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[Transcriber's Note: Archaic spellings have been retained; obvious
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A table of contents has been added for the reader's convenience.]
SINKS OF LONDON LAID OPEN:
A
_Pocket Companion for the Uninitiated,_
TO WHICH IS ADDED A
MODERN FLASH DICTIONARY
CONTAINING ALL THE
CANT WORDS, SLANG TERMS, AND FLASH PHRASES
NOW IN VOGUE,
WITH
A LIST OF THE SIXTY ORDERS OF
PRIME COVES,
_The whole Forming a True Picture of London Life, Cadging Made Easy,
the He-She Man, Doings of the Modern Greeks, Snoozing Kens Depicted,
the Common Lodging-house Gallants, Lessons to Lovers of Dice, the
Gaming Table, etc._
EMBELLISHED WITH HUMOROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
London:
PUBLISHED BY J. DUNCOMBE.
1848.
[Illustration: [handwritten caption] Pub'd March 22d 1822 by G.
Humphrey 27 St. James's St. London. G. Cruikshank fec't.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. COMMON LODGING HOUSES, CADGERS, &c., &c.
CHAPTER II. ST. GILES'S--THE CADGER'S HEAD-QUARTERS.
CHAPTER III. THE CADGING HOUSE.
CHAPTER IV. A BEGGAR'S REPAST.
CHAPTER V. AN EVENING MEAL--A FEAST FOR AN ALDERMAN.
CHAPTER VI. A QUIET SCENE.
CHAPTER VII. A LITTLE LITERARY CONVERSATION.
CHAPTER VIII. THE GAMING TABLE.
CHAPTER IX. AN UNDER-DEPUTY.
CHAPTER X. THE RETURN;--AND A LITTLE UNKNOWN.
CHAPTER XI. THE LIFE OF LOW LIFE; OR THE GLORIOUS FINISH OF THE WEEK.
CHAPTER XII. ONE NOISE SUBSTITUTED FOR ANOTHER.--THE CLAMOURS OF STRIFE
EXCHANGED FOR THE SONGS OF PEACE.
CHAPTER XIII. THE CLOSE OF THE NIGHT.
FLASH DICTIONARY.
THE SIXTY ORDERS OF PRIME COVES.
THE
Dens of London
EXPOSED.
CHAPTER I.
COMMON LODGING HOUSES, CADGERS, &c., &c.
These two subjects are, perhaps now the only ones remaining, in what
is termed the "walks of life," of which a correct description has not
yet been given. All the old topics, such as the beauties of the
country, and the ancient stories of love and heroism, which have
afforded so much employment to the pencil, the muse, and the worker-up
of novels, have long been considered as the beaten track; and the
relaters of fiction, at least those who lay claim to any thing like
originality, have been fain to leave the romantic path, with its old
castles and wondrous deeds, and so forth, and seek for heroes behind a
counter, amidst the common-place details of business, and for scenes
amongst the intricate windings of lanes and alleys. In short, novelty
is the grand charm for this novel-writing age.
Independent of the hosts of "Military and Naval Sketches of Mr.
Such-a-one," "the Author of So-and-So's Reminiscences," &c., with the
usual abundance of matter, that daily crowd from the press, we may
notice amongst the really useful works that have lately appeared, the
"Old Bailey Experience," "Essays on the Condition of the People," "the
Dishonest Practices of Household Servants," and "the Machinery of
Crime in England, or the Connection between the Thieves and Flash
Houses;" but, valuable as these articles are, and they are certainly
of some importance to society, has there any one, we might ask, ever
entered into the Common Lodging House,--the Vagabond's Home,--a place
that abounds in character and crime? The only information which we
have had in these dens of poverty and vice, has been merely through
the Police Reports, when some unfortunate defaulter had been taken out
of one of those skulking-holes. On such occasions we are told, amongst
the usual remarks, that the accommodation in those houses were
exceedingly cheap, and that the lodgers herded together
indiscriminately, &c.; but how such houses were really conducted, and
of the manners and characters of most of the people who frequented
them, the public may be said to be almost in perfect ignorance. In
like manner with that fraternity called "Cadgers," our knowledge has
been equally limited. No correct account has ever yet been given of
this idle, but cunning class of the community. All that we have been
told concerning them, is, to use the common phrase, but mere hearsay.
We remember reading, some few years ago, of one of those begging
gentry boasting of being able to make five shillings a day. He
considered that sixty streets were easily got through, from sunrise to
sunset, and that it was strange indeed if he could not collect a penny
in every street. Now, this very same anecdote we read, not many days
since, in a new work, entitled, "A History of the Working Classes," as
something, of course, just brought to light.
