CHAPTER VII.

THE CRIMINALS.

One very important section of the denizens of Darkest England are the criminals and the semi-criminals. They are more or less predatory, and are at present shepherded by the police and punished by the gaoler. Their numbers cannot be ascertained with very great precision, but the following figures are taken from the prison returns of 1889 :—

The criminal classes of Great Britain, in round figures, sum up a total of no less than 90,000 persons, made up as follows :—

Convict prisons contain ... ...

1 1,660 persons

Local „ „

20,883

Reformatories for children convicted of crime

1,270 ,,

Industrial schools for vagrant and refractory children

21,413

Criminal lunatics under restraint

910

Known thieves at large

H,747

Known receivers of stolen goods

1,121 ,,

Suspected persons

17,042 ,,

Total

89,046

The above does not include the great army of known prostitutes, nor the keepers and owners of brothels and disorderly houses, as to whose numbers Government is rigidly silent. ,

These figures are, however, misleading. They only represent the criminals actually in gaol on a given day. The average gaol popula­tion in England and Wales, excluding the convict establishments, was, in 1889, 15,119, but the total number actually sentenced and imprisoned in local prisons was 153,000, of whom 25,000 only came on first term sentences ; 76,300 of them had been convicted at least 10 times. But even if we suppose that the criminal class numbers