A DETECTIVE IN PRINT.—At the annual meeting of the Glasgow Industrial and Ragged Schools, held in the City Hall, on Tuesday, Dr Guthrie, author of The City: its Sins and Sorrows &c, in speaking of punishment being unable to reform criminals, made the following reference to the remarkable book entitled Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh, just published by Mr James M’Levy, the celebrated Scottish detective:—”M’Levy, the thief-catcher of Edinburgh, is more sensible than the Privy Council [laughter]. Let me just read one passage, among others, from the book he has recently published, and which I was reading the other night. He says—’I am not sure but that the old notion that punishment tends to reformation hangs yet about many minds. Let us get quit of that. I have had through my hands so many convicted persons that the moment I knew they were loose’—(he did not expect to see them working like honest men)—’I have watched them almost instinctively for a new offence.’ The simple truth is—punishment hardens, never did but harden, unless it is accompanied with the grace and sanctified by the Spirit of God. ‘It is forgotten by the hopeful people,’ he says—and this sentence should entitle M’Levy to be crowned with laurel—’it is forgotten by the hopeful people that it is clay that they have to work upon, and not gold; and, therefore, while they are passing the material through the fire, they are making bricks, and not golden crowns of righteousness.'”

Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle Sunday, Jan. 27, 1861