DA T'S JUVENILE CRIME. * 4 ‘ Thum is mighty and will
prevail," though it often takes a lone.° time to gain the mastery. In matters of practice and opin- ion this slowness is less to be ascribed to the weakness of truth and the strength of its opposites, than to the mixed nature of human affairs, which renders it exceedingly difficult to resolve the question which Pilate asked. When the attention is limited to one link in a chain and to a rather broad • conclusion, we readily arrive at a rough working kind of truth. There is not much difficulty in finding when killing is murder. If an urchin is drawing your purse from your pocket, or you find a man in your house at dead of night, he having effected a "burglarious entry," there is little thought required to settle the respective category of the offences. Nor is there much trouble in inflicting the penalty.
"The law allows it:and the court awards it."
But if you are given to speculation and take a larger view—if you wish to exactly apportion punishment, not to the mere tech- nical crime, but to the actual guilt of the criminal, then you are plunged into an ocean of difficulties over which you have to navi- gate somewhat hopelessly in search of truth. We put aside the phrenologico-fatalist notion that men are to escape the conse- quences of crime on account of the organization of their nerves or the formation of their brain. But to what extent could the boy
* Juvenile Crime; its Causes, Character, and Cure. By Samuel Phillips Day. Published by Hope.
who picks your pocket, or the burglar who robs your house, or murderer who who. practises "'gainst man's life," have successfully struggled against the circumstances that have surroluaded from his cradle to his crime ? How far does the plea of what the Romanists call " invincible ignorance "—a darknessi which us efforts of the individual can dissipate—avail ? In what degree is society an accomplice in criminality—so far, that is, as sochd causes directly contribute to crime ? For we should at once re_ fuse to discuss the opinion broadly • maintained by some that every roie and thief is entitled to lay his offences upon the na. tion. What you can fairly demand from human nature is the true point of the question; and even then, if answered in the criminal's favour, criminality may be a man's misfortune and net other people's fault. For a nation, be it remembered, has just as much title as an individual to the plea of circumstances ; on at- count of its growth, its habits, its ever-changing constituents, and the complexity and greatness of the questions with whieh has to deal.
These are some of the leading difficulties surrounding truth as connected with Juvenile Crime, its Causes, Character, and Cure rendering it so hard to trace the origin of crime, and to apply e; its reformation a plan which shall be practical and effectual This is the "magna veritas " which shall prevail, when we Can get at it ; but towards which the book of Mr. Samuel Phillips Day does not contribute much. There are, no doubt, a geed many truths and truisms to be found in it ; but many are not very new, and the truth of the best of them is limited. Under the head of causes of crime, Mr. Day considers the effects of pau- perism or rather of utter poverty, of ignorance, intemperance, had lodgings with their concomitants, demoralizing literature and en- tertainments, as well as what may be called social influences_ "compulsion (of parents or circumstances), evil example, (in- cluding workhouses and prisons ) temptation, and hereditary pre.. disposition." By the " character " of crime, Mr. Day means its (alleged) increase, extent, nature and cost. For its "cure" he looks to education in some form or other ; though we should think that sympathies more widely extended through society, a general raising of the mass by economical advancement—that is by an increase of the national wealth, and the domestic training of the females of the humbler classes, quite as important as mere "education. This is one of Mr. Day's proposals. "In order to correct these evils and prevent crime, I would advocate not only the establishment of efficient schools in every district, but also require the compulsory attendance of children from the ages of seven to twelve or fourteen, making parents and guardians responsible, under a penalty, for every violation of such requirement. Without a compulsory statute the best system of education ever devised would prove of little avail, as the lower classes prefer the trifling but immediate gains yielded by their child- ren's labour to any superior ulterior advantages denvable from education either to their offspring or themselves. The children of the poor are na- turally slow to appreciate the benefits of intellectual training, to which their parents are not only profoundly indifferent, but often stubbornly hostile ; so that a compulsory measure is absolutely needed to overcome an otherwise insuperable difficulty. The liberty of the subject can in no wise be in- fringed by such a proceeding; while the safety of society demands that children be instructed and withheld from the labyrinth of crime into which, as daily experience proves, the ignorant are particularly liable to fall."
