is generally less conversation among the frequenters of the low
lodging-houses than might be expected. Some are busy cooking, some
(in the better houses) are reading, many are drowsy and nodding, and
many are smoking. In perhaps a dozen places of the worst and filthiest
class, indeed, smoking is permitted even in the sleeping-rooms; but
it is far less common than it was even half-a-dozen years back, and
becomes still less common yearly. Notwithstanding so dangerous a
practice, fires are and have been very unfrequent in these places.
There is always some one awake, which is one reason. The lack of
conversation, I ought to add, and the weariness and drowsiness, are
less observable in the lodging-houses patronised by thieves and women
of abandoned character, whose lives are comparatively idle, and whose
labour a mere nothing. In their houses, if the conversation be at all
general, it is often of the most unclean character. At other times it
is carried on in groups, with abundance of whispers, shrugs, and slang,
by the members of the respective schools of thieves or lurkers.
* * * * *
I have now to speak of the habitual violation of all the injunctions
of law, of all the obligations of morality, and of all the restraints
of decency, seen continually in the vilest of the lodging-houses. I
need but cite a few facts, for to detail minutely might be to disgust.
In some of these lodging-houses, the proprietor--or, I am told, it
might be more correct to say, the proprietress, as there are more
women than men engaged in the nefarious traffic carried on in these
houses--are “fences,” or receivers of stolen goods in a small way.
_Their_ “fencing,” unless as the very exception, does not extend to
any plate, or jewellery, or articles of value, but is chiefly confined
to provisions, and most of all to those which are of ready sale to the
lodgers.
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, its 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 the 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 expectation of a great influx of
“travellers” and vagrants at the opening of the Great Exhibition.
OF THE CHILDREN IN LOW LODGING-HOUSES.
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 women; 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 to 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 outhouse 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.
“Taking advantage of an adjoining closet, the servant perceived
that the weight even of a straw had been too much for these hopeful
boys. They were both seated on the truss, and glibly recounting some
exploits of their own, and how they had been imposed upon by others.
The eldest--about fourteen--was vowing vengeance upon ‘Taylor Tom’
for attempting to ‘walk the barber’ (seduce his ‘gal’); while the
younger--who had scarcely seen eleven summers--averred that it was
‘wery good of the swell to give them summut to eat,’ but ‘precious bad
to be shut up in that crib all day without a bit o’ backer’. Before
the return of their patron they had transported all the straw to its
appointed designation; as it was very discernible, however, that this
had been effected by a wholesale process, the boys were admonished,
paid, and dismissed. They are now performing more ponderous work in one
of the penal settlements. Whether the test adopted by the gentleman in
question was the best that might have been resorted to, I need not now
inquire.
“It would be grateful to my feelings if in these disclosures I
could omit the misdemeanors of the other sex of juveniles; but I am
obliged to own, on the evidence of personal observation, that there
are girls of ages varying from eleven to fifteen who pass the day
with a ‘fakement’ before them (‘Pity a poor orphan’), and as soon as
evening sets in, loiter at shop-windows and ogle gentlemen in public
walks, making requests which might be expected only from long-hardened
prostitution. Their nights are generally passed in a low lodging-house.
They frequently introduce themselves with ‘Please, sir, can you tell
me what time it is?’ If they get a kindly answer, some other casual
observations prepare the way for hints which are as unmistakeable as
they are unprincipled.”
OF THE LOW LODGING-HOUSES THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.
Further to elucidate this subject, full of importance, as I have shown,
I give an account of low lodging-houses (or “padding-kens”) at the
“stages” (so to speak) observed by a patterer “travelling” from London
to Birmingham.
I give the several towns which are the usual sleeping places of the
travellers, with the character and extent of the accommodation provided
for them, and with a mention of such incidental matters as seemed
to me, in the account I received, to be curious or characteristic.
