London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (24 page)

Of very ready sale are ‘fish got from the gate’ (stolen from Billingsgate); ‘sawney’ (thieved bacon), and ‘flesh found in Leadenhall’ (butcher’s-meat stolen from that market). I was told by one of the most respectable tradesmen in Leadenhall-market, that it was infested – but not now to so great an extent as it was – with lads and young men, known there as ‘finders’. They carry bags round their necks, and pick up bones, or offal, or pieces of string, or bits of papers, or ‘anything, sir, please, that a poor lad, that has neither father nor mother, and is werry hungry, can make a ha’penny by to get him a bit of bread, please, sir.’ This is often but a cover for stealing pieces of meat, and the finders, with their proximate market for disposal of their meat in the lowest lodging-houses in Whitechapel, go boldly about their work, for the butchers, if the ‘finder’ be detected, ‘won’t’, I was told by a sharp youth who then was at a low lodging-house in Keate-street, ‘go bothering theirselves to a beak, but gives you a scruff of the neck and a kick and lets you go. But some of them kicks werry hard.’ The tone and manner of this boy – and it is a common case enough with the ‘prigs’ – showed that he regarded hard kicking merely as one of the inconveniences to which his business-pursuits were unavoidably subjected; just as a struggling housekeeper might complain of the unwelcome calls of the tax-gatherers. These depredations are more frequent in Leadenhall-market than in any of the others, on account of its vicinity to Whitechapel. Even the Whitechapel meat-market is less the scene of prey, for it is a series of shops, while Leadenhall presents many stalls, and the finders seem loath to enter shops without some plausible pretext.

Groceries, tea especially, stolen from the docks, warehouses, or shops, are things in excellent demand among the customers of a lodging-house fence. Tea, known or believed to have been stolen ‘genuine’ from any dock,
is bought and sold very readily; 1
s
. 6
d
., however, is a not unfrequent price for what is known as 5
s
. tea. Sugar, spices, and other descriptions of stolen grocery, are in much smaller request.

Wearing-apparel is rarely bought by the fences I am treating of; but the stealers of it can and do offer their wares to the lodgers, who will often, before buying, depreciate the garment, and say ‘It’s never been nothing better nor a Moses.’

‘Hens and chickens’ are a favourite theft, and ‘go at once to the pot’, but in no culinary sense. The hens and chickens of the roguish low lodging-houses are the publicans’ pewter measures; the bigger vessels are ‘hens’; the smaller are ‘chickens’. Facilities are provided for the melting of these stolen vessels, and the metal is sold by the thief – very rarely if ever, by the lodging-house keeper, who prefers dealing with the known customers of the establishment – to marine-store buyers.

A man who at one time was a frequenter of a thieves’ lodging-house, related to me a conversation which he chanced to overhear – he himself being then in what his class would consider a much superior line of business – between a sharp lad, apparently of twelve or thirteen years of age, and a lodging-house (female) fence. But it occurred some three or four years back. The lad had ‘found’ a piece of Christmas beef, which he offered for sale to his landlady, averring that it weighed 6 lbs. The fence said and swore that it wouldn’t weigh 3 lbs., but she would give him 5
d
. for it. It probably weighed above 4 lbs. ‘Fip-pence!’ exclaimed the lad, indignantly; ‘you haven’t no fairness. Vy, it’s sixpun’ and Christmas time. Fip-pence! A tanner and a flag (a sixpence and a four-penny piece) is the werry lowest terms.’ There was then a rapid and interrupted colloquy, in which the most frequent words were ‘Go to blazes!’ with retorts of ‘You go to blazes!’ and after strong and oathful imputations of dishonest endeavours on the part of each contracting party, to over-reach the other, the meat was sold to the woman for 6
d
.

Some of the ‘fences’ board, lodge, and clothe, two or three boys or girls, and send them out regularly to thieve, the fence usually taking all the proceeds, and if it be the young thief has been successful, he is rewarded with a trifle of pocket-money, and is allowed plenty of beer and tobacco.

One man, who keeps three low lodging-houses (one of which is a beer-shop), not long ago received from a lodger a valuable great-coat, which the man said he had taken from a gig. The fence (who was in a larger way of business than others of his class, and is reputed rich,) gave 10
s
. for the garment, asking at the same time, ‘Who was minding the gig?’ ‘A charity kid,’ was the answer. ‘Give him a deuce’ (2
d
.), ‘and stall him off’ (send
him an errand), said the fence, ‘and bring the horse and gig, and I’ll buy it.’ It was done, and the property was traced in two hours, but only as regarded the gig, which had already had a new pair of wheels attached to it, and was so metamorphosed, that the owner, a medical gentleman, though he had no moral doubt on the subject, could not swear to his own vehicle. The thief received only 4
l
. for gig and horse; the horse was never traced.

