PAST CRIMES1856 show that 18,000 of the 73,240 arrests made were for drunkenness,
4,303 for prostitution, 2,194 for assaults on the police, 6,763 for common
assaults, 7,021 for larceny and 8,160 for unlawful possession of goods.
There were probably many more unreported crimes, but these figures
compared well with those of a half century earlier.^2 One reason for this may
have been Britain’s commercial and industrial success in the period,
outstripping the French, Germans and Americans. There was a general rise
in national wealth, and the ordinary working man began to be seen as less of
a threat and more of an asset to the middle classes (unless they were seduced
by political factions such as the burgeoning labour and trades union
movements). Urban skilled workers felt themselves to be more empowered;
there were more opportunities available, more steady work was to be found,
and, as a result, living standards for many improved. There was, of course,
still a level of society that was unskilled, casually employed, or criminally
minded–but there was a growing gap between them and the majority of
workingclass people.
Respectability was the keyword; respectable homes, respectable
appearances, even respectable entertainment. Philanthropic institutions and
individuals provided reading rooms, educational classes, sporting venues,
clubs for young people, and so on. Public houses began to adopt the glass,
brass and polished wood décor that we now think of as typical, with bright
lights and an air of sophistication. Music halls and magic lantern shows,
exhibitions and performances all served to wean the poorer individuals away
from the criminal element and their squalid environment towards the
aspirational values of the middle classes.
The 1870 Education Act provided free schooling for all children, providing
them with literacy and other skills, preparing them for their working futures,
and removing them from the streets. Improvements in housing, sewerage,
water supply, rubbish collection–all these reduced the necessary background
of deprivation and squalor that characterised crime in the late eighteenth and
earlier nineteenth centuries.
Urban developments began to sweep away the worst of the rookeries and
slums, especially because of the provision of new wider roads for the
increased traffic and railway lines into the centre of towns and cities that cut
through the problem areas. The criminal gangs that had relied on these
districts were broken up as a result. Of course, new forms of criminal
organisation took their place over time; some criminals found it more pleasant
to utilise the railway system to move out to live respectable lives in the
suburbs and commute into the city to commit their illicit activities.