How in the name of goodness and humanity can we, under such circumstances, hope to be delivered from the curse of neglected children?
Twenty Thousand Thieves in London.—What it Means.—The Language of“Weeds.”—Cleverness of the Pilfering Fraternity.—A Protest Against a Barbarous Suggestion.—The Prisoner’s great Difficulty.—The Moment of Leaving Prison.—Bad Friends.—What Becomes of Good Resolutions and the Chaplain’s Counsel?—The Criminal’s Scepticism of Human Goodness.—Life in“Little Hell.”—The Cow Cross Mission.
Thehappily ignorant reader, whose knowledge of the criminal classes is confined to an occasional glance through the police court and Sessions cases as narrated in his morning newspaper, will be shocked and amazed to learn that within the limits of the City of London alone, an army of male and female thieves, twenty thousand strong, find daily and nightly employment.
It is easy to write “twenty thousand,” and easier still to read the words. Easier than all to pass them by with but a vague idea of their meaning, and perhaps a sympathetic shrug of the shoulders for the poor, hard-workedpolicemen who must have such a terrible time of it in keeping such an enormous predatory crew in anything like order. Still, and without the least desire to be “sensational,” I would ask the reader, does he fully comprehend what twenty thousand thieves in London means? Roughly estimating the population of the metropolis as numbering three millions, it means that amongst us one person in every hundred and fifty is a forger, a housebreaker, a pickpocket, a shoplifter, a receiver of stolen goods or what not; a human bird of prey, in short, bound to a desperate pursuit of that terrible course of life into which vice or misfortune originally casts him; a wily, cunning man-wolf, constantly on the watch, seeking whom he may devour.
Almost every member of this formidable host is known to the “police,” but unfortunately this advantage is almost counterbalanced by the fact that the police are as well known to the majority of the twenty thousand. To their experienced eyes, it is not the helmet and the blue coat that makes the policeman. Indeed, they appear to depend not so much on visual evidence as on some subtle power of scent such as the fox possesses in discovering the approach of their natural enemy. They can discover the detective in his innocent-looking smock-frock or bricklayer jacket, while he is yet distant the length of a street. They know him by his step, or by his clumsy affectation of unofficial loutishness. They recognise the stiff neck in the loose neckerchief. They smell “trap,” and are superior to it.
There is a language current amongst them that is tobe met with in no dictionary with which I am acquainted. I doubt if even the “slang dictionary” contains more than a few of the following instances that may be accepted as genuine. It will be seen that the prime essential of “thieves’ latin” is brevity. By its use, much may in one or two words be conveyed to a comrade while rapidly passing him in the street, or, should opportunity serve, during a visit to him while in prison.
To erase the original name or number from a stolen watch, and substitute one that is fictitious—christening Jack.
To take the works from one watch, and case them in another—churching Jack.
Poultry stealing—beak hunting.
One who steals from the shopkeeper while pretending to effect an honest purchase—a bouncer.
One who entices another to play at a game at which cheating rules, such as card or skittle sharping—a buttoner.
The treadmill,shin scraper(arising, it may be assumed, on account of the operator’s liability, if he is not careful, to get his shins scraped by the ever-revolving wheel).
To commit burglary—crack a case, orbreak a drum.
The van that conveys prisoners to gaol—Black Maria.
A thief who robs cabs or carriages by climbing up behind, and cutting the straps that secure the luggage on the roof—a dragsman.
Breaking a square of glass—starring the glaze.
Training young thieves—kidsman.
To be transported or sent to penal servitude—lagged.
Three years’ imprisonment—a stretch.
Half stretch—six months.
Three months’ imprisonment—a tail piece.
To rob a till—pinch a bob.
A confederate in the practice of thimble rigging—a nobbler.
One who assists at a sham street row for the purpose of creating a mob, and promoting robbery from the person—a jolly.
A thief who secretes goods in a shop while a confederate distracts the attention of the shopkeeper is—a palmer.
A person marked for plunder—a plant.
Going out to steal linen in process of drying in gardens—going snowing.
Bad money—sinker.
Passer of counterfeit coins—smasher.
Stolen property generally—swag.
To go about half-naked to excite compassion—on the shallow.
Stealing lead from the roof of houses—flying the blue pigeon.
Coiners of bad money—bit fakers.
Midnight prowlers who rob drunken men—bug hunters.
Entering a dwelling house while the family have gone to church—a dead lurk.
Convicted of thieving—in for a ramp.
A city missionary or scripture reader—gospel grinder.
Shop-lifting—hoisting.
Hidden from the police—in lavender.
Forged bank notes—queer screens.
Whipping while in prison—scrobyorclaws for breakfast.
Long-fingered thieves expert in emptying ladies’ pockets—fine wirers.
The condemned cell—the salt box.
The prison chaplain—Lady Green.
A boy thief, lithe and thin and daring, such a one as housebreakers hire for the purpose of entering a small window at the rear of a dwelling house—a little snakesman.
So pertinaciously do the inhabitants of criminal colonies stick to their “latin,” that a well-known writer suggests that special religious tracts, suiting their condition, should be printed in the language, as an almost certain method of securing their attention.
There can be no question that that of the professional thief is a bitterly severe and laborious occupation, beset with privations that moral people have no conception of, and involves an amount of mental anxiety and torment that few human beings can withstand through a long lifetime. Some years ago a clergyman with a thorough acquaintance with the subject he was handling, wrote on “Thieves and Thieving,” in the “Cornhill Magazine,” andaproposof this benumbing atmosphere of dread, that constantly encompasses even the old “professional,” he says:—
“But if an acquaintance with the thieves’ quarters revealed to me the amazing subtlety and cleverness of the pilfering fraternity, it also taught me the guilty fear, the wretchedness, the moral guilt, and the fearful hardshipsthat fall to the lot of the professional thief. They are never safe for a moment, and this unceasing jeopardy produces a constant nervousness and fear. Sometimes when visiting the sick, I have gently laid my hand on the shoulder of one of them, who happened to be standing in the street. The man would ‘start like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons,’ and it would take him two or three minutes to recover his self-possession sufficiently to ask me ‘How are you to-day, sir?’ I never saw the adage, ‘Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind,’ so painfully illustrated as in the thieves’ quarter, by the faces of grey-haired criminals, whose hearts had been worn into hardness by the dishonouring chains of transportation. When, in the dusk of the evening, I have spoken to one of them as he stood idly on the public-house steps, I have spoken in a low and altered tone, so that he might not at first recognise me: again the guilty start as the man bent forward, anxiously peering into my face.”
“But if an acquaintance with the thieves’ quarters revealed to me the amazing subtlety and cleverness of the pilfering fraternity, it also taught me the guilty fear, the wretchedness, the moral guilt, and the fearful hardshipsthat fall to the lot of the professional thief. They are never safe for a moment, and this unceasing jeopardy produces a constant nervousness and fear. Sometimes when visiting the sick, I have gently laid my hand on the shoulder of one of them, who happened to be standing in the street. The man would ‘start like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons,’ and it would take him two or three minutes to recover his self-possession sufficiently to ask me ‘How are you to-day, sir?’ I never saw the adage, ‘Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind,’ so painfully illustrated as in the thieves’ quarter, by the faces of grey-haired criminals, whose hearts had been worn into hardness by the dishonouring chains of transportation. When, in the dusk of the evening, I have spoken to one of them as he stood idly on the public-house steps, I have spoken in a low and altered tone, so that he might not at first recognise me: again the guilty start as the man bent forward, anxiously peering into my face.”
