...Yet despite the caricature of pre-statist Victorian society that we are all taught, English society had made tremendous progress since the 1830s in reducing squalor. The East End was poor, but absolute poverty was easing, and this had much to do with both physical and spiritual improvements in people’s lives. And this often had little to do with the state. As Mark Steyn notes in his new book about statism, After America, a letter sent by Jack the Ripper’s first victim Mary Ann Nichols shows a level of literacy that would shame many of today’s university students – and she was born in Holborn, arguably London's worst slum, 25 years before the Education Act.
Crime was relatively low by 1888, which is why such murders were shocking. The English homicide rate by the end of the 19th century had reached under 1/100,000 after decades of improvement, and would continue a decline until the mid-1950s, after which it would rise to its current level of 1.2-1.3/100,000. How was this achieved? Education and material improvement helped, but it’s telling that when Nichols’s body was found, at 4am in the worst district in London, three policemen were found within ten minutes, each walking the beat. ...
-go to the link-
No comments:
Post a Comment