“Among the rest they found one Wolton, a gentleman born, and sometimes a merchant of good credit, but fallen by time into decay. This man kept an alehouse at Smart’s Key, near Billingsgate, and after, for somemisdemeanour, put down, he reared up a new trade of life; and in the same house he procured all the cut-purses in the city to repair to his house. There was a schoolhouse set up to learn young boys to cut purses. Two devices were hung up—one was a pocket and another was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung about with hawk’s bells, and over the top did hang a little scaring bell; the purse had silver in it, and he that could take out a counter without any noise was allowed to be a public Foyster; and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without noise of any of the bells, was adjudged a judicial nypper, according to their terms of art.”
“Among the rest they found one Wolton, a gentleman born, and sometimes a merchant of good credit, but fallen by time into decay. This man kept an alehouse at Smart’s Key, near Billingsgate, and after, for somemisdemeanour, put down, he reared up a new trade of life; and in the same house he procured all the cut-purses in the city to repair to his house. There was a schoolhouse set up to learn young boys to cut purses. Two devices were hung up—one was a pocket and another was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung about with hawk’s bells, and over the top did hang a little scaring bell; the purse had silver in it, and he that could take out a counter without any noise was allowed to be a public Foyster; and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without noise of any of the bells, was adjudged a judicial nypper, according to their terms of art.”
The tricks we have enumerated all require cunning, lightness of hand, and address, rather than strength and courage. As the swellmobsman stands at the head of this school, so the cracksman or housebreaker stands on the highest pinnacle of the other great division of crime which attains its ends by force and courage. Since the ticket-of-leave system has been in action, this department has flourished to an alarming degree. The released convict re-enters the community with the enlarged experience of the hulks and with a brutal disregard of danger. Suddenly thrown upon his resources, with a blasted character, society leaves him no better means of livelihood than his old course of crime. One fellow who was brought up to Bow-street had committed no less than four burglaries within three weeks after he had been liberated! Bands of ruffians, with crape masks and with deadly arms, stand by the bed at dead of night, and, after robbing and terrifying their victims, leave them gagged and bound in a manner that would disgrace banditti. It is true these burglaries are confined to lonely houses situated in the country; but housebreaking has been on the increase of late even in the metropolis. Some of the craftsmen have become so expert, that no system of bolts or bars is capable of keeping them out. It may be as well to state, however, that a sheet of iron, on the inside of a panel, will often foil the most expert burglars; and all operators of this class who have opened their minds upon the subject to the prison authorities admit that it is totally impossible, without alarming the inmates, to force a window that is lightly barred with a thin iron bar and supplied with a bell. A shutter thus protected, and which gives a little with pressure, will not allow the centrebit to work without creating a motion which is sure to ring the alarum.
Most burglaries of any importance, especially those in which much plate is stolen, are what is termed “put up;” that is, the thieves are in correspondence with servants in the house, or with those that have been discarded. Many robberies that appear to have been accomplished in a most wonderful manner from without, are committed from within. In “put up” robberies, however, the thieves seldom allow the confederate in the house to know when the robbery is to come off, for fear of what is termed a “double plant;” that is, lest the person who originally “put up” the robbery should, from the stings of conscience, or for other reasons, have officers in waiting to apprehend them. It is quite sufficient for adroit burglars to know where the valuables are kept, and the general arrangements of the house. We are indebted to the Yankees for an extremely clever method of gaining entrance to hotel bed-chambers, even when the inmate has fastened the door. The end of the key which projects through the lock is seized by a pair of steel pliers, and the door is unlocked whilst the traveller sleeps in fancied security. Several robberies of this kind have lately taken place. The most ingenious pilfering of the “put up” kind we ever heard of occurred many years ago in a large town in Hampshire. A gang of first-rate cracksmen, having heard that a certain banker in a country town was in the habit of keeping large sums of money in the strong box of the banking-house in which he himself dwelt, determined to carry it off. For this purpose the most astute and respectable-looking middle-aged man of the gang was despatched to the town, to reconnoitre the premises and get an insight into the character of their victim. The banker, he ascertained, belonged to the sect of Primitive Methodists, and held what is termed “love-feasts.” The cracksman accordingly got himself up as a preacher, studied the peculiar method of holding forth in favour with the sect, wore a white neckerchief, assumed the nasal whine, and laid in a powerful stock of scripture phrases. Thus armed, he took occasion to hold forth, and that so “movingly,” that the rumour of his “discourses” soon came to the ears of the banker, and he was admitted as a guest. His foot once inside the doors, he rapidly “improved the occasion”in his own peculiar manner. The intimacy grew, and he was speedily on such terms of friendship with every one in the house, that he came and went without notice. He acquainted himself with the position of the strong box, and took impressions in wax of the wards of the locks. These he sent up to his pals in town, and in due course was supplied with false keys. With these he opened the strong box, made exact notes of the value and nature of its contents, and replaced everything as he found it. A plan of the street, the house, and of the particular chamber in which the treasure was kept, was then prepared and forwarded to the confederates in London. He persuaded his kind friend the banker to hold a love-feast on the evening fixed for the final stroke. A few minutes before the time appointed for the robbery, he proposed that the whole assembly should join with him in raising their voices to the glory of the Lord. The cracksman laboured hard and long to keep up the hymn, and noise enough was made to cover the designs of less adroit confederates than his own. The pseudo-preacher, to disarm suspicion, remained with his friend for a fortnight after the theft, and on his departure all the women of the “persuasion” wept that so good a man should go away from among them!