The licentiousness of the frequenters, and more especially of the juvenile frequenters, of low lodging-houses, must be even more briefly alluded to. In some of these establishments, men and women, boys and girls, – but perhaps in no case, or in very rare cases, unless they are themselves consenting parties, herd together promiscuously. The information which I have given from a reverend informant indicates the nature of the proceedings, when the sexes are herded indiscriminately, and it is impossible to present to the reader, in full particularity, the records of the vice practised.

Boys have boastfully carried on loud conversations, and from distant parts of the room, of their triumphs over the virtue of girls, and girls have laughed at and encouraged the recital. Three, four, five, six, and even more boys and girls have been packed, head and feet, into one small bed; some of them perhaps never met before. On such occasions any clothing seems often enough to be regarded as merely an incumbrance. Sometimes there are loud quarrels and revilings from the jealousy of boys and girls, and more especially of girls whose ‘chaps’ have deserted or been inveigled from them. At others, there is an amicable interchange of partners, and next day a resumption of their former companionship. One girl, then fifteen or sixteen, who had been leading this vicious kind of life for nearly three years, and had been repeatedly in prison, and twice in hospitals – and who expressed a strong desire to ‘get out of the life’ by emigration – said: ‘Whatever that’s bad and wicked, that any one can fancy could be done in such places among boys and girls that’s never been taught, or won’t be taught, better,
is
done, and night after night.’ In these haunts of low iniquity, or rather in the room into which the children are put, there are seldom persons above twenty. The younger lodgers in such places live by thieving and pocket-picking, or by prostitution. The charge for a night’s lodging is generally 2
d
., but smaller children have often been admitted for 1
d
. If a boy or girl resort to one of these dens at night without the means of defraying the charge for accommodation, the ‘mot of the ken’ (mistress of the house) will pack them off, telling them plainly that it will be no use
their returning until they have stolen something worth 2
d
. If a boy or girl do not return in the evening, and have not been heard to express their intention of going elsewhere, the first conclusion arrived at by their mates is that they have ‘got into trouble’ (prison).

The indiscriminate admixture of the sexes among adults, in many of these places, is another evil. Even in some houses considered of the better sort, men and women, husbands and wives, old and young, strangers and acquaintances, sleep in the same apartment, and if they choose, in the same bed. Any remonstrance at some act of gross depravity, or impropriety on the part of a woman not so utterly hardened as the others, is met with abuse and derision. One man who described these scenes to me, and had long witnessed them, said that almost the only women who ever hid their faces or manifested dislike of the proceedings they could not but notice (as far as he saw), were poor Irishwomen, generally those who live by begging: ‘But for all that,’ the man added, ‘an Irishman or Irishwoman of that sort will sleep anywhere, in any mess, to save a halfpenny, though they may have often a few shillings, or a good many, hidden about them.’

There is no provision for purposes of decency in some of the places I have been describing, into which the sexes are herded indiscriminately; but to this matter I can only allude. A policeman, whose duty sometimes called him to enter one of those houses at night, told me that he never entered it without feeling sick.

There are now fewer of such filthy receptacles than there were. Some have been pulled down – especially for the building of Commercial-street, in Whitechapel, and of New Oxford-street – and some have fallen into fresh and improved management. Of those of the worst class, however, there may now be at least thirty in London; while the low lodgings of all descriptions, good or bad, are more frequented than they were a few years back. A few new lodging-houses, perhaps half a dozen, have been recently opened, in expectations of a great influx of ‘travellers’ and vagrants at the opening of the Great Exhibition.

Of the Children in Low Lodging-houses

[pp.
277
–8] The informant whose account of patterers and of vagrant life in its other manifestations I have already given, has written from personal knowledge and observation the following account of the children in low lodging-houses:

‘Of the mass of the indigent and outcast,’ he says, ‘of whom the busy world know nothing, except from an occasional paragraph in the newspaper,
the rising generation, though most important, is perhaps least considered. Every Londoner must have seen numbers of ragged, sickly, and ill-fed children, squatting at the entrances of miserable courts, streets, and alleys, engaged in no occupation that is either creditable to themselves or useful to the community. These are, in many cases, those whose sole homes are in the low lodging-houses; and I will now exhibit a few features of the “juvenile performers” among the “London Poor”.

