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Page 25
Respecting the two per cent. of offenders which remain to be accounted
for, it will not be far from the mark to say that destitution is the
immediate cause of their wrong-doing. These offenders are composed of
homeless boys, of old men unable to work, of habitual drunkards who
cannot got a steady job, or keep it when they get it, of vagrants who
divide their time between begging and petty theft, and of workmen on
the tramp, who have become terribly reduced, and will rather steal
than enter a workhouse. The percentage of these offenders varies in
different parts of the country. In the north of England, for instance,
there are comparatively few homeless boys who find their way before
the magistrates on charges of theft; in London, on the other hand, the
number is considerable, and ranges according to the season of the
year, or the state of trade, to between 1 and 3 per cent. of the
criminal population. Why does London enjoy such an evil pre-eminence
in this matter? In my opinion it often arises from the fact that
house-accommodation is so expensive in the metropolis. In London, it
is a habit with many parents, owing to the want of room at home, to
make growing lads shift for themselves at a very early age. These boys
earn just enough to enable them to secure a bare existence; out of
their scanty wages it is impossible to hire a room for themselves;
they have to be contented with the common lodging-house. In such
places these boys have to associate with all sorts of broken-down,
worthless characters, and in numbers of instances they come by degrees
to adopt the habits and modes of life of the class among which their
lot is cast. At the very time parental control is most required it is
almost entirely withdrawn; the lad is left to his own devices; and, in
too many cases, descends into the ranks of crime. The first step in
his downward career begins with the loss of employment; this sometimes
happens through no fault of his own, and is simply the result of a
temporary slackness of trade; but in most instances a job is lost for
want of punctuality or some other boyish irregularity which can only
be properly corrected at home. To lose work is to be deprived of the
means of subsistence; the only openings left are the workhouse or
crime. It is the latter alternative which is generally chosen, and
thus, the lad is launched on the troubled sea of crime.
It must not be understood that all London boys drift into crime after
the manner I have just described. In some instances these unfortunates
have lived all their life in criminal neighbourhoods, and merely
follow the footsteps of the people around them. What, for instance, is
to be expected from children living in streets such as Mr. Charles
Booth describes in his work on "Life and Labour in East London?" One
of these streets, which he calls St. Hubert Street, swarms with
children, and in hardly any case does the family occupy more than one
room. The general character of the street is thus depicted. "An awful
place; the worst street in the district. The inhabitants are mostly of
the lowest class, and seem to lack all idea of cleanliness or decency
.... The children are rarely brought up to any kind of work, but loaf
about, and, no doubt, form the nucleus for future generations of
thieves and other bad characters." In this street alone there are
between 160 and 170 children; these children do not require to go to
lodging-houses to be contaminated; they breathe a polluted moral
atmosphere from birth upwards, and it is more than probable that a
considerable proportion of them will help to recruit the army of
crime. It is not destitution which will force them into this course,
but their up-bringing and surroundings.
In addition to homeless boys who steal from destitution, there are, as
I have said, a number of decrepit old men who do the same. There is a
period in a workman's life when he becomes too feeble to do an average
day's work. When this period arrives employers of labour often
discharge him in order to make way for younger and more vigorous men.
If his home, as sometimes happens, is broken up by the death of his
wife, his existence becomes a very lonely and precarious one. An odd
job now and again is all he can get to do, and even these jobs are
often hard to find. His sons and daughters are too heavily encumbered
with large families to be capable of rendering any effective
assistance, and the Union looms gloomily in the distance as the only
prospect before the worn-out worker. But it sometimes happens that he
will not face that prospect. He will rather steal and run the risk of
imprisonment. And so it comes to pass that for a year or two before
finally reconciling himself to the Union, the aged workman will lead a
wandering, criminal life on a petty scale; he becomes an item in the
statistics of offenders against property.
Habitual drunkards form another class who sometimes steal from
destitution. The well-known irregularity of these men's habits
prevents them, in a multitude of cases, from getting work, and
unfortunately, they cannot keep it when they do get it. Employers
cannot depend on them; as soon as they earn a few shillings they
disappear from the workshop till the money is spent on drink. It is at
such times that they are arrested for being drunk and disorderly. As
they can never pay a fine they have to go to prison, but long before
their sentence has expired they have lost their job, and must look out
for something else. If such men do not find work many of them are not
ashamed to steal, and it is only when trade is at flood-tide that they
can be sure of employment, no matter how irregular their habits may
be. At other times they are the first to be discharged and the last to
be engaged. It is not really destitution, but intemperance which turns
them into thieves. That they are destitute when arrested is perfectly
true, but we must go behind the immediate fact of their destitution in
order to arrive at the true causes of their crimes. When this is done
it is found that the stress of economic conditions has very little to
do with making these unhappy beings what they are; on the contrary, it
is in periods of prosperity that they sink to the lowest depths.
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