In a large number of cases the servants are only the unconscious instrument in the hands of the housebreaker. We will venture to say that more house robberies are committed through the vanity of servant girls than from any other cause. A smart young fellow, having heard that plunder is to be obtained in a certain house, manages to pick up an acquaintance with one of the female domestics, and makes violent love to her. We all know how communicative young women are to their sweethearts, and the consequence is, that in a short time he gets from her every particular that he requires,—the habits of the family, the times of their going out, the position of the plate-chest, and the fastenings of the doors. Where only a servant of all-work is kept, the process is more simple. The lover calls in the absence of the family at church, proposes a walk, and takes charge of the street-door key, which, unseen to the girl, is passed to a confederate; and whilst the polite lover and hislass are enjoying the cool of the evening the house is being ransacked. An investigation took place at the Lambeth Police Court a few months ago, where the poor girl who had been made the tool of the housebreaker attempted to commit suicide in order to prevent the consequences of her folly. Her account of the manner in which the “plant” was made upon her, affords a good example of the style of “putting up” a house robbery:—
“The young man with whom she had casually become acquainted called after the family had gone out, and she asked him into the back parlour. He then asked her to dress and go out with him, and he remained in the back parlour while she dressed. While in the back parlour he asked her if she could get a glass of wine, and she told him that she could not, as the wine was locked up. He said it did not matter, as they should have one when they went out, and that he expected to meet his sister at the Elephant and Castle. They then left the house and went for a walk, and on reaching the Elephant and Castle remained there for some time, waiting for the young man’s sister, but did not see her. They next proceeded to a public-house, where they had a glass of brandy-and-water, and the young man accompanied her to the end of the street, where they parted, with the intention that they should meet at one o’clock on the following day and spend the afternoon together. On going to unlock the door, she found it ajar, and on going in, found that the house had been robbed. On discovering this, she did not know what to do, but thought she would make up a story about thieves having got into the house, and took up the knife and chopped her hand; but after this, not knowing how to face her master or mistress after being so wicked, she took up the knife again, intending to kill herself, and inflicted the wound on her throat.”
“The young man with whom she had casually become acquainted called after the family had gone out, and she asked him into the back parlour. He then asked her to dress and go out with him, and he remained in the back parlour while she dressed. While in the back parlour he asked her if she could get a glass of wine, and she told him that she could not, as the wine was locked up. He said it did not matter, as they should have one when they went out, and that he expected to meet his sister at the Elephant and Castle. They then left the house and went for a walk, and on reaching the Elephant and Castle remained there for some time, waiting for the young man’s sister, but did not see her. They next proceeded to a public-house, where they had a glass of brandy-and-water, and the young man accompanied her to the end of the street, where they parted, with the intention that they should meet at one o’clock on the following day and spend the afternoon together. On going to unlock the door, she found it ajar, and on going in, found that the house had been robbed. On discovering this, she did not know what to do, but thought she would make up a story about thieves having got into the house, and took up the knife and chopped her hand; but after this, not knowing how to face her master or mistress after being so wicked, she took up the knife again, intending to kill herself, and inflicted the wound on her throat.”
This confession was enough for the officers, and her “young man,” with his confederates, were caught and convicted. The frequency of these robberies should put housekeepers on their guard as to what followers are allowed, lest the “young man” should turn out to be a regular cracksman in disguise. We bid the housekeeper also beware of another danger that sometimes threatens him when he has an empty house for a neighbour. Thieves always, if possible, make use of it as a basis of operations against the others. They creep towards the dusk of evening, when the inmates are generally down stairs, along the parapet, and enter successively the bedrooms of the adjoining tenements. As many as half a dozen houses have thus been robbed on the same occasion. Police-constables always keep a careful watch upon these untenanted houses, by placing private marks on some part of the premises; and if any of these signsare disturbed, they suspect that something is wrong, and make a further examination. In the City, where an immense amount of valuable property is stored in warehouses, the private marks are much more used than in other portions of the metropolis, and are continually changed, lest they should become known to thieves and be turned to their advantage.
Professional beggars are almost without exception thieves; but as they are generally recruited from the lowest portion of the population, they never attain any of the higher ranks, but confine themselves to petty acts of filching, or to cunning methods of circumventing the honest. The half-naked wretch that appears to be addressing the basement floor in piteous terms, has a fine eye for the spoons he may see cleaning below; and the shipwrecked sailor just cast ashore from St. Giles’s would be an awkward person to meet with in a dark suburban lane. Professional beggars are migratory in their habits. They travel from town to town, not in the filthy rags we are accustomed to see them in, but in good clothing; the rags are carried by their women, and are only donned when they are nearing the place in which they intend to beg.
