Many nineteenth-century observers believed that crime was an increasing problem. A contributor to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1844 argued that crime had risen by 700 per cent since 1805. Engels, writing in the same year, agreed that the available statistical evidence showed a dramatic increase in criminal activity. And writing from a totally different ideological standpoint, Sir Archibald Alison, the Tory Sheriff of Lanarkshire, commented, again in 1844, that ‘destitution, sensuality and crime advance with unheard of rapidity’. Despite their ideological differences they not only agreed that crime was on the increase but also that it was an urban phenomenon, a result of the manufacturing system. The idea that crime was predominately urban was commonplace. In 1842, Justice Erskine commented at the Hereford summer Assizes that:

This view was understandable; it reflected the commonsense notion that the cramming together of humanity in towns led to a disintegration of morality with sexual impropriety, disease and crime running rife. While disease and promiscuity undoubtedly caused concern it was the increase in crime that worried contemporaries the most. Urban Victorians of substance were not only fearful for their property but also for their own safety, and their fears resulted in ‘moral panics’ and theories of an emerging criminal class that lurked in dark alleys ready to prey upon respectable society.

Judging by the above comments one could easily believe that rural areas such as Herefordshire, with not a ‘satanic mill’ in sight, were virtually crimefree. Yet the link between crime and social and economic deprivation was not confined merely to the manufacturing districts. It was true that during the first half of the nineteenth century the rural labourer was untroubled by polluted air and water. Moreover, his place of work may have been more pleasant but he was as likely as his urban counterpart, perhaps more so, to experience lengthy periods of unemployment.