The story, too, in that by-gone piece of notoriety, "Pierce Egan's
Life in London," about the beggar's opera, where the lame and the
blind, and other disordered individuals, were said to meet nightly, in
a place called the "back slums," to throw off their infirmities, and
laugh at the credulity of the public, was, not a great many weeks ago,
trumped up into a paragraph in one of our weekly journals as a fact
just discovered, and the curious were referred to a certain house in
St. Giles's, in corroboration thereof. Indeed, we think it would be
easy to prove that what little is known of the Common Lodging House,
and those people the Cadgers, is neither more nor less than mere
reports, and which like the generality of reports, contain not always
the truth.
It certainly appears strange that those two subjects, which offer such
an abundance of original matter to writers and other observers of
mankind, should have remained so long without any other notice than
merely that they were known to exist. Seemingly strange, however, as
this singularity is, sufficient reasons, perhaps, may be given for it.
There can be little doubt, at least there is none in our mind, that
since the commencement of the _Spectator_ and _Tatler_, periodicals
have principally assisted in developing, if we may so term it, the
powers of observation. Intelligent readers of this kind of literature
would naturally turn away from the insipid stuff of the rhymer, and
the equally sentimental trash of the getter-up of fiction, of which
our old magazines were mostly composed, to the more rational parts of
the publication, such as original essays, critiques, stories which had
really some truth for their foundation, or any thing which bore the
stamp of newness. This secret of attraction would, of course, soon be
found out, by those most interested in the sale; but the grand
introduction of utility was at that period when the _Waverley_ novels
made their appearance. Then, instead of the exaggerated imaginings of
a diseased brain, with all its superhuman agency, we had History
beautifully blended with Fiction, or rather Truth, accurate
descriptions of nature, and correct pictures of life, both high and
low. We all remember what powerful sensations those literary wonders
at first created, and what a crowd of imitators followed in their
train. The Magazines soon caught up the tone, and became doubly
interesting, with the lives of private soldiers, "Two or Three Years
in the Peninsula," and the "Subaltern." The camp and the man-of-war
now poured forth their vast stories of anecdote and adventure, in all
shapes and sizes--octavo and article--sketches of character, local
customs and antiquities, filled up the other attractions of the day;
and to read for improvement, while we read for amusement, was almost
considered the fashionable employment of time.
These excellent topics, doubtless, had their season, and when done,
our wholesale dealers in wisdom, the Publishers, well knew that their
great patron, the public, would not be content with what had gone
before. Something was to be again produced, that would make the press
move; and that something, we believe, every one will agree with us,
that, notwithstanding the splendour of Genius which the imaginative
tribe are endowed with in this mental age, was to be that which was
_new_--that, in fact, which would _sell_. This, as might be expected,
caused the booksellers and their hacks to look around them, and the
tempting gilt which the former held out, (scanty though the quantity
always be!) was yet too keen a spur to the flagging wits of hungry
scribblers, to allow them to lie idle. Society was once more
ransacked, and that which formerly gave pleasure was now found to be
too old for entertainment. Bad practices were discovered to exist
amongst those with whom honesty was thought to dwell--the seat of
justice was found to be but the seat of corruption--and so high in
repute had Unions risen in the land, that they even extended to the
very pests of society--the men who lived by plunder. It is to this
desire for change, then, that we are indebted for those admirable
novels of the French writer Paul de Kock, which have lately appeared;
and wherein are portrayed, with such faithfulness, the plodding
manners and steady characters of shop-keepers, instead of the
high-toned conversation of polished society or the homely but innocent
simplicities of a country life--that old ground-work of fiction. The
same may be said of those "Essays on the Condition of the
People,"--"Household Servants,"--the "Old Bailey Experience," and
those equally instructive articles on the "Machinery of Crime in
England, or the Connection between the Thieves and the Flash Houses,"
which all owe their origin to the same cause. It therefore can
scarcely excite surprise that the Common Lodging House and Cadger
should have remained so long without notice, when, if we take but a
little time to reflect, we shall easily perceive that this work of
observation is but just now going on, and that the very period in
which we now live, is what with justice may be called but--the Age of
Inquiry.
The Common Lodging House, as the reader no doubt understands, is a
house of accommodation for all classes--no matter what may be their
appearance or character--only provided that they can procure, when
required, the necessary quantity of coins. In every considerable
village in the kingdom there is a lodging-place called the "Beggars'
House;" and in every town, more or less, according to its size or
population. In London there are hundreds and thousands of houses of
this description, from the poor tenant of a room or cellar, with its
two or three shake-down-beds upon the floor, to the more substantial
landlord with his ten or twenty houses, and two or three hundred beds.
