the other he 
 went raving mad ; and I believe it is a sentence 
 that no man can survive and retain his senses.' " * 
 1 " Her Majesty's Prisons." By One who has tried them. 
 Vol. i. p. 164.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 217 
 
 Consequently, if it is desired to give a man a 
 longer sentence than two years' imprisonment, it 
 is the custom to send him to penal servitude for a 
 minimum term of five years. But if prisoners are 
 classified as suggested, and a uniform system of 
 association carried out in all prisons, the necessity 
 for the present distinction between convicts and 
 prisoners naturally disappears. 
 
 7. The judicial system will thus be much 
 simplified. Very large discretion will be left to 
 judges, but not more, I am sure, than they are com- 
 petent to exercise; and convicted criminals will be 
 sentenced to imprisonment for a minimum term 
 in one of the three classes, the length of which 
 term will be fixed by such considerations as those 
 indicated in the previous chapter, and may, in 
 accordance with the principles laid down in sec- 
 tions 4 and 5 of this chapter, be indefinitely 
 prolonged. The effect of which reforms will be, 
 that society will be guaranteed against the wanton 
 emission of brutes in human form, of prison- 
 manufactured criminals, and of dangerous beings 
 hardened and rendered more desperate by injudi- 
 cious treatment ; but will, on the contrary, be 
 benefitted by the labour of such men who, as fast 
 as they are caught, will be placed in captivity, 
 there to remain until there is very strong reason 
 to believe they are really reformed, and in the 
 meanwhile will be obliged to work or starve. 
 
 8. It is not advisable to lay down many hard 
 and fast rules which shall restrict governors in 
 their treatment of prisoners. Human nature is so 
 elastic, and there are so many moods and varieties
 
 21 B CRIME. 
 
 of it, that it is most mischievous to deal with men 
 in the lump, as though they constituted a quantity 
 of logs of wood or pigs of iron, all of more or less 
 the same hardness, gravity and temper. Certain 
 broad principles must be established, and men 
 of great knowledge of human nature, of broad 
 and humane sympathies, of almost inexhaustible 
 patience, but withal of decision, and possessing 
 the capability of inflexible sternness when justice 
 and wisdom demand such an attitude, should be 
 appointed as governors, with large discretion to 
 apply those principles in practice. Such men are 
 certainly not as common as blackberries, but they 
 are to be had if sufficient inducement is offered 
 them to come forward and accept such posts. 
 They are not, however, likely to apply for prison 
 governorships under the present system, because 
 they would be conscious that their peculiar abili- 
 ties would be thrown away in the attempt to ad- 
 minister with good effect so rotten a scheme, and 
 the harassing regulations with which their hands 
 would be tied would be irritating beyond endur- 
 ance to a strong man who was capable of thinking 
 for himself. But adopt such a system as will afford 
 good hope of satisfactory results, a humane and 
 philosophical system, leave the administrators of 
 it a wide discretion, and offer salaries proportionate 
 to the great qualities and indefatigable application 
 required, and there is no doubt that the proper 
 men will be forthcoming. Warders, too, would 
 have to be a far superior class of men to those 
 now employed. 
 
 9. The chief difficulty is that prisons are under
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 219 
 
 Government control, and when one thinks of the 
 jobbery, the extravagance, the officialism which 
 characterize our public offices and State depart- 
 ments, some flagrant cases of which have been 
 recently exposed, it is enough to make him groan 
 aloud in despair of getting a philosophical system 
 effectively put into operation by such agents and 
 such means. It does, indeed, seem almost hopeless 
 to expect to get a perfect scheme of prison discip- 
 line carried out under Government officials. A man, 
 after being a State official for a number of years, 
 becomes such a creature of routine that every 
 human sentiment seems, during his business hours, 
 to have been dried out of him, producing a condition 
 of mind which, in its connection with prisons, was 
 powerfully satirized by Charles Reade in his novel, 
 " It is never too late to Mend." 
 
 Criminals, in the eyes of such men, constitute a 
 raw material which has to undergo, at the public 
 expense, a certain definite treatment through the 
 agency of a complicated machinery, and which 
 comes forth from the process a finished article : 
 a rascal is put into a machine, a crank is made to 
 revolve a definite number of times, and a virtuous 
 man is supposed to come forth. If by any chance 
 the man issues no better, or even worse, than he 
 went in, that is no concern of the State official ; he 
 ought to, that's all : the machinery was elabo- 
 rated with great care and most deliberately by all 
 the intellect of officialdom in order to bring about 
 a given result, and we must therefore take it for 
 granted that that result has been brought about. 
 But human beings cannot be treated advan-
 
 220 CRIME. 
 
 tageously as if they were lumps of dead metal, or 
 clay : man in the mass may be, as has been said, 
 a mathematical problem, but the individual is an 
 enigma which has its own special key, and it is 
 not given to many men to discover the keys of 
 these enigmas. Each single man has his peculiar 
 idiosyncracy, his own ruling passion, his own weak 
 point, his own desires, and his own repugnances, 
 and the treatment of 1,500 men in one institution 
 by means of a cast-iron system, under inflexible 
 rules, is simply a modern revival of the bed of 
 Procrustes. To deal with these human beings 
 you must have a man who understands human 
 nature, and who can mould the characters of men 
 such a one as M. de Metz, as Colonel Montesinos, 
 as Captain Maconochie, or as Captain Crofton ; but 
 who ever heard of a prison governor being selected 
 by Government on account of such qualifications ? 
 Party jobbery and favouritism sometimes come in; 
 but even when the motives of the choice are pure, 
 the questions most considered are whether the 
 candidate is a good disciplinarian, and one who 
 is likely to apply thoroughly and effectively the 
 excellent system which happens to be in favour 
 with the official wiseacres for the time being. The 
 system is everything individuality and humanity, 
 most potent forces, are ignored, the more human 
 sentiments and impulses of the prisoners are 
 numbed by want of sympathy, and all that could 
 tend towards their regeneration is strangled with 
 red tape. 
 
 One or two instances may be given of the absurd" 
 officialism which is rife. Here is a quotation from
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 221 
 
 a book already referred to, entitled, " Her Majesty's 
 Prisons," z which seems to have been written with 
 great moderation and impartiality : " 'Ah, red tape; 
 nothing but red tape,' interrupted old Pell (a 
 warder). ' Before you can get so much as a mat- 
 needle for a man, you have to apply to the chief, 
 he has to apply to the governor, and the governor 
 has to send an application to the prisoner's com- 
 missioners, and then, perhaps, with great luck, you 
 may get this farthing needle in a fortnight, and 
 when about five shillings' worth of paper and 
 stamps have been spent about it." Dr. McCook 
 Weir gives a mournful account of Christmas Day 
 spent in prison, and points out what an excellent 
 opportunity for the application of humanizing 
 influences is thrown away by a stern routine. He 
 says : 2 " Prisoners are allowed an extra hour in bed 
 on Sundays and great religious festivals, by way, 
 I presume, of compensation for their other pri- 
 vations. But this is all. They are not permitted 
 to share with the outside world in the festivities 
 of the day, no, not to the extent of sucking an 
 orange. This is both unchristian and brutal. 
 Since my own sad experience I have applied to 
 the governor of the prison in question to know if 
 I could send in a hamper of oranges and mince- 
 pies on Christmas Day. ' Impossible; such a thing 
 was never contemplated in the regulations. It 
 would be an unpardonable infringement of official 
 decorum and sanctity ! But, still, we mean to 
 reform the wretch by spiritual consolation.' ' Well, 
 may I send him a tract?' 'A tract!' roar the official 
 1 Vol. ii. p. 288. 3 "Prison Despotism," p. in.
 
 222 CRIME. 
 
 hirelings in Downing Street ; ' have we not a chap- 
 lain already ? ' ' Well, surely, I may send him a 
 note, enclosing the photograph of his wife and little 
 child ? ' ' Impossible, sir ; his next letter is not due 
 for three months according to the regulations, and 
 such enclosures are strictly prohibited.' ' But, you 
 know, it is Christmas Day ? ' ' Christmas Day, sir, 
 is nothing to us beyond an ordinary Sunday, and the 
 prisoner enjoys freedom from labour and attends 
 two religious services.' ' But is not his dinner the 
 same as on ordinary Sundays?' 'Quite the same, 
 sir ; why should the law-breaker be pampered, and 
 thus encouraged to go on in his career of crime ? ' 
 Such are the facts. Official regulations have 
 hedged the prisoner round like gates of brass. Is 
 it wonderful that his heart hardens in proportion 
 to his galling restraint and seclusion from the 
 world? But is he not a man, and a member of 
 God's great commonwealth, after all ? " 
 
 And yet it seems that if Government has any 
 proper functions the dealing with criminals is 
 one of them. Undoubtedly, the less Government 
 meddles in the affairs of the community the better 
 for the community and for every member of it ; 
 and if any one will devise a practicable and safe 
 scheme for dealing with criminals by means of a 
 private association he will do a service to the State. 
 Meanwhile, the remedy for those evils to which I 
 have been referring lies with the people ; so soon 
 as the voters of the United Kingdom will leave 
 straining their eyes in gazing towards remote parts 
 of the earth, bullying Ireland, following red-herring 
 trails drawn athwart their course by self-seeking
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 223 
 
 or hobby-riding politicians, and rouse themselves 
 to a sense of the gross abuses which exist in our 
 public service, and, above all, to a sense of the 
 enormous loss entailed by the permanent existence 
 among them of 60,000 habitual law-breakers, and 
 of the futility of the means now employed to get 
 rid of them, the reformation will begin. The 
 people, the tax-payers, are the interested parties, 
 and the remedy lies with them. 
 