There is an audacious class of thieves, termed “dragsmen,” who plunder vehicles. At the West End they chiefly operate upon cabs going to or coming from the railway stations. As this kind of thieving is carried on under the very eyes of the foot-passengers, it is rarely attempted except in the dusk of the evening. The dragsman manages to hang on behind, as though he were merely taking a surreptitious ride, but in reality to cut leather thongs and undo fastenings, and be able at any convenient moment to slip off a box or parcel unobserved. The carelessness of the public is the best confederate of this sort of thief. In the case of Lady Ellesmere’s jewels, the box was put notinside, butoutside, the cab in which the valet rode, and not in the middle of other boxes, but thehindermostof all—just the place in which the dragsman would have planted it. It is now known that the robbery was effected between Berkeley Square and Grosvenor Square, as a man was seen with the package standing at the corner of Mount Street, Davies Street, bargaining witha cabman to take him to the City. The man and his booty were driven to a public-house, but the box must have been shifted immediately, for in two hours from the time it was lost it was found rifled of its contents in a waste piece of ground in Shoreditch. It might perhaps for a moment be suspected that this was a “put up” robbery, but we are precluded from adopting this view of the case, as it is, we believe, suspected that the man sold the jewels, which were worth perhaps 25,000l., for a very trifling sum. He must have been entirely ignorant of their value, and having by a chance stroke obtained a magnificent booty, threw it away for an old song. Not many weeks after this extraordinary robbery, a plate-chest of her Majesty was stolen from a van between Buckingham Palace and the Great Western Railway. There were persons walking alongside the vehicle, and it seems marvellous how it could be possible to remove unseen a heavy chest under such conditions; but every facility was given in this case, as in the former, for the plunderers to do their work unmolested. In the first place the box was put in such a position that its bottom came flush with the ledge of the van. Next, the journey from Buckingham Palace to Paddington was, in the driver’s idea, too far to go without baiting on the way; therefore bait he did at a little public-house, and every person in charge of the property went inside to drink. According to their own account, they did not stop more than a minute; this minute was enough: like Laertes, the thief might have said, “’Twill serve.” In this instance also the box was found empty in a field at Shoreditch, and it is believed that a ticket-of-leave man had a hand in both robberies.
The habits of thieves have been somewhat modified since the institution of the new police, and the adoption of the principle of prevention instead of detection, in dealing with the criminal population. In the time of the old Bow-street Runners the different classes of thieves had their houses of call, in which they regularly assembled. The arrangement was winked at by the magistrates, and approved by the officers, as useful to them in looking after offenders that were wanted. John Townsend, when speaking of the supposed advantage of these flash houses,said, “I know five-and-twenty, or six-and-twenty years ago, there were four houses where we could pop in, and I have taken three or four, or five or six of them at a time, and three or four of them have been convicted, and yet the public-house was tolerably well conducted too.” Perhaps officers who lived upon the capture of thieves had good reason for maintaining these flash houses, in which most robberies were concocted; the case is far different now that the police are paid by day rather than by piece-work, by weekly salary rather than by blood-money, and all known flash houses have long been discontinued. Some fifteen years since a few remained in the Borough, but Superintendent Haynes broke them up, and rooted them out. Thieves cannot meet now in respectable houses, for if they did, the constables would become aware of the fact, and the landlord would speedily lose his license. The passing of the Common Lodging-house Act has also assisted in dispersing the desperate gangs, one of which, known under the name of “The Forty Thieves,” infested the town a few years since. It may be asked, what sort of mutual fellowship exists among these outcasts who live below the surface of “society”? Of the seven or eight thousand thieves in the metropolis, very few are acquainted with each other; they are, in fact, divided into as many sections as are to be found among honest men. Beyond their own peculiar set they do not associate with their kind. The swell-mobsman is as distinct a being from the cracksman as a Bond-street dandy from a South-Sea islander; they do not even talk the same slang, and could no more practise each other’s art, than a shoemaker could make a table. These natural divisions of the underground world of rogues immensely facilitate the operations of the police. The manner in which they do their work is also in some cases a pretty good guide to the detectives. Skill and individuality is evinced in unlawful as well as in lawful pursuits—in the manner in which a door is forced, as much as in the style a picture is painted; and a clever officer, after carefully examining a door or a window, will sometimes say, “This looks like ‘Whiteheaded Bob’s work,’” or “‘Billy-go-Fast,’ must have had a hand in this job.”
The leading swell-mobsmen are the only class of thieves who “touch,” if we may term it, the ordinary society of better men. The practitioner in this line must dress and be as much like a gentleman as possible, in order to pursue his avocation without suspicion. Accordingly, he lives with a woman, who passes for his wife, in genteel lodgings, and generally in the drawing-room floor. As his earnings are often very large, he has everything about him of the most expensive kind; his style of living is luxurious, and he drinks nothing less than hock and champagne. He sometimes keeps a banking account, and one man named Brown, lately apprehended, had a balance at his banker’s of 800l.! As the members of this fraternity work wholly in the daytime, going out in the morning and returning in the evening, the landlady believes that they are engaged in mercantile pursuits, and have business in the City; and, as it is part of their game to pay their way liberally, she esteems them to be model lodgers!
