The increase of juvenile delinquency has become alarming. The
criminal statistics of the country show that one-eighth of the
offences which occupy our courts of justice are committed by mere
children, and one-fourth by transgressors under twenty years of
age. The depredations daily and daringly committed, especially
in towns, and the destitution continually exhibited by crowds of
young persons, have, during the current year, caused the public
to manifest a very general anxiety to inquire into causes of so
great and augmenting an evil. The inquiry cannot proceed far
without eliciting the mournful fact, that the mode of dealing
with crime in its earlier stages is not only seriously defective,
but tends to foster and increase rather than to diminish it. Not
hundreds, but thousands, of children are daily seen in London,
and in every other large town, without the means of moral or
intellectual culture, except that which has recently been provided
by private benevolence. Abandoned by their parents, unrestrained,
uncared-for by the law; hungry, and without food; cold, without
clothing; weary, and without whereon to lay their heads; existing
amidst every kind of suffering, and consequently influenced by the
strongest temptations, they embrace crime as the only means of
escape from want. Then, and not till then, does the law condescend
to notice them; not to succour or reform, but to punish.
In this respect we are immeasurably behind the legislatures of
other countries, not only modern, but ancient. The laws of Greece
placed children of tender years in a state of pupilage, and made
their teachers and pastors responsible for their conduct. Orphans
who had no natural protectors were apportioned to 'patrons,' who
were charged with, and made accountable for, their wellbeing. In
modern France, and in other continental countries, children under
sixteen years of age are not held responsible for the crimes they
may commit, but their parents are; and if they have no parents, the
state provides for them in its own fashion. The sixty-sixth article
of the French penal code stands in English thus:--
'When the accused shall be under sixteen years of age, if it has
been decided that he has acted without discernment, he shall be
acquitted; but he must be, according to circumstances, returned to
his parents, or sent to a House of Correction, there to be "brought
up" (_élevé_), and detained during such a number of years as the
judgment shall specify, and which in no case must extend beyond
the time when the accused shall have attained his twentieth year.'
By another article of the same code (the 67th), all children found
by the authorities who have neither parents nor homes are taken
to the House of Correction: nor is this plan confined to France.
The boldly-benevolent sheriff of Aberdeen, imitating this law,
formed his most efficient school, by causing all the destitute
and friendless children in the bounds of his jurisdiction to
be 'taken up' and housed in his miscellaneous but admirable
academy. The law of France, by this sort of procedure, exercises
a protective influence over the friendless and forlorn. The law
of England, on the contrary, only condescends to notice children
when they have become criminals. Here the 'eye of the law' is
shut against neglected and wretched outcasts from tainted homes,
or the offspring of vicious parents; but opens them wide, and
darts its fiery glare, to bring these young victims to punishment,
when they have committed crimes for which, as we shall presently
prove, they ought scarcely to be held accountable. The sternest
moralist will not deny that in a majority of cases offenders
under, say fourteen years of age, ought not to be deemed criminals
in the ordinary sense of the term--that is to say, as offenders
who, having acquired a knowledge of the duties of civilised life,
have violated them: the fact being, that the very possibility of
acquiring such knowledge the law denies; whilst, on the other hand,
every incentive and temptation to dishonesty is working within
them. These wretched young creatures are either homeless orphans,
committing petty thefts to keep life in them, or the offspring of
infamous parents, who urge them to pilfer, as a means of support in
their own profligacy, or are hired and taught by practised ruffian
employers to plunder for their benefit. How, then, can a child
of tender years, for whom the legislature has provided no means
of instruction, religious or moral, who has been sent out by his
parents to beg or steal--caressed when successful, and punished
when unlucky; or, more frequently, a being who has been cast loose
upon the world, without a friend in it--form any just notion of his
duties to society? Yet, because he has not done so, the law, when
it detects him in the consequences of such ignorance, sends him to
the treadmill or to jail. And even there our criminal code affords
no means of reformation, nor always of employment;[1] while, on the
contrary, every sort of instruction in depravity, and every means
of acquiring proficiency in thieving, are supplied by his prison
associates. 'Prisons,' says the chaplain of the Pentonville Prison
in the last report from that establishment, 'as they are throughout
the country, generally speaking, are schools in which everything
wicked, deceitful, impious, and abominable is practised, taught,
and propagated at a great expense of public money and public
morals.'
