(snuff-boxes,) skins and dummies (purses and pocket-books).
_b._ “Wires,” or those who pick ladies’ pockets.
_c._ “Prop-nailers,” those who steal pins and brooches.
_d._ “Thimble-screwers,” those who wrench watches from their guards.
_e._ “Shop-lifters,” or those who purloin goods from shops while
examining articles.
2. “Sneaksmen,” or those who plunder by means of stealth.
_a._ Those who purloin goods, provisions, money, clothes, old metal,
&c.
i. “Drag Sneaks,” or those who steal goods or luggage from carts and
coaches.
ii. “Snoozers,” or those who sleep at railway hotels, and decamp with
some passenger’s luggage or property in the morning.
iii. “Star-glazers,” or those who cut the panes out of shop-windows.
iv. “Till Friskers,” or those who empty tills of their contents during
the absence of the shopmen.
v. “Sawney-Hunters,” or those who go purloining bacon from
cheesemongers’ shop-doors.
vi. “Noisy-racket Men,” or those who steal china and glass from
outside of china-shops.
vii. “Area Sneaks,” or those who steal from houses by going down the
area steps.
viii. “Dead Lurkers,” or those who steal coats and umbrellas from
passages at dusk, or on Sunday afternoons.
ix. “Snow Gatherers,” or those who steal clean clothes off the hedges.
x. “Skinners,” or those women who entice children and sailors to go
with them and then strip them of their clothes.
xi. “Bluey-Hunters,” or those who purloin lead from the tops of houses.
xii. “Cat and Kitten Hunters,” or those who purloin pewter quart and
pint pots from the top of area railings.
xiii. “Toshers,” or those who purloin copper from the ships along
shore.
xiv. Mudlarks, or those who steal pieces of rope and lumps of coal
from among the vessels at the river-side.
_b._ Those who steal animals.
i. Horse Stealers.
ii. Sheep, or “Woolly-bird,” Stealers.
iii. Deer Stealers.
iv. Dog Stealers.
v. Poachers, or Game Stealers.
vi. “Lady and Gentlemen Racket Men,” or those who steal cocks and hens.
vii. Cat Stealers, or those who make away with cats for the sake of
their skins and bones.
_c._ Those who steal dead bodies--as the “Resurrectionists.”
3. Those who plunder by breach of trust.
_a._ Embezzlers, or those who rob their employers.
i. By receiving what is due to them, and never accounting for it.
ii. By obtaining goods in their employer’s name.
iii. By purloining money from the till, or goods from the premises.
_b._ Illegal Pawners.
i. Those who pledge work given out to them by employers.
ii. Those who pledge blankets, sheets, &c., from lodgings.
_c._ Dishonest servants, those who make away with the property of their
masters.
_d._ Bill Stealers, or those who purloin bills of exchange entrusted to
them, to get discounted.
_e._ Letter Stealers.
D. “SHOFUL MEN,” OR THOSE WHO PLUNDER BY MEANS OF COUNTERFEITS.
1. Coiners or fabricators of counterfeit money.
2. Forgers of bank notes.
3. Forgers of checks and acceptances.
4. Forgers of wills.
E. DEPENDENTS OF THIEVES.
1. “Fences,” or receivers of stolen goods.
2. “Smashers,” or utterers of base coin or forged notes.
XI. _Prostitutes and their Dependents._
A. PROFESSIONAL PROSTITUTES.
1. Seclusives, or those who live in private houses or apartments.
_a._ Kept Mistresses.
_b._ “Prima Donnas,” or those who belong to the “first class,” and
live in a superior style.
2. Convives, or those who live in the same house with a number of
others.
_a._ Those who are independent of the mistress of the house.
_b._ Those who are subject to the mistress of a brothel.
i. “Board Lodgers,” or those who give a portion of what they receive
to the mistress of the brothel, in return for their board and lodging.
ii. “Dress Lodgers,” or those who give either a portion or the whole
of what they get to the mistress of the brothel in return for their
board, lodging, and clothes.
