After a lengthy investigation into criminal behaviour among young people, the committee reached the following conclusions: the main causes were the “improper conduct of parents”, the “want of education” and the “want of suitable employment”. Moral guidance and civilised order were seen as the remedies.
Sound familiar? This was the opinion of a report from the Society for Investigating the Causes of the Alarming Increase of Juvenile Delinquency in the Metropolis, established in 1815, just after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The circumstances then, of course, were very different. When a police chief spoke recently of gangs of “feral” children in our towns and cities, his grasp of history was somewhat tenuous. In the 19th century, some children were literally feral, wild and untamed, with no family to return to, no social workers to look after them, no welfare state to provide for them.