The domestic habits of thieves are all pretty much alike; fluctuating between the prison and the hulks, they exhibit the usual characteristics of men engaged in dangerous enterprises. They mainly pass their time, when not at “work,” in gambling, smoking, and drinking, and in listening to the adventures of their companions. It must be remembered, however, that the professed thief, even if he drinks, is neverdrunk; he is employed in desperate undertakings which require him to have his wits about him quite as much, if not more than the honest man. When a pickpocket is flush of money, he spends it in the most lavish manner,—takes a tour with his female companion to the Isle of Wight, or to any other place he has a wish to see, and puts up at the best hotels. In some of these trips he thinks nothing of spending 30l.in a fortnight, and when the money is gone he comes back again “to work.” Thieves are generally faithful to each other; indeed the community of danger in which they live develops this virtue to an unusual extent. If a “pal” is apprehended, they cheerfully put down their guinea apiece to provide him with counsel for his trial; and if he should be imprisoned, they make a collection for him when hecomes out. A curious circumstance is the rapidity with which news of any of the body having been arrested travels among his companions. We are assured that no sooner is a young thief captured and taken to the station-house, although he may have been plundering far away from his home, than some associate brings him his dinner or tea, as a matter of course.
The best class of swell-mobsmen sometimes act upon the joint-stock principle “with limited liabilities.” When a good thing is in prospect—a gold-dust robbery or a bank robbery—it is not unusual for several of them to “post” as much as 50l.apiece in order to provide the sinews of war to carry on the plan in a business-like manner. If in the end the job succeeds, the money advanced is carefully paid back to the persons advancing it—several of whom have lived for years on plunder thus obtained, without the police being able to detect them. Often the receivers make these adventures in crime, and plot the robbery of a jeweller’s shop with as much coolness and shrewdness as though it were an ordinary mercantile speculation, and the produce is disposed of in the same business-like manner. Watches are what is termed “re-christened,” that is, the maker’s names and numbers are taken out and fresh ones put in; they are then exported in large quantities to America. All articles of plate are immediately thrown into the crucible and melted down, so as to place them beyond the hope of identification. In many cases, when the receiver cannot thoroughly depend upon the thief, it is, we believe, customary to employ intermediate receivers so as to render it impossible to trace the property to its ultimate destination. It must not be supposed that the passion for gain is always the sole incentive to robbery. “Oh, how I do love thieving! If I had thousands, I’d still be thief;” such were the words uttered by a youth in Coldbath-fields Prison, and overheard by the governor.[49]
If the machinery for preventing and detecting crime has so vastly improved within this present century, the same may besaid for the method of dispensing justice. Up to as late as 1792, the magistrates of Bow-street—the first “police-office,” as it was then termed—were paid in that most obnoxious of all modes, by fees, which were often obtained in a manner so disgraceful that the magistrates got the name of “trading justices” and “basket justices.” Our old friend John Townsend, whom we must summon once more to our aid, gives an insight into their proceedings, and he knew them well. He said, “The plan used to be to issue warrants, and to take up all the poor devils in the streets, and then there was the bailing them, 2s.4d., which the magistrate had.In taking up a hundred girls, that would make, at 2s.4d., 11l.13s.4d.They sent none to jail,for the bailing them was so much better!” The old Bow-street worthy then draws a picture of the magistrate settling the amount of these ill-gotten fees with his clerk on the Monday morning. The “basket justices” were so called, because they allowed themselves to be bought over by presents of baskets of game. These enormities were so glaring, that, according to Townsend, “they at last led to the Police Bill, and it was a great blessing to the public to do away with these men, for they were nothing better than the encouragers of blacklegs, vice, and plunderers. There is no doubt about it.” In 1792 seven other “offices” were established, namely, Queen-square, Great Marlborough-street, Hatton Garden, Worship-street, Lambeth, Shadwell, and Union-street, each office having three magistrates, who did the duties alternately. These, by the addition of the suburban courts, have since been augmented to eleven. They form the judgment-seats to which all offenders in this great capital of 2,500,000 inhabitants are brought, either to be punished summarily, or to be remanded to the sessions to take their trial.
The police-courts may be likened to so many shafts sunk in the smooth surface of society, through which the seething mass of debauchery, violence, and crime, are daily bubbling up before the public eye. A spectator cannot sit beside the magistrate on the bench for a couple of hours without feeling that there are currents of wickedness flowing among the population asfixedly as the trade-winds in the tropics. A panorama of sin passes before his eye which he shudders to think is only like a single thread drawn from the fabric of vice which underlies the whole system of elegant, punctilious, and accomplished metropolitan life. On every case that comes before him the magistrate unassisted has to decide rapidly and justly, unless he desires to call down upon his head the thunders of an ever-watchful press. In addition to his judicial duties, he has to answer numberless questions, and to give advice upon law points to distressed persons: and all this amid a pestilential atmosphere which is calculated to depress both body and mind. Nevertheless, the work is done admirably, and justice, as speedy as that dispensed by cadis in Eastern tales, and much more impartial, is dealt to the throng brought before him.
From an analysis of the Criminal Returns of the Metropolitan Police, it is apparent that crimes have their peculiar seasons. Thus attempts to commit suicide generally occur in the months of June, July, and August, and rarely in November, according to the commonly accepted notion; comfort, it is evident, is considered even in the accomplishment of this desperate act. Common assaults and drunkenness also multiply wonderfully in the dog-days. In the winter, on the contrary, burglaries increase, and, for some unknown reason, the uttering of counterfeit coin.
