Essays on the Origin of Pauperism and Crime. by [Crime]. [Temperance]. Anonymous - 1841.

Boston: Published by S. G. Simpkins, 1841. First edition.. Some trifling wear and soiling; a fine copy.. 16mo, original blind-stamped diaper grain blue cloth, gilt lettering, 48 pages. No man of ordinary observation can pass through the streets of New York or Philadelphia, without meeting numerous living witnesses of the misery which exists in both of those cities, and especially in the former. Enough can be seen in Boston to make any benevolent heart ache daily for suffering humanity. But still the amount is less in proportion to population, than in either of the other two cities. Through the influence of better laws for education, intellectual culture, the best preservative from vice and crime, is more generally diffused in Boston, than in Philadelphia; and from its geographical position, Boston is not, like New York, the common resort of the squalid poverty that seeks refuge on our shores from Europe." A fairly nuanced sociological, criminal, and economic argument for temperance among the laboring classes, pointing to the savings in cost of drinks and to the economic advantages of sober fathers; additional aspersions are cast as well on adulteration of wines and liquors. Originally published as a series in Boston Daily Times, here collected and published with a prefatory Advertisement dated May, 1841 and signed by a committee of Boston advocates of temperance. Includes an appendix of collected statistics on inmates at the jails and house of correction, juvenile crime, insane asylum numbers, etc. OCLC (6/2019) notes two locations.