He is never at rest, the wretched professional thief. He goes about with the tools of war perpetually in his hands, and with enemies in the front and the rear, and to the right and the left of him. “Anybody, to hear ’em talk,” a thief once remarked to me (he was a thief at present in possession of liberty; not an incarcerated rogue plying “gammon” as the incarcerated rogue loves to ply it), “anybody would think, to hear ’em talk, that it was all sugar with us while we were free, and that our sufferings did not begin until we were caught, and ‘put away.’ Them that think so know nothing about it. Take a case, now, of a man who is in for getting his living‘on the cross,’ and who has got a ‘kid’ or two, and their mother, at home. I don’t say that it ismycase, but you can take it so if you like.Sheisn’t a thief. Ask her what she knows about me, and she’ll tell you that, wuss luck, I’ve got in co. with some bad uns, and she wishes that I hadn’t. She wishes that I hadn’t, p’raps—not out of any sort of Goody-two-shoes feeling, but because she loves me. That’s the name of it;wehaint got any other word for the feelin’; and she can’t bear to think that I may, any hour, be dragged off for six mouths, or a year, p’raps. And them’s my feelings, too, and no mistake, day after day, and Sundays as well as week-days. She isn’t fonder of me than I am of her, I’ll go bail for that; and as for the kids, the girl especially, why I’d skid a waggon wheel with my body rather than her precious skin should be grazed. Well, take my word for it, I never go out in the morning, and the young ’un sez ‘good bye,’ but what I think ‘good bye—yes! p’raps it’s good bye for a longer spell than you’re dreaming about, you poor little shaver.’ And when I get out into the street, how long am I safe? Why, only for the straight length of that street, as far as I can see the coast clear. I may find a stopper at any turning, or at any corner. And when youdofeel the hand on your collar! I’ve often wondered what must be a chap’s feelings when the white cap is pulled over his peepers, and old Calcraft is pawing about his throat, to get the rope right. It must be a sight worse than theotherfeeling, you’ll say. Well, if it is, I wonder how long the chap manages to hold up till he’s let go!”
I am the more anxious to remark on these lingering relics of humanity, and, I may almost say virtue, that, if properly sought, may be discovered in the most hardened criminals, because, of late, there appears to be a growing inclination to treat the habitual criminal as though he had ceased to be human, and had degenerated into the condition of the meanest and most irreclaimable of predatory animals, fit only to be turned over to the tender mercies of a great body of huntsmen who wear blue coats instead of scarlet, and carry staves and handcuffs in place of whips and horns, and to be pursued to death. I have already taken occasion in the public newspapers, and I have much pleasure in returning to the charge here, to exclaim against the barbarous suggestions of a gentleman holding high position in the police force, Colonel Fraser, Commissioner of the City Police.
Alluding to the Habitual Criminals Bill, Colonel Fraser says:—
“Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill are chiefly designed to ensure a clearer police supervision than now exists over convicts at large on licence, and to extend it to persons who have been, or may be convicted of felony; but all the pains and penalties to which such persons are liable are made to depend absolutely on proof being forthcoming that the alleged offenders are actual licence holders, or convicted felons, and the great difficulty which so frequently occurs in obtaining this proof will present serious obstacles to a satisfactory working of the statute.“Organized as the English police forces are, it will be most difficult for them, notwithstanding the contemplatedsystem of registration, to account satisfactorily for the movements of licence holders, or to obtain an effective supervision over them, if they are determined to evade it. But the number of these convicts at large is insignificant compared with the swarms of repeatedly-convicted thieves, who give infinitely greater trouble to the police than licence-holders, and who constantly escape with a light sentence, from the impossibility of obtaining ready proof of their former convictions.”
“Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill are chiefly designed to ensure a clearer police supervision than now exists over convicts at large on licence, and to extend it to persons who have been, or may be convicted of felony; but all the pains and penalties to which such persons are liable are made to depend absolutely on proof being forthcoming that the alleged offenders are actual licence holders, or convicted felons, and the great difficulty which so frequently occurs in obtaining this proof will present serious obstacles to a satisfactory working of the statute.
“Organized as the English police forces are, it will be most difficult for them, notwithstanding the contemplatedsystem of registration, to account satisfactorily for the movements of licence holders, or to obtain an effective supervision over them, if they are determined to evade it. But the number of these convicts at large is insignificant compared with the swarms of repeatedly-convicted thieves, who give infinitely greater trouble to the police than licence-holders, and who constantly escape with a light sentence, from the impossibility of obtaining ready proof of their former convictions.”
Now comes the remedy for this unsatisfactory state of affairs!
“As a remedy for this, I would suggest that every convict, on being liberated on licence, and every person after a second conviction of felony, should be marked in prison, on being set free, in such manner as the Secretary of State might direct—as has been the practice in the case of deserters, and men dismissed for misconduct from the army: such marking to be accepted as sufficient proof of former convictions.“The precise mode in which this should be effected is matter of detail; but, by a simple combination of alphabetical letters, similar to that employed in distinguishing postage-stamps, no two persons need bear precisely the same mark, and the arrangement of letters might be such as to show at a glance, not only the particular prison in which the offender had been last confined, but also the date of his last conviction. Copies of these marks, transmitted to the Central Office of Registration in London, would form an invaluable record of the history of habitual criminals, and enable the police to obtain thatreliable information as to their antecedents, the want of which now so commonly enables practised offenders to escape the consequences of their misdeeds.“Attempts might, and probably would, be made to alter the appearance of the tell-tale imprints; but it would be impossible to efface them, and any artificial discoloration of the skin appearing on the particular part of the arm, or body, fixed upon for the prison mark, should be considered as affording sufficient proof of former convictions; unless the person charged could show—to the satisfaction of the justice before whom he might be brought—that it was produced by legitimate means.”
“As a remedy for this, I would suggest that every convict, on being liberated on licence, and every person after a second conviction of felony, should be marked in prison, on being set free, in such manner as the Secretary of State might direct—as has been the practice in the case of deserters, and men dismissed for misconduct from the army: such marking to be accepted as sufficient proof of former convictions.
“The precise mode in which this should be effected is matter of detail; but, by a simple combination of alphabetical letters, similar to that employed in distinguishing postage-stamps, no two persons need bear precisely the same mark, and the arrangement of letters might be such as to show at a glance, not only the particular prison in which the offender had been last confined, but also the date of his last conviction. Copies of these marks, transmitted to the Central Office of Registration in London, would form an invaluable record of the history of habitual criminals, and enable the police to obtain thatreliable information as to their antecedents, the want of which now so commonly enables practised offenders to escape the consequences of their misdeeds.
“Attempts might, and probably would, be made to alter the appearance of the tell-tale imprints; but it would be impossible to efface them, and any artificial discoloration of the skin appearing on the particular part of the arm, or body, fixed upon for the prison mark, should be considered as affording sufficient proof of former convictions; unless the person charged could show—to the satisfaction of the justice before whom he might be brought—that it was produced by legitimate means.”
