This transcript, dedicated to William IV, contains William Augustus Miles's (1798-1851) report on the causes and effects of crime in London in the early nineteenth century. The 1820s and 1830s marked a revolution in policing in Britain, primarily due to the establishment of the first professional police force by Robert Peel in 1829. Peel's Metropolitan Police were able to tackle crime much more effectively than ever before. However, there remained a severe lack of adequate prisons in London, and many criminals were interred in hulks, ships moored along the Thames, which served as makeshift gaols. Large numbers of prisoners, including children, were transported to Australia where they would serve out their sentences carrying out hard labour in the new colonies.

Miles's report, issued in 1835, consists of three main sections: interviews with police officers and prison officers; reviews of the standards of accommodation in prisons across London; and the testimony of several young offenders, giving their reasons for committing crimes. Some of these inmates are unapologetic for their crimes, but many others stated that they had committed them because they had no hope of social mobility. Miles's report also contains descriptions of visits to the slums of St Giles (including the notorious 'Rookery') and a visit to a 'Flash House' as part of his research in attempting to discover reasons behind the high rate of juvenile crime.

Among the solutions Miles reached in this report was to unite the Metropolitan Police with local police forces to better track the whereabouts of petty criminals, and to continue the transportation of thieves to Australia, in the hope that once away from Britain they would no longer be tempted to commit crimes. Though his comments about the poorest in society use language which is today regarded as problematic, the report proved beneficial to Miles's career, as in the same year, the King approved his application to serve as police commissioner in New South Wales where he was responsible for the reorganisation of the police force in Sydney so that it resembled the Metropolitan force in London.

This book provides a fascinating insight into the criminal world of the early nineteenth century, and many of the accounts given in it parallel the descriptions of London by Charles Dickens's novels such as Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.