The character of the cases brought before the police-courts varies, in some degree, according to the neighbourhood and other causes. Bow-street still maintains the pre-eminence over the other courts which it exercised in the old days, when the horse-patrol and the detective police, known as the Bow-street runners, were in existence; and this it does in consequence of its special jurisdiction over persons who are amenable to foreign law. The cases of this class—arson, murder, or bankruptcy—are heard in private, generally by the chief magistrate, and the depositions are forwarded direct to the Foreign Office. Ticket-of-leave men who have committed fresh offences, are here deprived of their tickets and apprehended by a warrant from the Home-Office. All Inland Revenue and Post-Office cases,such as stealing from letters, are adjudicated upon exclusively at Bow-street, which is, in fact,theGovernment office.
The Thames police deals with mutinies and murders committed on the high seas, and all disputes under the Mercantile Marine Act come as a matter of course to this court, together with the major portion of the criminals, the scene of whose offences is in the docks and on the river. Drunkenness, the vice of the sailors, and the insubordination arising out of it, form a very large portion of the charges of the district. Worship-street is famous, or rather infamous, for wife-beaters. The reason is curious, and supplies a hint to philanthropists to reform the dwellings of the poor, rather than pass harsh acts of parliament against the husbands, which in many cases only serve to aggravate the evils arising from their brutality. The majority of the wife-beaters come from Bethnal-green, where there are a great number of large old mansions let out to the working-classes in floors or flats. Sometimes as many as twenty families live in the same house. The children play about in the passages as a neutral ground, disputes arise, and the mothers take the parts of their respective offspring with discordant fierceness. This drives the men to the public-houses, where they drink their portericedand listen to more pleasant sounds in the shape of gratuitous concerts. The wives in turn are driven to the tavern doors to seek their mates, with words not too conciliatory, and are brutally assaulted by the drunken husbands, who are taken up the next day and get six months’ imprisonment,the family being in most instances irretrievably broken up and ruined thereby. Some of the magistrates, seeing the baleful working of the system, have attempted a solution of the difficulty by making the husband promise to allow the wife to receive his weekly wages from his master, whose consent to the arrangement has been given. In many instances this plan has worked well, since the husband knows that on the slightest infringement of the agreement his spouse may give him six months’ imprisonment, judgment in the case having been only suspended. But this power, again, is often abused by the woman, and it is a common thing for them on the leastthreat of their mates to say, “Mind what you are about, or I will give you ‘a sixer.’”
Cases of begging are principally heard at the Marlborough-street police-court, as the rich streets in its neighbourhood are the main scenes of the nuisance. Blind beggars especially affect Regent-street, Oxford-street, and Piccadilly, the most thronged thoroughfares in the West End. We warn our readers against their charitable tendencies for these people. If the truth was known, the cry, “Pity the poor blind!” far from exciting their pity, would arouse their disgust. Blind beggars, as a class, are the most profligate scoundrels in the metropolis, thinking of nothing but their grosser appetites, and plundering the charitable for their satisfaction. One of these men lately taken into custody was discovered seated at the breakfast-table with ham and fourteen poached eggs before him! At the Westminster police-court the foot-guards are continually visitors against their will; but it is remarked as extraordinary that not one of the horse-guards has been charged here for years.
A custom has grown up of making the police magistrates the almoners of the public in cases which have attracted the attention of the charitable through the medium of the press. Many a poor forsaken creature has suddenly found himself not only famous, but comparatively rich, by the simple process of telling his tale in one of these courts. The news of it flies through the country in the pages of theTimes, and in the course of two or three mornings the magistrate is oppressed with post-office orders for the benefit of the sufferer, the donors simply requesting that their gifts should be acknowledged in the public journals. The annual receipts at the different courts for special cases must amount to a large sum; and there is in addition a constant flow of small sums towards the poor-box, the contents of which are distributed at the discretion of the magistrate. The annual income from this latter source is about 300l.per annum at Marlborough-street, and at Bow-street respectively, the greater portion of which is given to deserving objects whose cases have come before the court, and the remainder is dispensed at Christmas to the poor of the neighbourhoodin the shape of coals and candles. We are particularly anxious to make this fact known, in order that the charitable may be aware that their gifts are well bestowed. The magistrates do not, we believe, encourage these donations, as they consider that the distribution of alms is incompatible with their office; but, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that a vast amount of temporary aid is thus given to persons whose needs cannot be satisfied by the union workhouse. Deserving people are often furnished with the means of obtaining a livelihood, workmen whose tools have been burned in a conflagration supplied with new ones, and in some cases women left behind by their husbands, under circumstances of peculiar hardship, have been provided with a passage to Australia. The thousands in England who only want to know where genuine misfortune exists to hasten to its relief, have a greater guarantee that they will not be imposed upon by these cases at the police-courts than by private solicitations, as the magistrates have the means of sifting the statements of applicants. Nevertheless, even these astute public servants are now and then deceived, and comparatively large sums have been received by them for persons who have afterwards been ascertained to be unworthy of relief; and in instances where the discovery took place in time, the money, by the direction of the donors, has been transferred to truer objects of charity.