To illustrate vividly the condition of the juvenile criminal, the
bearing the law has upon his career and ultimate destiny, and,
finally, to render intelligible the best remedies it is in the
power of the country to apply to this worst of social diseases, it
is only necessary to trace the private history of at least one-half
of the unfortunate young beings who now infest our streets.
Before us lie two documents, from which it is easy to glean the
birth and parentage of a vast number of these wretched young
creatures. The first is the Report of the Parkhurst Prison, and the
second that of the Philanthropic Institution for the Reformation of
Juvenile Offenders; both for the year 1848. Against the lists of
'admissions' into the latter establishment are placed short notes
of the antecedents of the boys admitted during the year. The most
frequently-recurring entries against the initials of those inmates
who have been convicted more than once are such as:--'Father dead;
mother remarried; deserted by his friends.' 'Turned out of doors by
a stepfather.' 'Illegitimate; father unknown.' 'Father of dissolute
habits; deserted his wife.' 'An orphan, both parents dead;'
or 'Parents unknown,' occurs frequently. 'Mother dead, father
remarried, and turned out of doors,' and 'Utterly friendless,'
are also repeated in several instances. 'Mother separated from
her husband: she is of drunken habits: the boy led into evil by
discomforts of home:' 'Father of drunken habits,' are occasional
entries. Those boys who were admitted into the school upon one
conviction only, seem, in a majority of instances, to have been led
away by evil companions. We select the following from this category
as examples:--'The parents poor; father in bad health.' 'Father
dead; mother respectable.' 'Enticed to theft by bad companions,' &c.
Imagine the life of a young outcast belonging to the first class
of the cases above cited. His earliest endeavours may be towards
honest employment. This he seeks far and near--day after day--till,
worn out with fruitless solicitation, and nearly starved, he
takes to begging. With any charity-money he may obtain he abates
the pangs of hunger. In the casual wards of workhouses, to
which the young wanderer is often driven for a night's rest, he
has to associate with practised depredators;[2] but when more
successful, his sleeping companions in the low lodging-houses we
have previously adverted to in this Journal are chiefly young
thieves, whose occasional affluence he envies. He does not see
their more frequent privations, because at these places of meeting
no one can appear who has not been able to get money, the prompt
payment of the admission fee being indispensable. He has no moral
principles to fortify him against the jaunty, clever, convincing
persuasions of his new friends. They seem, so far as he can judge,
happy, and even joyous, which, to his perceptions, speak not only
of sufficient for subsistence, but of superfluity. He contrasts
his own condition and hopeless despondency with their evanescent
happiness, and longs to acquire such depraved knowledge as will
enable him to increase his quantum of food, and put him on a par
with his neighbours. In short, he soon becomes a thief--not an
occasional depredator, driven to dishonesty by the urgent demands
of nature, but a regular, practised, professional pilferer. Fraud
is his trade; and as it is by no means an easy one, he takes very
great pains, and runs great risks, to learn it. When he has been
'lucky,' his gains are to him great, and he spends them in a way
which debauches him still more, but which, for the time, affords
him a sort of enjoyment. There are, however, long intervals between
these saturnalia; and the want and misery he experiences meantime
are sharp and severe. But they teach him no lesson, for with him
it is 'either a hunger or a burst;' and when plenty comes, past
privation is drowned in present enjoyment.
But this is a bright view of a juvenile outcast's career. A
specimen of the miseries he has to endure was afforded by Lord
Ashley in his speech on the reformation of juvenile offenders in
the House of Commons towards the end of last session. His lordship
was anxious to ascertain from personal inspection what was the
actual condition of those persons; and he therefore, in company
with two or three others, perambulated the city of London. He found
these persons lying under dry arches, on the steps of doors, and
in outhouses; but by far the majority of them lying in the dry
arches of houses in course of erection. Those arches were quite
inaccessible in any ordinary way, being blocked up with masonry;
and the only mode of ascertaining whether any one was inside, was
by thrusting in a lantern. When lanterns were thrust in, however,
a great many were discovered, of whom he caused 33 to undergo an
examination. Their ages varied from twelve to eighteen. Of those,
24 had no parents, 6 had one parent, and 3 had stepmothers; 9 had
no shoes; 12 had been once in prison, 3 four times, 1 eight times;
and 1, only fourteen years of age, had been twelve times in prison!