 10. I, however, strongly deprecate any such 
 sentiments as those colloquially known as 
 " namby-pambyism." It is right that every man 
 who does wrong should learn that no action pre- 
 judicial to social welfare may be performed with 
 impunity; but the mischief of the present methods 
 for the attainment of this object lies in the fact 
 that prisoners are irritated and galled by petty 
 annoyances, crushed by stupid and inflexible regu- 
 lations, and made to feel that they are pariahs, 
 brutes, good-for-nothings, that it is useless to 
 endeavour to be any different, for nothing better 
 is expected of them. 
 
 It is a law of human nature that men love 
 approbation ; this is too generally admitted to re- 
 quire support here by special evidence. In what- 
 ever kind of society a man is forced to live he will 
 try to stand well with it, even though he despise 
 it ; and if a man, descended from criminals, and 
 therefore naturally endowed with vicious instincts, 
 and habituated from childhood to anti-social 
 thoughts and acts, can obtain applause from his 
 fellows for immoral conduct, while learning that 
 the contrary behaviour will only identify him with
 
 224 CRIME. 
 
 those whom he has been taught to look upon as 
 the enemies and despisers of his class, it is but 
 natural that he should be impelled to the perform- 
 ance of such exploits as are held meritorious by 
 those of whom alone the good or bad opinion can 
 affect him. And herein lies a powerful lever by 
 which the characters of criminals may be operated 
 on, though it has hitherto been quite neglected. 
 No scope has been given to prisoners for the 
 exercise of any good qualities by which they 
 might earn the approbation of persons whose 
 opinion they had learnt to value. In the separate 
 system prisons what encouragement to emulation 
 is afforded by the solitary turning of a useless 
 crank, by the monotonous and equally useless 
 treadwheel and by the sickening tedium of oakum- 
 picking ? In the convict establishments, what 
 healthy rivalry is possible among men who are 
 driven in herds like slaves to their compulsory and 
 unrewarded task? Patience, the virtue of the ass, 
 is the only good quality which these men have the 
 opportunity of exercising, and, as a rule, there is 
 no one but their brutal companions whose good 
 opinion they care for and whose approbation they 
 would strive to gain. It is only to be expected 
 that mischief should result from such a state of 
 things ; whereas if governors, warders, and chap- 
 lains would talk frequently to the prisoners, treat- 
 ing them like human beings, sympathizing with 
 their difficulties and their great temptations rather 
 than demonstrating to them the heinousness of 
 their actions, filling their minds with softer and 
 more charitable thoughts, and, in short, prov-
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 225 
 
 ing themselves true friends to these wretched 
 creatures, the prisoners would begin to find satis- 
 faction in pleasing those whom they had found 
 kind and sympathetic, would strive to earn their 
 approbation and show themselves deserving of the 
 treatment they had experienced. 
 
 Meanwhile, and by degrees, the prisoners should 
 be placed in positions in which temptations would 
 have to be resisted and self-control exercised. 
 When they conducted themselves well under such 
 circumstances they should be encouraged by 
 hearty words, and by increased privileges and 
 liberty, culminating in promotion to the superior 
 class ; if they yielded to the temptation, the 
 governor should express to them his grief and dis- 
 appointment at their abuse of his confidence, and 
 if this course had no effect, a second offence should 
 be visited with loss of certain privileges. An in- 
 subordinate, or very refractory prisoner, might be 
 punished by lengthening the term of his stay in an 
 inferior class, by degradation to the class below, 
 or in such other ways as the governor might think 
 desirable. 
 
 ii. It is clear that the proper administration 
 of such a system would require that governors, 
 warders, and chaplains, should be men of a 
 superior class to those now employed and be very 
 carefully selected. Mr. Chesterton has confidently 
 asserted that by taking sufficient trouble the right 
 kind of men could be obtained. At present little 
 trouble is taken to secure that prison officials 
 should be peculiarly fitted for their very important 
 and very arduous duties ; and warders, especially, 
 
 16
 
 226 CRIME. 
 
 are often of such a character as to make the 
 men under their charge much worse instead of 
 better. Ex-prisoners who have made statements 
 with regard to prison administration are unani- 
 mous on this point, and even if a very large 
 allowance is made for exaggeration we are still led 
 to the conclusion that warders, as a class, have 
 not the qualifications requisite for judicious treat- 
 ment of prisoners, and that many are cruel, unjust, 
 and likely to ruin many a promising man's cha- 
 racter. Several ex-convicts were examined by 
 the Penal Servitude Acts Commission of 1878, one 
 of whom was Mr. Michael Davitt, and all gave 
 instances, from their own experience, of gross acts 
 of cruelty and tyranny on the part of warders. 
 The author of " Five Years' Penal Servitude " I 
 says : " The generality of men who enter the con- 
 vict service as assistant-warders are of a very poor 
 type. They take to it as a last resource, except, in 
 some instances, such as where whole families 
 father and sons are in it, and are, to a certain 
 extent, born and bred in it. A man generally comes 
 there with hardly a rag to his back or a shoe to 
 his foot ; has never had the least authority over 
 another man in his life, and is suddenly placed 
 with very great power and authority over a lot of 
 men who are, for the time being, slaves to his 
 orders, whims, and fancies ; most of them are 
 perfect tyrants." 
 
 The author of "Her Majesty's Prisons " 2 which 
 was published as recently as 1881, says : " There 
 are numerous and constant cases of gross cruelty 
 1 P. 314. 2 Vol. ii. p. 17.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 227 
 
 and injustice in our prisons, and many a prisoner's 
 life is lost by the neglect and ill-treatment of brutal 
 warders. A man in prison has no opportunity of 
 bringing his grievances before the notice of the 
 authorities, for the monthly visit of the Govern- 
 ment Inspector is a silly farce, and whether 
 prisoners are treated fairly or not depends entirely 
 
 on the warders ; at all events it did at shire, 
 
 and I expect it is the same in all but a few of the 
 prisons where there are exceptionally clever, con- 
 scientious governors." Several particular cases 
 of inhumanity on the part of warders, one, at least, 
 resulting in a man's death, are given by the same 
 author, but are rather too long to quote. 
 
 And not only convicts, who might possibly be 
 thought to be prejudiced persons, but even prison 
 officials have testified to the same fact. Captain 
 H. K. Wilson, Governor of Gloucester Gaol for five 
 years, of Maidstone for four years, and, finally, 
 Inspector of Prisons, has said : " The difficulty is 
 to teach a warder that a prisoner is a human being ; 
 that is what I have generally found," 1 and again 
 he stated that warders, both military and civilian, 
 rather tend to be overbearing with the prisoners. 
 
 Even the chaplains, who are supposed to exercise 
 a humanizing and reformatory influence over the 
 prisoners, are often very inefficient. An ex-convict 
 who gave evidence before the Penal Servitude Acts 
 Commission of 1878, said : 2 "The chaplain never 
 visited me once, nor asked to see me. ... I am 
 
 1 Report of the Penal Servitude Acts Commission, vol. ii. 
 
 P- 391. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 417.
 
