SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
CHAPTER V
CRIMINALS AND CRIME. A
PIONEER
Sir Robert Anderson has had a remarkable and rare
opportunity for studying and becoming acquainted with most existing forms of
crime, and also with the manner and working of our criminal punishment system.
His views therefore are worthy of the utmost respect and consideration.
The Liverpool Post.
WE justly deplore the barbarity with which past
generations treated their criminals. The elaborate folly of our present methods
will excite the wonder of generations to come. These are the opening
words of the book Criminals and Crime published in 1907 and based upon a series
of articles in various journals from 1891 onwards, notably The Nineteenth
Century, the editor of which, SirJames Knowles, was a strong supporter of the
campaign for reform. But he is a pioneer, said Lord Guthrie the
Scottish judge when I was introduced to him in South Africa as the son of Sir
Robert Anderson. The following pages will in some measure show the truth of the
remark.
One plea which met with a good deal of misunderstanding and
misrepresentation, not to say hostility in some quarters, was for a new
approach to the problem of professional crime. Habitual criminals
belonged to two classes. One consisted of those who were so utterly weak or so
hopelessly wicked that they could not abstain from crime. Some of these were
hereditary criminals who were allowed to beget children to follow in their
steps. Such children were brought up in surroundings which would be fatal to
the offspring of the best of men; and then we were proud of having efficient
police to capture them and well-ordered gaols in which to cage them!
But
the other class were those who were criminals by deliberate choice, pursuing a
career of crime with full appreciation of its risks. A certain man of good
education and address was visited in prison by a minister of religion. When the
latter voiced his distress at finding him in such a position, the man asked
whether one who was keen on fox-hunting gave it up when he had a fall. I
have had a bad fall and no mistake, he said, but I count on better
luck another time. This case was thoroughly typical, said my father. For
such a man a criminal career was a life of adventure such as would compare
favourably with most kinds of sport. He was not a weak creature who yielded to
uncontrollable impulse. Stories of Benson and Raymond, two men of this class,
have been given in the chapter on Scotland Yard. Such men, the elite of the
profession, lived well; they could name their favourite wine and knew a good
cigar. A trip to Brighton was an ordinary incident in their easy lives, and a
winter visit to Monte Carlo nothing out of the way. They were responsible for
the elaborate frauds, the great forgeries, jewel larcenies and bank robberies,
which now and then startled the public.
They were few in number and as well
known to the police as were the members of the Cabinet. The men who were
competent to finance as well as to organise great crimes were so few, said my
father once, that the room in which he was then writing would suffice to seat
them comfortably. But there were many others who might fairly be called
criminals by profession ; they too were well known to the police, and a single
wing of any large prison would hold them all.
Referring especially to those
who were trained and accomplished burglars, he described the routine at
Scotland Yard when a skilled burglary was being investigated, or such a theft
as that of an oil-painting from a public gallery. The problem could not be
solved by sitting down in the Sherlock Holmes style with a wet towel round
one's head. The men competent to plan and execute the crime were limited in
number and were definitely known. Some would be "doing time" at the moment;
others would be known to be out of London; yet others could be proved to have
been at their registered addresses on the night in question. The list thus
became reduced to working dimensions; and it was not difficult to go on
eliminating one name after another until the thief was discovered.
If
evidence was forthcoming (and there was the difficulty), he would be arrested
and sentenced to perhaps five years' penal servitude. In less than four he
would be back at the practice of his profession. After another good run during
which he might commit ten, twenty, fifty crimes, enjoying a "high old time," he
would be caught again; and the same farce would be re-enacted.
This routine
my father described as the "shot drill" of the C.I.D., referring to the
obsolete punishment of having to carry cannon-balls from one spot to another in
a prison yard and then carry them back again. The energies of the most highly
trained police in Europe were expended in ways bearing a striking resemblance
to this. The case of a ladder larceny in which "Quiet Joe" was implicated was
mentioned in the previous chapter. If the men had been asked what they would do
on the termination of their sentence they would have replied "why, go back to
business of course ; what else?" And so he records that the year after he left
office he recognised his old friends in the newspaper accounts of a similar
case at Bristol.