The fees, penalties, and forfeitures received at the eleven metropolitan police-courts and by the justices of the exterior police districts are very considerable; in 1855 they amounted to 11,315l.16s.6d.This sum goes towards defraying the expenses of the courts, which, together with the salaries of the officers, and other items, amounted in the same year to 63,021l.0s.5d.The expenditure may be considered reasonable, when it is remembered that 60,000 cases are annually disposed of, many of which require a minute knowledge of statute and of common law. The chief improvement required is the improvement of the buildings. The Thames police-court is the only one at all suitable for its purpose. An enclosed yard is attached to it, in which the police-van can draw up and dischargeits prisoners without exposing them to the public gaze, an important point in times of public excitement. Clerkenwell and Westminster are the next best-arranged courts, but both want space and air; Lambeth, though lately built, is a complete failure; many of the other courts are held in small private houses; and in those of Marlborough Street and Hammersmith, the business is transacted up stairs. In the latter court it is a common thing to hear it said of persons who have been taken before the magistrates—“he has been up the forty steps.” With the common people, with whom these institutions have mainly to deal, justice should be dispensed with regard to appearances; there should be the formality of the superior courts, and somewhat of their show. A magistrate sitting in a plain black dress like an ordinary gentleman, and a lawyer dispensing justice in his wig and gown, are two very different things to the lower classes, whatever they may be to educated persons; and the want of all official costume, and the huddled style of doing business, inseparable from the present confined space, is not calculated to inspire the people with much respect. The police should at least be put upon a level with the county-courts. The latter have to deal with less momentous interests. Questions of paltry debt cannot be put in comparison with questions involving the liberty of the subject; the power of committing to prison for six months with hard labour is far more important than that of adjudicating in money disputes under five pounds. It is not enough that justice is administered; it is the opinion which the people have of it that produces the effect, and until the judgment-seat is rendered dignified, and those who sit on it are clothed with the habiliments which distinguish the magistrate from the man, the law, by losing most of its impressiveness, will lose its moral power over delinquents. The vulgar terror of punishment may remain, but the lesson which is conveyed to the feelings by the solemn stateliness of the tribunal is entirely gone.
It is but natural to suppose, that in such a busy hive of industry as England, where so large a proportion of the population—at least one-half—is engaged in the prosecution of arts and manufactures, that the effects of unceasing toil, and the debilitating influences of many employments, will have a certain effect upon the health and longevity of the artisan. We cannot pit the tender muscles of the child against the senseless energy of steam, without producing a strain upon the vital principle of the workers which must be highly injurious to it. We cannot consign a population as large as that of many German States to live perpetually in the bowels of the earth, without being prepared for an increased death-rate. The hundreds of diverse manufactures and handicrafts, which make the land hum with labour, must all be prosecuted under circumstances more or less inimical to perfect health. If we take the agricultural labourer of the better class, whose daily toil is performed under the roof of heaven, it must be clear that all trades which pursue their monotonous vocations in the crowded workshops of crowded cities, in constrained attitudes, and subject to debilitating emanations, must, to a certain extent, fall short of his standard of health. Nevertheless, we do not think the public are prepared for the state of things which a close examination of the sanitary condition of certain portions of the working population divulges. Accustomed to be furnished with all the appliances of easy life and luxury, the great middle and upper classes have never perhaps given athought as to the manner in which these wants and appliances are supplied. Accustomed to sip the honey, it never strikes us that perhaps its product involves in some cases the life of the working-bee. Yet the lady, who, from the silken ease of her fauteuil, surveys her drawing-room, may learn a lesson of compassion for the poor workman in nearly every article that lies before her. Those glazed visiting cards, if they could speak, possibly could tell of the paralyzed hand that made them; that splendid mirror, which lights up the stately room, has, without doubt, reflected the trembling form of the emaciated Italian artificer poisoned with mercurial fumes; those hangings, so soft and delicate, may have produced permanent disease to the weaver, whose stomach has been injured by its constant pressure against the beam; the porcelain vase on the bracket has dragged the “dipper’s” hand into a poison that, sooner or later, will destroy its power, and, may-be, produce in him mania and death; nay, the very paper on the walls, tinted with all the vernal brightness of spring, has, for all we know, ulcerated with its poisonous dust the fingers of the hanger. The history of the manufacture of almost every article of elegance orvirtùwould disclose to us pictures of workmen transiently or permanently disabled in the production of them. All this suffering—much of it totally preventible—goes on without complaint, the workman falls out of the ranks, and another instantly takes his place, to be succeeded perhaps by a third. We are convinced that such a waste of health and life could not be endured, if the public were fully alive to the magnitude of the evil; for this reason we shall endeavour, in the following essay, to give a true picture of what may, perhaps, without pedantry, be termed the pathology of industrial occupations and professions in this country.
