Although this figure was very small when compared with road fatalities and when seen against the total population of this country, it nonetheless showed a small increase in deaths by murder, manslaughter and infanticide. The figure, seen as a percentage per million of the population of England and Wales, was 11.5. In 1970, when 339 homicides were ultimately recorded, the figure was seven per cent.
There is no doubt that we live in an increasingly violent society, in which more violence is being committed by the young and in which even more is directed against women and the elderly. In London in 1980, there were 13,984 incidents involving robbery, mugging and violent theft – an increase of 20 per cent on the previous year. Of the victims involved in these incidents, nearly 2,000 were over the age of sixty, and 3,387 were over fifty. And in the 584,137 serious offences recorded in London in 1980, 25 per cent of those arrested were aged between ten and sixteen.
Nonetheless, although there has been a vast increase in all types of crime since 1900, the comparative rise in murder is very slight, and there is little variation in the kinds and causes of murder. The commonest murders are still domestic ones – of a wife by her husband, of a woman by a lover, of a child by a parent. Of 456 murders examined in the period 1957-60 (70 per cent of those victims over the age of sixteen were women) the victim and the murderer were related in 53 per cent of all cases. In 27.9 per cent they were known to each other and 19.1 per cent were strangers. This is very similar to the Home Office statistical interpretation of the figures for homicide between 1970 and 1980: when about 50 per cent of the victims and killers were related, when over 30 per cent knew each other and about 19 per cent were strangers. A notable feature of the Home Office statistics is that infants less than one year old, viewed as a percentage of that age group in the population, were most at risk.
The survey of the 1957-60 murders, carried out by Terence Morris and Louis Blom-Cooper, also found that a very high percentage of the murderers had previous criminal records, usually for property offences, and that 70 per cent of the men convicted of capital murder in 1960 had previous convictions. It was also found that murderers were predominantly of the lower classes; that many of these had been in the services or were merchant seamen; that not a few were coloured; and that many murders were associated with heavy drinking.
Sir John MacDonnell wrote in 1905 that murder was ‘an incident in miserable lives in which disputes, quarrels, angry words and blows are common’. This still applied 75 years later – as the 1980 Home Office Criminal Statistics for England and Wales show when listing the apparent circumstances of homicides in 1970 and in 1980.
| 1970 | 1980 | ||||
| Quarrel, revenge or loss of temper | 173 | 239 | |||
| In furtherance of theft or gain | 34 | 56 | |||
| Attributed to acts of terrorism | 0 | 4 | |||
| While resisting or avoiding arrest | 0 | 2 | |||
| Attributed to gang warfare or feud | 4 | 5 | |||
| The result of offences of arson | 0 | 84 | |||
| Homicide of women undergoing illegal abortion | 4 | 0 | |||
| Other circumstances, including sex attack | 51 | 66 | |||
| Not known, because: | |||||
| The suspect committed suicide | 19 | 20 | |||
| The suspect was mentally disturbed | 34 | 39 | |||
| Other reasons | 20 | 49 | |||
| Totals | 339 | 564 |
Compared with the 1950s, there was less shooting or gas poisoning in the 1970s, and a much-reduced use of the blunt instrument – a reflection of changing social conditions. One constant was, however, murder by strangulation or asphyxiation.
The Home Office list of figures for offences recorded as homicide in the decade 1970-1980 by apparent method of killing was as follows.
| 1970 | 1980 | ||||
| Sharp instrument | 107 | 160 | |||
| Strangulation or asphyxiation | 70 | 89 | |||
| Hitting, kicking, etc. | 57 | 94 | |||
| Blunt instrument | 43 | 61 | |||
| Shooting | 23 | 19 | |||
| Drowning | 12 | 14 | |||
| Poison or other drugs | 9 | 14 | |||
| Burning | 1 | 94 |