 228 CRIME. 
 
 speaking of all the chaplains that I have seen, 
 except at Pentonville and Portsmouth. At Ports- 
 mouth Mr. Bankes used to come into the infirmary 
 and address the men very nicely. I think that he 
 is a very excellent man. But even in the infirmary 
 at Parkhurst all that a chaplain would do (and I 
 was there three months) was that he would go to 
 the bed and say, ' Are you better to-day ? ' and 
 before the man could say, ' Yes, sir,' he was at 
 the next bed, and so on all round. After you leave 
 Pentonville there is no attempt, except at Ports- 
 mouth, to do men good and to get them to reform. 
 . . . If the chaplain would take the trouble to do as 
 many excellent clergymen do, and to visit their 
 prisoners as clergymen visit their parishioners, 
 and talk to them, I am satisfied that it would do 
 them good. It might make a few hypocrites, but, 
 on the other hand, it would have a very good 
 effect. I have heard the prisoners say many times, 
 ' Oh, they care nothing about our souls.' I have 
 seen the men turn away when the chaplain has 
 come to the bed, and pretend to be asleep rather 
 than listen to him. That was not the case at 
 Portsmouth. Mr. Bankes was always listened to." 
 Another ex-convict * stated that at Pentonville he 
 only saw the chaplain once a month, and at Brix- 
 ton only once the whole time he was there. The 
 author of "Her Majesty's Prisons" says: 2 "During 
 the afternoon I had a visit from the chaplain ; he 
 walked meekly into my cell, stared silently at me 
 for a few moments, until I felt inclined to ask him 
 what on earth he wanted, and then softly said 
 1 Report, vol. ii. p. 436. s Vol. i. p. 255.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 229 
 
 " ' What's your name ? ' 
 
 " I told him, though what he asked for I do not 
 know, as he knew my name and who I was per- 
 fectly well. 
 
 " ' Have you been taught your catechism ? ' was 
 his next question. 
 
 " ' Yes,' I said, ' when I was a child.' 
 
 " ' And you have been instructed in your Bible ?' 
 
 "'Yes,' I said, 'I have been.' 
 
 " Then there was another long pause, during 
 which he blinked solemnly at me like some re- 
 spectable old barn owl, and finally hazarded the 
 suggestion, ' That I had been leading a very 
 reckless life, he was afraid.' 
 
 " ' Not more reckless than other people,' I re- 
 plied, half-defiantly ; for I was bothered and 
 worried with the man and his manner, and every- 
 thing about him. 
 
 " 'Ah! perhaps not, perhaps not,' he answered ; 
 and then, after another pause, during which he 
 alternately gazed first at me and then at the ceil- 
 ing, he suddenly said, ' Good day,' and marched 
 out. 
 
 " When I came to think the interview over, I 
 could hardly help laughing, the man's manner and 
 appearance were so exceedingly ludicrous ; but, 
 if mine was a sample of what usually happened 
 when he visited prisoners, I don't fancy that much 
 good was likely to be the result of his visits." 
 
 Even though the chaplain were everything that 
 could be desired such a man, for instance, as Mr. 
 Eden, in Charles Reade's powerful novel it is im- 
 possible for one man to give the proper amount
 
 230 CRIME. 
 
 of attention to a thousand or more prisoners ; he 
 could not even visit five hundred as often as they 
 should be visited; but if the efforts of the chaplain 
 were supplemented by those of the governor and 
 warders in the way I have suggested, one such 
 chaplain would be sufficient. 
 
 12. Some people may, perhaps, say, " It is no 
 use ; these men are bad to the core ; if you had 
 Jesus of Nazareth for chaplain, and picked your 
 governors and warders with the greatest care 
 imaginable, you would no more change them by 
 such means, or any means, than you can by any 
 known means convert coal into diamonds." There 
 may, indeed, be some criminals who are quite 
 hopeless, but I have already given instances to 
 show what marvels even one man, a judicious 
 governor, can accomplish ; and it is simply not a 
 fact that criminals, as a class, are utterly bad. 
 They have a moral code, though it differs from 
 ours ; there are actions which among them are 
 reckoned praiseworthy, and others which are held 
 to be dishonourable ; they are capable of great 
 self-sacrifice, great generosity, great endurance on 
 behalf of one another ; but society which they 
 regard, and truly not without some reason, as 
 their natural enemy, they think may be meri- 
 toriously plundered and attacked. Mr. G. L. 
 Chesterton, who was a keen observer of the 
 manners and character of these men, has said : 
 " In the midst of all these innovations upon 
 prison regulations, I learned a fact, which not a 
 little surprised me viz., the liberal supply of 
 money and articles of comfort, furnished by
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 231 
 
 attached relatives and friends to many of the 
 lowest order of criminals. Indeed, the attention 
 this class of persons pay to each other's wants, 
 constitutes a redeeming trait in the midst of their 
 degenerate habits and pursuits. The extent to 
 which they will send in combs, gloves, flannels, 
 &c., in the present day, and used liberally to 
 supply money in the bygone times of which I 
 am treating, exceeds credibility. In a like spirit 
 will relatives or companions, all vicious though 
 they be, be found standing for hours in the cold 
 and rain to welcome and succour liberated friends. 
 Some of these affectionate demonstrations are of 
 so touching a nature, that the highest and best 
 members of society might derive from them an 
 example worthy of imitation." 1 
 
 13. It is for society, in its own interest, to 
 prove to these persons, by a thorough revolution 
 in its criminal procedure, and through the agency 
 of properly qualified prison governors, warders, 
 and chaplains, that it only wishes them well ; be- 
 cause the welfare of the State being the sum of 
 the welfare of its component parts, no class can 
 be miserable or vicious without adversely affecting 
 the whole body. 
 
 Another principle upon which prison officials 
 must act is this : that if men are spied upon, kept 
 in severe restraint, and everything done to show 
 that no confidence is reposed in them, they will 
 consider themselves bound by no moral obliga- 
 tions, but will hold it meritorious to outwit 
 their guardians, from which will result a con- 
 1 " Revelations of Prison Life," p. 50.
 
 232 CRIME. 
 
 tinual contest, the prisoners endeavouring to evade 
 detection in breaking the regulations, and the 
 overseers endeavouring to frustrate and punish 
 such attempts ; whereas, if a man is trusted, he 
 will feel a desire to prove himself worthy of the 
 confidence which has been reposed in him, and a 
 repugnance at abusing it. A remarkable instance 
 of this fact is afforded by the different treatment 
 of boys at French and English schools. In France 
 the school is surrounded by a wall, a master is 
 continually among the boys watching their move- 
 ments they are like prisoners, and no confidence 
 is placed in them the result is that, whenever 
 they think they can evade detection, they break 
 the rules. In England, of course, the system 
 is very different, and M. Francisque Sarcey, 
 after a visit to this country, wrote a series of 
 letters to " Le XIX. me Siecle," in June, 1879, 
 giving a description of Charterhouse School, and 
 expressing his astonishment at what he had seen 
 and heard there. He was amazed to find that 
 the houses in which the boys live were surrounded 
 by no wall, that the boys might ramble about the 
 country as they pleased, and always returned. 
 " On the day of my visit," he says, " I had before 
 me an example, very surprising for us, of this 
 liberty which the boys are allowed. There was, 
 posted on the wall, an ordredujour; mechanically 
 I approached and read. It said that such a 
 division would have the right to go, on that day, 
 to bathe in the river between certain hours. I 
 shuddered ; for the cold was biting, and the wind 
 keen.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 233 
 
 " ' But are they going alone ? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' Wait a moment, you shall see. It is time.' 
 And I saw a voice of boys run upstairs, four steps 
 at a time, to a room, whence they emerged in 
 flannel, and then they started off, without any 
 master, down to the river. 
 
 " 'Suppose an accident happens ? ' 
 
 "'Posts mark out the limits which they may 
 not pass ; no one will pass them ; it is the rule, 
 and here every one respects the rule, because it is 
 the rule. ... Be assured that, at the appointed 
 time, they will all be back, because it is the rule. 
 They observe it the better from being left more 
 free.' " 
 
 An incident which has already been quoted from 
 the account of the Valencia prison, is an example 
 of the same fact. 
 
 14. The extreme supervision which is thought 
 necessary in our prisons is often such as to pro- 
 duce more harm than good ; for instance, the 
 periodical stripping of convicts quite naked in the 
 presence of warders, and the waking men up in 
 the middle of the night by flashing a lantern upon 
 them. Of course too much .freedom could not 
 safely be given at once to a prisoner of the worst 
 class ; but the prospect of greater liberty and less 
 supervision would be a great inducement to good 
 behaviour ; and as the prisoner was allowed to 
 mingle and converse more and more unrestrainedly 
 with others, and prevented only from breaking 
 regulations by moral obligations, he would be 
 learning a lesson in self-control, which would be 
 of the utmost value to him when, on his discharge,
 
 234 CRIME. 
 
 he had again to mingle with other human beings. 
 This plan would also have the inestimable ad- 
 vantage of putting into the hand of governors a 
 large range of rewards and punishments of a very 
 satisfactory kind. Continued good conduct would 
 be rewarded by an increase of liberty, and a 
 breach of rules by deprivation of such privileges 
 or loss of marks. This would avoid the necessity 
 for recurring to such very objectionable punish- 
 ments as bread-and-water diet, dark-cell, irons 
 and flogging, which should only be resorted to in 
 extreme cases, and under a rational system would 
 probably never be required. 
 