Circuitous as is the route, it is the one generally followed. Time
is not an object with a travelling patterer. “If I could do better
in the way of tin,” said one of the fraternity to me, “in a country
village than in London, why I’d stick to the village--if the better tin
lasted--for six months; aye, sir, for six years. What’s places to a man
like me, between grub and no grub?” It is probable that on a trial,
such a man would soon be weary of the monotony of a village life; but
into that question I need not now enter.
I give each stage without the repetition of stating that from “here to
there” is so many miles; and the charge for a lodging is at such and
such a rate. The distance most frequently “travelled” in a day varies
from ten to twenty miles, according to the proximity of the towns,
and the character and capabilities (for the patterer’s purposes) of
the locality. The average charge for a lodging, in the better sort of
country lodging-houses, is 4_d._ a night,--at others, 3_d._ In a slack
time, a traveller, for 4_d._, has a bed to himself. In a busy time--as
at fairs or races--he will account himself fortunate if he obtain _any_
share of a bed for 4_d._ At some of the places characterised by my
informant as “rackety,” “queer,” or “Life in London,” the charge is as
often 3_d._ as 4_d._
The first stage, then, most commonly attained on tramp, is--
_Romford._--“It’s a good circuit, sir,” said my principal informant,
“and if you want to see life between from London to Birmingham, why you
can stretch it and see it for 200 miles.” The Romford “house of call”
most frequented by the class of whom I treat, is the King’s Arms (a
public-house.) There is a back-kitchen for the use of travellers, who
pay something extra if they choose to resort, and are decent enough
to be admitted, into the tap-room. “Very respectable, sir,” said an
informant, “and a proper division of married and single, of men and
women. Of course they don’t ask any couple to show their marriage
lines; no more than they do any lord and lady, or one that ain’t a
lady, if she’s with a lord, at any fash’nable hotel at Brighton. I’ve
done tidy well on slums about ‘ladies in a Brighton hotel,’ just by the
Steyne; werry tidy.” In this house they make up forty beds; some of
them with curtains.
_Chelmsford._--The Three Queens (a beer-shop.) “A rackety place, sir,”
said the man, “one of the showfuls; a dicky one; a free-and-easy. You
can get a pint of beer and a punch of the head, all for 2_d._ As for
sleeping on a Saturday night there, ‘O, no, we never mention it.’ It
mayn’t be so bad, indeed it ain’t, as some London lodging-houses,
because there ain’t the chance, and there’s more known about it.”
Fourteen beds.
_Braintree._--The Castle (a beer-shop.) “Takes in all sorts and all
sizes; all colours and all nations; similar to what’s expected of
the Crystal Palace. I was a _muck-snipe_ when I was there--why, a
muck-snipe, sir, is a man regularly done up, coopered, and humped
altogether--and it was a busyish time, and when the deputy paired
off the single men, I didn’t much like my bed-mate. He was a
shabby-genteel, buttoned up to the chin, and in the tract line. I
thought of Old Scratch when I looked at him, though he weren’t a
Scotchman, I think. I tipped the wink to an acquaintance there, and
told him I thought my old complaint was coming on. That was, to kick
and bite like a horse, in my sleep, a’cause my mother was terrified
by a wicious horse not werry long afore I was born. So I dozed on the
bed-side, and began to whinny; and my bed-mate jumped up frightened,
and slept on the floor.” Twenty-two beds.
_Thaxton._--“A poor place, but I stay two days, it’s so comfortable and
so country, at the Rose and Crown. It’s a sort of rest. It’s decent and
comfortable too, and it’s about 6_d._ a night to me for singing and
patter in the tap-room. That’s my cokum (advantage).” Ten beds.
_Saffron Walden._--The Castle. “Better now--was very queer. Slovenly
as could be, and you had to pay for fire, though it was a house of
call for curriers and other tradesmen, but they never mix with us.
The landlord don’t care much whose admitted, or how they go on.”
Twenty-four beds.