The London Underworld in the Victorian Period: Authentic First-Person Accounts by Beggars, Thieves and Prostitutes: v. 1

by Mayhew, Henry

  Arrived in England, she found her friends reluctant to believe the tale she told them, and found herself thrown on her own resources. Without a character, and with a mind very much disturbed, she found it difficult to do anything respectable, and at last had recourse to prostitution;—so difficult is it to come back to the right path when we have once strayed from it.

  Perhaps it is almost impossible to stop this traffic; but at any rate the infamous wretches who trade in it may be intimidated by publicity being given to their acts, and the indignation of the public being roused in consequence. What can we imagine more dreadful than kidnapping a confiding unsuspecting girl, in some cases we may say child, without exaggeration, for a girl of fifteen is not so very far removed from those who come within the provisions of the Bishop of Oxford’s Act? I repeat, what can be more horrible than transporting a girl, as it were, by false representations from her native land to a country of strangers, and condemning her against her will to a life of the most revolting slavery and degradation, without her having been guilty of any offence against an individual or against the laws of the land?

  It is difficult to believe that there can be many persons engaged in this white slave-trade, but it is undeniably true.

  It is not a question for the legislature; for what could Parliament do? The only way to decrease the iniquity is to widely disseminate the knowledge of the existence of such infamy, that those whom it most nearly concerns, may be put upon their guard, and thus be enabled to avoid falling into the trap so cunningly laid for them.

  Much praise is due to those benevolent societies who interest themselves in these matters, and especially to that which we have alluded to more than once—“The Society for the Protection of Women and Children,” over which Lord Raynham presides.

  Much good may be done by this means, and much misery prevented. The mines of Siberia, with all their terrors, would be preferred—even with the knout in prospective—by these poor girls, were the alternative proffered them, to the wretched life they are decoyed into leading. For all their hopes are blasted, all their feelings crushed, their whole existence blighted, and their life rendered a misery to them instead of a blessing and a means of rational enjoyment.

  The idea of slavery of any kind is repulsive to the English mind; but when that slavery includes incarceration, and mental as well as physical subjection to the dominant power by whom that durance is imposed, it becomes doubly and trebly repugnant. If it were simply the deprivation of air and exercise, or even the performance of the most menial offices, it might be borne with some degree of resignation by the sufferer, however unmerited the punishment. But here we have a totally different case: no offence is committed by the victim, but rather by nature, for what is her fault, but being pretty and a woman? For this caprice of the genius of form who presided over her birth she is condemned to a life of misery, degradation, and despair; compelled to receive caresses that are hateful to her, she is at one moment the toy of senile sensuality, and at others of impetuous juvenility, both alike loathsome, both alike detestable. If blandishments disgust her, words of endearment only make her state of desolation more palpable; while profusions of regard serve to aggravate the poignancy of her grief, all around her is hollow, all artificial except her wretchedness. When to this is added ostracism—banishment from one’s native country—the condition of the unfortunate woman is indeed pitiable, for there is some slight consolation in hearing one’s native language spoken by those around us, and more especially to the class from which these girls are for the most part taken. We must add pour comble d’ injustice, that there is no future for the girl, no reprieve, no hope of mercy, every hope is gone from the moment the prison tawdry is assumed. The condemnation is severe enough, for it is for life. When her beauty and her charms no longer serve to attract the libidinous, she sinks into the condition of a servant to others who have been ensnared to fill her place. Happiness cannot be achieved by her at any period of her servitude; there must always be a restless longing for the end, which though comparatively quick in arriving is always too tardy.

  The mind in time in many cases becomes depraved, and the hardness of heart that follows this depravity often prevents the girl from feeling as acutely as she did at first. To these religion is a dead letter, which is a greater and additional calamity. But to be brief, the victim’s whole life from first to last is a series of disappointments, combined with a succession of woes that excite a shudder by their contemplation, and which may almost justify the invocation of Death:—

  “Death, Death, oh amiable lovely death!

  Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!

  Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,

  Thou hate and terror to prosperity,

  And I will kiss thy detestable bones;

  And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows;

  And ring these fingers with thy household worms;

  And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,

  And be a carrion monster like thyself;

  Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil’st,

  And kiss thee as thy wife! Misery’s love,

  O, come to me!”

  SHAKESPERE, King John, Act iii. Scene 4.

  THIEVES AND SWINDLERS

  INTRODUCTION

  IN TRACING the geography of a river it is interesting to go to its source, possibly a tiny spring in the cleft of a rock in some mountain glen. You follow its windings, observing each tributary which flows into its gathering flood until it discharges its waters into the sea. We proceed in a similar manner to treat of the thieves and swindlers of the metropolis.