I have ventured to transcribe, in its integrity, the main portion of Colonel Fraser’s “new idea,” thinking that its importance demanded it. It is significant of much that is to be regretted, coming from such a source. It is somewhat excusable, maybe, in a common policeman—who yesterday may have been an agricultural labourer, or a member of a community of which no more in the way of education is expected—if he exhibits a kind of unreasoning, watch-dog antagonism towards the criminal classes. He is instructed in all sorts of manœuvres, and paid a guinea a week to actagainstthem—to oppose the weight of his officially-striped arm, and the full force of his handy staff against them, whenever he finds plausible excuse for doing so. And, possibly, this is a condition of affairs one should not be over eager to reform. The policeman, “too clever by half,” is generally an instrument of injustice, and an impediment in the way of thelaw’s impartial acting. So long as the common constable remains a well-regulated machine, and fulfils his functions without jarring or unnecessary noise, we will ask no more; but without doubt we expect, and we have a right to expect, some display of intelligence and humanity on the part of the chief engineer who directs and controls these machines. An official of polite education, and possessed of a thorough knowledge of the ways and means and the various resources of the enemy it is his duty to provide against, should be actuated by some more generous sentiment than that which points towards uncompromising extermination. Colonel Fraser should bear in mind that an act of criminality does not altogether change a man’s nature. He is a human creature in which, perhaps through accident, perhaps through desperate, and to some extent deliberate culture, certain growths, injurious to the welfare of the commonwealth, have growth; but to brand, and destroy, and crush under the heel the said creature because of his objectionable affections, is much like smashing a set of valuable vases because stagnant water has been permitted to accumulate in them. It may be urged that if the said vases or men have secreted criminal vice and fouling until their whole substance has become saturated beyond possibility of cleansing, then the sooner they are utterly abolished the better. To this I answer that until the best known methods of cleansing have been tried on the foul vessels we are not in a position to say that they are irreclaimable; and again, even provided that you might discover certain such vessels fit for nothing but destruction, it would bea monstrous absurdity to issue an edict ordering the annihilation of every pot of a like pattern. And this is pretty much as Colonel Fraser would act.
Let the reader for a moment consider what would be the effect if such a law as that proposed by the Commissioner of Police for the City of London were passed. In the first place it would, in its immediate operation, prove immensely unjust to the milder sort of criminal. If we started anew with our army of twenty thousand to-morrow morning, and every member of it had been convicted but once, there would be fairness (admitting just for argument sake only that there is any fairness at all about it) in holding out the threat that the next man who committed himself should be branded. But, as the case stands, before a month had elapsed we should have hundreds of unlucky wretches against whose names but two felonious commitments stood, bearing the hateful brand, while thousands of the old and wary of the tribe acquainted with the interior of every prison in England would, as far as the tell-tale mark is concerned, appear as innocent as you or I. Nor would any “alphabetical postal system,” however ingenious and cold-blooded, avoid this difficulty. The only way of doing full justice to the entire body of felons—the young beginners and the old practitioners—would be, whenever the latter were next taken to search all the prison records for convictions against them, and score them in regular order on the delinquents’ writhing flesh. To do this, however, Colonel Fraser would have to abandon his idea of branding on the arm. That member would in many cases affordinadequate space, even if you brought the chronicle from the shoulder to the finger tips, and “turned over” and continued the length of the criminal’s palm. As the newspaper reports frequently show, there are evil doers whose catalogues of crimes may scarcely be expressed in a century.
But these are the bad ones already so branded and seared in heart and mind that to prick and scorch an inch of their outward skin would be but to tickle their vanity, and give them to brag of another scar, got in their life-long war against society. Short of torturing them or killing them, it matters little what measures are provided against these case-hardened villains. But there are scores and hundreds who though they have earned for themselves the names of criminals, whom to class and force to herd with the before-mentioned set would be to incur the greatest responsibility, and one that under existing circumstances it would be utterly short of wanton brutality to engage in.
As regards the class last mentioned, that is to say, those members who have at present made no very desperate acquaintance with crime and its punishment, I believe that if they were but judiciously dealt with a very large number would be but too glad to escape from their present life of misery. “Many a thief,” says a writer, whose able remarks are the more valuable, because they are founded on actual experience and conversation with the people he treats of; “many a thief is kept in reluctant bondage to crime from the difficulties he finds in obtaining honest employment, and earninghonest bread. Many thieves are fond of their criminal calling. They will tell you plainly that they do not intend to work hard for a pound a week, when they can easily earn five times as much by thieving in less time and live like gentlemen. But others of them are utterly weary of the hazard, disgrace, and suffering attaching to their mode of life. Some of them were once pure, honest, and industrious, and when they are sick, or in prison, they are frequently filled with bitter remorse, and make the strongest vows to have done with a guilty life.
“Suppose a man of this sort in prison. His eyes are opened, and he sees before him the gulf of remediless ruin into which he will soon be plunged. He knows well enough that the money earned by thieving goes as fast as it comes, and that there is no prospect of his ever being able to retire on his ill-gotten gains. He comes out of prison, determined to reform. But where is he to go? What is he to do? How is he to live? Whatever may have been done for him in prison, is of little or no avail, if as soon as he leaves the gaol he must go into the world branded with crime, unprotected and unhelped. The discharged prisoner must be friendly with some one, and he must live. His criminal friends will entertain him on the understood condition that they are repaid from the booty of his next depredation. Thus the first food he eats, and the first friendly chat he has, becomes the half necessitating initiative of future crime. Frequently the newly discharged prisoner passes through a round of riot and drunkenness immediately on his release from a long incarceration, as any other man would do in similarcircumstances, and who has no fixed principles to sustain him. And so by reason of the rebound of newly acquired liberty, and the influence of the old set, the man is again demoralized. The discharged prisoner leaves gaol with good resolves, but the moment he enters the world, there rises before him the dark and spectral danger of being hunted down by the police, and being recognised and insulted, of being shunned and despised by his fellow workmen, of being everywhere contemned and forsaken.”
There can be no doubt that to this utter want of friends of the right sort at the moment of leaving prison, may be attributed a very large percentage of the persistence in a career of crime by those who have once made a false step. In this respect we treat our criminals of comparatively a mild character with greater harshness and severity than those whose repeated offences have led to their receiving the severest sentences of the law. The convict who is discharged after serving a term of five years at Portland, receives ere he quits the gates of Millbank prison a money gratuity, varying in amount according to the character that was returned with him from the convict establishment. Nor do the chances that are afforded him of quitting his old course of life and becoming an honest man end here. There is the Prisoner’s Aid Society, where he may obtain a little more money and a suit of working clothes, and if he really shows an inclination to reform, he may be even recommended to a situation. Put for the poor wretch who has given society much less offence, who has become a petty thief, probably not from choice, but from hard necessity, and who bitterlyrepents of his offences, there is no one to take him by the hand and give or lend him so much as an honest half-crown to make a fair start with. It may be said that the convict is most in want of help because heisa convict, because he is a man with whom robberies and violence have become so familiar, that it is needful to provide him with some substantial encouragement lest he slide back into the old groove. Further, because he is a man so plainly branded that the most inexperienced policeman may know at a glance what he is; whereas, the man who has been but once convicted may, if he have the inclination, push his way amongst honest men, and not one of them be the wiser as to the slip he has made. And that would be all very well if he were assisted in rejoining the ranks of honest bread-winners, but what is his plight when the prison door shuts behind him? It was his poverty that urged him to commit the theft that consigned him to gaol, and now he is turned out of it poorer than ever, crushed and spirit-broken, and with all his manliness withered within him. He feels ashamed and disgraced, and for the first few hours of his liberty he would willingly shrink back for hiding, even to his prison, because, as he thinks, people look at him so. A little timely help would save him, but nothing is so likely as desperate “don’t care” to spring out of this consciousness of guilt, and the suspicion of being shunned and avoided; and the army of twenty thousand gains another recruit.
