PRINCIPLES OF POLICE,

AND THEIR APPLICATION TO THE METROPOLIS.

(From Fraser's Magazine, August 1837..)

[concluded from our last.]

Mendicity forms a proper subject of police jurisdiction. Fluctuations in trade, changes in the seasons, the operation of the debtor laws, the arts of impostors, and the neglect of parents, continually pour into the streets and outskirts of large cities crowds of miserable objects, painful to the beholder, and inconsistent with municipal order. Some of these merit punishment; others are the victims of misfortune, requiring temporary aid, or perhaps only advice, to enable them to obtain the assistance which individual benevolence of the law of the country has provided. In an opulent and populous community, this mass of wretchedness can only be analysed and disposed of by public authority ; it is too extensive an evil to be dealt with by individuals, or even by societies supported by voluntary contributions.

In England, the institution of poor laws ought to have precluded pretexts for common begging. Every Englishman has his parish, and every parish (mulgri the new poor-law act) is bound to find work for these who are willing, but unable to get employment ; to bring up to useful trades the children of the destitute ; and to provide for the lame, impotent, blind, and others, being poor, and unable to provide for themselves (43 Eliz. c. 2). Under these provisions, the rich and poor are bound up in a common fate and reciprocal ties of obligation. Neither prosperity nor adversity can visit one, without operating a corresponding influence on the other. The rich have an interest, paramount to the poor themselves, in the circumstances influencing their condition ; and are necessitated to apply to their consideration whatever superior knowledge they possess, in order to the permanent security of their own enjoyments. There is, therefore, no need of the public exhibition of distress to attest its existence ; it is known from the amount of poor assessment. But, owing to an imperfect police, the wisdom of the legislature has proved unavailing; and the industrious householder is not only impoverished by the compulsary relief of indigence, but he is pestered with its clamours, and his feelings lacerated by the spectacle of real or fictitious suffering, which ought to be excluded from observance.....
A number of females lose the benefit of their settlements by marriage. During coverture, a wife can have no settlement separate from her husband. Hence, if an Englishwoman marry a native of Scotland or Ireland, and he desert her, as is not infrequent, she has no claim to parochial relief in England ; and, in the event of becoming chargeable, may be removed to the country where the husband was born. This often brings a destitute woman and her children into the street.

But the chief source of mendicity in London, Manchester, Leeds, and other large towns, is the vast influx of lower Irish, who not only depress the English labourer, in competing with him for employment, but, from their half-civilised habits, debase his manners and character. Of 11,741 registered and non-registered cases brought before the London Mendicity Society in one year, 4708 were Irish. The cost of Irish paupers to the metropolitan parishes is enormous ; and, contrary to all principles of equity, the natives of Scotland and Ireland obtain that relief from the parishes which is denied them in their own country.*

It is not, however, Irish immigration, nor the other assigned causes, which chiefly originate mendicity, but the arts of the idle and profligate. In these originate by far the most numerous, obstinate, and disgusting class of mendicants, who torment the passenger, infest the shops of tradesmen, and the dwellings of the opulent. From the enquiries of a parliamentary committee, it appears that ninety-nine out of every hundred of London beggars consist of this class of impostors. Upwards of 13,000 beggars are annually conveyed out of the metropolis by the parishes. Many of them return repeatedly. Those passed to their parishes usually return ; and most of them escape and disperse after the first stage.

Whether mendicity originate in fraud or unavoidable want, there is little pretext for its toleration in England. The law has made a provision for all legal distress ; and having so provided, it has, under the Vagrant Act, made it an offence to annoy the public with the solicitation of alms; and formerly it was, by statute (23 Edw. III. c. 7), an offence to bestow alms on those able to work. By the institution of a vigorous system of municipal police, having authority to question, apprehend, and disperse, the evil may be circumscribed. Prior to this, provision ought to be made for the investigation and relief of casual distress, originating in accidents,which even prudence cannot always see or avert, and for which it would be unchristian to deny permission to solicit alms, without first establishing a tribunal to which recourse could be had for advice, direction, or temporary aid. Having done this, the horde of impostors, of which the vast majority of beggars consists, might be assailed without remorse, and a fruitful source of annoyance, demoralisation, and crime, be extirpated.

Female Prostitution is the last object of police jurisdiction we shall notice. Next to homicide, it forms the earliest depravity recorded in Scripture. Nearly in all places, and at all periods, it has been more or less prevalent; and its universal existence would almost imply that it is an evil inseparable from society. Its predominance in the capital and large towns of the kingdom is deeply to be deplored ; but as its extinction seems unfortunately unattainable, the legislature has seldom sought more than to repress its pruriences, and keep it within the bounds of general decorum. It is, indeed, one of those private vices, the consequence of which are chiefly personal to the offender, and, consequently, does not fall properly within the cognisance of public law. With the exception of a short period during the ascendancy of puritanism, it has been always so treated in England ; and efforts have never been made to repress lewdness, unless it became open and notorious, and such as was a source of annoyance to others, of riot and disorder.