‘In many cases these poor children have lost
one
of their parents; in some, they are without either father or mother; but even when both parents are alive, the case is little mended, for if the parents be of the vagrant or dishonest class, their children are often neglected, and left to provide for the cost of their food and lodging as they best may. The following extract from the chaplain’s report of one of our provincial jails, gives a melancholy insight into the training of many of the families. It is not, I know, without exception; but, much as we could wish it to be otherwise, it is so general an occurrence, varied into its different forms, that it may be safely accounted as the rule of action.

‘“J. G. was born of poor parents. At five years old his father succeeded to a legacy of 500
l
. He was quiet, indolent, fond of drink, a good scholar, and had twelve children. He never sent any of them to school! ‘Telling lies,’ said the child, ‘I learned from my mother; she did things unknown to father, and gave me a penny not to tell him!’ The father (on leaving home) left, by request of the mother, some money to pay a man; she slipped up stairs, and told the children to say she was out.

‘“From ten to twelve years of age I used to go to the ale-house. I stole the money from my father, and got very drunk. My father never punished me for all this, as he ought to have done. In course of time I was apprenticed to a tanner; he ordered me to chapel, instead of which I used to play in the fields. When out of my time I got married, and still carried on the same way, starving my wife and children. I used to take my little boy, when only five years old, to the public-house, and make him drunk with whatever I drank myself. A younger one could act well a drunken man on the floor. My wife was a sober steady woman; but, through coming to fetch me home she learned to drink too. One of our children used to say, ‘Mam, you are drunk, like daddy.’”

‘It may be argued that this awful “family portrait” is not the average character, but I have witnessed too many similar scenes to doubt the
general
application of the sad rule.

‘Of those children of the poor, as has been before observed, the most have either no parents, or have been deserted by them, and have no
regular means of living, nor moral superintendance on the part of relatives or neighbours; consequently, they grow up in habits of idleness, ignorance, vagrancy, or crime. In some cases they are countenanced and employed. Here and there may be seen a little urchin holding a few onions in a saucer, or a diminutive sickly girl standing with a few laces or a box or two of lucifers. But even
these
go with the persons who have “set them up” daily to the public-house (and to the lodging-house at night); and after they have satisfied the cravings of hunger, frequently expend their remaining halfpence (if any) in gingerbread, and as frequently in gin. I have overheard a proposal for “half-a-quartern and a two-out” (glass) between a couple of shoeless boys under nine years old. One little fellow of eleven, on being remonstrated with, said that it was the only pleasure in life that he had, and he weren’t a-going to give that up. Both sexes of this juvenile class frequent, when they can raise the means, the very cheap and “flash” places of amusement, where the precocious delinquent acquires the most abandoned tastes, and are often allured by elder accomplices to commit petty frauds and thefts.

‘Efforts have been made to redeem these young recruits in crime from their sad career, with its inevitable results. In some cases, I rejoice to believe that success has crowned the endeavour. There is that, however, in the cunning hardihood of the majority of these immature delinquents, which presents almost insuperable barriers to benevolence, and of this I will adduce an instance.

‘A gentleman, living at Islington, who attends one of the city churches, is in the habit of crossing the piece of waste ground close to Saffron-hill. Here he often saw (close to the ragged school) a herd of boys, and as nearly as he could judge always the
same
boys. One of them always bowed to him as he passed. He thought – and thought right – that they were gambling, and after, on one occasion, talking to them very seriously, he gave each of them twopence and pursued his way. However, he found himself followed by the boy before alluded to, accompanied by a younger lad, who turned out to be his brother. Both in one breath begged to know if “his honour” could please give them any sort of a job. The gentleman gave them his card, inquired their place of residence (a low lodging-house) and the next morning, at nine o’clock, both youths were at his door. He gave them a substantial breakfast, and then took them into an out-house where was a truss of straw, and having himself taken off the band, he desired them to convey the whole,
one straw at a time
, across the garden and deposit it in another out-house. The work was easy and the terms liberal, as each boy was to get dinner and tea, and one shilling per day as long
as his services should be required. Their employer had to go to town, and left orders with one of his domestics to see that the youths wanted nothing, and to watch their proceedings; their occupation was certainly not laborious, but then it was
work
, and although that was the first of their requests, it was also the last of their wishes.