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Cities Don't Cause Crime: Urban-Rural Differences in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century German Criminality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Eric A. Johnson
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Extract

“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”

“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside… But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”

—Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Spring 1992 , pp. 129 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1992 

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