and the Industrial Schools Acts.

This Act was

passed in 1854, and it empowered magistrates, upon the conviction for crime of any person under 16 years of age, to send such child to a reformatory school, to be there detained for a period of not less than two, nor more than five years. The total admission into these schools from 1854 to December 1873, was 26,326; the number actually under detention at the latter date being 6,778. The abstraction from society, and efficient oversight of so many budding criminals, cannot but have tended to the reduction of crime.

From 1850 to 1853, trade in general was very good. In the early part of 1854 the Crimean war broke out, which lasted until the spring of 1856. The war somewhat interfered with trade, but not very extensively. In 1857 there was a commercial panic, but it was of short duration; and during the three following years-1858-59-60-trade was very good; probably, on the whole, better than it had been known to be during the present century.

During the years 1854-5-6 the price of wheat was higher than it had been for any three consecutive years since 1820. In those years, and up to 1857,

COMPARISONS OF CRIME.

45

crime ran somewhat high. Probably the high price of food and the dullness of trade had an influence upon this, and some influence would no doubt also be exercised by the Russian war, especially on the return home of the soldiers; but this does not appear to have been very great.

But if the crimes women, affected by

It is impossible to tell the exact condition of crime at the end of these ten years as compared with the beginning, because we cannot measure the effect of the changes in the law. of aggravated assaults on the change in the law in 1853, and the larcenies, affected by the change in the law in 1855, and which are given in the police tables for 1860, be added to the list of indictable crimes for that year, it will swell it much beyond the list of 1850.

In 1857, for the first time, was published the Judicial Statistics, including not only the indictable crime of the country, but also the police returns, embracing the crime dealt with by the magistrates. Before this date, the Criminal Returns (so the Blue Books were called prior to 1857) only gave the crime which came before the Assizes or Quarter Sessions: it

made it difficult, if not impossible, to institute reliable

comparisons.

In 1859 the number of houses licensed for the sale

of intoxicating liquors, as compared with 1849, was as follows:

In 1851 the population of England and Wales was 17,982,849; in 1861 it was 20,119,344. The increase in the drink-shops was, therefore, more than on a par with the growth of population.

The average annual consumption of intoxicating liquors during the 10 years was as follows:

* See Report of Commissioners of Inland Revenue, 1870, page 113.

CHAPTER VII.

CRIME IN ENGLAND AND WALES.

1861 TO 1874.

the 14 years under review:

The following Table gives the returns of crime for

In conjunction with the figures just quoted, the reader should study the table given in the chapter succeeding this one (page 64). A tradesman might very easily reduce his debts, if he could do it by simply transferring them from his principal ledger to a sub-ledger; but to imagine such a process would reduce his liabilities would be very irrational; and it is equally irrational for any one to suppose that there is any reduction in crime, by its transference from the assize calendar to the petty sessions list.

From the year 1860 to 1874, there appears to have been no direct change in the law transferring any of the crime from the jurisdiction of Assizes to Petty Sessions, except in the year 1868. In that year cases of embezzlement were put on the same footing as cases of larceny. The influence of this change will be manifest when I state, that in 1874, of 1,071 cases of embezzlement, 777 were dealt with by the magistrates, and only 294 treated as indictable crimes, and of course only 294 appear in the annual returns of crime.

There have, however, been other changes in the law which, though not directly affecting the returns