The physical condition of those children was melancholy beyond
belief. The whole of them, without exception, were the prey of
vermin, a large proportion were covered with itch, a few of them
were suffering sickness, and in two or three days afterwards died
from exhaustion. Of these 33 he had himself privately examined
some eight or ten; and from the way in which their answers were
given, he was certain that they told the truth. He asked them
how often they had slept in a bed during the last three years.
One of them said, 'Perhaps as many as twelve times in the three
years;' another, three times; and another said that he could not
remember that he had ever slept in a bed. He then asked them how
they passed the time in winter, and whether they did not suffer
from the cold. They replied that they lay eight or ten together
in these cellars, in order to keep themselves warm. They fairly
confessed that they had no other means of subsistence than begging
or stealing, and that the only mode by which they could 'turn a
penny,' as they termed it, in a legitimate way, was by picking up
bones, and selling them to marine-store dealers. Let it be observed
that a large proportion of those young persons were at the most
dangerous age for society; many of them were from sixteen to two or
three-and-twenty, which was by far the most perilous age for every
purpose of fraud, and certainly of violence.
A well-authenticated anecdote gives an even more powerful
illustration of the excessive wretchedness to which young persons
without friends or protectors are, in thousands and tens of
thousands, reduced. The master of a Ragged School having occasion
to lecture a boy of this class, pointed out to him the consequences
of a perseverance in the career of crime he was pursuing; and to
enforce his precepts the stronger, painted in strong colours the
punishments he was earning in this life, and the torments in that
to come. 'Well,' said the boy, 'I don't think it can be worse than
the torments in this life.'
It is melancholy to know that it is chiefly the novices in crime
who have to endure the sharpest privations and miseries. As youths
grow more dexterous in their illicit calling, they have, as a
matter of course, better success. In lodging-houses and casual
wards they learn the elements of their illicit vocation; and it is
not till they have passed a few months in one of our prisons that
their education in crime is complete. Despite the 'silent-system,'
and the palatial accommodation of our modern prisons, detention
in them is still productive of the worst results. Although, by a
recent act, the power of summary conviction has been much extended
to police magistrates, so as to obviate the evil of long detention,
other and greater evils, which need not be specified here, have
sprung up. To show what efficient instruction in infamy those
already prepared to receive its lessons is afforded in prisons, we
need only instance a fact, related in the Pentonville Prison Report
by the chaplain, relative to a child of decent parentage, and not,
as one may suppose, so open as many to bad impressions:--'A very
young boy, seven years of age, was brought in, charged, in company
with other two boys somewhat older, with stealing some iron-piping
from the street. The little fellow--it was the first time he had
ever been in such a place--cried bitterly all the afternoon of
the Saturday; but by the Monday morning, the exhortations of his
companions, and their sneers at his softness, had reconciled him to
his situation; and the eldest of the three was teaching him to pick
pockets, practising his skill on almost all the other prisoners.
His mother came to see him in the forenoon, and the boy was again
overwhelmed with grief. Again his companions jeered him, calling
him by certain opprobrious epithets in use amongst such characters,
and in a short time the boy was pacified, and romping merrily with
his associates.'
In the same report we find the following account given by a
thoroughly-reformed prisoner, who spoke from what he had himself
witnessed:--'In the assize-yard there was a considerable number of
what are called first-offenders, nine or ten including myself, the
remainder forming an overwhelming majority; two of them murderers,
both of whom were subsequently condemned to death. I cannot reflect
without pain on the reckless conduct of these two unhappy men
during the few weeks I was with them. As regarded themselves, they
appeared indifferent to the probable result of their coming trial.