This undoubtedly is frequently the case with the criminal guilty of but a “first offence.” Be he man or lad, however, he will be subject to no such painful embarrassmenton his leaving prison after a second or third conviction. By that time he will have made friends. He will have found a companion or two to “work with,” and they will keep careful reckoning of the date of his incarceration as well as of the duration of his term of durance. Make no doubt that they will be on the spot to rejoice with him on his release. They know the exact hour when the prison gate will open and he will come forth, and there they are ready to shake hands with him. Ready to “stand treat.” Ready to provide him with that pipe of tobacco for which he has experienced such frequent longing, and to set before him the foaming pot of beer. “Come along, old pal!” say they, “we thought that you’d be glad of a drink and a bit of bacca, and we’ve got a jolly lot of beef over some baked taters at home!”
What becomes of all his good resolutions—of the chaplain’s wholesome counsel now! “Shut your eyes resolutely to the temptations your old companions may hold out to you,” were the parting words of that good man; “if they threaten you, bid them defiance. Let it be the first test of your good resolves to tell them plainly and boldly that you have done with them and will have no more to do with them!” Most excellent advice truly! but how is the emancipated one to act on it? How can he find it in his heart to dash with cold ingratitude such warmth of generosity and good nature? What claim has he on them that they should treat him so? They owe him nothing, and can have no ulterior and selfish object in thus expending their timeand their money on his comfort. All that they expect in return is, that should either of them fall into trouble similar to his, he will exert himself for him in the same manner, and surely that is little enough to ask. Perhaps with the chaplain’s good advice still ringing in his ears, a sigh of lingering remorse is blended with the outpuffing of that first delicious pipe, but it is promptly swallowed down in the draught of free beer, with the grim reflection, perhaps, that if those professing to be his friends came to his timely assistance as promptly and substantially as did those his enemies, he might have been saved the ignominy of entering anew on the old crimeful path.
As I have endeavoured to show, the best time for treating with these unhardened criminals for their reform, is just before they leave the prison at the expiration of their sentence, or so soon as they have crossed its threshold and find themselves free men. But even if they are here missed and allowed to go their sinful way, it is not absolutely necessary to postpone the good work until the law lays hold on them again. The dens to which they retire are not impregnable. They do not live in fortified caves, the doors of which are guarded by savage dogs and by members of the gang armed with swords and pistols. It is wonderful how docile and respectful they will behave towards folk who visit them, treating them as nothing worse than fellow creatures suffering under a great misfortune, and not as savage creatures of prey who have forfeited all claim to human nature, and are fit only to be scourged and branded. A writer already quoted tells us that duringtwo years in one of the largest towns in England he had unlimited access to the thieves’ quarter at all hours and under any circumstances—weddings, midnight gatherings, “benefit nights,” public houses, he has visited them all. “How I gained the confidence of the criminal fraternity I cannot say. I only sought their welfare, never went amongst them without some good errand, never asked questions about their affairs, or meddled with things that did not belong to me; and it is due to the thieves themselves to say that I never received from any of them, whether drunk or sober, an unkind look or a disrespectful word. . . . I had not pursued my quiet mission amongst the thieves many months without discovering the damning fact that they had no faith in the sincerity, honesty, or goodness of human nature; and that this last and vilest scepticism of the human heart was one of the most powerful influences at work in the continuation of crime. They believe people in general to be no better than themselves, and that most people will do a wrong thing if it serves their purpose. They consider themselves better than many “square” (honest) people who practise commercial frauds. Not having a spark of faith in human nature their ease is all but hopeless; and only those who have tried the experiment can tell how difficult it is to make a thief believe that you are really disinterested and mean him well. Nevertheless, the agencies that are at work for the arrest of crime are all more or less working to good purpose, and conducing to a good end. Had I previously known nothing of the zeal and labour that have been expended during the last few years in behalf ofthe criminal population, I should have learned from my intercourse with the thieves themselves, that a new spirit was getting amongst them, and that something for their good was going on outside thievedom. The thieves, the worst of them, speak gloomily of the prospects of the fraternity; just as a Red Indian would complain of the dwindling of his tribe before the strong march of advancing civilization.”
In every essential particular can I corroborate the above account. There are few worse places in London than certain parts of Cow Cross, especially that part of it anciently known as Jack Ketch’s Warren, or “Little Hell” as the inhabitants more commonly designate it, on account of the number of subjects it produced for the operations of the common hangman. Only that the law is more merciful than of yore, there is little doubt that the vile nests in question, including “Bit Alley,” and “Broad Yard,” and “Frying Pan Alley,” would still make good its claim to the distinguishing title conferred on it. The place indicated swarms with thieves of every degree, from the seven-year old little robber who snatches petty articles from stalls and shop-fronts, to the old and experienced burglar with a wide experience of convict treatment, British and foreign. Yet, accompanied by a city missionary well known to them, I have many a time gone amongst them, feeling as safe as though I was walking along Cheapside. I can give testimony even beyond that of the writer last quoted. “I never asked questions about their affairs, or meddled with things thatdid not concern me,” says the gentleman in question. I can answer for it that my pastor friend of the Cow Cross Mission was less forbearing. With seasoned, middle-aged scoundrels he seldom had any conversation, but he never lost a chance of tackling young men and lads on the evil of their ways, and to a purpose. Nor was it his soft speech or polished eloquence that prevailed with them. He was by no means a gloomy preacher against crime and its consequences; he had a cheerful hopeful way with him that much better answered the purpose. He went about his Christian work humming snatches of hymns in the liveliest manner. One day while I was with him, we saw skulking along before us a villanous figure, ragged and dirty, and with a pair of shoulders broad enough to carry sacks of coal. “This,” whispered my missionary friend, “is about the very worst character we have. He is as strong as a tiger, and almost as ferocious. “Old Bull” they call him.”
I thought it likely we would pass without recognising so dangerous an animal, but my friend was not so minded. With a hearty slap on his shoulder, the fearless missionary accosted him.
“Well, Old Bull!”
“Ha! ’ow do, Mr. Catlin, sir?”
“As well as I should like to see you, my friend. How are you getting along, Bull?”
“Oh, werry dicky, Mr. Catlin.” And Bull hung his ears and pawed uncomfortably in a puddle, with one slipshod foot, as though in his heart resenting being “pinned” after this fashion.
“You find matters going worse and worse with you, ah!”
“They can’t be no worser than they is, that’soneblessin’!”
“Ah, now there’s where you are mistaken, Bull. They can be worse a thousand times, and theywill, unless you turn over a fresh leaf. Why not, Bull? See what a tattered, filthy old leaf the old one is!”
(Bull, with an uneasy glance towards the outlet of the alley, but still speaking with all respect,) “Ah! it’s all that, guv’nor.”
“Well then, since youmustbegin on a fresh leaf, why not try the right leaf—the honest one, eh, Bull. Just to see how you like it.”
“All right, Mister Catlin. I’ll think about it.”
“I wish to the Lord you would, Bull. There’s not much to laugh at, take my word for that.”
“All right, guv’nor, I ain’t a larfin. I means to be a reg’lar model some day—when I get time. Morning, Mister Catlin, sir.”
And away went “Old Bull,” with a queer sort of grin on his repulsive countenance, evidently no better or worse for the brief encounter with his honest adviser, but very thankful indeed to escape.
“I’ve been up into that man’s room,” said my tough little, cheerful missionary, “and rescued his wife out of his great cruel hands, when three policemen stood on the stairs afraid to advance another step.”