3. Those who live in low lodging-houses.
4. Sailors’ and soldiers’ women.
5. Park women, or those who frequent the parks at night, and other
retired places.
6. Thieves’ women, or those who entrap men into bye streets for the
purpose of robbery.
7. The Dependents of Prostitutes:
_a._ “Bawds,” or Keepers of Brothels.
_b._ Followers of Dress Lodgers.
_c._ Keepers of Accommodation Houses.
_d._ Procuresses, Pimps, and Panders.
_e._ Fancy-Men.
_f._ Magsmen and Bullies.
B. CLANDESTINE PROSTITUTES.
1. Female Operatives.
2. Maid Servants.
3. Ladies of Intrigue.
4. Keepers of Houses of Assignation.
C. COHABITANT PROSTITUTES.
1. Those whose paramours cannot afford to pay the marriage fees.
2. Those whose paramours do not believe in the sanctity of the
ceremony.
3. Those who have married a relative forbidden by law.
4. Those whose paramours object to marry them for pecuniary or family
reasons.
5. Those who would forfeit their income by marrying, as officers’
widows in receipt of pensions, and those who hold property only while
unmarried.
THOSE WHO NEED NOT WORK.
XII. _Those who derive their income from rent._
A. LANDLORDS OF ESTATES.
B. LANDLORDS OF HOUSES.
XIII. _Those who derive their income from dividends._
A. FUNDHOLDERS.
B. SHAREHOLDERS.
1. In Mines.
2. In Canals.
3. In Railways.
4. In Public Companies.
XIV. Those who derive their income from yearly stipends.
A. ANNUITANTS.
B. PENSIONERS.
XV. _Those who hold obsolete or nominal offices._
SINECURISTS.
XVI. _Those who derive their incomes from trades in which they never
appear._
A. SLEEPING PARTNERS.
B. ROYALTY MEN.
XVII. _Those who derive their incomes by favour from some other._
A. PROTEGÉS.
B. DEPENDENTS.
XVIII. _Those who derive their support from the head of the family._
A. WIVES.
B. CHILDREN.
OF THE NON-WORKERS.
The exposition of the several members of society being finished, I now
come to treat of that inoperative moiety of it, which more especially
concerns us here. The non-workers, we have seen, consist of three
broadly marked and distinct orders, viz:--
_The incapacitated_, or compulsory non-workers.
_The indisposed_, or voluntary non-workers.
_The independent_, or privileged non-workers.
It would be of the highest possible importance, could we ascertain
with any precision the number of people existing in this country, who
do no manner of work for their support; and I was anxious to have
concluded the preceding account of the several divisions of society,
with an estimate of the numbers appertaining to each of the four great
classes, as well as the incomes accruing to them. I found, however, on
consulting the official documents with this view, that the government
returns were in such an economical tangle--distributor being confounded
with employer, and employer again jumbled up with the employed--that
any attempt to unravel the twisted yarn would have cost an infinity of
trouble, and have been almost worthless after all; and it was from a
long experience as to the incompetency of the official returns to aid
the social inquirer in solving the great economical problems concerning
the production and distribution of wealth, that I was induced to
suggest to Sir George Grey (to whom I had been indebted for much
courtesy and valuable information, and who, from the commencement of my
investigations, had shown a readiness to afford me every assistance),
that, in the ensuing census, an attempt should be made to obtain
some definite account of the numbers of employers and employed, and
I am happy to say that, in conformity with my suggestion, the next
“Abstract of the Occupations of the People,” will at least teach us
the proportion between these two main elements of our social state; so
that if the Distributors are but kept distinct from the Promoters and
Producers of the wealth of the country, one important step towards a
right understanding of the subject will assuredly have been made[10].
