Welsh Journals

linguistic needs of a Welsh diocese than had been his numerous, English predecessors at St. David's. Similarly, upon his translation to St. Asaph in 1802, he gave the most lucrative patronage at his disposal to members of his immediate family. His son, Heneage Horsley, for example, was presented to no fewer than three livings, and given a sinecure in the cathedral, the aggregate income of which exceeded £ 2,000. Although other late-eighteenth-century bishops, such as Brownlow North, far exceeded this modest display of nepotism, yet Mather's exploration of such details allows his portrait of Horsley to live in three dimensions. This is a very readable book, and an important contribution to Welsh ecclesiastical history at the turn of the nineteenth century. MATTHEW CRAGOE Swansea CRIME IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY WALES. By David J. V. Jones. University of Wales Press, 1992. Pp. xv, 295. £ 25.00. David Jones has produced a series of major studies of Welsh protest and crime in the industrial period and in his latest publication has brought them to splendid culmination with this account of crime in nineteenth-century Wales. Indeed, this latest study stands as one of the most substantial and sophisticated examinations of crime and policing in nineteenth-century Britain and will provide an excellent model for studies of other parts of the United Kingdom. Jones is well aware of the pitfalls surrounding the use of criminal statistics, but his thorough investigation of the statistical and literary evidence of the period allows him to establish an overall picture of the pattern of crime in nineteenth-century Wales. Its most striking feature was a spectacular increase in recorded crime during the first part of the century, a rise shared by the rest of Britain. This came against a background in which eighteenth-century Wales enjoyed a reputation for relative tranquillity. Give or take a certain 'roughness' in manners remarked upon by travellers, the rural areas and small country towns were largely free of major crimes. Judges in the late eighteenth century recorded delight at the small number committed for trial and half-empty gaols. Much petty crime was dealt with informally through compensation, compromise and neighbourly reconciliation, while community sanctions could be enforced by the Welsh equivalent of the English 'Skimmington', the ceffyl pren. The rural areas retained their aura of 'innocent Wales' well into the next century, in spite of the great wave of protests associated with the Rebecca riots of 1839-44. But the growing urban districts of the nineteenth century soon began to exhibit a major increase in crimes of every type. A huge surge in crime swept through to the early 1870s, largely concentrated in the most urban and industrialized centres. By 1861 rates of theft in Cardiff, Swansea and Newport were about six times those found in the most rural districts and crimes of violence showed a similar pattern. From the 1830s, the problems of growing crime, accompanied by fears of social upheaval and political agitation, prompted a wholesale revision of the provisions for