In the county of Surrey during the month
of July, 1888, sixty per cent. fewer persons were imprisoned for
vagrancy than in the following month of January, 1889. As far as
Surrey is concerned, these figures effectually dispose of the idea
that vagrancy is more common in summer than in winter; as a matter of
fact they demonstrate that the very opposite is the case. Surrey is
the only county for which I have been able to obtain trustworthy
statistics, but there is every reason to believe that the statistics
of Surrey reveal on a limited scale what the whole of England, if
figures were procurable, would reveal on a large scale. Assuming,
then, that what holds good for Surrey is equally valid for the rest of
England, the conclusion is forced upon us that the augmentation of
crime in summer does not arise from an increase of vagrants and others
arrested and convicted under the Vagrancy Acts while in search of work
or pretending to be in search of it. The assumption that such is the
case is quite unwarranted by the facts so far as they are obtainable,
and another explanation must be sought of the greater prevalence of
crime in summer as compared with winter.

An economic cause of an opposite character to vagrancy has by some
been considered as accounting for the facts now under consideration.
In the summer months, work as a rule is more easily procured; people
in consequence have more money to spend; drunkenness becomes more
common, and the high prison population of summer is to be attributed
to drink. That there is a greater consumption of drink when work
becomes more plentiful is a perfectly correct statement which has been
verified over and over again, and it is also equally correct to say
that drinking leads its victims to the police court. But it has to be
remembered that in almost all cases of drunkenness the magistrate
allows the alternative of a fine. A much larger percentage of fines
is paid in summer than in winter, the result being that the increase
of drunkenness in summer does not disproportionally increase the size
of the prison population. In July, 1888, as compared with January,
1889, cases of felony and assault, followed by imprisonment, increased
in the county of Surrey 20 and 28 per cent. respectively, while
drunkenness on the other hand only increased 18 per cent. The reason
of this relatively small increase of imprisonment for drunkenness does
not arise from the fact that there is less drunkenness in prop