Frequent allusions to hooliganism and armed burglars occur in 1882. _Punch_ speaks of a "Mohock Revival," and asks, "Is the Police Force no remedy, or must we all carry revolvers?" For a while complaints against the impotence of the police cease, or take a new form, as when _Punch_ turns his attention to the disgraceful conditions prevailing at the Central Criminal Court, where respectable men and women subpoenaed as witnesses were exposed to hustling and insults from roughs--and constables. In 1887 he extended his censure to the shocking condition of the prisons in which unconvicted prisoners were lodged awaiting trial. For the conduct of the police during the Jubilee Celebrations he has nothing but praise, and waxed lyrical in "_Punch_ to the Peelers" over their humanity and courtesy. But a far more severe ordeal awaited the police in 1888, the year of the crime wave in Whitechapel. Sarcastic allusions to the inefficiency of the Force are renewed. One cartoon represents them blindfolded and stumbling about amongst jeering criminals. _Punch_ was nearer the mark in the cartoon headed, "The Nemesis of Neglect"--based on a letter from "S. G. O." in _The Times_ pointing out that East End slums invited crime--and in his admissions that the numbers of the police were inadequate and that their inefficiency was largely due to the publicity given to the movements of detectives, and the measures taken by the authorities, by sensational interviewers in the cheap press. The amateur "crime investigator" unfortunately continued to flourish in spite of _Punch's_ censure. Hideous picture-posters, vividly representing sensational scenes of murder, exhibited as the "great attractions" of certain plays, are also condemned as a blot on civilization, a disgrace to the Drama, and a suggestion of crime. It should be added that _Punch_ expressly exempted Sir Charles Warren from blame, and indignantly dissociated himself from the attacks of those who joined in making him a scapegoat:-- The Police Force requires strengthening, and Sir Charles is perfectly alive to the fact. What on earth can it matter if, in number, our Police compare favourably with the Police Force at Constantinople, or St. Petersburgh, or Vienna, or Jericho, if we have not sufficient Police to protect life and property in the Metropolis? Socialistic sensational Journalists and rowdy demagogues would like to see the Police Force reduced to one in every two thousand, until they fell to fighting among themselves, when they would be the first to yell out "Police!" and scream for the intervention of the enfeebled arm of the law. In April, 1889, the proposed flogging of dangerous criminals excited a good deal of controversy. In _Punch's_ cartoon in April Bill Sikes protests as an injured innocent against the cat on the ground that it will make a brute of him. _Punch's_ attitude was strongly anti-sentimentalist, but he held that the lash should be used with discretion.