He would do more than in his blunt, rough-and-ready way point out to them what a shameful waste oftheir lives it was to be skulking in a filthy court all day without the courage to go out and seek their wretched living till the darkness of night. He would offer to find them a job; he made many friends, and was enabled to do so, earnestly exhorting them to try honest work just for a month, to find out what it was like, and the sweets of it. And many have tried it; some as a joke—as a whimsical feat worth engaging in for the privilege of afterwards being able to brag of it, and returned to their old practice in a day or two; others have tried it, and, to their credit be it spoken, stuck to it. In my own mind I feel quite convinced that if such men as Mr. C., of the Cow Cross Mission, who holds the keys not only of the houses in which thieves dwell, but, to a large extent, also, a key to the character and peculiarities of the thieves themselves, were empowered with proper facilities, the amount of good they are capable of performing would very much astonish us.
The Three Classes of Thieving Society.—Popular Misapprehensions.—A True Picture of the London Thief.—A Fancy Sketch of the“Under-Ground Cellar.”—In Disguise at a Thieves’ Raffle.—The Puzzle of“Black Maria.”—Mr. Mullins’s Speech and his Song.
Although, as most people are aware, the great thief tribe reckons amongst its number an upper, and a middle, and a lower class, pretty much as corresponding grades of station are recognised amongst the honest community, it is doubtful, in the former case, if promotion from one stage to another may be gained by individual enterprise and talent and industry. The literature of the country is from time to time enriched by bragging autobiographies of villains confessed, as well as by the penitent revelations of rogues reclaimed, but, according to my observation, it does not appear that perseverance in the humbler walks of crime lead invariably to the highway of infamous prosperity. It seems to be an idea too preposterous even to introduce into the pages of Newgate romance, daring in their flights of fancy as are the authors affecting that delectable line. We have no sinister antithesis of the well-known honest boy who tramped from Bristol to the metropolis with twopence-halfpenny in his pocket, andafterwards became Lord Mayor of London. No low-browed ragged little thief, who began his career by purloining a halfpenny turnip from a costermonger’s barrow, is immortalized in the page of the Newgate Calendar, as finally arrived at the high distinction of wearing fashionable clothes, and ranking as the first of swell-mobsmen. It is a lamentable fact, and one that should have weight with aspirants for the convict’s mask and badge, that the poor, shabby, hard-working thief so remains, till the end of his days. There is no more chance of his carrying his shameful figure and miserable hang-dog visage into tip-top society of his order, than there is of his attaining the summit of that treadwheel, with the ever-recurring steps of which he is so painfully familiar.
And if there is a forlorn, abject, harassed wretch in the world it is the poor, threadbare, timid London thief. I believe the popular supposition to be that, to turn thief at least ensures for the desperate adventurer money to squander for the time being; that however severe may be the penalty paid for the luxury, while “luck” lasts the picker of pockets and purloiner of his neighbour’s goods has ever at his command means wherewith to satisfy the cravings of his vices, however extravagant they may be—money to live on the fat of the land and get drunk and enjoy happy spells of ease and plenty. This, no doubt, is the tempting picture the devil holds up for the contemplation of heart-sick honesty, when patient integrity is growing faint with hunger and long privation; and truly it seems not an improbable picture.What inducement is there for a man to persist in a career of dishonesty with its certain and frequent penalties of prison and hard labour, unless his perilous avocation ensures him spells, albeit brief ones, of intoxicating enjoyment?
No wonder that the ignorant, sorely-tempted, out-o’-work labourer should take this view of the case, when men, who by station and education—men who profess to have gone out of their highly respectable paths in life to make such inquiries as should qualify them to discuss the matter in solemn Parliamentary conclave, declare that it is so. A curious exhibition of the lamentable credulity of our law makers occurred no longer ago than at the second reading of the Habitual Criminals Bill in the House of Lords. Naturally the subject was one concerning which their Lordships could know nothing, except by hearsay, and Earl Shaftesbury volunteered to put them in possession of such useful information as might guide them towards a decision as regarded the projected Bill.
It is only fair to state, however, that his Lordship was not personally responsible for his startling statements. He had them from a “practitioner,” from a thief, that is to say. His Lordship did not reveal whether it was a thief at large who was his informant: but that is scarcely likely. Doubtless it was from some weeping villain, with an eye to a remission of his sentence, who so frankly confided to the soft-hearted Earl the various secrets of that terrible trade it was his intention never,neverto work at again! At any rate, whoever the “practitioner” was, he succeeded in his design completely, as the horror-stricken visage of his lordship,as he delivered himself of the astounding revelations, fully attested.
They were to this effect, and the reader will please bear in mind that they were not tendered to be received at their worth, but as facts which might he relied on. Within the City of London, Lord Shaftesbury declared, “crucibles and melting-pots are kept going all day and all night. I believe that in a very large number of cases the whole of the plate is reduced within two or three hours of the robbery to ingots of silver. As for spoons, forks, and jewellery, they are not taken so readily to the melting-pot; but to well-known places where there is a pipe, similar to that which your lordships may have seen—I hope none may have seen it of necessity—in the shop of the pawnbroker. The thief taps, the pipe is lifted up, and in the course of a minute a hand comes out covered with a glove, takes up the jewellery, and gives out the money for it.”
If that conscienceless “practitioner,” who so scandalously gulled the good Earl, happened to be in enjoyment of liberty when the above quoted newspaper report was printed, how he must have grinned as he perused it? But what an unpleasant reversal of the joke it would be if the mendacious statements of the bare-faced villain lead to the passing of a bill imposing cruelly severe rules for the government of criminals, and the worthy in question should one fine day find himself groaning under the same! The most astounding part of the business however, is, that his lordship should have given credit to such a tissue of fudge. To his honour be it stated, heshould know better. As an indefatigable labourer amongst the poor and afflicted, his name will be remembered and blest long after he has passed from among us. It is doubtful if any other man whose title gives him admission to the House of Lords, could have given nearly as much practical information on this painful subject, and there can be no question—and this is the most unfortunate part of the business—that all that his lordship stated was regarded as real. Every lord present to listen to and discuss the various clauses of Lord Kimberley’s Bill, probably took to his vivid imagination the appalling picture of the underground cellars (to be reached only by known members of the burglarious brotherhood who could give the sign to the guardian of the cellar-door), where certain demon-men of the Fagin type presided constantly over crucibles and melting-pots, wherein bubbled and hissed the precious brew of gold and silver ornaments dissolved, the supply being constantly renewed by the bold “cracksmen” who numerously attended to bring the goods to market. Easier still even was it to conjure before the mind’s eye the peculiar operations of the “pipe” that Lord Shaftesbury so graphically described. The deserted-looking house in the gloomy back street, with the street door always ajar so that customers might slip in and out at it in an instant—before even the policeman on beat could wink his sleepy eyes in amazement at the unexpected apparition; with the sliding panel in the dimly-lighted back kitchen, and the “spout” just like a pawnbroker’s, and the “gloved hand,” the fingers of it twitching with eager greed for the gold watch, still warmfrom the pocket of its rightful owner! How was it possible to deal with a subject bristling so with horrors with calmness and dignity? Their lordships had been given to understand by the mover of the bill that there were fifteen thousand thieves constantly busy in the Metropolis alone, and Lord Shaftesbury had informed them that the mysterious “spout” and the melting-pot were the chief channels for converting stolen goods into ready money. At this rate, London must be almost undermined by these gold-melting cellars—the midnight traveller through the great city might plainly hear and wonder at the strange tap-tapping that met his ears—the tapping at the “spout” that notified to the owner of the gloved hand that a new customer was in attendance? It would have been not very surprising if the Chief Commissioner of Police had been instantly communicated with, and given instructions at once to arrest every man and woman of the fifteen thousand, and hold them in safe keeping until their lordships had resolved on the most efficacious, and at the same time least painful way of exterminating them.
