New Means to Old Ends 59not without fatal instances of the most wanton cruelty and barbarity,
exercised on many of those unfortunate persons, who have fallen into
the hands of these plunderers of the public.^2Historians of crime have shown that violent crime was declining in the latter
half of the eighteenth century? Personal offences such as murder and
property crimes accompanied by violence were declining. But so too was
public tolerance of such crimes, as attitudes towards physical violence chan-
ged noticeably. Radical Francis Place wrote 'we are much better people than
we were ... better instructed, more sincere and kind-hearted, less gross and
brutal, and have fewer concomitant vices of a less civilized state'.^4 Still, many
were convinced that life and property were much more vulnerable. This
perception that crime was increasing and becoming more violent heightened
the fears of the propertied classes, resultinf in 'levels of hysteria and anxiety
that were ... beyond even the early 1750s'.
Other factors fed these growing fears. The War for American Independ-
ence caused an abrupt end to transportation in 1775 and the jails began to
fill up with felons sentenced to be deported.^6 The post-war crime wave
strained an already overburdened penal system; the jails, prisons, hulks,
and houses of correction grew increasingly crowded and conditions inside
them grew steadily worse.^7 Crime rates were also boosted by a growing
population and rising food prices. The population rose noticeably in the
last quarter of the century and after the tum of the century.^8 J.M. Beattie
shows there was an increase in the number of crimes committed and the per
capita rate rose as well.^9 In addition, a period of dearth coincided with the
end of the war in 1782-84 and the connection between rising food prices and
rising crime was well established.^10 Indictments did decrease slightly when
the wars with revolutionary France began in 1793, but when severe harvest
shortages occurred in England in 1795-96 and 1800-01, food prices reached
record levels.U The sense of crisis about crime levels around the turn of the
century had a different quality from the anxiety levels experienced pre-
viously. England's propertied classes became convinced that they faced
more crime, crime that seemed more violent, and that this was a long-term
problem.
Most historians of London's police also point to the anti-Catholic Gordon
Riots of 1780 as a key factor that spurred reform.^12 However, while they
contributed to the general sense that disorder was increasing, the Gordon
Riots did not necessarily lead contemporaries to conclude that local law
enforcement was fatally flawed. 'ftiggered by a Catholic Relief Act, the
riots occurred over the week of 2-10 June 1780Y The rampage spread
from Westminster to the City, Spitalfields, Wapping, and over the river, to
Bermondsey and Southwark. Catholic chapels and schools, the homes of
government ministers and opposition leaders, Newgate and other prisons