 An ex-convict was examined upon the subject 
 of prison-punishments by the Penal Servitude 
 Acts Commission of 1878, and the following 
 questions and answers are reported : 
 
 "5504. [Chairman] : What change in the rules do 
 you think is desirable ? I think that there should 
 be more, if I may use the term, moral force used 
 instead of physical force. The present rules are 
 all for physical force ; the present rules are that 
 everything is punishment ; if a man is reported 
 for insolence he is not simply sent into the cells, 
 but he loses his class, he loses his remission 
 marks, he loses his letter, he loses his visit, and 
 suffers a reduction in quantity of food. 
 
 "5505. Do you not think that those are very 
 justifiable modes of punishment ? I think that 
 they are too severe (if I may be allowed the ob- 
 servation) upon a man; there is an entire sepa- 
 ration from the world, and from all that is likely 
 to elevate a man.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 235 
 
 "5506. [Sir H. Holland^: But it does not neces- 
 sarily follow that any one of those punishments 
 would be inflicted for a first offence ? To my own 
 knowledge there has been no instance in which 
 one of those punishments has been inflicted solely. 
 
 " 557- Are you not aware of any cases where a 
 prisoner has been reprimanded and cautioned ? 
 I have heard of it under Captain Harvey only." 
 
 As some people may, not unnaturally, perhaps, 
 regard with suspicion the statements and opinions 
 of ex-convicts, I will also quote here the opinion 
 of Dr. Robert Macdonnell, ten years medical 
 superintendent of Mountjoy Convict Prison in 
 Ireland, who says : " I should like to mention 
 that, with regard to the punishments, it is always 
 possible, I think, in prisons, to allow nearly all the 
 prisoners to gain some little privileges by their 
 good conduct, and the best kind of punishment 
 will, I believe, consist in depriving them of those 
 privileges. I think, for instance, that the tobacco 
 mania might possibly be utilized in this way that 
 they might be allowed, after twelve months or two 
 years of good conduct and good marks to get some- 
 thing of this kind, and that it would be a good 
 means of punishment to stop it from them for 
 misconduct. That was done at Mountjoy, in some 
 degree, with the younger convicts ; when they 
 had good-conduct stripes upon their arms they 
 were allowed, when at exercise, to play at football, 
 instead of merely walking round and round in a 
 ring, and for misconduct they were deprived of this 
 privilege. Those punishments are far better than 
 whipping or dark cells. Of course, there will
 
 236 CRIME. 
 
 always be some prisoners so bad that they never 
 will be good enough to gain any privilege, but they 
 always form, I think, a small minority of the 
 whole. I should also like to say that I gave a 
 good deal of attention to punishment as a deter- 
 rent, and I think that punishments of a particular 
 class very often harden very much. Even with 
 regard to dietetic punishments, it is not a good 
 thing, if a prisoner is only kept for three or four 
 months in a prison, to enervate him and weaken him 
 by a low diet during that short time, so that when 
 he goes out he is not able to earn a livelihood by 
 labour. A reduction of dietary should not, there- 
 fore, be made as a punishment ; it lowers the 
 prisoners and irritates them, and unfits them when 
 they go out again, for entering upon a career which 
 is all-important to them as regards earning an 
 honest livelihood. The real mode of dealing with 
 the matter, to my mind, is by lengthening the 
 sentence, and bringing the prisoners more under a 
 reformatory influence, and not inflicting upon them 
 punishments which have a brutalizing tendency." J 
 15. It really seems a strange thing that when 
 all those men who have been singularly successful 
 in the reformation of criminals, and men who, like 
 Dr. Macdonnell, have had a long experience of the 
 working of a rational method, are unanimous in 
 declaring that hope is an incomparably more satis- 
 factory agent than fear, our prison authorities 
 persist in relying almost solely on the latter, with 
 the effect that if a man once becomes criminal he 
 
 1 Report of the Penal Servitude Acts Commission, vol. ii. 
 p. 463.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 237 
 
 is more likely to be made worse than better. The 
 system approved by Dr. Macdonnell, which has, in 
 different forms, been tried with unvarying success, 
 would be particularly easy to carry out if the plan 
 of dividing prisoners into three classes were 
 adopted. The inducement to good behaviour held 
 out by the prospect of eventual promotion to the 
 superior class should be very great ; prisoners 
 whose character was such as to justify their being 
 placed in a prison of this class should be allowed 
 to write and receive letters without restriction, 
 though the governor might have the power to read 
 any letter, and even refuse to allow it to be sent, 
 to receive visits from relations and friends at 
 appointed hours, to have access to newspapers, to 
 amuse themselves in association in innocent ways ; 
 their life should be as social as possible, in order 
 that they might become fitted for social life in 
 freedom, and whoever failed to stand this test 
 would, of course, be degraded ; finally, the 
 number of regular prison warders should be few, 
 but monitors should be chosen from the best 
 behaved of the prisoners to keep order among the 
 rest and report improper conduct or conversation. 
 Such pure luxuries as tobacco, spirits, or beer, are 
 not to be recommended for prisoners under any cir- 
 cumstances the deprivation of such enjoyments, 
 even when by good conduct they have merited the 
 greatest alleviations of prison life, will cause them 
 to reflect that wrong cannot be done with impunity. 
 In the intermediate prisons the supervision would 
 be more strict and the alleviations less ; in the 
 lowest class the discipline would be severe without
 
 238 CRIME. 
 
 being irritating or damaging to health, and even 
 in them a few privileges should be attainable, and 
 means taken to test the prisoners' capability of 
 resisting temptation, in order that they may 
 undergo some probation before being advanced 
 into the class above. Hypocrisy is the only thing 
 to be feared, but evidence has already been given 
 to show that with proper precautions such a fear 
 is groundless. If every criminal in the lowest 
 class had to remain for a tolerably long time under 
 the judicious surveillance of competent governor 
 and prison officials, and then had to pass through 
 a second probation, exposed to greater temptations, 
 before being placed in the highest class, there is 
 not much danger of men attaining to that class 
 until they were really fit for it. 
 
 1 6. I pointed out in the previous chapter that 
 in order to make the labour of convicts profitable, 
 there must be offered to them some inducement 
 to put forth their full energies. This has been 
 attempted in two ways one in the Belgian 
 and French prisons, and the other by Captain 
 Maconochie. By the former system the Govern- 
 ment assigns to the prisoners a certain portion 
 of the produce of their work, and retains the 
 remainder to meet the expense of their main- 
 tenance. The prisoners are divided into three 
 classes ; the proportion of profit allowed to each 
 class differs according to the nature of the crime 
 and punishment ; part of this allowance is paid to 
 the prisoners for present expenses, and part is 
 placed in a savings' bank, bearing interest at 
 4 per cent., and is given to the prisoner on his
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 239 
 
 dismissal. The prisoners are allowed on Saturday 
 afternoon, with the money they receive, to purchase 
 tobacco, wine, and other luxuries. This system is 
 not in all respects satisfactory ; it is not advisable 
 that criminals should have money in their posses- 
 sion when in prison, and still less so that they 
 should be permitted to employ it for the procuration 
 of indulgences. There might be something to be 
 said in favour of paying prisoners in the superior 
 class in coin, though I should not feel inclined to 
 recommend it ; but if the worst classes of prisoners 
 were allowed to have money in their possession, 
 there would be great risk of their endeavouring to 
 bribe the warders and use it improperly in other 
 ways. 
 
 Captain Maconochie's plan consisted in allotting 
 a certain number of marks to different kinds of 
 labour, proportionate to the severity of the labour ; 
 for instance, he gave six marks for grinding a 
 bushel of wheat ; two marks for platting three 
 yards of sennit ; one mark for doing five loops in 
 making a mat, and so on ; the prisoners were 
 divided into stages, in each of which a little more 
 liberty was allowed than in the one below ; every 
 manhad to earn one hundred marks before he could 
 be promoted into the next stage to that in which 
 he was ; and instead of time sentences, Captain 
 Maconochie proposed that every convicted man 
 should be condemned to earn a given number of 
 marks. Existing prison regulations prevented 
 Captain Maconochie carrying out this system in 
 its entirety, but so far as it could be applied it was 
 attended with excellent results.
 
 240 CRIME. 
 
 Now, reasons have been given in a former part 
 of this work for thinking that the length of a 
 prisoner's term, and the length of his stay in the 
 inferior classes should be determined principally by 
 general conduct ; whereas Captain Maconochie's 
 plan seems to give too much weight to pure in- 
 dustty. It is quite true that, according to his 
 scheme, a prisoner might forfeit marks for bad 
 conduct ; but it seems, on the whole, better that 
 prison officials of a superior class should be ap- 
 pointed, and should determine by careful observa- 
 tion of each man's behaviour whether he is fitted 
 for promotion. 
 
