CRIME IN LONDON.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3375, 28 January 1884, Page 2

CRIME IN LONDON.

The Director of Criminal Investigations, in a recent report, said that London was the safest city in the world for life and property. Three events which have happened during the past fortnight (says the “ Home News ”) set thisdaring assertion in a strange light. Inthe first case, Mr Sexton, M.P„ was set upon in a street off the strand by a gang of footpads, and a watch valued at £4o' snatched from his pocket. It is true* that this happened at three o’clock In: the morning. But the thieves ehowedi their respect for the vigilance of the* police by coolly walking away, and but: for a cabman would have escaped altogether. That an outrage should be* committed on a Land League member is perhaps only retributive justice* but oddly enough the culprit was* Irish also. A couple of days after a German was kidnapped, at 8 o’clock in the evening,'in the neighborhood of tb.e Euston road, one of the most populous thoroughfares In the Metropolis. A sack was flung over his head, b.e was dragged into a house, drugged, and robbed of about £BO, which he had saved to get married. Ten or twelve hours afterwards he was fo, T and lying on the highway of Hertford Common, about a dozen miles away, bound band and foot. The followip g day a respectable girl was found lying half dead on the Thames foreshore, near Blackfriars, having been subjected to brutal treatment, and then thrown over the Embankment. If, with crimes of this sort of daily occurrence, London is the “ safest ” city in the world, the others cannot be desirable places of habitation.