HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE BRITISH THIEF.
_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, and afterwards 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, _never_ to 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, he should 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 warm from 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 same
kind 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 I depend 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 because of 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’s den!—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, or even 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 host he 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 not _look_ like 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 have
_appeared_ thieves; 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 the
wearer; 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, it may 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 his short-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, to an 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.