Gin and Crime
FIELDING, Henry.
An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase in Robbers, &c. with some Proposals for remedying this growing Evil … London, A. Millar, 1751.
12mo, pp. xxxii, 203, [1, blank]; with the half-title; upper corner of A1–5 gnawed (not affecting text), else a very good, uncut copy in early twentieth-century buckram, arms of the Maxwells of Monreith to front cover, spine darkened; bookplate of Herbert Eustace Maxwell.
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An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase in Robbers, &c. with some Proposals for remedying this growing Evil …
Second edition, published two months after the first in March 1751, with a number of sporadic but likely authorial changes, and the errata corrected.
In his capacity as magistrate and principal judge at the Bow Street Police court, the novelist Henry Fielding was at the forefront of the fight against highwaymen and street gangs in London. He argued for increased punishments and the prohibition of ‘expensive Diversions’ and gin shops (which distracted and stupefied ‘useful members of society’), pointed out defects in laws pertaining to the poor, and examined the conditions in which poverty led to criminality. ‘By thus identifying areas in which specific reforms were needed, the Enquiry had an important influence on the criminal legislation of 1751–2. Its concerns would be reflected in his last novel [Amelia], published in December 1751’ (ODNB).
Provenance: from the library of the novelist, antiquary, MP, and angler Herbert Eustace Maxwell (1845–1937), with his bookplate.
ESTC T89871; Cross III, pp. 320–1; Zirker, p. 324.