  Thousands of our felons are trained from their infancy in the bosom of crime; a large proportion of them are born in the homes of habitual thieves and other persons of bad character, and are familiarized with vice from their earliest years; frequently the first words they lisp are oaths and curses. Many of them are often carried to the beershop or gin palace on the breast of worthless drunken mothers, while others, clothed in rags, run at their heels or hang by the skirts of their petticoats. In their wretched abodes they soon learn to be deceitful and artful, and are in many cases very precocious. The greater number are never sent to school; some run idle about the streets in low neighbourhoods: others are sent out to beg throughout the city; others go out with their mothers and sit beside their stalls; while others sell a handful of matches or small wares in our public thoroughfares.

  One day, in going down a dark alley in the Borough, near Horsemonger Lane Gaol, we saw a little boy—an Irish cockney, who had been tempted to steal by other boys he was in the habit of associating with. He was stripped entirely naked, and was looking over a window on the first floor with a curious grin on his countenance. His mother had kept his clothes from him that day as a punishment for stealing, and to prevent him getting out of the house while she went out to her street-stall.

  In our brief sketch of the criminals of the metropolis, we have in the outset directed our attention to the sneaks or common thieves—by far the larger number of our criminal population—from whose ranks the expert pickpockets and the ingenious and daring burglars in most cases emerge. We have treated of the incipient stage of thieving, when the child of five or six years of age steals an apple, or an orange, or a handful of nuts from a stall, or an old pair of boots from a shop door, and then traced the after-stages of more daring crime.

  There are thousands of neglected children loitering about the low neighbourhoods of the metropolis, and prowling about the streets, begging and stealing for their daily bread. They are to be found in Westminster, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, St. Giles’s, New Cut, Lambeth, the Borough, and other localities. Hundreds of them may be seen leaving their parents’ homes and low lodging-houses every morning sallying forth in search of food and plunder. They are fluttering in rags and in the most motley attire. Some are orphans and have no one to care for them; others have left their homes and live in lodging-houses in the most improvident manner, never thinking of t
o-morrow; others are sent out by their unprincipled parents to beg and steal for a livelihood; others are the children of poor but honest and industrious people, who have been led to steal through the bad companionship of juvenile thieves. Many of them have never been at a day-school nor attended a Sunday or ragged-school, and have had no moral or religious instruction. On the contrary, they have been surrounded by the most baneful and degrading influences, and have been set a bad example by their parents and others with whom they came in contact, and are shunned by the honest and industrious classes of society. The chief agencies which have tended to ameliorate their condition are the ragged-schools, where they receive sound secular and religious instruction; the shoeblacks’ brigades, where they are trained in habits of honest industry; and the juvenile reformatories, which have been instituted for their moral and social elevation.

  Many of them are hungry, and have no food to eat nor money to purchase it, and readily steal when they find a suitable opportunity. Not having received the benefit of a sound moral training, they have not the conscientious scruples possessed by the children of honest parents; their only care is to avoid being detected in their felonies. When they successfully steal some article from a stall or shop-door, or rifle a till by entering the shop, they are congratulated on their expertness by their companions, and enjoy a larger share of plunder.

  The public streets of the metropolis are regarded by these ragged little felons and the children of honest industrious parents in a very different aspect. The latter walk the streets with their eyes sparkling with wonder and delight at the beautiful and grand sights of the metropolis. They are struck with the splendour of the shops and the elegance and stateliness of the public buildings, and with the dense crowds of people of various orders, and trains of vehicles thronging the streets. These little ragged thieves walk along the streets with very different emotions. They, too, in their own way, enjoy the sights and sounds of London. Amid the busy crowds many of them are to be seen sitting in groups on the pavement or loitering about in good-humour and merriment; yet ever and anon their keen roguish eyes sparkle as they look into the windows of the confectioners’, bakers’, and greengrocers’ shops, at the same time keeping a sharp eye on the policeman as he passes on his beat.

  These juvenile thieves find an ample field for plunder at the stalls and shop-doors in Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Edgeware Road, and similar localities, where many articles are exposed for sale, which can be easily disposed of to some of the low fences. In this manner thousands of our felons are trained to be expert and daring in crime, and are frequently tried and convicted before the Police Courts.

  This is the main source of the habitual felons of the metropolis. As these boys and girls grow up they commence a system of sneaking thefts over the metropolis, some purloining in shops, others gliding into areas and lobbies on various pretences, stealing articles from the kitchen, and when opportunity occurs carrying off the plate.

  As these young felons advance in years they branch off into three different classes, determined partly by their natural disposition and personal qualities, and partly by the circumstances in which they are placed. Many of them continue through life to sneak as common thieves, others become expert pickpockets, and some ultimately figure as burglars.

  A vast number of juvenile thieves as they grow up continue to carry on a system of petty felonies over the metropolis, and reside in the lowest neighbourhoods. Some pretend to sell laces and small wares to get a pretext to call at the houses of labouring people and tradesmen, and to go down the areas and enter the lobbies in fashionable streets. In addition to the paltry profits arising from these sales they get a livelihood by begging, and as a matter of course do not scruple to steal when they can find an opportunity.

