Creating born criminals

should not be exaggerated. Certainly, further investigation is justified if only because of the statistical and demographic significance of accidental injury and death. In Britain in 1991 more than 50 per cent of deaths among minors (aged 5-14) were attributed to accidents, while in the same year accidents were the commonest cause of death for people in the age range 19-34. Infants are hard hit by domestic accidents, while road traffic continues to kill the British at a rate of around 4000 per year, with younger age groups suffering disproportionately to their numbers. In other periods and places the accident toll was higher still. As a former US Commissioner of Labor observed in 1913, American industry had no equal in terms of the "maiming and mangling and killing of those who attempt to earn their bread in the sweat of their faces". Perhaps paradoxically, in light of the foregoing, much of this volume, including the editors' stimulating and incisive introduction, is concerned with denying the existence of the subject under consideration. In other words, insofar as a common argument is presented here, it is that accidents, in the sense of arbitrary occurrences devoid of social, economic, cultural, or political meaning, do not exist. While it is true that accidents have causes and consequences, some of which may lie far from the scene of injury, and also that, for example, the industrial working class is more likely to suffer a workplace injury than the aristocrat or capitalist, it is equally plausible that the identity of any given victim will also owe something to a phenomenon which, for want of a better word, we might call "chance". In this sense it can be said that accidents, like the poor, are always with us. The editors of this volume, both of whom have previously written on their subject, are to be congratulated on putting together a wideranging collection which provides a valuable introduction to the subject while indicating that there is much scope for further work.