The C.I.D. noticed that the men were meeting at a free
library and studying provincial directories ; they were tracked to a bookshop
where they bought a map of Bristol, and to other shops at which they got the
plant for a ladder larceny. They then went to Bristol where they took
observations of the house they had fixed upon. At that stage the local police,
warned by the Yard, seized the criminals, who were given a nine months'
sentence on a minor issue. The burglars openly expressed their gratification at
the police not having waited to "catch them fair on the job," as they were both
over sixty and another penal servitude sentence would have about finished their
career. As it was they would live without expense for a short time, and a
paternal Government would see that the money found on them would be given back
on their release to enable them to buy more jemmies and wire and screws, so
that no time would be lost in getting to work again. Such was our
punishment-of-crime system
"Quiet Joe" made a good income at his
"profession," wrote my father; but he was a thriftless fellow who spent his
earnings freely and never paid income tax. "Old Carr" was of a different type.
Never having done an honest day's work in his life, he was a thief a financer
and trainer of thieves and a notorious receiver of stolen property. "Upon his
conviction," runs the story, "I was appointed statutory administrator of his
estate. I soon discovered that he owned a good deal of valuable house property;
but this I declined to deal with, taking charge only of his portable securities
for money. The value of this part of his estate may be estimated by the fact
that he brought an action against me for maladministration of it, claiming
£5000 damages ! . . . The man lived in crime and by crime; and old though
he was, and rolling in wealth, he once more resumed the practice of his
profession. He was arrested abroad during a trip taken to dispose of some
stolen notes, the proceeds of a Liverpool crime, and his evil life came to an
end in a foreign prison."
No words surely, argued the C.I.D. Chief, could
be needed to point the moral of such cases. The criminals who kept society in a
state of siege were as strong as they were clever. If the risk of a few years'
penal servitude gave place to the certainty of final loss of liberty on
conviction, these professionals would put up with the tedium of an honest
life.
What, then, was the suggested new method for dealing with these
professional criminals? The proposal was that any convict who had been
registered or licensed under certain Acts, when again convicted, should be
further charged with being a professional criminal, and the judge might then
proceed to an after-verdict inquiry upon that issue. This should be an open
inquiry and the accused should be given adequate opportunity for meeting the
charge. Then, if as the result of such judicial investigation a man was
adjudged a professional criminal, he should be registered as such, and solemnly
warned that if by his own wilful act he was convicted of further crime, he
would for an indefinite period be deprived of a liberty which he used only to
prey upon society. If at any time new circumstances or proof of genuine moral
reformation seemed to warrant it, he could be restored to liberty. In a lecture
he said: "I do not mean that these men [the professional criminals] are to be
numbered by tens, but they are to be numbered only by hundreds. We have in
London five hundred burglaries a year; . . . they would be the work of probably
not more than fifty men. What an outrage that these fifty professional
burglars, who are perfectly well known to Scotland Yard, should be permitted to
be at large, a terror to the community. With regard to armed burglars, he
considered that when a burglar was found with a revolver in addition to the
legitimate instruments of his profession he ought to be given a
life sentence.
In an interview my father said: During my time at
Scotland Yard I acted as administrator to almost every high-class professional
criminal, and I know who and what they are and how comparatively few they are.
You ask: Would shutting up a few dozen criminals really make any sensible
difference in the crime of the country? And I reply that is precisely what I
mean. My opinion is based on definite facts and a knowledge of the personnel of
the criminal fraternity.
One of the best and boldest
utterances in the January magazines is Dr. Andersons article in the
Contemporary on the means for the abolition of organised crime" was the opinion
of a reviewer as far back as 1891. Ten years later an article in theNineteenth
Century evoked a great deal of comment mainly favourable; an exception being
The Times which, after saying that few persons had larger experience with
reference to the criminal classes, proceeded to accuse him of wanting to put
down crime by terror and harshness. However my father was able to turn the
tables rather neatly when in Criminals and Crime he quoted a Times leader of
1891 strongly supporting his views. The Spectator received the proposals with
favour, saying that the suggestions seemed simply a precept of common sense.
Many other papers, London and provincial, drew attention to the articles and
the book. The view of a Church journal was that, while on the surface the
scheme seemed almost terrifying, beneath the surface it might be found as
merciful as it would prove to be effective. Whilst the proposals regarding
professional crime attracted most attention many other matters were brought
forward. The whole punishment-of-crime theory, was attacked as in
the following words: In any sensible and civilised community the aim
ought to be to deal with the criminal and never mind the crime. If the crime is
a chance offence our main effort ought to be to save the offender; if a
deliberate crime the main thought should be the protection of the
community.