  These common thieves are of both sexes, and of various ages, and are often characterized by mental imbecility and low cunning. Many of them are lazy in disposition and lack energy both of body and mind. They go out daily in vast shoals over the metropolis picking up a miserable and precarious livelihood, sometimes committing felonies in the houses they visit of considerable value.

  The pickpockets are of various ages and of different degrees of proficiency, from the little ragged urchin in St. Giles’s stealing a handkerchief at the tail of a gentleman’s coat, to the elegantly dressed and expert pickpocket promenading in the West-end and attending fashionable assemblies. Some are dressed as mechanics, others as clerks, some as smart business men, and others in fashionable attire. They are to be found on all public occasions, some of them clumsy and timid, others daring and most expert. Many of them continue to pursue this class of felonies in preference to any other. They receive a considerable accession to their numbers by young women, frequently servants who have been seduced, and cohabit with burglars, pickpockets, and others, and who are trained to this infamous profession, and in many cases are shoplifters.

  Many are trained to commit housebreaking and burglaries from fourteen to fifteen years of age. Boys are occasionally employed to enter through fanlights and windows, and to assist otherwise in plundering dwellings and shops. Some of them commit burglaries of small value in working neighbourhoods, where comparatively little ingenuity and skill are required, others plunder shops and warehouses and fashionable dwellings, which is generally done with greater care and ingenuity, and where the booty is often of higher value.

  In addition to the three classes we have named, the common thief, the pickpocket, and the burglar, there is another class of low ruffians who frequently cohabit with low women and prostitutes, and commit highway robberies. They often follow these degraded females on the streets, and attack persons who accost them, believing them to be prostitutes. At other times they garotte men on the street at midnight, or in the by-streets in the evening, and plunder them with violence. This class of persons are generally hardened in crime, and many of them are returned convicts.

  The habitual crime of the female portion of the community is in most cases associated with prostitution. We learn from statistics collected by the metropolitan constabulary for 1860, that there are nearly 7,000 open prostitutes or street-walkers in London, three fourths of whom we have reason to believe are addicted to stealing. While many of these belong to our native-born felon population, a large proportion have been seduced from the ranks of honest and industrious people in London, or have come up from the provinces, while a few of them are from the Continent.

  We believe that the most effective means of checking the crime of the metropolis is to have an efficient machinery of ragged schools in those low neighbourhoods, where neglected children are to be found, similar to the ragged school in George’s Yard, and to train them in honest employment, as in the shoeblack brigades or industrial schools.

  We learn from the statistics of the constabulary of the metropolis that juvenile crime has been considerably reduced within the past ten years. Several of our police inspectors have laboured with untiring industry to reform the lodging-houses and to introduce cleanliness and decency, where immorality and filth formerly prevailed. And noble exertions have been made by Christian societies to illumine these dark localities with the light of Christian truth.

  Yet much still remains to be done. And it is a problem worthy of our highest and wisest statesmen to consider whether adequate means to elevate this abandoned class are to be provided by voluntary effort, or by the paternal care of our Government from the public treasury.

  It is far easier to train the young in virtuous and industrious habits, than to reform the grown-up felon who has become callous in crime, and it is besides far more profitable to the State. To neglect them or inadequately to attend to their welfare gives encouragement to the growth of this dangerous class. On the other hand how noble the aim, to adopt wise and vigorous measures to provide for these children of adversity and misfortune, and to transform them into useful members of society!

  Our national reformatories are very useful in reclaiming those juveniles who have fallen into crime; but ragged sc
hools efficiently conducted would be of still higher value—as prevention is better than cure. In providing those noble machineries by voluntary effort, or by the State, we would wisely act as the minister of Divine Providence, and would thereby promote the best interests and prosperity of our country.

  We have also endeavoured to give a cursory sketch of the swindlers of the metropolis, who are generally of a different class from our felon population. They consist of persons embezzling the property of their employers; of sharpers plundering their dupes by tricks at card-playing, skittles, or otherwise; and of rogues abstracting the property of the public by false pretences. Many of these formerly belonged to the ranks of the honest and industrious working and middle-classes, and not a few of them are well connected, and have lived in fashionable society. By improvidence, extravagance, or dissipation, they have squandered their means, and have now basely adopted a course of systematic dishonesty rather than lead an industrious life. Some of them have led a fast life in the metropolis, and are persons of ruined fortune. Others are indolent in disposition, and carry on a subtle system of public robbery rather than pursue some honest occupation or calling.

  It may throw considerable light on the crime of London to look to the criminal statistics of the Metropolitan Police Force. We find a statement of those who were apprehended or proceeded against in the year ending 29th September, 1860.

  Under the class of persons proceeded against on indictment there are:—

  Known thieves 813

  Prostitutes 159