 The law of Nature is that no man shall consume 
 until he has produced, and it is this that compels 
 free labourers to put forth their utmost endeavours. 
 There can be no reason why criminals should be 
 exempted from the penalties attached to idleness, 
 nor why the same stimulus should not be applied 
 to them as is applied to every free man. This 
 may be done by a method compounded of the 
 two plans just sketched. Let every prisoner be 
 paid wages for his work, as in the Belgian prisons, 
 but let him be paid in marks according to the 
 method of Captain Maconochie. A certain deduc- 
 tion must be made for lodging, but the necessaries 
 of life must be purchased by the prisoner with the 
 marks he has received as wages. It shall be 
 decided that one mark is to be reckoned as so 
 much money; what he does not spend, the prisoner 
 shall be allowed to deposit in a savings' bank and 
 receive on his discharge. A modification of this 
 plan was proposed by Mr. Pearson ; but his sugges-
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 241 
 
 tion was that just sufficient food of a very plain 
 character should be given to every prisoner to keep 
 him from actual starvation, and that he might sup- 
 plement this by means of the marks he earned. 
 There is, however, no reason for extending to 
 criminals this favourable treatment ; every man 
 on entering prison must be distinctly told that he 
 must earn his own livelihood there or starve ; 
 there is absolutely no reason why the State should 
 be put to any expense on the account of such a 
 man, and if he did not choose to keep himself at 
 liberty he must keep himself in prison. Of course, 
 such a scheme is open to abuse, and very great 
 care would have to be exercised in administering 
 it ; with the present class of prison warders, and 
 with prison doctors of such a character as are now 
 not infrequently appointed, it would be quite out 
 of the question; but if worked by carefully selected 
 men there would be no danger. If thought neces- 
 sary, two or even more medical men might be 
 appointed to each prison, who should con- 
 stantly and carefully examine the prisoners, and 
 whenever they thought that a man's physical 
 strength was not sufficient to enable him to earn 
 the requisite number of marks at the work upon 
 which he was employed, would at once report the 
 fact to the governor and see that such a man was 
 put to labour consistent with his health and 
 strength ; and every man whom they reported as 
 really too ill to work would receive proper food 
 gratis. 
 
 17. It might be objected to this plan that, as 
 the capabilities of men vary much, some prisoners 
 
 17
 
 241 CRIME. 
 
 would earn a great many more marks than others 
 in a given time, and this would be unfair. It 
 certainly would seem hard upon the weaker and 
 less intelligent ones; but the same thing occurs 
 in the world outside ; free men vary greatly in 
 mental and physical capacity, but if any one were 
 to propose to carry into effect a scheme for giving 
 all men, whatever their capacity or utility to 
 society, precisely the same remuneration, he would 
 be ridiculed and called a socialist ; and if socialism 
 is fundamentally a fallacy, I do not see how it 
 would become less so because applied to prisoners 
 than when applied to free men. Moreover, this 
 hardship would in prison be much alleviated by 
 putting each man to the labour for which he was 
 naturally most fitted, and by affording in his ill- 
 nesses proper medical attention and suitable food 
 gratis. 
 
 18. In order that every reasonable facility 
 might be afforded the prisoner, the food which he 
 had to purchase should, as far as possible, combine 
 the two qualities of cheapness and nutritiousness ; 
 in both of which respects great improvements 
 might be made in the food now supplied in prisons. 
 The food is not good, it is insufficient, and yet it 
 costs more than it need. When one considers the 
 ways of Government officials, he passes so rapidly 
 from one astonishment to another that eventually 
 the capability for wonder is satiated, and therefore 
 I am not at all surprised that the English Home 
 Department has paid no attention to the astonish- 
 ing results achieved by Count Rumford in the 
 provision of good cheap food for a large number of
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 243 
 
 persons. In the English convict prisons the total 
 cost of victualling for convicts, during the year 
 ending March 31, 1883, was 94,299 I2s., and the 
 number of persons fed was 10,564, giving an 
 average of 8 per prisoner per annum, or about 
 5^-d. per day. 
 
 This certainly does not seem a very large sum 
 for a man to have to pay for his "daily bread," even 
 though that bread be of inferior quality, until we 
 have seen what has been effected in the way of 
 cheap food. 
 
 The following table, given by Mr. Mattieu 
 Williams in " Knowledge," z gives the ingredients 
 and cost of preparing a thick soup, or rather 
 porridge, which Count Rumford supplied to the 
 Bavarian beggars, he having found by experience 
 that a given quantity of solid food was more 
 satisfying to the appetite and more effective in 
 nutrition when made into soup by long boiling 
 with water : 
 
 Weight 
 Avoirdupois. Cost. 
 
 Ibs. ozs. s. d. 
 
 2 viertels of pearl barley 70 9 ... o 5 9^ 
 
 2 viertels of peas 65 10 ... 037! 
 
 8 viertels of potatoes 230 4 ... o i 9 T T 
 
 Cuttings of fine wheaten bread ... 69 10 ... o 10 2j 
 
 Salt 19 13 ... o i 2^ 
 
 Vinegar 46 13 ... o i 5$ 
 
 Water 982 15 ... 
 
 Fuel, servants, repairs, &c ...03 5^ 
 
 Total daily cost of 1,200 dinners ... i 7 
 ' Vol. vi. p. 44.
 
 244 CRIME. 
 
 This amounts to a trifle more than one farthing 
 per dinner i T V exactly. 
 
 But since that date, 1790, the prices of food 
 and fuel have declined while wages have risen ; 
 and if the necessary allowances are made, the 
 price will be increased to about one halfpenny per 
 dinner. 
 
 Another soup was made by Count Rumford of a 
 slightly better quality, by doubling the weight of 
 peas and pearl barley and leaving out the potatoes, 
 at a cost of one-third of a penny per dinner ; or, 
 making the necessary correction for variation in 
 prices, a little over one halfpenny. The weight 
 of each portion, as served to the beggars, was 
 19*9 ozs. ; the solid matter contained was 6 ozs. of 
 the inferior, or 4^ ozs. of the better soup, and 
 Rumford states that this " is quite sufficient to 
 make a good meal for a strong, healthy person," 
 as " abundantly proved by long experience." A 
 result which is quite in accordance with theory, 
 for chemical analysis shows us that of all food- 
 stuffs barley, peas, and wheat are among the most 
 nutritious. 
 
 Surely there is no danger of a prisoner starving, 
 except wilfully, if he could get a good dinner for 
 one halfpenny, and a rather better one for a trifle 
 more. If he wished to indulge himself a little, and 
 had a fancy for animal food, he might be supplied 
 with a dinner such as Count Rumford devised for 
 the mess of the Elector's Grenadiers at Munich. 
 Here is one example which Mr. Mattieu Williams 
 gives out of many : * 
 
 1 " Knowledge," vol. vi. p. 82.
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 245 
 
 June 10, 1795 Bill of Fare. 
 Boiled beef, with soup and bread dumplings. 
 
 Details of the Expense. 
 
 First for the boiled beef and the soup. 
 
 Ibs. loths Kreutzers. 
 
 2 o beef 16 
 
 o i sweet herbs ... i 
 
 o Q\ pepper o 
 
 6 salt o 
 
 1 14^ ammunition bread cut fine ... 2f 
 9 20 water o 
 
 Total 13 10 Cost 20f 
 
 " The Bavarian pound is a little less than i Ibs. 
 avoirdupois, and is divided into 32 loths. 
 
 " All these were put into an earthenware pot 
 and boiled for two hours and a quarter, then 
 divided into twelve portions of 26 T V loths each, 
 costing if kreutzers." 
 
 Second for the bread dumplings. 
 Ibs. loths. Kreutzers. 
 
 i 13 of fine Semel bread 10 
 
 i o of fine flour 4$ 
 
 o 6 salt o 
 
 3 o water o 
 
 Total 5 19 Cost 15 
 
 "This mass was made into dumplings, which were 
 boiled half an hour in clear water. Upon taking 
 them out of the water they were found to weigh 
 5 Ibs. 24 loths, giving 15^ loths to each portion, 
 costing i kreutzers.
 
 246 CRIME. 
 
 " The meat, soup, and dumplings were served all 
 at once, in the same dish, and were all eaten 
 together at dinner. Each member of the mess 
 was also supplied with 10 loths of rye bread, 
 which cost T 5 7 of a kreutzer. Also with 10 loths 
 of the same for breakfast, another piece of same 
 weight in the afternoon, and another for his 
 supper. 
 
 " A detailed analysis of this is given, the sum- 
 total of which shows that each man received in 
 avoirdupois weight daily : 
 
 Ibs. ozs. 
 