Among these the houseless wanderer may find shelter, from a penny to
three halfpence, twopence, threepence, fourpence, and sixpence a
night, on beds of iron, wood, and straw, or on that more lofty couch a
hammock; and some (that is, the penny-a-night lodger) have often no
softer resting place than the hard floor. This common lodging-house
business is a thriving trade; only small capital is required, for an
old house will do, no matter how the rain beats in, or the wind
whistles through, in a back street or filthy lane, for the more
wretched the neighbourhood, the better; old bedsteads and beds,
clothes of the coarsest description, with a few forms, and a table or
so, for the kitchen, are all that is necessary for the concern. The
front room, or what is usually termed the parlour, is generally fitted
up into a shop, or, when this is not the case, there is always some
accommodating neighbour, who has the following articles for sale:
viz., bacon, butter, cheese, bread, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco,
potatoes, red and salt herrings, smuggled liquors, and table-beer.
Some add the savoury profession of the cook to that of the huckster,
and dish up a little roast and boiled beef, mutton, pork, vegetables,
&c. The whole of these, the reader may be assured, are of a very
moderate quality: they are retailed to the lodgers at very profitable
prices, and in the smallest quantities, such as a halfpenny worth of
butter, bacon, cheese, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, &c.; and, for the
trifling sum of one penny, the poor epicure may gratify his palate
with a taste of beef, mutton, and so on. Very little credit is given
in those creditable places, and that only to those who are well-known;
they who have not that advantage, often are compelled to take the
handkerchief off their necks, the coat, and even the very skirts off
their backs, to give to the cautious housekeeper, before they can
procure a night's lodging, or a morsel of food; indeed, in the
country, it is a common thing, when a traveller (which is the
respectable appellation by which the alms-seeking gentry designate
themselves) seeks for a night's lodging, for the landlord to refuse
admittance, unless the applicant carries a bundle, which is looked
upon as a kind of security, should he not have the desirable in his
pocket.
It may naturally be supposed that, where there are such little outlays
and such large returns, that good round sums must be produced; indeed,
there are few who commence this kind of life, but soon secure to
themselves an independency. There are many whom we could mention, who
have accumulated such large fortunes by the encouragement of
vagrancy, as now to be the proprietors of vast property in houses, and
who still carry on large establishments by means of deputies, and in
their deputies' names, while they themselves live in fashionable style
on the borders of the town. The servants that are kept in those houses
are in general men, they being considered better adapted to keep peace
and quietness than women. It is customary with lodgers, who have
anything of value, to deposit it with the landlord, and, in most
cases, it is returned with safety. There are some whose character
stands so high for honesty, that twenty pounds and upwards may be
entrusted with them; but there are those again with whom it would not
be prudent to leave a rag, and who often colleague with ruffians to
get up a row during the night, to rob the lodgers, they of course
coming in for a share of the booty. It is true, too, that in a great
many of those houses men and women scorn all restraint, and hate any
thing in the shape of a barrier. As regards cleanliness very little
can be said for any; they all abound, more or less, with those small
creeping things, which are said to be so prolific on the other side of
the Tweed, and in the _dear country_. To delineate, however, the
characters of the different houses, comes not at present within our
limits; that of itself would fill volumes with the most extraordinary
interest; and what then would be the descriptions of the crowds who
frequent such houses--the thousands and tens of thousands who exist in
this country by what is called their wits--whose trade is imposture,
and whose whole life one continued exercise of the intellects? The
flash letter-writer and the crawling supplicant; the pretended
tradesmen, who live luxuriously on the tales of others, and the real
claimant of charity, whose honest shame will hardly allow him to beg
for sufficient to procure the hard comforts of a bed of straw; the
match seller and ballad-singer, whose convenient profession unite the
four lucrative callings of begging, selling, singing, and stealing;
gangs of shipwrecked sailors, or rather, fellows whose iron
constitutions enable them for the sake of sympathy, to endure the most
inclement weather, in almost a state of nudity, and among them only
one perhaps ever heard the roar of the ocean; jugglers, coiners,
tramps (mechanics seeking work), strolling players, with all the
hangers-on of fairs, races, assizes, stable-yards; besides the hosts
of Irish who yearly migrate from sweet Erin to happy England, to beg,
labour, and steal. Here then, is a wide field for speculation, a vast
common in life, where a character may be almost picked up at every
step--mines of vice and misery as yet unexplored. A road that has
never yet been trodden by the man of the pen, and very rarely by him
of the pencil. If a few straggling mendicants, or some solitary
wretch, have occasionally been sketched, the great centre of the sons
of Cain--the outcast's home--has never yet been entered; that place
has remained sacred to the tell-tale eye of each observer. But enough
of this: we will now enter among these new scenes, and in order to
give a correct view of the ways and doings of this strange life, will
at once introduce the reader to the head-quarters of the cadgers--St.
Giles's.
[Illustration]