Graves Charles Larcom - Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 3 of 4.1874-1892 стр 20.

To this year belong Punch's tirades against the iniquity of unjust rates. In December he has quite a long article based on the hardships of shopkeepers, small and large. He quotes two cases. The first is that of a small shopkeeper. The street in which he lived had been recently widened. Immediately his landlord raised his rent £30 a year, and his rates were at once raised from £16 to £30. Another victim carrying on business in a principal City thoroughfare paid a rental of £800 a year, his gross profits being £1,500. The street was improved; his rent was increased to £1,000; and £40 a year were added to his rates in consequence of an improvement which had already cost him £200 a year, which the landlord had received without the expenditure of a single shilling. One does not expect to find precise information on rating and rentals in a comic journal, but in the 'eighties at any rate Punch did not shirk such topics.

Housing and Health

This was the year of the Health Exhibition, the second of that annual series which was a special feature of the 'eighties. On their recreative aspect I speak elsewhere. It may suffice here to say that Punch summed up the conflict of aims which they represented in the phrase "Commerce v. Cremorne." His anticipatory notice of the "Healtheries" abounds in burlesque suggestions for hygienic exhibits; in the account of the opening praise is largely tempered with irony; and his "insane-itary guide" shows how largely these Exhibitions depended on al fresco entertainments, illuminations, and bands.

The growth of the modern mania for amusement was still in its infancy, but Punch has some instructive remarks on the decline of the many institutions which had begun with the highest instructional aims and aspirations:

The Crystal Palace at Sydenham commenced its career with the highest aspirations. The British Public were to be shown the architectural glories of the Alhambra and Pompeii, and soon found themselves watching the evolutions of Léotard and Blondin. In like manner the Westminster Aquarium was inaugurated by the Duke of Edinburgh, as a sort of supplement to "the mission of Albert the Good," but soon had to fall back on Zazel and a "Variety entertainment."

accordingly prophecies a similar evolution in the character of the South Kensington Exhibition, and the sequel proved that here, at any rate, he was a true prophet.

Students of Criminology will find much to interest them in Punch's pages during this period. We have already seen that he had abandoned his objection to capital punishment in the 'sixties. Commenting on the debate in June, 1877, Punch defended the maintenance of the gallows as an ultima ratio legum much on the lines of J. S. Mill, who had, more than anyone else, converted him from his old view. Later on, when the abolition was rejected by 263 votes to 64, he writes:

We keep our gallows for the brute whom no rope weaker than the hempen halter will bind, and no terror less terrible than Tyburn Tree will hold in awe. There are such ruffians; and for them the gallows is, and will be, kept for the present standing.

Crime in Whitechapel

But a far more severe ordeal awaited the police in 1888, the year of the crime wave in Whitechapel. Sarcastic allusions to the inefficiency of the Force are renewed. One cartoon represents them blindfolded and stumbling about amongst jeering criminals. Punch was nearer the mark in the cartoon headed, "The Nemesis of Neglect" based on a letter from "S. G. O." in The Times pointing out that East End slums invited crime and in his admissions that the numbers of the police were inadequate and that their inefficiency was largely due to the publicity given to the movements of detectives, and the measures taken by the authorities, by sensational interviewers in the cheap press. The amateur "crime investigator" unfortunately continued to flourish in spite of Punch's censure. Hideous picture-posters, vividly representing sensational scenes of murder, exhibited as the "great attractions" of certain plays, are also condemned as a blot on civilization, a disgrace to the Drama, and a suggestion of crime. It should be added that Punch expressly exempted Sir Charles Warren from blame, and indignantly dissociated himself from the attacks of those who joined in making him a scapegoat:

The Police Force requires strengthening, and Sir Charles is perfectly alive to the fact. What on earth can it matter if, in number, our Police compare favourably with the Police Force at Constantinople, or St. Petersburgh, or Vienna, or Jericho, if we have not sufficient Police to protect life and property in the Metropolis? Socialistic sensational Journalists and rowdy demagogues would like to see the Police Force reduced to one in every two thousand, until they fell to fighting among themselves, when they would be the first to yell out "Police!" and scream for the intervention of the enfeebled arm of the law.