 2 2 T ^ of solids 
 i 2 T 8 ^ of "prepared water" 
 
 total solids and fluids. 
 
 which cost 5^|- kreutzers, or twopence sterling, 
 very nearly." 
 
 This cost will be reduced by the substitu- 
 tion of the present prices of materials, but it is 
 exclusive of the cost of fuel, &c., for cooking. 
 Therefore, for about twopence a day prisoners 
 ought to be able to procure a good meat dinner 
 and sufficient breakfast, tea, and supper, and live 
 much better at their own expense than they now 
 do at a cost to the country of 5d. per man per 
 day. Of course, if they chose to practise self- 
 denial and live chiefly upon the halfpenny 
 porridge they would have more money to spend 
 on their liberation. It often happens that the 
 innocent wives and children of convicted men
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 247 
 
 suffer extreme hardships, and perhaps even run 
 considerable risk of starvation, or are forced to go 
 to the workhouse, to which disreputable place, if 
 they are at all respectable, they naturally dislike 
 going ; it should, therefore, be permissible for the 
 convict to direct that a certain proportion of his 
 earnings be paid to his wife. 
 
 19. The system of paying prisoners for their 
 labour, which was originated in the Belgian prisons, 
 has now been extended to many continental prisons, 
 and the men are fairly well treated and comfort- 
 ably lodged ; but, for various reasons, crime is 
 reduced by such establishments, probably, as little 
 as by the English prisons. In the first place, the 
 wages paid to the prisoners amount only to six- 
 pence or eightpence for twelve hours' labour, and 
 of this small sum half is retained by the State to 
 set against the prisoner's food, lodging and dress. 
 The effect of such a course is really scarcely, if at 
 all, better than not paying the prisoners any- 
 thing, for they feel that they are being cheated 
 and robbed, and their hearts are hardened against 
 a society which, as they think, is taking advantage 
 of them. They might say, " According to you, it 
 is wicked to rob ; but what is the extraction of 
 twelve hours' work from a man at the price of two ? 
 You have robbed us of ten hours' labour. It seems 
 the law of society is that while we have the chance 
 we rob you, and when you get your turn you rob 
 us ; very well, wait till our turn comes round 
 again, and see if we don't make hay while the sun 
 shines." Everything is done to confirm the 
 criminal in the idea that he and society are
 
 248 CRIME. 
 
 natural enemies, and that, as in war, all things 
 are fair which the one can compass against the 
 other. Then he is clothed, as in English prisons, 
 in a parti-coloured dress, the effect of which is to 
 degrade him in his own eyes and make him 
 ashamed. Now, everybody must know, from his 
 own experience, that to be made to look like a fool, 
 or in any way publicly humiliated by another 
 person, is about the most difficult thing to forgive, 
 and rouses in the heart all kinds of bitterness 
 and uncharitable feelings ; the convict is a man, 
 though many people seem not to think so, he feels 
 that he is being gratuitously humiliated and 
 degraded in the eyes of himself and others ; 
 bitterness and hardness of heart is the result, 
 and one more grudge chalked down to the heavy 
 score of society. 
 
 Again, wrong is frequently done from want of 
 moral strength and firmness of will, but surely no 
 man's will is likely to be strengthened by his being 
 treated as a slave, being under the absolute con- 
 trol of other men, forced always to perform a given 
 act at a given time, and never allowed to choose 
 for himself between two actions nor exercise his 
 will at all ! If a man enters prison with a little 
 independence of character, and with a proper 
 amount of self-respect, he will revolt as a man 
 against the ignominious treatment to which he is 
 subjected in prison; he will then become a marked 
 man ; he will be persecuted by the warders, and 
 perhaps by the governor ; his spirit will be 
 crushed by dark-cell and bread-and-water diet ; 
 and, should he survive, he will issue from prison
 
 THE TREATMENT OF ADULT CRIMINALS. 249 
 
 an inferior being in all respects : inferior physi- 
 cally, and therefore less capable of earning an 
 honest livelihood by labour ; inferior mentally, 
 with moral fibre crushed and broken, and there- 
 fore less likely to act honourably and resist temp- 
 tation. Besides these things, the absence of 
 interest, of events, of new impressions, is in- 
 jurious both to bodily and mental well-being ; and 
 the impossibility of exercising sympathy, gene- 
 rosity, friendship, forbearance, all the good quali- 
 ties which are called forth among men in society, 
 but absolutely precluded when all intercourse is 
 forbidden, throws away a splendid means of im- 
 proving the characters of prisoners. 
 
 All these and other causes render worthless the 
 continental system; the mere employing prisoners 
 in industrial occupations, and paying them the 
 paltry sum of sixpence or eightpence for twelve 
 hours' labour, will not suffice to effect their refor- 
 mation ; a fortiori it will not when at the same 
 time the prisoner is degraded and humiliated, and 
 his heart filled with all kinds of bitter and revenge- 
 ful feelings against society. It is as though a 
 farmer, before sowing his seeds, converted his field 
 into a huge high road by means" of a steam-roller. 
 
 20. However, the lengthening of the hours of 
 labour is a step in the right direction ; it has been 
 pointed out in the previous chapter that such a 
 change was necessary before the labour of prisoners 
 could be made remunerative ; and since it is done 
 abroad, there are clearly no practical difficulties in 
 the way. 
 
 21. I would also suggest that daily chapel be
 
 250 CRIME. 
 
 discontinued, for I do not think much impression 
 is produced on the convicts by it ; and whatever 
 might be thought desirable in the lowest class of 
 prisons, I should propose that in the superior and 
 intermediate classes the attendance at chapel on 
 Sundays be voluntary. If prison officials of a 
 suitable character were appointed, and if they 
 conversed often and in a judicious manner with 
 the prisoners, and if properly qualified persons, 
 without respect to denomination, were admitted 
 to visit the prisoners constantly, far more moral 
 good would be done than now results from com- 
 pulsory attention at chapel, which is regarded as 
 part of the prison routine, and in which, owing to 
 the inefficiency or bigotry of chaplains, prisoners 
 frequently hear words which can in no way 
 awaken their moral sense, and may sometimes 
 even produce a bad effect. 
 
 22. But, as I have already observed, the 
 fewer regulations the better ; certain fundamental 
 principles have been here laid down, and an at- 
 tempt made to prove them. If their truth has 
 been satisfactorily established, then all that] is 
 necessary is that prison governors, peculiarly 
 fitted by nature for dealing with men, should be 
 appointed and given a free hand to carry them 
 into effect. If this were done there can be no 
 doubt that the successes of Colonel Montesinos 
 and M. Obermaier would be repeated, and even 
 surpassed, and society become enriched by thou- 
 sands of producers.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE LAST RESOURCE. 
 
 " Etenim ut membra quaedam amputantur, si et ipsa san- 
 guine et tamquam spiritu carere casperunt, et nocent reliquis 
 partibus corporis, sic ista in figura hominis feritas et im- 
 manitas beluas a communi tamquam humanitatis corpora 
 segreganda est." CICERO, " De Officiis," bk. iii. 32. 
 
 i. THERE is, unfortunately, some reason to think 
 that there are in existence men of so vicious and 
 degraded a nature that no reformatory treatment 
 would ever make good citizens of them. Owing 
 to some mental disease, to some malformation of 
 the brain, or to a want of development of the in- 
 tellectual and moral centres, some men may be 
 literally on a level with the brutes, and combine 
 the ferocity of the tiger with the cunning of the 
 fox. What is to be done with these ? Well, if 
 they can safely be kept in custody, and will earn 
 their living in that condition, there is no reason 
 why they should not thus remain during the 
 whole of their lives, seeing that they are no burden 
 upon the State. Commonly, however, it will not 
 be safe thus to keep them, for by hypothesis they 
 are unreformable and untamable, and might use
 
 252 CRIME. 
 
 violence against the prison officials, and even 
 against their fellow-prisoners. The attacks upon 
 warders which take place now, occasionally re- 
 sulting in murder, are not to be wondered at, for 
 reasons already given ; and many a prisoner who 
 is goaded by the present system into homicidal 
 frenzy, might, by proper treatment, be made a 
 useful member of society ; but it is to be feared 
 that there are men whose savagery is unredeem- 
 able. There are only two ways of dealing with 
 men of this character one is to imprison them 
 for life in a separate cell, and the other is to kill 
 them. 
 
 The former method is cruel to the criminal, 
 prejudicial to his health, dangerous to his reason, 
 and costly to the State ; whereas the latter need 
 involve no pain and little expense. When, there- 
 fore, a reformatory treatment has had a fair trial 
 and failed, and it is quite obvious that the criminal 
 is a dangerous wild beast, death is the only 
 remedy. Simple murder, under any circumstances, 
 will not justify Society in at once depriving a 
 human being of life ; but Society would be guilty 
 of culpable folly in allowing a wild beast to be at 
 large, perhaps propagating its species, and cer- 
 tainly endangering the lives of citizens. To keep 
 a wild beast in a cage is cruel, death is more 
 merciful and more effective. 
 
