PREFACE. IN glancing at the following work, the reader will find the subject of Juvenile Delinquency treated in connection with the present state and sources of depravity, the duty of society to care for neglected youth, the means by which accessions to the ranks of the vicious may be prevented, and the already abandoned may be reclaimed; and lastly, the various objections to the schemes proposed, or in existence, and the arguments that are urged in favour of them. The aim of the First Chapter is to furnish the reader with the means of arriving at a correct conclusion on the present state and aspects of juvenile depravity. By a comparison of conflicting theories, and an attempt to reconcile counter statements with one another, it is hoped the reader will be convinced that juvenile depravity is neither on the increase, so as to occasion alarm; nor on the decrease, so as to justify indifference. The anomalous state of children in our large towns is, by admissions on all hands, shown to be the natural result of simple, but wide-spread neglect on the part of the classes above. For the greater part of the information in the Second a Chapter the author is indebted to the curious and elaborate work of Mr. Mayhew on "London Labour and London Poor;" which, in two massive and crowded. volumes, printed in double columns, forms a complete cyclopædia of the habits, resources, and sufferings of the neglected classes. be specified, it was thought advisable to accept no statement that cannot be corroborated by the testimony of other writers, or of individuals conversant with the lower grades of the metropolitan or provincial populace. The scenes related in that work are so buried under a mass of miscellaneous, interesting, and uninteresting matter, that its value to the friends of outcast children is completely destroyed. It is hoped that the form in which those statements are now given, in connection with confirmatory evidence derived from various sources, will rouse society to its danger and its duty. Intemperance, like some other particulars, is lightly touched upon, simply because in its bearing upon the welfare of children, the subject has been so recently and so completely exhausted in Mr. Worsley's Prize Essay. It is not pretended, therefore, that every source of deterioration is fully discussed or even enumerated in this chapter. That this was simply impracticable needs no assertion. Those who would hear more on the subject should acquaint themselves with the work entitled "Social Evils," and others of a similar character. Some of the accounts furnished in this chapter expose scenes of vice so revolting that the writer anticipates censure from certain quarters. Indeed, he had erased and reinserted the paragraphs to which reference is made. Vice exists. To be known to be felt-it must be fearlessly though cau For reasons which need not here |