Seriously, it is impossible almost to exaggerate the amount of mischief likely to result from such false and inflammatory pictures of an evil that in its naked self is repulsive enough in all conscience. On the one hand, it excites amongst the people panic and unnecessary alarm, and furnishes the undeniable excuse of “self-defence” for any excess of severity we may be led into; and on the other hand, it tends to magnify the thief’s importance in the eyes of the thief, and to invest his melancholy and everlastingly miserable avocations with precisely the samekind of gallows-glory as is preached by the authors of “Tyburn Dick” or the “Boy Highwayman.” Curiously enough at the conclusion of his long and interesting speech, Lord Shaftesbury went a little out of his way to make mention of the literature of the kind just quoted, to remark on its intimate bearing on the crime of the country, and to intimate that shortly the whole question would be brought under their lordships’ consideration. It is doubtful, however, and I say so with extreme regret, knowing as I well do how shocking even the suspicion of such a thing must be to Lord Shaftesbury, if in any dozen “penny numbers” of the pernicious trash in question, the young aspirant for prison fame would find as much stimulative matter as was provided in his lordship’s speech, or rather speeches, on the Habitual Criminal question.
No, the affairs of those who affect the criminal walks of life are bad enough in all conscience, but they are much less romantic than his lordship has been led to believe. Shorn of the melo-dramatic “bandit” costume with which they have been temporarily invested they lose nothing in appalling effect.
Truly, it is hard to understand, but it is an undoubted fact, that the criminal who in police nomenclature is a “low thief” (to distinguish him, it may be presumed, from “the respectable thief”) is without exception of all men the most comfortless and miserable; and should the reader be so inquisitive as to desire to be informed of the grounds on which I arrive at this conclusion, I beg to assure him that I do not rely on hearsay, neither do Idepend on what thieves incarcerated for their offences have told me, holding it to be hardly likely that a prisoner in prison would vaunt his liking for crime and his eagerness to get back to it. I have mixed with thieves at liberty, an unsuspected spy in their camp, more than once. I will quote an example.
This was many years since, and as at the time I published a detailed account of the visit, I may be excused from more than briefly alluding to it here. It was at a thieves’ raffle, held at a public-house in one of the lowest and worst parts of Westminster. I was young in the field of exploration then, and from all that I had heard and read made up my mind for something very terrible and desperate. I pictured to myself a band of rollicking desperadoes, swaggering and insolent, with plenty of money to pay for bottles of brandy and egg-flip unlimited, and plenty of bragging discourse of the doughty deeds of the past, and of their cold-blooded and desperate intentions for the future. Likewise, my expectations of hope and fear included a rich treat in the shape of vocalization. It was one thing to hear play-actors on the stage, in their tame and feeble delineations of the ancient game of “high Toby,” and of the redoubtable doings of the Knights of the Road, spout such soul-thrilling effusions as “Nix my Dolly Pals,” and “Claude Duval,” but what must it be to listen to the same bold staves out of the mouths of real “roaring boys,” some of them, possibly, the descendants of the very heroes who rode “up Holborn Hill in a cart,” and who could not well hear the good words the attendant chaplain was uttering becauseof the noisy exchange of boisterous “chaff” taking place between the short-pipe smoking driver, whose cart-seat was the doomed man’s coffin, and the gleeful mob that had made holiday to see the fun!
But in all this I was dismally disappointed. I had procured a ticket for the raffle from a friendly police-inspector (goodness only knows how he came possessed of them, but he had quite a collection of similar tickets in his pocket-book), and, disguised for the occasion, I entered the dirty little dram shop, and exhibited my credential to the landlord at the bar. So far the business was promising. The said landlord was as ill-looking a villain as could be desired. He had a broken nose and a wooden leg, both of which deformities were doubtless symptomatic of the furious brawls in which he occasionally engaged with his ugly customers. As I entered he was engaged in low-whispered discourse with three ruffians who might have been brothers of his in a similar way of business, but bankrupt, and gone to the dogs. As I advanced to the bar the four cropped heads laid together in iniquity, separated suddenly, and the landlord affected a look of innocence, and hummed a harmless tune in a way that was quite melodramatic.
I intimated my business, and he replied shortly, “Go on through,” at the same time indicating the back door by a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder. Now for it! On the other side of the back door I discovered a stone yard, at the extremity of which was dimly visible in the darkness a long, low, dilapidated building, with a light shining through the chinks. This, then, was the robber’sden!—a place to which desperate men and women who made robbery and outrage the nightly business of their lives, resorted to squander in riot and debauchery their ill-gotten gains! It would not have surprised me had I found the doorkeeper armed with a pair of “trusty barkers,” and every male guest of the company with a life-preserver sticking out at the breast pocket of his coat.
The door was opened in response to my tap at it. I gave the potman there stationed my ticket, and I entered. I must confess that my first sensation as I cast my eye carelessly around, was one of disgust that I should have been induced to screw up my courage with so much pains for so small an occasion. The building I found myself in was a skittle-ground, furnished with forms and tables; and there were present about thirty persons. As well as I can remember, of this number a third were women, young generally, one or two being mere girls of sixteen, or so. But Jenny Diver was not there, nor Poll Maggot, nor Edgeworth Bess. No lady with ringlets curling over her alabaster shoulders found a seat on the knee of the gallant spark of her choice. No Captain Macheath was to be seen elegantly taking snuff out of a stolen diamond snuff-box, or flinging into the pink satin lap of his lady love a handful of guineas to pay for more brandy. Poor wretches! the female shoulders there assembled spoke rather of bone than alabaster, while the washed-out and mended cotton frocks served in place of pink satin, and hair of most humble fashion surmounted faces by no means expressive either of genuine jollity, oreven of a desperate determination towards devil-may-careness, and the drowning of care in the bowl. There were no bowls, even, as in the good old time, only vulgar pewter porter pots, out of which the company thankfully swigged its fourpenny. There was no appearance of hilarity, or joviality even; no more of brag and flourish, or of affectation of ease and freedom, than though every man and woman present were here locked up “on remand,” and any moment might be called out to face that damning piece of kept-back evidence they all along dreaded was in store for them. To be sure it was as yet early in the evening, and though the company may have assembled mainly for the purpose of drowning “dull care,” that malicious imp being but recently immersed, may have been superior at present to their machinations, and able to keep his ugly head above the liquid poured out for his destruction. Or may be, again, being a very powerful “dull care,” of sturdy and mature growth, he might be able to hold out through many hours against the weak and watery elements brought to oppose him.
