THUGGEE IN LONDON Sir, - Observing in your paper of to-day a letter from a gentleman who was nearly strangled and robbed of his watch by this abominable practice, I think it right to say that about a month since I was treated in exactly a similar manner. This was also in a public thoroughfare, and within a few yards of a publichouse that was open. I suffered considerably for some days from the constriction of the throat I had endured. I applied to the police, but they could not succeed in tracing the parties, although I believe they have a suspicion whom one of them is who perpetrated this and various other outrages of a similar description. The difficulty is that the sufferer scarcely ever sees his assailant, as he is seized round the throat from behind. It certainly is high time that decisive steps should be taken to put a stop to these serious outrages, which I believe are much more common that most people are aware of. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, ANOTHER SUFFERER Lincoln's-inn, July 17. Sir, - I wish to add my testimony to that already given in your paper with respect to the cowardly system of Thuggee now being carried on in the streets of London. About three weeks back I was returning home along the Haymarket about 12 o'clock at night, and, having occasion to turn aside up a court, I was suddenly seized round the throat by one ruffian, while another snatched my watch and struck me on the head with a life preserver, or some heavy instrument, rendering me senseless...

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In Whitechapel alone, there were 62 houses known by the police to be brothels and a great number more less intermittently used for such purposes. The official number of prostitutes in the district was estimated to be 1200 but was more likely to have been double that figure. Venereal disease (Syphilis) in the 1880s was very high and accounted for more deaths in England and Wales - greater than Smallpox, Typhus and Cholera. The British Army report shows over a period of seven years in the 1840s on average 1 in 5 of the Cavalry, Foot-guards and Infantry men had contracted Syphilis, it was the Infantry men who suffered the worst, near to I in 3.

Sir Francis Galton: Racial types and criminality; Degeneration and the Body Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, 1883 Hereditary Genius: Enquiry into its laws and Consequence, 1896

Alphonse Bertillon: Les Races SauvagesLes Races Sauvages, 1882 Instruction for Taking Descriptions for the Identification of Criminals and Others by means of Anthropometric Indications, 1889

Cesare Lombroso: Criminal Behavior is Hereditary L’oumo delinquente, 1876 (trns Criminal man) The Man of Genius, 1891 The Female Offender, 1898

Eugene Talbot, Degeneracy, 1898