Sir John Bridge, one of the most experienced London
magistrates, had said: I have nothing to do with punishing crime. That
rests with a Higher Power. My business is to protect the community. Major
Arthur Griffiths, one of H.M. Inspectors of Prisons, had declared that the
prison population might be classed in two main divisions, those offenders who
ought never to have been sent to prison at all and those who ought never to be
released. I maintain said my father, that no one should ever
be sent to prison in the aimless and unintelligent way in which so many
offenders are committed. Every committal ought to be with some definite object,
whether it be the prisoners punishment, or his reformation or merely his
detention, or some combination of these aims.
Let us judge of
our present methods by results, he wrote. Are the sentences of
imprisonment imposed by our courts in fact deterrent? And does the imprisonment
as now administered reform those who are subjected to it? . . . As regards the
first question, do the sentences now imposed create a dread of the gaol in the
minds of the class from which the prison population is recruited? Here two
facts claim notice. First, a considerable proportion of commitments are due
merely to default in paying money penalties. Secondly, the majority of direct
commitments are for terms almost as brief as the above. The opinion of those in
a position to judge is that so far from having a deterrent effect, the result
is that persons who specially need such an influence come to regard
imprisonment as a commonplace incident in their lives. .
As regards
reformation; human nature being what it is, a few weeks in gaol may do much to
demoralise, even to degrade, but practically nothing to elevate or reform. But
do not the severe sentences imposed by the superior courts avail to make the
law a terror to evil-doers? The answer may be gleaned from the notorious fact
that criminals return again and again to penal servitude. For even the
discipline of a convict prison has no terrors for men who have become gradually
accustomed to a life in gaol by a preliminary course of short sentences.
If it be reasonable to expect that no one shall be imprisoned without a
definite and intelligent purpose, is it not equally reasonable to insist that,
when that purpose is the reformation of the offender, the discipline and
treatment shall be adapted to bring about that result? Reform in the
character of prison buildings was strongly urged, especially in the matter of
windows designed to shut out all view of external nature such as might soothe
and possibly elevate the mind. Asylum prisons were advocated for those who gave
proof that they could not be trusted with liberty; for there were the utterly
weak as well as the utterly wicked. Discipline and industry must be enforced,
such a prison being made self-supporting. But there should be as much liberty
and opportunity for mental and moral improvement as compatible with discipline;
and prisons should be open to all the influences of Christianity, not only to
official religious services. It is nothing short of a scandal, he
wrote, that in a Christian and Protestant country the inmates of our
gaols should know nothing of religion save what comes to them officially like
the water and the gas. To turn from the soul to the intellect; what means are
now available to develop or excite a prisoners mental powers?
Short-sentence prisoners have practically nothing. And the only provision for
those who are committed for longer terms is that the use of library books is
allowed as a reward for good conduct. But what use would it be to Bill Sykes or
to Hodge if you gave him all the thirty-five volumes of Wisdom while you wait!
Why should not prisoners on one night a week have a religious meeting of a kind
fitted to win them, and on another night a popular lecture calculated to
interest and instruct them? By all means make them work hard; and punish
severely for idleness or misconduct ; but dont starve either their souls
or their brains."
Apart from the indefinitely prolonged seclusion of those
who deliberately outlaw themselves by making crime the business of their lives,
there should be an "habitual offender division," in which the convict will
obtain even more generous treatment than is now either politic or justifiable.
There are two ways of preventing a dog from biting ones neighbours. One
is by the fear of the lash, the other by chaining him up. If the criminal is to
be restrained by the fear of a measured sentence, the discipline ought to be
severe; if by his being kept in seclusion then severity is unnecessary.
Our
methods of dealing with unpremeditated "chance crimes" due to moral weakness,
sudden temptation, or the pressure of want, he considered to be "deplorable
both in their severity and in their effects."
The restitution of stolen
property ought to be insisted on. A burglar should not be set at liberty until
he had disclosed what he had done with his booty. This would go far to abolish
the market for stolen property and even put an end to stealing. If necessary
the thief should compensate the individual he had robbed by work done and paid
for in prison.
Very strong support came from Mr. Justice (Sir Alfred)
Wills, of whom it was said that in all the great qualities that go to the
making of a just and merciful judge he was pre-eminent. After its criticisms of
the 1901 Nineteenth Century article Sir Alfred wrote a long letter to The Times
emphatically agreeing with my fathers main contentions and proposals, and
pleading for a prompt and effective inquiry into them. The following year Mr.