It should, however, be borne in mind, that, though the distribution,
the promotion, and the production of the riches or exchangeable
commodities of a country are usually distinct offices in every
civilized nation, they are not invariably separate functions, even in
our own. The exceptions to the economical rule with us appear to be as
follows:--
1. Sometimes the producers themselves supply the materials, tools,
shelter, and subsistence, that they require for their work, though
this is usually done by some capitalist; and having finished the work,
proceed themselves to find purchasers for it likewise (though this is
generally the office of the distributor or dealer). Street artizans,
or those who make the goods they sell in the streets, may be cited as
instances of a class uniting in itself the three functions of producer,
capitalist (supplying the materials, &c.), and distributor.
2. Sometimes the capitalist employer is also the distributor of the
commodities, such being the case with bakers, tailors, and the like,
who themselves “purvey” what they employ others to produce.
3. Sometimes the craft does not admit of a distributor being attached
to it; the employer himself undertaking to supply the wants of the
public; this is the case with the building and decoration of houses.
4. Sometimes the work is done directly for the public, without the
intervention of either a distributor or trading-employer; such is the
case with the jobbing, day, or piece workers--among the seamstresses
and journeymen tailors, for instance--who “make up ladies’ and
gentlemen’s own materials,” either at home or at the houses of those
for whom the work is done.
5. Sometimes the artificers or working men are their own capitalists;
providing the materials, tools, shelter, and subsistence requisite for
the work, as is the case with the garret and chamber-masters in the
slop cabinet and shoe trades, and among the members of co-operative
associations.
6. Sometimes the artificers are both employers and employed; being
supplied with their materials and subsistence from a capitalist, and
supplying them again to other artificers working under them; this is
the case with sweaters, piece-working masters, first hands, and the
like.
7. Sometimes the capitalist employer, on the other hand, is, or rather
assumes to be, the proprietor of both the capital and labour; as is the
case with the slave-owners, masters of serfs, bondmen, villeins, and
the like; though this state of things, thank God, no longer exists in
this country.
8. Sometimes the capitalist supplies all the requisites of production,
excepting the subsistence of the artificer, who is remunerated by a
certain share of the profits (if any); this is often the case with
publishers and authors.
9. Sometimes the capitalist supplies only the materials and
subsistence, but not the tools, of the artificers, and sometimes he
compels them to pay him a rent for them out of their wages; as is the
case with the employers of the sawyers and stockingers.
10. Sometimes the capitalist supplies the materials, tools, and
subsistence of the artificers, but not the appliances of their work;
and sometimes he compels them to purchase such appliances of him at an
exorbitant profit; as the trimmings in the tailors’ trade, thread with
the seamstresses, and the like.
11. Sometimes the capitalist supplies the materials, tools,
subsistence, and shelter of the artificers, but not their gas-light,
and compels them to pay a rent for the same out of their wages.
12. Sometimes the capitalist supplies the materials, tools, appliances,
and subsistence, but not the shelter, necessary for the due performance
of the work, the artificers, in such cases, doing the work at their own
homes.
* * * * *
But all this concerns the workers more directly than the non-workers of
society, and it is mentioned here merely with the view of completing
the classification before given. Our more immediate business in this
place lies with the inoperative, rather than the operative, members of
the community. Nor is it with the entire body of these that we have
to deal, but rather with that third order of the non-working class
who are unwilling, though able, to work, as contradistinguished from
those who are willing, but unable, to do so. The non-workers are a
peculiar class, including orders diametrically opposed to each other:
the very rich and the very poor, in the first place, and the honest and
dishonest in the second. The dishonest members of society constitute
those who are known more particularly as the criminal class. Hence
to inquire into their means of living and mode of life, involves an
investigation into the nature and the extent of crime in this country.
Crime, sin, and vice are three terms used for the infraction of three
different kinds of laws--social, religious, and moral. Crime is the
transgression of some social law, even as sin is the transgression of
some religious law, and vice the breach of some moral one. These laws,
however, often differ only in emanating from different authorities;
while infractions of them are merely offences against different powers.