They even went so far as to have a mock trial in the day-room,
when, one of the prisoners sitting as judge, some others acting
as witnesses, and others as counsel, all the proceedings of the
court of justice were gone through, the sentence pronounced, and
mockingly carried into execution. I shall not soon forget that day
when one of these murderers was placed in the cell amongst us,
beneath the assize-court, a few moments after the doom of death
had been passed upon him. Prisoners on these occasions eagerly
inquire, "What is the sentence?" Coolly pointing the forefinger of
his right hand to his neck, he said, "I am to hang." He then broke
into a fit of cursing the judge, and mimicked the manner in which
he had delivered the sentence. The length of his trial was then
discussed: all the circumstances that had been elicited during its
progress were detailed and dwelt upon: the crowded state of the
court, the eagerness of the individuals present to get a sight of
him, the grand speech of his counsel--all were elements that seemed
to have greatly gratified his vanity, and to have drugged him into
a forgetfulness of the bitterness of his doom. He then dwelt upon
the speech he should make on the scaffold; was sure there would
be an immense concourse of people at his execution, as it was a
holiday-week; and from these and numerous other considerations,
drew nourishment to that vanity and love of distinction which had
in no small degree determined perhaps the commission of his crime.
To minds in the depths of ignorance, and already contaminated by
vicious and criminal courses of life, such a man becomes an object
of admiration. They obtain from him some slight memorial--such
as a lock of his hair, or some small part of his dress--which
they cherish with a sentiment for which veneration is the most
appropriate term; while the notoriety he has obtained may incite
them to the perpetration of some act equally atrocious.'
Mr Cloy of the Manchester Jail also reports that there the
prisoners form themselves into regular judge-and-jury societies,
and go through the whole form of a trial and conviction. They also
practise stealing from one another--less for the misappropriation
of the articles stolen, than for acquiring proficiency in the art
of picking pockets, and other degrading and immoral arts.
A constant supply of masters in the arts of dishonesty is kept up
by the system of short imprisonment. The author of 'Old-Bailey
Experience' says that thieves regard not imprisonment if it be
only for a short time. Indeed, in the winter-time, they rather
prefer it to liberty; for in jail they can insure protection from
the inclemencies of that season: but even at other times, so
ductile is nature to circumstances, that these men think themselves
fortunate if, out of twelve, they can have four mouths' 'run,'
as they call it. 'I have no hesitation in affirming,' says the
above-quoted author, 'that they would continue to go the same
round of imprisonment and crime for an unlimited period if the
duration of life and their sentences afforded them the opportunity.
I knew one man who was allowed a course of seventeen imprisonments
and other punishments before his career of crime was stopped by
transportation.' In each of these imprisonments, this practised
ruffian mixed with the youngest prisoners, and doubtless imparted
to them lessons in crime which made them ten times worse after they
had left than before they entered the prison.
Although numbers of these unfriended _pariahs_ of both sexes die in
their probation, yet some, by dint of depredation and subsistence
at the public expense in jail, grow up to adolescence. Let us hear,
in concluding this miserable history, Lord Ashley's experience of
the grown-up thief:--'Last year he received a paper signed by 150
of the most notorious thieves in London, asking him to meet them at
some place in the Minories, and to give them the best counsel he
could as to the mode in which they should extricate themselves from
their difficult position. Lord Ashley went to their appointment,
and instead of 150, he found 250 thieves assembled. They made no
secret of their mode of life. A number of addresses were delivered,
and he proceeded to examine them. They said, "We are tired to death
of the life we lead--we are beset by every misery--our lives are
a burthen to us, for we never know from sunrise to sunset whether
we shall have a full meal or any meal at all: can you give us any
counsel as to how we may extricate ourselves from our present
difficulties?" He told them that that was a most difficult question
to determine under any circumstances in the present day, when
competition was so great, and when no situation became vacant but
there were at least three applicants for it; more especially was it
difficult to determine when men whose characters were tainted came
in competition with others upon whose character there was no stain.
To that they replied, "What you say is most true: we have tried
to get honest employment, but we cannot--we find that our tainted
character meets us everywhere." In their efforts to escape from
their miserable condition, these poor creatures were constantly
foiled, and driven back to their old courses.'
Thus it is that an action and reaction are continually kept up;
and from this short sketch it may be readily seen how crime, and
especially that of young persons, increases, and will increase,
until some comprehensive remedy is earnestly applied. We repeat,
that in our present official system no machinery exists for
helping the helpless: the iron hand of the law does not hold out
the tip of its little finger to aid the orphan out of the gulf of
ignorance and crime which yawns for him at the very threshold of
his existence. This is the root of the evil--the radical defect in
our system; for it has been ascertained that not one in fifty ever
becomes a depredator after the age of twenty. Crime, therefore, can
only be checked by removing pollution from its source.
