The growth of routine police-work during these years is apparent from the number of persons placed before the magisterial bench. Between 1874 and 1880 it increased from 21,500 to nearly 28,000, the exceptional number of 33,000, recorded in 1879, being due to the presence of a large body of immigrants, who had fled from the famine of the previous year in the Deccan and remained in Bombay in the hope of improving their condition by stealing. The volume of offences against property likewise expanded and would probably have been greater, but for the chances of steady employment afforded by the opening of new mills and the construction of dock works. Among the most unsatisfactory features of crime recorded during these years were the steady increase in the number of juvenile offenders and the comparatively large number of cases in which children were murdered for the sake of the gold and silver ornaments they were wearing. As Sir Frank Souter remarked, it is practically impossible for the State to provide an effective remedy for this evil, so long as Indian parents persist in a practice which offers overwhelming temptation to the criminal classes. The prosecution of persons for adultery, which is an offence under the Indian Penal Code, was another noteworthy feature of the crime records of the ’seventies. In 1872 nineteen, and in 1873 twenty-three offenders were prosecuted by the police for this offence, and all of them were acquitted. The extreme difficulty in a country like India of proving a criminal charge of this character led doubtless to the abandonment of such prosecutions in all but the rarest cases. A remarkable case of criminal breach of trust, in which no less than 51 separate charges were brought against a Parsi woman, who was convicted on three counts, and a clever theft of silver bars and coin from the Mint by some sepoys of the 10th Regiment N. I., owed their discovery to the detective abilities of the police.