A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their PreventionColquhoun, Patrick
History
A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their Prevention
Colquhoun, Patrick
Crime -- England -- London; Police -- England -- London
In a commercial Country, and in a great Metropolis, where from the
vast extent of its trade and manufactures, and from the periodical
issue of above Twenty Millions annually, arising from dividends on
funded security, there must be an immense circulation of property, the
danger is not to be conceived, from the allurements which are thus
held out to young men in business, having the command of money, as
well as to the clerks of merchants, bankers, and others concerned in
different branches of trade: In fact, it is well known, that too many
of this class resort at present to these destructive scenes of vice,
idleness, and misfortune.[37]
[Footnote 37: The same Affidavit further states--"That the principal
Gaming Houses at the West end of the Town have stated days on which
they have luxurious dinners, (Sunday being the chief day,) to which
they contrive to get invited merchants' and bankers' clerks, and other
persons intrusted with money; and that it has been calculated, (and
the calculation was believed not to be over-rated,) that the expences
attendant on such houses, amounted to £.150,000 yearly, and that the
keepers of such houses, by means of their enormous wealth, bid
defiance to all prosecutions, some of them having acquired from 50 to
£.100,000 each; considerable estates have been frequently won by them
in the course of one sitting."]
The mind shrinks with horror at the existence of a System in the
Metropolis, unknown to our ancestors, even in the worst periods of
their dissipation; when a _Ward_, a _Waters_, and a _Chartres_,
insulted public morals by their vices and their crimes: for then no
regular Establishments--no systematic concerns for carrying on this
nefarious trade, were known.--No Partnerships in Gaming-Houses, were
conducted with the regularity of Commercial Houses.
But these Partnerships have not been confined to Gaming-Houses alone.
A considerable proportion of the immense capital which the conductors
of the System possess, is employed periodically in the _two
Lotteries_, in _Fraudulent Insurances_, where, like the Faro Bank, the
chances are so calculated as to yield about 30 per cent. profit to the
Gambling proprietors; and from the extent to which these transactions
have been, and we fear still are carried, no doubt can be entertained
that the annual gains must be immense.--It has, indeed, been stated,
with an appearance of truth, that a single individual acquired no less
than £.60,000 during one English Lottery!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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