Criminals and crime : some facts and suggestions / by Sir Robert Anderson.

  • Robert Anderson
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Criminals and crime : some facts and suggestions / by Sir Robert Anderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/204 page 5
    First, then, as to the extent to which crimes against property have decreased. Let us, for example, compare the statistics for 1905, the last year for which the tables have been published, with those for 1868, the year after that in which transportation was abandoned. In 1868 the felonies relating to property numbered 22,083, whereas in 1905 the felonies of the same class were only 18,515. And yet during these thirty- six years the population of the metropolis was more than doubled.^ In 1868 the proportion of such crimes to each 1000 of the population was 6*295, whereas in 1905 it was only 2*613. Professional crime has several phases, but the burglar is essentially a professional, and his crimes always appeal to the popular imagination ; and the distinction between the crime of burglary and that of housebreaking or breaking into a shop is some- what technical, and in fact they are regarded by the police as falling within the same category. For our present purpose, therefore, these offences may be grouped together; and the following table gives at a glance I. The average annual number of such crimes committed in the metropolis in each of the seven quinquennial periods from 1869 to 1903; and ^ The estimated population of the metropolitan police district was 3,507,828 in 1868, and in 1905 it was 7,086,638.
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