Whether ignorance of reading, writing, and arithmetic, is the cause of so much crime as one class of statists assume, may per- haps be a question; for education among the poor either implies a certain degree of competence in the parents, or some intelligence and. morality. It is evidently quite impracticable to pass a bill like the one proposed in the present temper of Parliament and the public. What the author calls his "feeding schools" are still more hopeless. For the expositional matter of his subject, Mr. Day mainly relies on the statistics found in blue-books, the pub- lications of private investigators, or works similar to his own. Those to whom such inquiries are entirely new will find a good deal of information as to the wretched lives, demoralizing amuse- ments, and moral difficulties that beset the criminal community. Readers who are familiar with the subject will meet with nothing generically new, while they will already have read a good many of the facts. The application of the mass of statistics, or of individual facts, to the enforcement of the author's object is not very striking. A grand grasp of the subject, in its entire truth, we scarcely look for from any one ; but Mr. Day sometimes rather wanders from his defined purpose. For instance, he gives ex- amples from the police reports of persons in respectable positions, who by innate depravity, pitiable weakness, or momentary temp- tation, have committed an offence which has brought them to ruin : he tells a story within his own knowledge of the " widow of a London merchant," one of whose daughters sunk to prostitu- tion owing to a chancery suit, and the criminal connivance of her mother; but what have such exceptional cases to do with juve- nile crime, or general crime of any kind ? If we were to take some of his statements strictly, exertion would be much more hopeless than it even now appears. One statist gives to 75 Per cent of the crime at Preston an "hereditary character," another to that of Manchester 90 per cent. This, however, does not mean either a constitutional taint or an hereditary right to rob, but merely that the family connexions were loose in their practical notions of mount and tuum.
The mere literary execution of the book is well enough, easy, fluent, readable ; but the writer's original observations are not in the highest style. Among his authorities are Mr. Dickens and Mr. Mayhew, and his manner, as the painters say, rather par- takes of theiPs. "In order to be fully informed as to the condition of thomost abject etas?, one very wet night last April I visited the Asylum for the Homeless Nor is te be seen at the fiar ! Also a Do with two S legs • alive ' It was not long Saturday ere I reached Whitecross Street. being ay night a singular spectacle itself. Fronting the shops and houses on either side were exten- rnted ranges of stalls, upon which were piled small pieces of meat, having the appearance of offal ; oysters as large as scallops, potatoes, greens' china-. carrots, ironmongery, watercress, and lots of all conceivable articles, mwa:erhich heterogenous commodities the owners were not backward in draw- ing attention.; for their hale and husky voices jarred most gratingly upon the ear, realizing if not precisely a Pandemonium on earth, at least a fair illustration of the ancient Babel. As for as my eye could stretch, the street, which owing to the great glare of light appeared trilliantiv wwas one floating tide of human life. Numerous ragged urchins with sooty countenances, bare feet, and uncovered heads, were either roving about or sheltering from the rain at the entrances of courts. Pushing my way through this dense and motley throng, I shortly arrived at Playhouse Yard, which, from its darkness, afforded a striking contrast to the abutting thoroughfare. "A few yards on the left, straggling groups of poverty-stricken creatures had collected in front of the asylum, from whose saturated garments arose a humid and offensive exhalation. At the doorway stood a police officer in all the haughty dignity of authority. I entered the abode of misery, over which I WU politely conducted by the secretary and superintendent; and never shall I forget the ghastly scene which presented itself: it is indeed as hr. Mayhew observes, a thing to haunt one for life.' Ranged along the lower or ground floor, I observed tiers of sleeping berths (each one six by two feet in dimensions) already crowded with miserable occupants, some of whom were sitting upon their pallets, partly nude, while repairing their
dank and tattered raiment. In this ward, too, al lay some forty boys of va- rious ages, head to foot, and crouched here and there two in a bed, most i
enveloped n their leathern coverlets, so that I could but merely catch a glimpse of their faces. They had had, poor things ! their modicum of bread, sad were now indulging in the luxury of sleep—the last refuge which Heaven in mercy leaves to the unfortunate ! Proceeding up one flight of stairs I reached another extensive dormitory, where a crowd of people were, as it is termed, passing the doctor,' apparently a kind and tender-hearted man, whose duties must be not only onerous but odious. It was sitively painful to hear the heart-broken tones in which some of these 51 icted and impoverished creatures told, in few and feeble accents, the tale of their physical infirmities ; and the avidity with which they seized the proffered rations of bread, left no doubt but that they were in a famishing condition. One poor aged and infirm Irishman, who really looked respectable, had a bowl of gruel given to him. "Higher up still, and I arrived at the female wards and the nursery,' appropriated solely to women with infants. This was the most harrowing right of all. Never shall I forget those young and rather comely faces, upon which the deep furrows of grief could distinctively be traced, nor those aged women' who seemed as woe-begone and bereft of hope as they were destitute of this world's comforts. Some did not even raise their eyes to look at me, so absorbed were they with their own thoughts ; others were fondling their hapless babes, who smiled beguilingly upon their mothers' bosoms." Yard. I wended my course through the dark, narrow lanes and P,IaLh°huseww Yavs which abound in the 'district of Clerkenwell, some idea of the01 whose low inhabitants may be gathered from the fact, that
the window of a public-house appeared the following notice,
to prina"-ted- in very large capitals, as an inducement to customers—' Fancy Rats
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