Anyhow, so far as I was able to observe, there was no foreshadowing of the blue and brooding imp’s defeat. His baneful wings seemed spread from one end of the skittle-alley to the other, and to embrace even the chairman, who being a Jew, and merely a receiver of stolen goods, might reasonably have been supposed to be less susceptible than the rest. There would seem to prevail, amongst a large and innocent section of the community, a belief that the thief is a creature distinguished no less by appearance than by character from the honest hosthe thrives by. I have heard it remarked more than once, by persons whose curiosity has led them to a criminal court when a trial of more than ordinary interest is proceeding, that really this prisoner or that did notlooklike a thief, or a forger, or stabber, as the case might be. “Lord bless us,” I once heard an elderly lady exclaim, in the case of an oft-convicted scoundrel of the “swell mob” tribe, over whose affecting trial she had shed many tears, “Lord bless us!” said she, as the jury found him guilty, and sentenced him to two years’ hard labour, “so thin, and genteel, and with spectacles on, too! I declare I should have passed that young man twenty times without dreaming of calling out for the police.” On the other hand, there are very many persons less ingenuous than the old lady, who invariably regard a man through the atmosphere of crime, real or supposed, that envelopes him, and by means of its distorting influence make out such a villain as satisfies their sagacity. Had one of this last order been favoured with a private view of the company assembled to assist at Mr. Mullins’s raffle, and have been previously informed that they were one and all thieves, in all probability they would haveappearedthieves; but I am convinced that had they been shown to an unprepared and unprejudiced observer, his opinion would have been that the company gathered in the skittle-alley of the “Curly Badger” were no worse than a poor set of out-o’-work tailors, or French polishers, or weavers, or of some other craft, the members of which affect the gentility that black clothes and a tall hat is supposed to confer on thewearer; nor would an hour in their society, such as I spent, have sufficed to dissipate the innocent impression. Their expenditure was of the most modest sort, not one man in six venturing beyond the pot of beer. Their conversation, though not the most elegant, was least of all concerning the wretched trade they followed; indeed, the subject was never mentioned at all, except in melancholy allusion to Peter or Jerry, who had been recently “copped” (taken), and was expected to pass “a tail piece in the steel” (three months in prison). There was one observation solemnly addressed by one elderly man to another elderly man, the purport of which at the time puzzled me not a little. “Unlucky! Well you may say it. Black Maria is the only one that’s doin’ a trade now. Every journey full as a tuppenny omblibus!” I listened intently as prudence would permit for further reference to the mysterious female who was doing “all the trade,” and “every journey” was “as full as a twopenny omnibus,” but nothing in the conversation transpired tending to throw a light on the dark lady; so I mentally made a note of it for reference to my friend the inspector. He laughed. “Well, she has been doing a brisk stroke of business of late, I must say,” said he. “Black Maria, sir, is our van of that colour that carries ’em off to serve their time.”
But, as before observed, there was nothing in the demeanour of either the men or women present at Mullins’s raffle to denote either that they revelled in the nefarious trade they followed, or that they derived even ordinary comfort and satisfaction from it. To be sure, itmay have happened that the specimens of the thief class assembled before me were not of the briskest, but taking them as they were, and bearing in mind the spiritless, hang-dog, mean, and shabby set they were, the notion of bringing to bear on them such tremendous engines of repression as that suggested by the humane Commissioner of the City Police appears nothing short of ridiculous.
At the same time, I would have it plainly understood that my pity for the thief of this class by no means induces me to advise that no more effective means than those which at present exist should be adopted for his abolition. A people’s respect for the laws of the country is its chief pillar of strength, and those who have no respect for the laws, act as so many rats undermining the said pillar, and although the rats assembled at Mullins’s raffle were not of a very formidable breed, their hatred of the law, and their malicious defiance of it, was unmistakeable. For instance, the article to be raffled was a silk pocket handkerchief, and there it was duly displayed hanging across a beam at the end of the skittle-ground. The occasion of the raffle was, that Mr. Mullins had just been released after four months’ imprisonment, and that during his compulsory absence from home matters had gone very bad, and none the less so because poor Mrs. Mullins was suffering from consumption. In alluding to these sad details of his misfortune, Mr. Mullins, in returning thanks for the charity bestowed on him, looked the picture of melancholy. “Whether she means ever to get on her legs again is more than I can say,” said he, wagging hisshort-cropped head dolefully, “there ain’t much chance, I reckon, when you’re discharged from Brompton incurable. Yes, my friends, it’s all agin me lately, and my luck’s regler out. But there’s one thing I must mention” (and here he lifted his head with cheerful satisfaction beaming in his eyes), “and I’m sure you as doesn’t know it will be very glad to hear it—the handkerchief wot’s put up to raffle here is the wery identical one that I was put away for.” And judging from the hearty applause that followed this announcement, there can be no doubt that Mr. Mullins’s audience were very glad indeed to hear it.
But even after this stimulant, the spirits of the company did not rally anything to speak of. Song singing was started, but nobody sung “Nix my Dolly Pals,” or “Claude Duval.” Nobody raised a roaring chant in honour of “ruby wine,” or the flowing bowl, or even of the more humble, though no less genial, foaming can. There was a comic song or two, but the ditties in favour were those that had a deeply sentimental or even a funereal smack about them. The gentleman who had enlightened me as to Black Maria sang the Sexton, the chorus to which lively stave, “I’ll provide you such a lodging as you never had before,” was taken up with much heartiness by all present. Mullins himself, who possessed a fair alto voice, slightly damaged perhaps by a four months’ sojourn in the bleak atmosphere of Cold Bath Fields, sang “My Pretty Jane,” and a very odd sight it was to observe that dogged, jail-stamped countenance of his set, as accurately as Mullins could set it, toan expression matching the bewitching simplicity of the words of the song. I was glad to observe that his endeavours were appreciated and an encore demanded.
Decidedly the songs, taken as a whole, that the thieves sang that evening in the Skittle Saloon of the “Curly Badger” were much less objectionable than those that may be heard any evening at any of our London music halls, and everything was quiet and orderly. Of course I cannot say to what extent this may have been due to certain rules and regulations enforced by the determined looking gentleman who served behind the bar. There was one thing, however, that he could not enforce, and that was the kindliness that had induced them to meet together that evening. I had before heard, as everybody has, of “honour amongst thieves,” but I must confess that I had never suspected that compassion and charity were amongst the links that bound them together; and when I heard the statement from the chair of the amount subscribed (the “raffle” was a matter of form, and the silk handkerchief a mere delicate concealment of the free gift of shillings), when I heard the amount and looked round and reckoned how much a head that might amount to, and further, when I made observation of the pinched and poverty-stricken aspect of the owners of the said heads, I am ashamed almost to confess that if within the next few days I had caught an investigating hand in my coat-tail pockets, I should scarcely have had the heart to resist.
The Beginning of the Downhill Journey.—Candidates for Newgate Honours.—Black Spots of London.—Life from the Young Robber’s Point of View.—The Seedling Recruits the most difficult to reform.—A doleful Summing-up.—A Phase of the Criminal Question left unnoticed.—Budding Burglars.—Streams which keep at full flood the Black Sea of Crime.—The Promoters of“Gallows Literature.”—Another Shot at a Fortress of the Devil.—“Poison-Literature.”—“Starlight Sall.”—“Panther Bill.”
Itis quite true that, counting prostitutes and receivers of stolen goods, there are twenty thousand individuals eating the daily bread of dishonesty within the city of London alone; there are many more than these. And the worst part of the business is, that those that are omitted from the batch form the most painful and repulsive feature of the complete picture. Shocking enough is it to contemplate the white-haired, tottering criminal holding on to the front of the dock because he dare not trust entirely his quaking legs, and with no more to urge in his defence than Fagin had when it came to the last—“an old man, my lord, a very old man;” and we give him our pity ungrudgingly because we are no longer troubled with fears for his hostility as regards the present or the future. It is all over with him or very nearly. The grave yawns forhim and we cannot help feeling that after all he has hurt himself much more than he has hurt us, and when we reflect on the awful account he will presently be called on to answer, our animosity shrinks aside, and we would recommend him to mercy if it were possible. No, it is not those who have run the length of their tether of crime that we have to fear, but those who by reason of their tender age are as yet but feeble toddlers on the road that leads to the hulks. It would be instructive as well as of great service if reliable information could be obtained as to the beginning of the down-hill journey by our juvenile criminals. Without doubt it would be found that in a lamentably large number of cases the beginning did not rest in the present possessors at all, but that they were bred and nurtured in it, inheriting it from their parents as certain forms of physical disease are inherited.