Foremost among those artisans who suffer from the inhalation of dust and other gritty particles given off in the pursuit of their employment are the grinders of Sheffield. Dr. J. C. Hall, in a series of papers published lately in theBritish Medical Journal, draws a picture of the condition of these unfortunate men, which is indeed appalling, and without doubtgives them the bad pre-eminence of pursuing the most deadly trade in existence. Grinding is divided into dry, wet, and mixed; that is, the various articles of steel turned out of the cutler’s shop of Sheffield are subjected to the stone entirely dry, revolving in water, or to processes involving both methods. Of the three, the former is by far the most deadly: forks, needles, brace-bits, &c., are ground entirely on the dry stone, and the amount of finely-divided metal dust and siliceous grit given out in the process may be imagined, when we state that a dozen of razors, weighing 2lb. 4oz. as they come from the forge in the rough, lose in the process of “shaping” on the dry stone, upwards of five ounces, and the stone itself, seven inches in diameter, would be reduced one inch. To receive the mixture of stone and steel thus rapidly given off, the position of the grinder is but too convenient; straddled across his “horsing,” as the frame in which the grindstone revolves is called, with his knees bent in an acute angle, his body inclined forwards, and his head hanging over the work, his mouth is brought into fatal contact with the poisonous dust, and his eyes with the rush of the sparks. Fork-grinding is performed entirely on the dry stone, and consequently it is the most deadly occupation pursued in Sheffield. About 500 men and boys are at present devoting themselves to destruction during the period of early manhood, for the benefit of the users of steel forks. “The silver fork school” imagines perhaps that these vile appliances have long been banished to the same limbo as snuffers, and will be surprised to learn that more steel forks than ever are thus fashioned in Sheffield, and the poor grinder, as he receives into his lungs the products of the fashioning, in his own person exemplifies the awful passage in the burial-service—“dust to dust”—as the disease thus induced cuts him off at the average age of twenty-nine years! “I shall be thirty-six years old next month,” remarked a grinder, pathetically, to Dr. Hall, “and you know, measter, that’s gettinga very old manin our trade.” Another operation, almost as deadly as fork-grinding, is that of “racing the stone.” These grindstones are but roughly reduced to the circular form by thequarry men, and the grinder undertakes the business of reducing and removing all their asperities, which he does by revolving them against a piece of steel—a tremendous dust being given off in the process. In wet grinding, which is employed in the manufacture of saws, files, sickles, table-knives, and edge-tools, comparatively little dust is made, and in these employments the grinders enjoy comparatively longer life; their average age ranging from thirty-five to forty years. In addition to the destructive effects of these particles of metal and stone upon the delicate membrane of the lungs, the dry-grinder is subjected to serious injury of the eyes from the red-hot particles of steel thrown off in the shape of sparks. The more careful of the workmen protect themselves from the danger, however, by wearing large spectacles of ordinary window glass. These spectacles, when they have been in use a little time, give practical evidence of their utility, for on examining them they are found to be speckled all over with the particles of steel, which, when red-hot, become embedded in the glass.
In the rough nomenclature of the trade, the disease which thus early destroys the fashioner of forks and needles is termed thegrinder’s rot. The lung, when examined after death, looks as though it had been dipped in ink, and the texture, instead of exhibiting the usual spongy character of that organ when in health, cuts like a piece of india-rubber! The colour and the solidification of the dry-grinder’s lung is owing to the chronic inflammation to which it has been subjected by the presence from an early age of irritating particles of steel and stone within its finest air passages. But why dry-grind at all, the reader will involuntarily exclaim, if the wages of the occupation are death? The grinder replies, that there are certain operations which cannot be done on the wet stone; giving the rounded back to razors, technically called “humping,” and the rounded side to scissors, are quoted as examples. The pressure during the process of shaping is so great, that the rolling friction would speedily make the stone wear, and the workman would be unable to hold the blade upon it. Then, again, we may ask, where is the necessity for this rounded form—would the shaveron a cold morning care a jot whether his razor had a round or a square back? Would the lady, as she manipulated her lace-work with her scissors, hesitate to accept a three-sided scissor-leg in place of a half-round one, if she knew that the difference involved the life of a fellow-creature? Yet such trifling differences as these between round and flat, stand in the way of the health or misery of an entire class of workers! We give a list of the average duration of life of artisans in steel in Sheffield:—Dry-grinders of forks, 29 years; razors, 31 years; scissors, 32 years; edge-tool and wool-shears, 32 years; spring-knives, 34 years; table-knives, 35 years; files, 35 years; saws, 38 years; sickles, 38 years—the ascending longevity being in proportion to the amount of water used on the stone, and to the greater amount of adult labour employed; such articles as saws, sickles, and tools are happily too heavy to be manipulated by the children employed, and thus early diseased in the manufacture of the lighter articles.
The only relief to be gathered from this dismal picture of wasted life, is the fact that things are not so bad as of old. By means of greater speed being given to the stone, many articles, such as pen and pocket-knives, are now ground with a wet stone that formerly were ground with the dry; and happily much of the dust has been abolished in the best shops, such as that of Messrs. Rodgers, by the introduction of fans on the principle of a winnowing-machine, which blows the dust and grit as it comes from the grindstone clear away through a flue placed in connection with the chimney. This fan is, however, only partially used; the grinders themselves, whom they are intended to benefit, complaining that the “trade is bad enough as it is, and if men lived longer, it would be so over-full that there would be no such a thing as getting a living:” the same spirit rejected Mr. Abraham’s mask of magnetized wire, invented many years ago for the same object. There can be no doubt, however, that intelligence should rule in this matter, and that the Legislature should make it a fineable offence to work a dry stone without a fan, just as it is to work dangerous machinery without guards; for where one life is lost by neglectin the latter case, thousands sink into a premature grave in the former. Grinders, wet or dry, may also protect their lungs, in a most remarkable manner, by simply allowing the beard and moustache to grow. The hirsute appendages of the upper lip and chin are Nature’s respirators, and it has been observed that those men who have allowed her in this respect to have her way, have discovered that she is somewhat wiser than fashion or popular usage.