To thieve is to offend at once socially, religiously, and morally; for
not only does the social, but the religious and moral law, each and
all, enjoin that we should respect the property of others.
But there are other crimes or offences against the social powers,
besides such as are committed by those who will not work. The crimes
perpetrated by those who object to labour for their living, are
habitual crimes; whereas those perpetrated by the other classes of
society are accidental crimes, arising from the pressure of a variety
of circumstances. Here, then, we have a most important fundamental
distinction: all crimes, and consequently all criminals, are divisible
into two different classes, the professional and the casual; that is
to say, there are two distinct orders of people continually offending
against the laws of society, viz., those who do so as a regular means
of living, and those who do so from some accidental cause. It is
impossible to arrive at any accurate knowledge on the subject of crime
generally, without making this first analysis of the several species
of offences according to their causes; that is to say, arranging them
into opposite groups or classes, according as they arise from an
habitual indisposition to labour on the part of some of the offenders,
or from the temporary pressure of circumstances upon others. The
official returns, however, on this subject are as unphilosophic as the
generality of such documents, and consist of a crude mass of undigested
facts, being a statistical illustration of the “rudis indigestaque
moles,” in connection with a criminal chaos.
At present the several crimes of the country are officially divided
into four classes:--
I. Offences against persons; including murder, rape, bigamy, assaults,
&c.
II. Offences against property.
A. With violence; including burglary, robbery, piracy, &c.
B. Without violence; including embezzlement, cattle-stealing, larceny,
and fraud.
C. Malicious offences against property; including arson, incendiarism,
maiming cattle, &c.
III. Forgery and offences against the currency; including the forging
of wills, bank-notes, and coining, &c.
IV. Other offences; including high-treason, sedition, poaching,
smuggling, working illicit stills, perjury, &c.
M. Guerry, the eminent French statist, adopts a far more philosophic
arrangement, and divides the several crimes into--
I. Crimes against the State; as high treason, &c.
II. Crimes against personal safety; as murder, assault, &c.
III. Crimes against morals (with and without violence); as rape,
bigamy, &c.
IV. Crimes against property (proceeding from cupidity or malice); as
larceny, embezzlement, incendiarism, and the like.
The same fundamental error which renders the government classification
comparatively worthless, deprives that of the French philosopher of
all practical value. It gives us no knowledge of the character of
the people committing the crimes; being merely a system of criminal
mnemonics, as it were, or easy method of remembering the several
varieties of offences. The classes in both systems are but so many
mental pigeon-holes for the orderly arrangement and partitioning of
the various infractions of the law; further than this they cannot help
us.
Whatever other information the inquirer may want, he must obtain for
himself; if he wish to learn from the crimes something as to their
causes, as well as the nature of the criminals, he must begin _de
novo_, and, using the official facts, but rejecting the official system
of classification, proceed to arrange all the several offences into two
classes, according as they are of a professional and casual character,
committed by habitual or occasional offenders. Adopting this principle,
it will be found that the _non-professional_ crimes consist mainly of
murder, assaults, incendiarism, ravishment, bigamy, embezzlement, high
treason, and the like; for it is evident that none can make a trade or
profession of the commission of these crimes, or resort to them as a
regular means of living[11].
The _professional_ crimes, on the other hand, will be generally found
to include burglary, robbery, poaching, coining, smuggling, working of
illicit stills, larceny from the person, simple larceny, &c., because
each and every of these are regular crafts, requiring almost the same
apprenticeship as any other mode of life. Burglary, coining, working
illicit stills, and picking pockets, are all _arts_ to which no man,
without some previous training, can take. Hence to know whether the
number of these dishonest _handicrafts_--for such they really are--be
annually on the increase or not, is to solve a most important portion
of the criminal problem; it is to ascertain whether crime pursued as
a profession or business, is being augmented among us--to discover
whether the criminal class, as a distinct portion of our people is, or
is not, on the advance. The non-professional crimes will furnish us
with equally curious results, showing a yearly impress of the character
of the times; for being only occasional offences, of course the number
of such offenders at different years will give us a knowledge of the
intensity of the several occasions inducing the crimes in such years.