Justice Phillimore in the charge to a Grand Jury drew attention to the articles
and said that the matter had been brought before the Kings Bench by one
of the oldest, most experienced and most humane of their number, with the
result that communications had passed between the Home Office and the judges
with regard to devising some new form of detention, more or less permanent, for
old offenders. When Criminals and Crime appeared in 1907 Sir Alfred Wills wrote
to my father:
"I should like to find some opportunity for saying in public
how thoroughly I agree with almost - I think I might even say with quite all
that you say. . . . I like particularly your objection to the punishment
of crime theory. . . . I can only now thank you heartily for your manly
and courageous support of true principles, and your plain speaking upon matters
with respect to which hesitation, cowardice and mealy-mouthedness have already
done such infinite harm."
In 1908 Mr. Herbert (later Viscount) Gladstone
introduced a Bill " to make better provision for the prevention of crime,"
which adopted some of the proposals which had for so long been advocated by my
father, although in 1901 the then Home Secretary had stated that there was
nothing in them which could be made the basis of legislation! The measure,
however, suffered severely in its passage through the House. "I found," wrote
Sir Alfred Wills, "that as you say everything of value in Part II was gone."
And again: "The humanitarians, as they audaciously call themselves,
have scored this time, and I suppose they will until a set of statesmen arise,
if they ever do, who have views of their own and will stick to them regardless
of consequences when a great principle is at stake." Sir Robert himself
said
"The chief merit of this Bill is in the recognition of the principle
that the protection of the public is a justification for prolonged sentences.
But this recognition is made in a halting and incidental way. The Bill fails to
provide for the numerous class of cases in which, though the actual crime
charged is not in itself a grave one, inquiry would satisfy the court that the
offender is a professional criminal who ought to be detained indefinitely. If
the sick were treated with the folly which marks our dealing with criminals, a
man with a violent cough would be sent to hospital though possibly suffering
from nothing worse than a fly in his throat or a common cold, whilst a slight
cough would be neglected although it might be a symptom of some fatal disease."
Regarding the relationship of drink and crime, Sir Robert remarked that
judge after judge had said drink was at the root of the bulk of the crime of
the country. That, he said, must be taken with a certain reservation. Crimes of
violence and brutality were nearly always the result of drink. But gambling and
betting also led to crime and misery; so did overcrowding and dirt and
everything that tended to immorality and the lowering of the standard of life.
I remember his saying that he had asked one of the most experienced of the
London magistrates what proportion of the ordinary cases of crime coming before
him he considered to be wholly or in part the result of drink. The reply, which
he confessed was a surprise to him, was that drink was an element in nine out
of every ten cases.
So great an advance has been made in respect of the
treatment of first offenders, especially of juveniles, that I deal only very
briefly with this aspect of Sir Roberts penology. "The aim," he argued,
"should be by all possible means to reform a young offender and give him a new
start in life." To this end he advocated corporal punishment in suitable cases
- anything in fact rather than gaol.
In reply to those who objected to
punishments which they classified as degrading, although affording an
alternative to imprisonment in the case of youthful offenders, it was urged
that no punishment degrades an offender so thoroughly as one that allows him to
make his crime a subject of boasting. The Irish story related in the first
chapter of this book was given as an example of the opposite effect being
produced. "I will not," he said, "insult the intelligence of the reader by
explaining the moral of my story. And I will only add that if offenders of this
class were punished in the manner that public schoolboys are punished, and then
turned out at once to rejoin their companions, an appearance in a police court
would cease to be a matter for boasting!"
The right of boys to go wrong was
challenged: "I advocate reforms that will reduce the ranks of the army of
crime; I plead also for measures that will stop the recruiting." Before the
unemployment problem had become acute, and before two wars had accustomed the
British people to conscription, it was pointed out that the sort of boys who
become "street arabs" and hooligans often made splendid soldiers and sailors.
And the suggestion was that magistrates should be empowered to deal with any
lad between the ages of, say, sixteen and twenty-one who habitually made the
streets his home and had no visible means of subsistence.
The Earl of
Meath, founder of the Empire Day Movement, having seen an article by my father
in 1910 on the best way of dealing with young offenders, drew his attention to
the Duty and Discipline series of leaflets, and asked him to write one dealing
specially with the subject of corporal punishment for children not amenable to
milder influences. Lord Meath said: "There is so much humanitarian sentiment to
be met with in the present day that there appears to be a real danger lest all
control over the rising generation should be thrown to the winds."
The
Aliens Act required strengthening and honest administration. No other country
in Europe tolerated the presence of alien criminals. Why then should such men
as anarchist conspirators be allowed to live in Britain? The
neer-do-wells and known criminals of other countries should be excluded.