Before we take a glance at the beneficial efforts towards this
result which have been made by private benevolence, by means of
Ragged Schools, and other reformatory establishments, we must
point out one more trait of the infirmity of the law, by showing
the enormous expense to which the country is put by keeping the
cumbrous and clumsy legal machinery in operation.
A child indicted for a petty theft is often honoured with as
lengthy an indictment, occupies as much of the time of a grand
jury, and when brought into court, has as great an array of
witnesses brought against him--all involving draughts on the
county rates--as a capital offender. A petition was presented to
parliament last year by the Liverpool magistrates on this subject,
in which Mr Rushton gave the criminal biography of fourteen
lads, whose career of wickedness and misery had cost, in their
innumerable trials and convictions, about L.100 a-piece. This is
only a single instance; but a more comprehensive calculation shows
that the total amount we pay for punishing, or, more correctly,
for fostering crime, is two millions per annum; and it has been
computed that from two to three millions more are lost in plunder.
In the year 1846, the cost of each prisoner in England and Wales
averaged L.26, 17s. 7¼d.
Laying aside the higher aspects in which the duties of the
community towards their misguided and neglected fellow-beings may
be seen, and lowering our view to the merely fiscal expediency of
the question, it is easily shown that prevention--and reformation
when prevention is past hope--would be much cheaper than the
mischievous cure which is now attempted. At from one penny to
twopence a week, nearly 10,000 children are at this time being
taught reading and writing in the Ragged Schools: and although
reading and writing are by no means of themselves preventives to
crime, yet the moral instruction which is given along with them
to a certain extent is. Then as to reformation, the Philanthropic
School reforms juvenile offenders at L.16 per head; and even if we
add this sum to the L.26 odds which the conviction of each prisoner
is said to cost (for reformation can only be complete after
punishment), there would be a great saving to the country; for the
reformed youth would be withdrawn from the ranks of depredators,
and cease to be a burthen on the country.
In endeavouring, however, to provide for destitute criminal
juvenality, the danger presents itself of placing them in a better
position than the offspring of poor but honest parents, who have
no such advantages for their children. From the absolute necessity
of the case we could get over this: but there is another and
more peremptory objection. Anything like a wholesale sweeping-up
of juvenile vagrants, and providing for them, no matter how,
would most probably tend to a demoralisation of the lower class
of parents, who would be only too thankful to get rid of their
offspring on any terms. Plans of this nature must inevitably be
accompanied by an enforcement of parental responsibility. The
wretch who neglects his child, must be taught, even if by the whip
to his back, that he has no right or title to turn over his duties
to the philanthropist or to the public.
Another difficulty presents itself even after the reformation of
the more hardened offenders has been effected. How are they to
find employment? The 250 depredators who told Lord Ashley that
they could not get honest employment, only mentioned the ease of
every one of their crime-fellows. Some manage to obtain an honest
livelihood by concealing their past history, but even in such a
case the 'authorities' do not always leave them alone. One young
man told Lord Ashley that he had contrived to get a good situation,
and after some trial, his employer was as well pleased with him as
he was with his employer. One day, however, there came a policeman,
who said to his master, 'Are you aware that you are employing a
convicted felon?' The master, upon ascertaining that such was the
case, turned the young man at once out of his service, and he had
no alternative but starvation or a recurrence to the evil courses
from which he had so nearly extricated himself.
In such cases emigration meets the difficulty, and has hitherto
succeeded. Several batches of reformed juvenile criminals have
already been sent out from Parkhurst Prison, from the Philanthropic
School, and other reformatories, and the emigrants have, upon the
whole, given satisfaction to the employers.
We have laid the evil bare before our readers, and hinted at
remedies, not more for the importance of the facts set forth, than
to prepare them for a description we shall next attempt of the
interesting experiment now being tried by the Philanthropic Society
at their Farm-School at Red Hill in Surrey. Its object has been
to see how far a modification of the Mettray system is likely to
answer in this country. The results which have arisen up to this
time are of the most encouraging nature. What we saw during our
visit has led us to hope that at least a beginning has been made
towards removing much of the stigma which rests upon Great Britain
for suffering the existence, and allowing the increase, of more
crime and destitution among persons of tender years than exists in
any other country.