Fascinating accounts of Victorian criminality, rescued from the oblivion of the humble dumpster. From the Daily Mail, via Fark.

Little George Sayers was scarcely a hardened criminal. Just 13 years old, small for his age due to malnourishment, his little face screwed up in an expression of bewilderment, he faced the police camera in May 1900 fearing, quite rightly, that he would be beaten for his crimes.

George was accused of stealing handkerchiefs, rugs, skirts and shirts worth three pounds and ten shillings from the Newcastle shop where he was employed as an errand boy.

When he heard the charge, he burst into tears. One of some 14 children, whose father had deserted his 52-year-old mother Emma, leaving her to feed and clothe her huge brood alone. He was accused along with his mother, who admitted she had put him up to his petty thieving. ‘I told him to take them. Don’t blame the boy,’ she gallantly told the police.

Another of the pair’s methods was to steal clothes off the neighbours’ washing lines, whereupon Emma would whisk the loot around to the local pawnbroker where they were hocked to get money for the family. It was the pawnbroker who tipped off the police when he became suspicious.

These stories, and some 300 others, all equally poignant, have just been uncovered by retired North Shields policeman Ken Banks.

Every now and again a new study comes out, saying exactly the same thing as every study ever commissioned on the same damn subject: the majority of crime is committed by young men.

And every now and again, someone says “Well, now that we know who’s responsible, we can take action.” And they go on to say exactly how, in minute detail and at great length, particularly if they’re paid by the word. No actual progress in reducing the crime rate so far, even by those who are looking to lay a Putin on the skulking minors.

The problem transcends culture, race, and even time itself; look at the historic documents and legends of any culture on the planet. It’s always the damn hoodies!

The solution is not to ban rap music. The solution is not to blast ultrasonic waves or Wagner into the park at night, annoying the neighbors and turning the usually peaceful squirrels into raging Clockwork Orange Lodge Members in good standing.

The solution, my friends, is to ban young men.

Simple, elegant, and utterly effective. Rather than wait several years until they’re eligible for trial as adults and real (and really expensive) prison time, I suggest that we just pre-emptively lock them up from the ages of 12 to, say, 21.

I know what you’re thinking.

Half of my readers are thinking, “Well dammit, isn’t that what we’ve got tv and meaningless after-school activities for?”

While the other half are thinking “Well dammit, isn’t that what we have boarding school and University for?”

And quite right you both are. With the half-life of a hoodie at only five years, containment IS solution.