'Poverty, mendicity and crime; or, the facts, examinations, &c upon which the report was founded, presented to the House of Lords by W. A. Miles, Esq. to which is added a dictionary of the flash or cant language, known to every thief and beggar, edited by H. Brandon, Esq.', London: Shaw and Sons, 1839, first edition, with manuscript revisions for a proposed second edition, probably 1840

MLMSS 11794/Box 1X

fonds

approximately 1839-1840

1001974

0.20 metres of textual material (1 outsize box) - octavo volume in original soft brown cloth cover

William Augustus Miles (1798-1851) served as a commissioner of police and police magistrate in Sydney during the 1840s. It is thought that Miles was an illegitimate son of William IV, the monarch supporting Miles’ career and the inscription on his gravestone, in the old Camperdown cemetery, featuring a crown and the words: ‘Sweet nature gave a Prince but Fortune blind adorned him not whom nature had adorned’.

In England, Miles was a contributor throughout the 1830s to a number of parliamentary select committees, culminating in his appointment as Assistant Commissioner on the Rural Constabulary Commission. His investigations in the field of poverty and crime, which led him to conduct interviews with convicted men and boys destined for transportation, led in July 1840 to his appointment by Home Secretary Lord John Russell to the post of commissioner of police in Sydney. Miles appeared as a witness before various select committees of the Legislative Council, notably those on immigration (1842), the Water Police Amendment Act (1843), insecurity of life and property (1844), and police (1847). In 1850 he was discredited and forced into retirement, and he died in Sydney the following year.

Little is known about the editor Henry Brandon, except that he contributed letters to medical journals such as The Lancet in 1839 about his opium use, giving his address as 14 Percy Street, Bedford Square, London.

References:
Library acquisition file
King, Hazel. 'Miles, William Augustus (1798–1851)', Australian Dictionary of Biography. Accessed 20 April 2020.
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-william-augustus-2452/text3275

From a deceased estate near Cheriton in Kent, England.

The first edition of 'Poverty, mendicity and crime' was published on the eve of Miles' departure for Australia. It is a compilation of his writings under the editorship of Henry Brandon, containing Miles' Report on Prison Discipline, presented by him to the House of Lords, on 5 June 1835, together with the information, letters and papers collected during his subsequent investigation of that subject and his enquiry into the causes of crime and poverty in the labouring classes. The book is based on field work which Miles had conducted, including interviews on the convict hulks 'Fortitude' and 'Euryalus'. In addition to the House of Lords report, the volume contains chapters on 'Prisons', 'Police Information', 'Flash Houses and Fences', 'Low Lodging Houses', 'Pawnbrokers', 'Thimblemen', 'Gipseys' and 'Trampers'. The book ends with an eight-page 'Dictionary of the Flash or Cant Language known to every Thief and Beggar'.

This copy of the first edition contains numerous emendations and additions for the intended second edition. On the reverse of the contents leaf is a long manuscript note headed ‘Mem[orandum] To the compositor’, and the volume contains occasional directions to the printer. Other revisions and additions include: a sixteen-page passage 'Vagrancy at Bristol' on tipped-in leaves; short notes on laid-down slips of paper; three statistical tables on two fold-out leaves; manuscript emendations to the printed text including the identification of numerous persons and places only represented by initials in the printed version (for example, on pages 61, 106, 113 and 157); some pages cut up for the rearrangement of blocks of text; and additions and corrections to the volume's 'Dictionary of the Flash or Cant Language'.

The additional material refers to reports and cases from 1837 to 1840. The manuscript portions are all in the same hand, and this is presumably that of the editor Henry Brandon (with one passage of manuscript additional text written on a blank page on the back of a letter addressed to: ‘Henry Brandon Esq / 14 Percy Street / Bedford Sq’).

The title 'Poverty, medicity & crime' is stamped in gilt on the front cover.

Out of copyright:
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Another copy of the first edition of this title, without marginalia, is held by the State Library of New South Wales at Call No. T0014851.

Title page has manuscript inscription: ‘Second Editn. Fair copy’, with ‘Second Edition / with considerable additions’ inscribed beneath the editor’s name and 'This book corrected for the compositor' beneath the year.

The vendor suggests that ‘Henry Brandon’ was possibly a pseudonym employed by William Augustus Miles.

Amongst the additional material for the proposed second edition is a reference to an 1840 case of a public execution.