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'WHERE DID IT ALL GO WRONG?': CRIME IN SWANSEA, 1938-68 THE purpose of this article is to examine the history of crime in the second largest town in Wales during a crucial period. Swansea has acquired over several generations a reputation for being a fairly orderly and law-abiding place, and in a recent survey it was regarded as being one of the most civilised of modern cities.2 Compared with Cardiff, Liverpool, and some of the other large seaports, the crime rate in twentieth-century Swansea has been comparatively modest. In 1938, when one indictable offence was reported for every 200 of the population, and when proceedings involving other crimes were taken against 1 in 80, the proportions were 50 and 100 per cent better than those of Cardiff. As Graph 1 indicates, the national rise in reported crime came late to the town, from the outbreak of the Second World War onwards. Within thirty years, at the time of the amalgamation of the Swansea police force with the South Wales Constabulary, the rate had grown by five times. As we shall see, the precise pace and the character of the most recent crime wave had already been set. The discussions in the watch committee, the local press and the royal commission on the police during the 1960s understandably centred on the question of what went wrong. Analysis of crime and policing during the thirty years before amalgamation is not easy. The war disrupted the normal flow of information; the annual parliamentary reports when they re-appear lack detail; and the supplementary statistics produced by the Home Office were a late development. Nor is the local situation much better. Front-line evidence, such as the occurrence and charge books, no longer exists. Twenty years ago, most of the twentieth- century records of crime and policing in the town were lost or destroyed, a tragedy that was repeated in other districts. What remains has been gathered 1 This article could be called 'first-stage research'. More work is needed on the history of crime in modem Wales before confident judgements and comparisons can be made. The importance of local statistical studies in the history of crime was recognised many years ago: H. Mannheim, Social Aspects of Crime m England between the Wars (London, 1940), p. 22. The present writer has completed a number of such studies for nineteenth-century London and Manchester, in Crime, Protest, Community and Police in Nineteenth- Century Britain (London, 1982). Compare the contemporary studies of urban crime by sociologists and social geographers; see, for example, J. Lambert, Crime, Police and Race Relations: a Study of Birmingham (London, 1970), and J. Baldwin and A. E. Bottoms, The Urban Criminal: a Study of Sheffield (London. 1976). 2 The survey was carried out at the University of Glasgow, by Dr. Rogerson and others. Swansea came sixth in a list of thirty-four medium-size cities: South Wales Evening Post (EP), 3 May 1989. Files of this newspaper are held at the Central Library, the City Archives in the Guildhall, and the Royal Institution in Swansea. In the 1950s and 1960s, Swansea's crime rate was comparable with that of Bristol and Sheffield: J. Baldwin and A. E. Bottoms, op. cit., p. 52.