It is generally admitted, by the oldest residents in the metropolis, that there is a decided improvement in popular manners. The public tea-gardens, the minor assemblies in public-houses, and even Vauxhall, exhibit none of those scenes of gross licentiousness which abounded in their ancient prototypes, the Dog and Duck, Apollo's Garden, and Ranelagh. The eye is not so frequently offended by the exhibition of obscene pictures ; and we are confident, from our own observation, that the behaviour of unfortunate females in the street is more orderly and decorous than prevailed among the same class twenty years since. In conversation and the external presentment of vice, the improvement in manners over what prevailed at the commencement of the reign of George III. has been frequently remarked. The dialogue in the comedies of Congreve, of Vanbrugh, and Cibber, would be quite revolting to modern ears ; and we do not think there are above three or four living examples of the grossness in expression and conduct recorded in the scandalous chronicle of Lord Orford's " Reminiscences." The scenes in the "Adventure of a Guinea," though highly coloured by Johnstone, are considered not to exhibit a very exaggerated picture of living manners for the period in which they were written; but, in the public or private men of the present day, we should be at a loss to point out any corresponding examples of turpitude and profligacy. Though not more moral than our grandfathers, yet such is the taste of the age, as Sir Walter Scott observed, that "modern vice pays tax to appearances, and is content to wear a mask of decorum."

There are none of the factitious allurements to vice which disgraced a former period : we have no " Bon Ton Magazines," nor trash of that description. The periodical literature is totally free from impurity; and the newspaper press, with the exception, perhaps, of two or three weekly papers, addicted to personal libel, cannot be charged with grossness or indelicacy.

Twenty-five years ago, an extensive traffic was carried on in the metropolis in obscene books, prints, drawings, and toys. Several persons of apparent respectability were in partnership, for the principal and almost exclusive purpose of vending this description of merchandise. Their agents, mostly Italians, under the assumed character of licensed hawkers, established a systematic trade throughout a great part of the United Kingdom. These itinerant panders to vice were accustomed to disperse themselves in parties of two or three, visiting Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and all the principal towns ; and when their stock of wares was exhausted, their confederates in London furnished them with additional supplies by the coaches and waggons. The principal vent for their moral poisons was in schools, and these chiefly for females, into which they would contrive to introduce them by means of servants. Women, also, were employed as agents in the deleterious trade, who would gain admission into houses under pretext of purchasing cast off clothes from the domestics. The number of persons employed in this way as principals, artists, agents, and hawkers, was supposed to amount to six hundred.

We believe there are few remains of this abomination now in London. There are, we think, not above two or three shops regularly devoted to the sale of obscene books and prints ; and the penury and wretchedness of the owners of these are such as sufficiently shews how little their miserable calling accords with the prevailing taste. To the credit, of young men of the present day, they have not much appetite for absolute grossness; and this improvement in manners must certainly be ascribed to the diffusion of knowledge, and more general cultivation of the production of art and literature.

It is something gained to virtue when the external exhibition of vice is subdued, since it lessens the corruptive influence of example. But though the age has improved in appearances, there is little, we fear, in sentiment. In number, female prostitution has certainly not diminished ; and though the behaviour of abandoned women in the streets is less outrageous, and the passenger not so frequently disgusted with obscene language, we fear this is the only improvement we can remark in their condition. While every other pursuit has been improving, the arts of mendicity and prostitution seem to have been stationary. Exhibiting starving children, soap-eating, sham fits, and personal mutilation, were the common tricks of beggars before the Reformation: and the modern brothel is no better than the stews abolished by Henry VIII.

The situation of women of the town is not unworthy of attention. They form a numerous class ; and, however fallen, it cannot be forgotten that they not only constitute a part of our common species, but also appertain to that moiety of it, which it is the pride of a refined age to treat with indulgence and honour. Of the success of institutions established to reclaim them, we have no recent returns. During a period of sixty years, there were admitted into the Magdalen Hospital 4,954 persons; of whom 3,012 were restored to their friends, or placed in respectable service; 912 were discharged at their own request; 556 for improper behaviour; and 85 died while in the hospital. Of 264 who were discharged during four years, of every description, 159 had reformed ; 74 had relapsed; 4 were insane; 1 died; and of 10 the situation was unknown ; so that it may be concluded that two-thirds of the women who enter the society are permanently reclaimed. The average age of the females is from seventeen to eighteen. They apply very young —some even at thirteen or fourteen, but generally from fifteen to twenty-five. Some have been admitted there at twelve years of age.

Plans have been suggested for subjecting common prostitutes to stricter civic regulation, by which it may be made less publicly offensive. The intrusion of profligate women into the theatres has been complained of; but the difficulty of drawing the line of exclusion cannot be overlooked ; then, again, it might be supposed that the interest of the proprietors would so far coincide with the public sentiment, as to render unnecessary magisterial interference. Holland, under the stadtholder, has been cited as an example of a better system. In France and Italy prostitutes are licensed ; and in Hindostan a class of females are reared, who are under the conduct of matrons, and with whom indiscriminate intercourse is permitted. Everything of the kind, however, is inconsistent with English usage and religion ; and, perhaps, legislation is best restricted to the prevention of prostitution becoming a nuisance to the more virtuous portion of the community, and this seems well attained by the existing law. Under the Vagrant Act, every common prostitute, wandering in the public streets, or any place of public resort, and behaving in a riotous or indecent manner, may be apprehended and committed to the House of Correction.

*The pressure of the Irish on the English population, and its deleterious effects, are not evils of yesterday ; they are the growth of centuries. Early in the reign of Charles 1. (1629) a proclamation was issued, proving the existence of the calamity complained of. It begins—"Whereat, this realme hath of late been pestered with great number of Irishe beggars, who live here idly and dangerously, and are of ill example to the natives of this kingdom."

 The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser 8 May 1838,