 2. The only difficulty, and it is certainly no 
 slight one, is where to draw the line ; but if there 
 be any doubt, it will be better to obey the old 
 adage and " abstain," and there will be cases in 
 which doubt is impossible. One or two instances
 
 THE LAST RESOURCE. 253 
 
 may be given. In February, 1886, a correspon- 
 dent of The Times wrote from Copenhagen : "The 
 incendiary who some years ago set fire to the 
 Victoria Docks, and caused a conflagration of the 
 most dangerous nature, and involving damage of 
 several hundred thousands of pounds, has recently 
 been condemned to death for the second time by 
 the Danish courts, and he is not yet twenty-five. 
 The name of the criminal is Jens Nielsen, and he 
 was born in 1862, the illegitimate child of a 
 crippled mother. He passed his youth in Danish 
 workhouses and reformatories, was frequently 
 punished for thefts, and before he was sixteen had 
 twice tried his hand at arson. After having served 
 his term at the penitentiary for these crimes he 
 was sent to America, where he became a sailor. 
 His new trade brought him to London, where he 
 underwent several punishments for minor felonies 
 and committed the principal crime of his life. 
 For this he was not put on trial in England ; it 
 was during an investigation against him for other 
 reasons after his return to Denmark that he was 
 convicted of having set fire to the Victoria Docks 
 solely with a view of plundering during the con- 
 fusion, and the sentence for this and other crimes 
 was sixteen years' penitentiary. He had only been 
 a few months in prison when he made a mur- 
 derous attack on one of the warders, partly out of 
 spite, and partly because he felt tired of life and 
 wished to die. He was condemned to death, but 
 a royal pardon commuted the penalty to imprison- 
 ment for life, under severe guard. This increased 
 his rage and despair, and a few weeks after he
 
 254 CRIME. 
 
 committed another murderous assault, planned 
 with the utmost shrewdness, and coming very 
 near success. The Supreme Court has now, for 
 the second time, condemned him to the supreme 
 penalty of the law, and it is not probable that any 
 commutation will again be advised to the King. 
 Jens Nielsen is in full possession of his mental 
 powers ; he is even clever and shrewd, but he is 
 of a bottomless depravity, utterly devoid of moral 
 notions, entirely dominated by his feelings of 
 spite and revenge, and full of sensational vanity. 
 His execution will relieve the world of a real 
 monstntm horrendum." 
 
 On June 10, 1887, there was reported in the 
 newspapers the trial of a man by the Recorder of 
 Birmingham for theft : " The Recorder, in passing 
 sentence, said he had rarely come across a case 
 like the prisoner's. His career of crime began 
 over eighteen years ago, and since then every 
 experiment it was possible to make had been tried. 
 He had been whipped, sent to a reformatory, 
 twenty times summarily convicted, under police 
 supervision, and finally sent into penal servitude. 
 The practical result was that, during all those 
 years, he had been either kept by the State, or had 
 subsisted on the plunder taken by him from the 
 citizens of this country. He (the Recorder) felt it 
 to be his duty to protect society against a man 
 whom it seemed impossible to wean from crime, 
 and he should therefore order him to be kept in 
 penal servitude for seven years, and then be for 
 three years under police supervision." 
 
 The next case was reported in The Star, April
 
 THE LAST RESOURCE. 255 
 
 4, 1888 : " Jeremiah Murphy, 26, labourer, 
 pleaded Guilty at the Middlesex Sessions to-day 
 with committing wilful damage to a plate-glass 
 window, value 7, and assaulting a police-con- 
 stable. The prisoner broke the window of a public- 
 house in St. George's, East, and when taken into 
 custody assaulted the constable with a gas-pipe, 
 severely hurting him. Twenty-four convictions 
 were proved, beginning in 1870, when he was 
 eleven years of age. His lordship passed sentence 
 of five years' penal servitude for the damage, and 
 twelve months' imprisonment for the assault." 
 
 Reference has been made in a former chapter 
 to Wright, the Hoxton burglar, and to his threat 
 that he would not undergo another sentence of 
 penal servitude. Since that chapter was written 
 the following account of this criminal has appeared 
 in The Daily News : x " Wright, the Hoxton 
 burglar, seems bent on ending his wretched career 
 on the gallows. A more degraded and desperate 
 villain has rarely tenanted even a prison cell. A 
 glimpse of him in his cell was given three years 
 ago by one of our correspondents, who visited 
 Wormwood Scrubbs Convict Prison on Christmas 
 Day. After attending service in the chapel, the 
 writer made the round of the gaol, and in one of 
 the cells he recognized the figure of this man, 
 who, even in a convict prison, had managed to 
 commit a theft, and, while most of his fellow- 
 prisoners were celebrating the day by attendance 
 at morning service, was confined in a punishment- 
 cell. ' As I peep in upon him through the eye- 
 1 April 24, 1888.
 
 256 CRIME. 
 
 hole in the door,' observed the writer, who at that 
 time referred to him merely as a notorious criminal, 
 and without naming him, ' he is pacing his cell 
 with his hands clasped behind him, a brutal scowl 
 on his brow, and he is savagely muttering to him- 
 self. The look of the man makes me shudder. 
 His restless pacing to and fro, and his strange 
 muttering irresistibly suggest the idea of a caged 
 wild beast, and I turn away sick and sad.' A 
 very dangerous person he has shown himself. 
 Last week, according to the brief report, which is 
 all that is usually permitted to find its way into 
 print respecting what occurs in convict prisons, 
 he seems to have been put in irons, which is never 
 done except in cases of extreme insubordination. 
 While his shackles were being examined, the report 
 states that he suddenly seized the chief warder's 
 sword and made a slash at him. How the officer 
 came to escape with his life it is difficult to under- 
 stand, if, as it is stated, he was knocked backwards 
 by the blow. Wright, it is said, made a thrust at 
 another officer, and was then overpowered. . . . 
 He is evidently quite reckless, and one of these 
 days he may catch somebody napping. For his 
 attempt last week thirty lashes were ordered by 
 one of the Directors of Convict Prisons who hap- 
 pened to be on the spot. ' The attempt, and not 
 the deed, confounds us,' will be the sentiment 
 that this desperado will probably entertain in 
 future, and next time he will make sure of the 
 gallows, and so escape the whipping." 
 
 Of course it would be very rash to say at once that 
 all these men were irreclaimable, because no serious
 
 THE LAST RESOURCE. 257 
 
 attempt was ever made to reclaim them; on the con- 
 trary, the treatment they underwent in prison prob- 
 ably made them worse than they were before. In 
 the second of the cases given, especially, long before 
 the man had reached his twentieth conviction it 
 must have been pretty obvious what his real 
 character was, and so soon as that was apparent, 
 however trifling the offence of which he was 
 charged, he should have been sentenced, according 
 to the scheme which has been sketched in a 
 previous chapter, to a minimum term of say two 
 years, commencing in the lowest class ; if at the 
 end of the two years he had already reached the 
 superior class, and had been there a sufficiently 
 long time to enable the prison governor to say, 
 with certainty, that he was a reformed man, he 
 would be discharged; but if the most judicious 
 treatment produced no effect upon him, he would 
 remain, all his life, if necessary, in the lowest class, 
 earning his own livelihood in it, and would never 
 be, as this man was for years, a burden upon the 
 State, and so long as he refrained from violence 
 no further steps need be taken with regard to him. 
 In the other three cases there was a strong 
 tendency to murderous violence ; whether such 
 men as Nielsen and Wright could be reformed by 
 any means remains to be proved by experiment ; 
 but assuming that, after every means had been 
 tried, during three or four years, the men still 
 showed themselves as dangerous as these two men 
 have done, there could be no hesitation in saying 
 that death is the only thing for them. Not as a 
 punishment, nor in a spirit of revenge, nor as a 
 
 18
 
 258 CRIME. 
 
 deterrent to others ; but just as society, not 
 primarily for the good of the criminal, but in its 
 own interest, ought to substitute reformatory for 
 deterrent methods, so, when reformatory methods 
 have failed, society, in self-defence, has no other 
 course to adopt but that of putting a dangerous 
 criminal to death. 
 
