Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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Thieves as a rule are remarkably cunning, and to capture them is no easy matter.

Captain Fenwick, head constable of Chester, wrote some time back an interesting letter on “Modern Thief-catching.” It is estimated, said he, that there are at large in this country about 40,000 individuals who are either known thieves or under the suspicion of the police; nearly 3000 are yearly liberated from the convict prisons alone; and a large proportion of them are lost in the crowd until they find themselves back in prison again.

Considering the influence of these persons on society in the way both of depredation and contamination, it will be readily perceived that thief-catching is a matter of considerable moment.

Captain Fenwick in his epistle reviews the various means which have been adopted from time to time to identify depredators, and to save the public from being victimised by habitual criminals.

When the telegraph system was adopted it was probably thought that its use by the police would cripple the operations of the professional thief.