Of those artisans exposed to irritating dust, probably miners take the second place after the miserable dry grinders. If we investigate the condition of these men, we are immediately struck with the lamentable conditions under which they labour, and astonished at the endurance and patience with which they submit to toil to which that of the well-fed, well-housed felon is pleasant pastime. There are at present upwards of 300,000 human beings acting the part of gnomes for the good of the community at large, entering day by day into the bowels of the earth, and emerging in the evening. Of human life they see as little as the train of black ants we watch emerging from their holes in the ground. Yet the miner is the industrial Atlas of England. Were he to cease to labour, this busy hive of men would speedily be hushed, and the giant limbs of machinery, which now do the drudgery of the world, become as still as the enchanted garden of the fairy tale ere the advent of the prince. Without the coal and the iron, the copper and the tin, they toilfully evolve from vast depths, England would be but a third-rate power. A life so cheerless, and yet so useful—nay, essential, to our national existence—should at least receive at the hands of the Government every protection that can be thrown around it; yet, if we follow the miner into his gallery and working cell, we are amazed at the dangers and the difficulties which are needlessly thrust upon him in the black realm in which he moves and has his being. Let us take the collier, for example. In many pits in the West of England, the seams of coal are not more than twenty or twenty-five inches thick; and inasmuch as the object of the worker is to remove the coal with as little as possible of the surrounding soil, he often drives his workingto a considerable distance through an aperture not more than, and often not so much as, two feet high. If our adult male reader will condescend to squat himself on the floor,à la Turque, say under the dining-table, for instance, and then picture to himself the inconvenience of picking with an axe the under side of the prandial mahogany for twelve hours, he will obtain some slight idea of the muscular knot into which the poor collier has to tie himself, for the whole term of his working life, having to use violent exercise throughout. Can it be wondered at that, under such circumstances, the Apollo-like form of man becomes permanently twisted and bent, like the gnarled root of an oak that has been doubled up in the fissure of some rock? If we look at a collier, we see instantly that his back is curved, his legs bowed, and the extensor muscles of his calves withered through long disease. He has knotted himself so long, that the erect position of his race becomes a punishment to him. It is credibly related that a number of colliers, having been sentenced to imprisonment in Wakefield jail, with hard labour, the only complaint they made was, that they were obliged, whilst at work, to keep the ordinary posture of rational creatures. But confined space is only one of the many evil conditions under which they labour. In the majority of cases the collier works in foul air; for, notwithstanding all the official inspection, the ventilation of mines is still execrable. The fire-damp either blasts him into a cinder, or the choke-damp noiselessly blots out his life. However good, moreover, the general system of ventilation in a mine, unforeseen accidents will happen at any moment. The pick of the collier strikes into the gallery of an old pit, where carbonic acid gas has been gathering perhaps for a century; and the poisoned air rushes in and does its work in an instant; or a sudden invasion of carburetted hydrogen, disengaged by the fall of a mass of coal, meets the miner, who is working, perhaps imprudently, with a naked candle;—and an explosion follows which crowds the pit’s mouth with a wailing multitude of newly-made widows and orphans.
Upwards of 1,500 lives are annually lost, principally through these causes, and not less than 10,000 accidents in the sameperiod testify to the dangerous nature of the miner’s occupation, notwithstanding the strict Government inspection.[50]It is humiliating to know that England is yet far behind continental nations in her methods of preventing these dreadful catastrophes. Mr. Mackworth, in his lecture at the Society of Arts, stated that the mortality from accidents was, in the coal mines of
This comparison, so humiliating to England, cannot be explained by the superior adventure of our countrymen, inasmuch as the production of coal in Belgium is half as much again per acre of the coal-field as in England. It is not, however, to the dramatic accidents of coal mines which every now and then startle the community, to which we wish to draw attention; but rather to the silent progress of disease, which makes his death so premature, and his life so miserable. In addition to his cramped condition, whilst at work, his supply of oxygen is small; for in all probability the air supplied to him has to circulate many miles through the mine, and to pass over the excrementitious deposits of man and horse, and the decaying woodwork of the mine, ere it finally reaches him, in enfeebled streams, in his solitary working cell. Long deprivation of solar light, again, tends to impoverish his blood, to blanch him, in short, like vegetable products similarly deprived of the light of day. It is through the lungs, however, that the health of the miner is principally attacked. The air of a coal mine (such as it is) holds a vast amount of coal-dust in mechanical suspension, and this, as a matter of course, is constantly passing into the lungs of the miner. The proof of this is the so-called “black spit” of the collier, which, on being subjected to the microscope, is found to consist of mucus, filled with finely divided particles ofcoal. The permanent inhalation of such an atmosphere results in what is termed the “black lung.” The breathing apparatus of the collier becomes clogged, in short, with coal-dust, and after death it has the appearance of being dipped in ink. A writer,[51]who has lately investigated this singular pathological condition, thus gives his experience of twopost-mortemexaminations:—