ABSTRACT
Roger Lane, a careful student of crime in nineteenth century Massachusetts, has argued that the presumed "functional and longstanding connection between the growth of cities and the growth of crime" is simply a relic of the anti-urban myth. Observers in the nineteenth century lacked precise historical analyses of the incidence of crime. Crimes of violence occurred in rapid succession—dangerous and deadly weapons were resorted to on trivial occasions, and sometimes with recklessness, a malignant atrocity, and frequently with fatal effect. In 1853 the staid American Institute of Instruction chose to award a first-prize in a competition it sponsored to an essay on the subject of crime. Surveying the "prominent causes" of the increasingly criminal behavior of the inhabitants of Boston in 1850, the Mayor put "the increase of the intemperate use of intoxicating liquors" at the head of the list.
