London: Chatto & Windus, 1883
Sims visited these children at school in a poverty-stricken area of London. He aimed to encourage a better understanding in the general population of the wretchedly poor, by graphically illustrating the conditions in which the poor lived. His reaction to their conditions wavers between horror and a hope that social reform will achieve a change. Despite his natural sympathy, inevitably Sims makes judgements as to whether each child is ‘redeemable’ or not, based on their physical appearance.
It was a common belief that poor people could be divided into the “deserving poor” who suffered poverty through particular circumstances such as death of the wage earner, and those whose poverty was due to laziness, greed or some other moral weakness. It was considered important to give financial support and even education only to those poor people who were morally sound, or, as has been said, the result would simply be better educated criminals.
This led to the view that there was a “criminal class” of people in society who were naturally inclined to commit crimes. Since there was a good deal of crime in poorer areas of cities, the criminal class was assumed to consist chiefly of poor people. This criminal class was believed to be irretrievably immoral and could not be reformed. An extreme version of this approach was the opinion that criminal tendencies were actually inherited, that crime was the result of a genetic failing rather than a moral one. With the growth of numbers of people living in city slums in appalling conditions, alarmist reports circulated that the criminal class was breeding more criminals than ever who would take over the cities.
1883.11.50 pp. 30-31