THEIR NUMBER AND THEIR DIFFICULTIES.
_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_.
THE happily 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-worked policemen 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 to be 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_, or _break 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—_scroby_ or _claws 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,” and _apropos_ of 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 hardships that 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 is _my_ case, but you can
take it so if you like. _She_ isn’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; _we_ haint 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 you _do_ feel 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 the
_other_ feeling, 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 contemplated system 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 that reliable 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 act _against_ them—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 the law’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 be a
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 afford inadequate
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 earning honest 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 similar circumstances, 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 bitterly repents 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 he _is_ a 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 embarrassment on 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 time and 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 during two
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 of the 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 that did 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’s _one_ blessin’!”
“Ah, now there’s where you are mistaken, Bull. They can be worse a
thousand times, and they _will_, 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 you _must_ begin 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 of their 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.