The accidental crimes, classified according to their causes, may be
said to consist of--
I. Crimes of malice, exercised either against the person or the
property of the object.
II. Crimes of lust and perverted appetites; as rape, &c.
III. Crimes of shame; as concealing the births of infants, attempts to
procure miscarriage, and the like.
IV. Crimes of temptation, } with, or without
V. Crimes of cupidity, } breach of
VI. Crimes of want, } trust.
VII. Crimes of political prejudices.
With the class of casual or accidental criminals, however, we are not
at present concerned. Those who resort to crime as a means of support,
when in a state of extreme want, for instance, cannot be said to belong
to the _voluntary_ non-workers, for many of these would willingly work
to increase their sustenance, if that end were attainable by such
means, but the poor shirt-workers, slop-tailors, and the like, have not
the power of earning more than the barest subsistence by their labour,
so that the pawning of the work entrusted to them by their employers,
becomes an act to which they are immediately impelled for “dear life,”
on the occurrence of the least illness or mishap among them. Such
_offenders_, therefore, belong more properly to those who cannot work
for their living, or rather, who cannot live by their working, and
though they offend against the laws in the same manner as those that
will not work, they cannot certainly be said to be of the same class.
The _voluntary_ non-workers are a distinct body of people. In the
introductory chapter to the first volume of the “Street-folk,” they
have been shown to appertain to even the rudest nations, being
as it were the human parasites of every civilized and barbarous
community. The Hottentots have their “_Sonquas_,” and the Kafirs their
“_Fingoes_,” as we have our “Prigs” and “Cadgers.” Those who will not
work for the food they consume, appear to be part and parcel of a
State--an essential element of the social fabric as much as those who
cannot, or need not work for their living. Go where you will, to what
corner of the earth you please, search out or propound what new-fangled
or obsolete form of society you may, there will be some members of it
more apathetic than the rest, who object to work--some more infirm
than the rest, who are denied the power to work--and some more thrifty
than the rest, who from their past savings have no necessity to work
for the future. These several forms are but the necessary consequences
of specific differences in the constitution of different beings.
Circumstances may tend to give an unnatural development to either one
or other of the classes; the criminal class, the pauper class, or the
wealthy class, may be in excess in one form of society, as compared
with another, or they may be repressed by certain social arrangements;
nevertheless, to a greater or less degree, there they will and _must_
ever be.
Since, then, there _is_ an essentially distinct class of people who
_will_ not work for their living, and since work is a necessary
condition of the human organism, the question becomes, How do such
people live? There is but one answer:--If they do not labour to procure
their own food, of course they must live on the food procured by
the labour of others. But how do they obtain possession of the food
belonging to others? There are but two means: it must either be given
to them by, or be taken from, the industrious portion of the community.
Consequently, the next point to be settled is, what are the means by
which those who _object_ to work get their food given to them, and what
the means by which they are enabled to take it from others. Let us
begin with the last mentioned.
The means by which the criminal classes obtain their living constitute
the essential points of difference among them, and form indeed
the methods of distinction among themselves. The “Rampsmen,” the
“Drummers,” the “Mobsmen,” the “Sneaksmen,” and the “Shofulmen,”[12]
which are the terms by which they themselves designate the several
branches of the “profession,” are but so many expressions indicating
the several modes of obtaining the property of which they become
possessed.
The “_Rampsman_” or “_Cracksman_” plunders by force; as the burglar,
footpad, &c.
The “_Drummer_” plunders by stupefaction; as the “hocusser.”
The “_Mobsman_” plunders by manual dexterity; as the pickpocket.
The “_Sneaksman_” plunders by stealth; as the petty-larceny men and
boys.
The “_Shofulman_” plunders by counterfeits; as the coiner.