Surely, nothing can be of more vital importance than that the social diseases which affect a community should be exposed. Indeed publicity of itself would do much towards effecting a cure; more especially in a country like England, where the force of public opinion is the main lever of the State and the originator of every social and political reform. I am not a little gratified to find that the hitherto immoveable authorities of Newgate have, at length, consented to and authorized important improvements in that prison. One hundred and thirty new cells are now in course of construction, which, when completed, will have the effect of partly preventing the promiscuous association and intercommunication of idle prisoners, for which Newgate prison has been so long and so disgracefully notorious. This statement I now make (although somewhat out of place) as a set-off against the description of Newgate given in Chapter VII.,which, by the by, was fully and truly applicable at the time the account was penned, as it most probably is at this very minute. If, as Voltaire remarks, "Punishments invented for the good of society ought to be useful to society,”* the penitentiary of Newgate cannot boast of having conferred much, if any, public advantage. What it yet may do time alone can tell; for why despair of systems any more than of individuals? * Comment. on Beccaria, cap. x. I have to express my indebtedness for the polite attention shown to and the facilities afforded me in compiling this volume, by Sir George Grey, the late Home Secretary; Sir Richard Mayne, Chief Commissioner of Police; Lieut.-Col. Jebb, Inspector of Prisons; Capt. Greig, Chief Constable, Liverpool; R. N. Stephens, Esq., Chief of Police, Birmingham; the Poor-law Board; the Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education; Rev. Sydney Turner, Her Majesty's Inspector of Reformatory Schools; Rev. J. Davis, Ordinary of Newgate; Rev. John Clay, Preston Gaol; Rev. Henry Smith Warleigh, Parkhurst Prison; and the Rev. J. T. Burt, Birmingham Prison. The intense interest lately excited by, and the deep attention given to, the consideration of social questions by the middle and upper classes of this country, unmistakeably prove that “a benignant spirit is abroad." Hence, I am led to regard the "good time coming" as no aërial phantom of the brain, or escurient fancy; and to adopt, as one article of my social and political creed, the terse aphorism of St. Simon: "L'age d'or, qu' une aveugle tradition a placé jusqu'ici dans le passé, est devant nous." "The golden age, which a blind tradition has placed in the PAST, is BEFORE us." LONDON: June, 1858 JUVENILE CRIME; ITS CAUSES, ETC. CHAPTER I. PAUPERISM. "Rather than continue to labour under this affliction, individuals who are experiencing it will naturally and necessarily, in proportion as they find opportunity, do what depends upon them towards obtaining, at the charge of others, the means of rescuing themselves from it: and in proportion as endeavours to this purpose are employed, or believed to be intended to be employed, security for property is certainly diminished-security for person probably diminished on the part of all others."-JEREMY Bentham. 66 Pauperism and crime are connected with each other, not only because they are analogous corruptions of the moral nature of man, but because they act and re-act on each other as mutual cause and effect."-G. H. BOWYER, one of her Majesty's Inspectors of Parochial Union Schools. an It has been well and wisely observed that " enemy discovered is an enemy half conquered." The alarming increase of juvenile delinquency during late years has excited the public mind beyond precedent, has led to considerable inquiry as to its causes and extent, and has originated a B |