criminals, sometimes called "street Bedouins", were characterised as "work-shy savages with a propensity for gratuitous violence". The increased publicity for garrotting crimes led to judges and magistrates imposing harsher sentences on those convicted for violent robbery offences. The moral panic is considered to have originated in the press coverage and subsided when coverage was curtailed. The newspapers considered that the story would not remain newsworthy into 1857 and so seem to have made use of some minor changes to legislation to declare the end of the crisis. A House of Commons select committee met to consider alternatives to the ticket of leave system, its report lamented the end of transportation but was largely positive about the system. Its recommendations on minor adjustments to the ticket of leave system were confirmed by the Penal Servitude Act 1857, which was accompanied by guidance from the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey on how the system should work. Under the Penal Servitude Act 1857 criminals would continue to be released on a ticket of leave by prisons at the earliest opportunity though the minimum sentence for offences previously punished by transportation was increased from four years to seven. There remained a lack of police resources to adequately monitor those released on licence, which some reporters suggested would lead to future issues. Following the panic the public fear of garrotting subsided in the later 1850s. In 1859 the Metropolitan Police reduced the height of their anti-garrotting stocks to . 1862–63 A second moral panic occurred in 1862 after the robbery of the member of parliament for Blackburn, James Pilkington. Pilkington was garrotted at 1am on 17 July in Pall Mall, returning from a late night sitting of the House of Commons. Pilkington was assaulted by two attackers who stole his pocket watch. The attack was widely publicised in the press and served as the inspiration for an attack on a cabinet minister in Anthony Trollope's Phineas Finn. Crime had continued to fall through the 1850s, though the police figures for Middlesex (which included much of London north of the Thames) show a slight increase in robberies in the early part of 1862. Despite this there was widespread coverage in the newspapers with almost every fresh street robbery being seized upon as evidence of another garrotting crime wave. The Times once more led the coverage but reports were also made in the Sun, Observer, Punch and