In very few instances are theytrainedto thieving by a father who possibly has gone through all the various phases of criminal punishment, from the simple local oakum shed and treadmill to the far-away stone quarry and mineral mine, and so knows all about it. The said human wolf and enemy of all law and social harmony, his progenitor, does not take his firstborn on his knee as soon as he exhibits symptoms of knowing right from wrong, and do his best to instil into his young mind what as a candidate for Newgate honours the first principles of his life should be.
This would be bad enough, but what really happens is worse. To train one’s own child to paths of rectitudeit is necessary to make him aware of the existence of paths of iniquity and wrong, that when inadvertently he approaches the latter, he may recognise and shun them. So on the other hand, if by the devil’s agency a child is to be made bold and confident in the wrong road, the right must be exhibited to him in a light so ridiculous as to make it altogether distasteful to him. Still a comparison is instituted, and matters may so come about that one day he may be brought to re-consider the judiciousness of his choice and perhaps to reverse his previous decision. But if he has received no teaching at all; if in the benighted den in which he is born, and in which his childish intellect dawns, no ray of right and truth ever penetrates, and he grows into the use of his limbs and as much brains as his brutish breeding affords him, and with no other occupation before him than to follow in the footsteps of his father the thief—how much more hopeless is his case?
Does the reader ask, are there such cases? I can answer him in sorrowful confidence, that in London alone they may be reckoned in thousands. In parts of Spitalfields, in Flower and Dean Street, and in Kent Street, and many other streets that might be enumerated, they are the terror of small shopkeepers, and in Cow Cross, with its horrible chinks in the wall that do duty for the entrance of courts and alleys—Bit Alley, Frying Pan Alley, Turk’s Head-court, and Broad Yard, they swarm like mites in rotten cheese. As a rule, the police seldom make the acquaintance of this thievish small fry (if they did, the estimated number of London robbers would beconsiderably augmented); but occasionally, just as a sprat will make its appearance along with a haul of mackerel, one reads in the police reports of “Timothy Mullins, a very small boy, whose head scarcely reached the bar of the dock;” or of “John Smith, a child of such tender age that the worthy magistrate appeared greatly shocked,” charged with some one of the hundred acts of petty pilfering by means of which the poor little wretches contrive to stave off the pangs of hunger. Where is the use of reasoning with Master Mullins on his evil propensities? The one propensity of his existence is that of the dog—to provide against certain gnawing pains in his belly. If he has another propensity, it is to run away out of dread for consequences, which is dog-like too. All the argument you can array against this little human waif with one idea, will fail to convince him of his guilt; he has his private and deeply-rooted opinion on the matter, you may depend, and if he screws his fists into his eyes, and does his earnest best to make them water—if when in the magisterial presence he contorts his countenance in affected agony, it is merely because he perceives from his worship’s tone that he wishes to agonize him, and is shrewd enough to know that to “give in best,” as he would express it, is the way to get let off easy.
But supposing that he were not overawed by the magisterial presence, and felt free to speak what is foremost in his mind unreservedly as he would speak it to one of his own set. Then he would say, “It is all very fine for you to sit there, you that have not only had a jollygood breakfast, but can afford to sport a silver toothpick to pick your teeth with afterwards, it is all very fine for you to preach to me that I never shall do any good, but one of these days come to something that’s precious bad, if I don’t cut the ways of thieving, and take to honest ways. There’s so many different kinds of honest ways.Yoursis a good ’un. I ain’t such a fool as not to know that it’s better to walk in honest ways like themyou’vegot into, and to wear gold chains and velvet waistcoats, than to prowl about in ragged corduroys, and dodge the pleeseman, and be a prig: but how am I to get into them sorts of honest ways? Will you give me a hist up to ’em? Will you give me a leg-up—I’m such a little cove, you see—on to the bottom round of the ladder that leads up to ’em? If it ain’t in your line to do so, p’raps you could recommend me to a lady or gentleman that would? No! Then, however amIto get into honest ways? Shall I make a start for ’em soon as I leaves this ere p’lice office, from which you are so werry kind as to discharge me? Shall I let the chances of stealing a turnip off a stall, or a loaf out of a baker’s barrow, go past me, while I keep straight on, looking out for a honest way?—straight on, and straight on, till I gets the hungry staggers (younever had the hungry staggers, Mr. Magistrate), and tumble down on the road? I am not such a fool, thank’e. I don’t see the pull of it. I can do better in dishonest ways. I’m much obliged toYOU. I’m sure of a crust, though a hard ’un, while I stick to the latter, and if I break down, you’ll take care of me for a spell, and fatten me up a bit; but s’pose Igo on the hunt after them honest ways you was just now preaching about, and I miss ’em, what am I then? A casual pauper, half starved on a pint of skilly, or ‘a shocking case of destitution,’ and the leading character in a coroner’s inquest!” All this Master Timothy Mullins might urge, and beyond favouring him with an extra month for contempt of court, what could the magistrate do or say?
Swelling the ranks of juvenile thieves we find in large numbers the thief-born. Writing on this subject, a reverend gentleman of wisdom and experience says, “Some are thieves from infancy. Their parents are thieves in most cases; in others, the children are orphans, or have been forsaken by their parents, and in such cases the children generally fall into the hands of the professional thief-trainer. In every low criminal neighbourhood there are numbers of children who never knew their parents, and who are fed and clothed by the old thieves, and made to earn their wages by dishonest practices. When the parent thieves are imprisoned or transported, their children are left to shift for themselves, and so fall into the hands of the thief-trainer. Here, then, is one great source of crime. These children are nurtured in it. They come under no good moral influence; and until the ragged-schools were started, they had no idea of honesty, not to mention morality and religion. Sharpened by hunger, intimidated by severe treatment, and rendered adroit by vigilant training, this class of thieves is perhaps the most numerous, the most daring, the cleverest, and the most difficult to reform.In a moral point of view, these savages are much worse off than the savages of the wilderness, inasmuch as all the advantages of civilization are made to serve their criminal habits. The poor, helpless little children literally grow up into a criminal career, and have no means of knowing that they are wrong; they cannot help themselves, and have strong claims on the compassion of every lover of his species.”
Truly enough these seedling recruits of the criminal population are the most difficult to reform. They are impregnable alike to persuasion and threatening. They have an ingrain conviction that it isyouwho are wrong, not them. That you are wrong in the first place in appropriating all the good things the world affords, leaving none for them but what they steal; and in the next place, they regard all your endeavours to persuade them to abandon the wretched life of a thief for the equally poor though more creditable existence of the honest lad, as humbug and selfishness. “No good feeling is ever allowed to predominate; all their passions are distorted, all their faculties are perverted. They believe the clergy are all hypocrites, the judges and magistrates tyrants, and honest people their bitterest enemies. Believing these things sincerely, and believing nothing else, their hand is against every man, and the more they are imprisoned the more is their dishonesty strengthened.”