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POLICE AND CRIME IN ENGLAND BY PIONEER AUSTRALIAN POLICEMAN

Synopsis

To which is added a dictionary of the flash or cant language, known to every thief and beggar. edited by h. brandon, esq. noted in manuscript on the title page: 'second edition with considerable additions. this book corrected for the compositor'.

Item Description

FIRST EDITION WITH NUMEROUS MANUSCRIPT ADDITIONS FOR A SECOND EDITION. 8vo. 5.5 x 8.75 inches. [iv] + 168 pp. Manuscript additions include 35 extra pages, a 3 page letter addressed to Henry Brandon Esq 14 Percy St. Bedford Sq. with insertion, 2 folding tables and additional insertions, p. 154-5 and blank p. 60. Other manuscript additions throughout many sections pasted over and others sections of the original report cut away.

Notes

In effect the manuscript corrected copy of the original first edition, ready for the compositor, for a second edition which was never published. The additions appear to be in the hands of both the author, William Augustus Miles (1796-1851) and the editor, Henry Brandon, of whom little is known other than he was a physician or surgeon who wrote to the Lancet in 1839 relating the effects of opiates on himself. Miles, who claimed to be an illegitimate son of George IV, had considerable experience in matters relating to poverty and crime, having been an assistant commissioner of inquiry into the Poor Law and later of the Royal Commission on Rural Constabulary, 1836-39. The text of the first edition was originally prepared for the assistance of the House of Lords Committee on secondary (i.e. non-capital) punishment and prison discipline, 1835. Its sections include preliminary observations, the Report by Miles for the House of Lords, 1835, the texts of letters received and various facts and observations on prisons, and various categories of vagrants, 'Flash Houses and Fences' and 'Low Lodging Houses.' The text is concluded with a brief dictionary of thief's slang, including ten flash names for silk pocket handkerchiefs. Miles was of the opinion that 'Crime was the fault of a vagrant criminal class who opted for their idle and predatory life-styles. This second edition was never published, probably because he was appointed Commissioner of Police for Sydney in 1839 and served in that post, 1840-48 making this extensively annotated copy a unique survival.