 3-Theobjectionstothe putting persons to death 
 by Government have been stated by Henry Romilly, 
 in his book upon " The Punishment of Death," to 
 be : " i. That an example is given of indifference 
 to human life which, if it became general, would 
 bring men down to the level of wild beasts ; 2. That 
 Government thereby usurps the function of that 
 Being who has bestowed life upon us as a free 
 gift ; 3. That imprisonment for life has a greater 
 deterrent effect." Now, intelligent men have gene- 
 rally discarded the doctrine that persons after their 
 death have to give account of the actions they 
 have committed during their lives, nor do they 
 believe that life has been specially given to man 
 in a different sense from that in which it has been 
 given to animals, which may be killed without 
 usurping the functions of any supernatural being ; 
 and it has been proved in former pages that no 
 punishments are deterrent to any considerable 
 extent. Objections two and three are thus sum- 
 marily disposed of, and the first only remains. 
 
 Now, it cannot be said that the slaughter of a 
 dangerous beast gives an example of indifference 
 to human life, and if Government, as the represen- 
 tative of society, says, " Under no circumstances, 
 and in retaliation for no act, shall any person be
 
 THE LAST RESO URCE. 259 
 
 put to death while there is the smallest hope that 
 he can be made a useful member of society ; not 
 even murder shall be held to entitle us to take the 
 agent's life ; we will do our utmost to calm his 
 passions and to elevate his thoughts, placing him 
 in a position in which he can do the minimum 
 of injury to society at large, and in which he may 
 do useful work for his own and the common ad- 
 vantage, even holding out to him the hope of 
 earning his liberation ; but if, after all our en- 
 deavours, a creature in human form proves him- 
 self in reality a savage and dangerous animal, 
 then our regard for the lives of human beings will 
 compel us to put that dangerous creature to death ; " 
 surely hereby is manifested no indifference for 
 human life, but quite the reverse. 
 
 4. There have, from time to time, been debates 
 in the House of Commons as to the advisability of 
 discontinuing what is called the death " penalty ; " 
 and the argument has usually turned chiefly upon 
 the question of the relative deterrency of death 
 and of imprisonment for life a line of argument 
 which must now, of course, be abandoned, equally 
 with the idea of death as a "punishment," or 
 " penalty." But on, at least, one occasion, Mr. 
 Pease urged as an objection to death the revolting 
 scenes which sometimes take place at executions, 
 and he gave a long and gruesome list of cases in 
 which accidents or delays have occurred, causing 
 to the condemned man either physical or mental 
 anguish. 
 
 This, though it is no argument at all against 
 putting men to death, is a strong argument against
 
 260 CRIME. 
 
 the present barbarous system of strangling them 
 and wringing their necks. In a philosophical and 
 aesthetic age it is really time to cast about for 
 some method which shall be at the same time 
 less repulsive and more certain. Seeing that 
 death is only to be inflicted when no other course 
 remains, and that it is not to be meted out as a 
 punishment, the State is guilty of a criminal act 
 when it does not limit itself to the mere painless 
 deprivation of life, but wantonly subjects the 
 doomed man to torture in his last moments. In 
 any case, even though death on the scaffold be 
 instantaneous, the preliminaries, the pinioning, 
 the walking from the cell to the place of death, 
 the sight of the scaffold, the slow painful moments 
 which must elapse before the bolt is drawn, 
 all these things must, and it is known as a fact 
 that they do, cause the condemned man extreme 
 mental agony, though, naturally, some bear it better 
 than others. Of all the continental countries 
 Russia, which we are wont to look upon as semi- 
 barbarous, is the only companion of England in 
 resorting to the halter. America, an English- 
 speaking nation, has not yet discarded it, but 
 there are signs that public opinion there is tending 
 in that direction; for the Medico-Legal Society of 
 New York, having recently appointed a committee 
 to report on the best method of executing criminals, 
 the following conclusions were arrived at : Hanging 
 should be abolished, as cruel and contrary to the 
 public sense of civilization ; as a substitute for the 
 present death penalty three methods are recom- 
 mended (a) death by the electric current ; (&)
 
 THE LAST RESOURCE. 261 
 
 death by hypodermatic or other injection of poison ; 
 (c) death by carbonic acid gas injected into a small 
 room in each gaol ; of these three preference is 
 given to the first, 1 a decision which I, for various 
 reasons, endorse ; but to discuss the respective 
 merits of the three methods would not properly 
 come within the scope of the present work. That 
 some change ought to be made cannot be dis- 
 puted. 
 
 5. I have now endeavoured to show how law- 
 breakers of every age and every shade may be 
 dealt with most profitably to the community. 
 Examining first the causes of crime, I showed that 
 habitual criminals nearly always commenced their 
 career early, and inferred that, since prevention is 
 better than cure, it was advisable to use our 
 utmost endeavours to get hold of juveniles before 
 the seeds of evil had had time to take root, and 
 even before those seeds were sown if possible, and 
 plant instead, in their minds, habits of industry 
 and uprightness; if we could succeed in this there 
 is great hope that the criminal classes would be 
 broken up and their supply cut off at the source. 
 Then I endeavoured to devise a scheme by which 
 all habitual criminals might be drawn into a great 
 net spread for them by society, and kept in a 
 position in which little injury could be done by 
 them, and in which they would produce for the 
 advantage of the community, instead of being a 
 prey upon it as heretofore, and I pointed out a 
 
 1 Since the above words were written the New York 
 Legislature has given effect to the recommendations of 
 this committee.
 
 262 CRIME. 
 
 means by which such men might be reformed and 
 earn their own freedom through good conduct, or, 
 should they never become fitted for social life, 
 remain all their lives in no miserable or unhealthy 
 condition, but out of harm's way. Finally, I 
 argued that if it were evident that a man were 
 quite unfit to live, life would rightly be withdrawn 
 from him. Society deals with criminals in self- 
 defence ; if they can be made useful citizens the 
 best result of all is attained ; if they will not work 
 but prefer to starve that is their look-out ; if they 
 endanger the lives of members of society, then 
 death is the last resource. 
 
 To keep men in a separate cell at the public 
 expense has been shown to be futile and a waste 
 of public money; the method proposed in these 
 pages, some portions of which have already been 
 put into practice with good results, seems to me 
 not only consistent and philosophical, but inex- 
 pensive and, if involving difficulties, with determi- 
 nation, practical. 
 
 The present method is a failure. At least, it is 
 wise to try some other plan ; should that also fail, 
 ingenuity must again be evoked, but at least let 
 us not sit contented and, with a bland smile, watch 
 criminals being manufactured by society, in the 
 very establishments which are designed to eradi- 
 cate them.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 SOME FACTS AND EXPRESSIONS OF OPINION WITH REGARD 
 TO THE EFFICIENCY OF IMPRISONMENT AS A DETER- 
 RENT FROM CRIME. 
 
 No. i. 
 
 Extract from a report in The Times of December 2, 
 1885, of a speech delivered by Lord Coleridge in a Mis- 
 sion Room, before a company of discharged prisoners : 
 
 "There were few things more frequently borne in upon 
 a judge's mind than the little good he could do the 
 criminal by the sentence he imposed. These sentences 
 often did nothing but unmixed harm, though he was sure 
 that throughout the country the greatest pains had been 
 taken to make our prisons as useful as possible in the 
 way of being reformatories. But, as a matter of fact, they 
 are not so" 
 
 No. 2. 
 
 Extracts from the Report of the Select Committee on 
 Prison Discipline: 
 
 "3422. You are aware of the solitary system as it has 
 been acted upon in America ? 
 
 " Mr. W. Merry. Yes, in Walnut Street Prison the men 
 were shut up in living graves for ten months. ... In
 
 264 CRIME, 
 
 the course of the ten months some died, one went mad, 
 and the thing was given up. But a remarkable thing in 
 connection with the experiment is this that most terrible 
 as that punishment was, fourteen of those men upon 
 whom such an awful experiment had been tried were 
 recommitted." 
 
 Rev. J. Field, Chaplain of Reading Gaol, said, in- 
 answer to question 3786 : "I do not think punishments 
 generally deter to the extent supposed." 
 
 No. 3. 
 
 Extracts from the Report of the Penal Servitude Acts 
 Commission, 1879. 
 
 Major A. Griffiths, Inspector of Prisons, in reply to 
 question 3195, said: "I do not think punishment is 
 effective at all in the way of deterring from crime." 
 
 "3197. Then you think that the punishment has no 
 effect upon those who have not yet offended in deterring 
 them from committing crime? I do not think that it 
 has a very appreciable effect." 
 
 Captain R. A. Leggett, Governor of Salford Gaol, in 
 reply to question 6163, said : "I cannot think that the 
 imprisonment, as enforced now, under the strictest rules, 
 exercises any deterrent effect." 
 
 And this opinion is spreading more and more among 
 those who are brought into frequent contact with crimi- 
 nals and thoughtfully observe their ways and character. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS THE GRESHAM TRESS, CHILWORTH ANU LONDON.