"Why should a professional criminal be admitted because he happens to have a
first-class ticket on the Channel boat? He would not be fit for his
profession if he could not dress like a toff and pay
for a high-class revolver of the newest pattern."
Accusations of hardness,
lack of sympathy and the like were not wanting. In his letter to The Times,
already quoted, Sir Alfred Wills had said: "Dr. Anderson is undoubtedly
fearless, and pace his critic in your columns, in my opinion a merciful and
fair- minded man." Another kind of light was shed on the question by a writer
in the Daily News: "I believe Sir Robert Anderson to be one of the best friends
of those who can be reclaimed, whether young or of mature age. He is in full
sympathy with the boys (an average of 500 annually) whom Mr. William Wheatley
has in hand, and the Superintendent certainly looks upon him as a very
steadfast friend. I happened to be in the chapel in Little Wild Street when Sir
Robert gave an address to nearly 500 children belonging to the schools of the
St. Giles Christian Mission, and Lady Agnes Anderson distributed some hundreds
of prizes. It strikes me that this is service worthy even of the Humanitarian
League." Mr. Wheatley, on hearing of my fathers death, wrote: "I am more
than grieved to read this morning of the passing Home of my very dear old
friend, Sir Robert. Words fail me to express the deep feeling of my heart."
A fact which is probably not generally known was mentioned in Criminals and
Crime. Speaking of one of the organisations which had attacked him as being too
hard on their protégés the "professionals," the author said: "I
must add that never a, day passes in which the much-maligned police do not give
more help to weak and deserving criminals than this sort of society has
rendered during all its history."
I close this chapter with a few South
African opinions and suggestions in the years 1945 and 1946. Their similarity
to what Sir Robert Anderson was saying fifty years ago is too obvious to need
pointing out. Dr. F. E. T. Krause, late Judge-President in the Orange Free
State, was quoted recently as having said:
"The doctrine of retribution and
revenge was and is still now the underlying principle of our penal laws. . . .
It was not and is not now the prescribed function or duty of the prison staff
to do anything towards the actual reform of the prisoner. All prisoners are
dealt with as if they conform to a single pattern or type. . . . What is needed
is not a reasonable interpretation and a liberal application of the
regulations, but an entire change and abandonment of a barbarous, wrong and
purposeless system. .
Reformatories have now been placed under the
jurisdiction of the Education Department. This has been the first tangible
proof of a change in the policy which regarded the 'crime and not the
criminal as the principal factor in awarding punishment. .
Most of our
country prisons still follow the dungeon pattern - thick iron bars, slits of
windows, no sun, faulty ventilation and semi-darkness in the cells."
At a
conference in Johannesburg on penal reform, Mr. W. G. Hoal, Secretary for
Justice and Director of Prisons, said that the gaols were overcrowded with
persons many of whom should never be there. The short sentence for a trivial
offence, followed by committals for longer periods according to a carefully
graded scale, defeated the whole object of imprisonment. The head of a
reformatory stated that it was nonsense to say that the punishment must fit the
crime; it should fit the criminal.
The Cape Times in a leading article on
the above conference said: "Time after time it has been emphasised by the
highest authorities that thousands of prisoners are housed in our gaols who
should never be there. Modern observation has proved beyond doubt that prisons
create more criminals than they frighten or cure. Only with a drastic overhaul
of the present methods of conviction and detention is there hope of our prisons
fulfilling their rightful function of reformatories."
And Mr. Justice
Twentyman Jones is reported in the Cape Times of 23rd August 1945 as saying
with reference to lawlessness among coloured youths, that it was time some
institution was established with full powers to round up these youths and put
them where they would have no opportunity to commit crimes. The Government
should take the matter up and not wait for the courts to commit the youths to
gaol, because when they came out they only resumed their criminal activities.
A commission on penal reform was appointed by the South African Government
in November 1945. The terms of reference include inquiry into the general
objects of punishment; the desirability or otherwise of short terms of
imprisonment and the means by which, if undesirable, they may be avoided; the
classification and proper control of penal institutions and of the inmates ;
also the development of suitable forms of education for all prisoners.
In
a leading article on the commission under the heading "Prisons on Trial," the
Cape Times says:
"The need for a radical examination of the prison and
punishment system of the Union is obvious. All civilised countries have at last
made up their minds that the true object of imprisonment ought to be not so
much the desire to exact revenge as the desire to reform the criminal. The long
history of the penal system . . . gives fairly clear evidence that the
deterrent effect of punishment has been grossly overrated. . . . It is plain
that our present penal system is a hopeless failure and needs complete
renovation."
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