Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Wapping, and Shadwell, although I have not
touched very closely upon those who cohabit with thieves and other
desperate characters, whose daily means of obtaining a livelihood
exposes them to the penalties the law inflicts upon those who infringe
its provisions. Their mode of living, the houses they inhabit, and the
way in which they pass their time, does not very materially differ from
that of other prostitutes, with this exception, they are not obliged to
frequent casinos, dancing-rooms, and other places of popular resort,
to make acquaintances that may be of service to them in a pecuniary
way, although they do make use of such places for the purposes of
robbery and fraud. Some women of tolerably good repute--that is, who
are regarded as knowing a good set of men, who have admission to the
night-houses in Panton Street and the Haymarket--I am informed, are
connected with thieves. The night-houses and supper-rooms in the
neighbourhood of the Haymarket are for the most part in the hands of a
family of Jews. Kate Hamilton’s in Princes Street, Leicester Square,
belongs to one of this family. She is given a per centage on all the
wine that she sells during the course of the evening, and as she
charges twelve shillings a bottle for Moselle and sparkling wines, it
may readily be supposed that her profits are by no means despicable.
Lizzie Davis’s, Sams’s, Sally’s, and, I believe, the Carlton, also
belong to this family. One of these Jews, I am told, was some few
years back imprisoned for two years on a charge of manslaughter. He
was proprietor of a brothel in the vicinity of Drury Lane, and the
manslaughter occurred through his instrumentality on the premises.
I have been informed by the police that some of the proprietors of
these night-houses are well-known receivers of stolen goods, and
the assertion is easily credible. To exemplify this I will relate a
story told me by a sergeant of the H division. Some two years ago a
robbery was committed by a “snoozer,” or one of those thieves who
take up their quarters at hotels for the purpose of robbery. The
robbery was committed at an hotel in Chester. The thief was captured,
and the Recorder sentenced him to be imprisoned. This man was a
notorious thief, and went under the _soubriquet_ of American Jack.
He was said to have once been in a very different position. He was
polished in his manners, and highly accomplished. He could speak
three or four languages with facility, and was a most formidable and
dexterous thief, causing much apprehension and trouble to the police.
After being incarcerated for a few weeks he contrived in a clever
manner to make his escape from one of the London prisons; it was
supposed by the connivance of his gaolers, who were alleged to have
been bribed by his friends without. Be this as it may, he effected
his liberation, and was successfully concealed in London until the
hue and cry was over, and then shipped off to Paris. But the night
after he escaped he perpetrated the most audacious robbery. He was
dressed by his friends, and having changed his prison attire went to
B---- Hotel, a well-known place, not far from the Freemasons Tavern,
where, singularly enough, the Recorder of Chester, who had sentenced
him, chanced to be staying. American Jack had the presumption to
enter into conversation with the Recorder, who fancied he had seen
his face before, but could not recollect where. The visitors had not
long retired to bed before American Jack commenced operations. He was
furnished by his accomplice with a highly-finished instrument for
housebreaking, which, when inserted in the lock, would pass through and
grasp the key on the inside. This done, it was easy to turn the key
and open the door. The thief actually broke into sixteen or seventeen
rooms that night, and made his exit before daybreak loaded with booty
of every description. The proprietors of the hotel would offer no
reward, as they feared publicity. The Recorder of Chester, when the
robbery was discovered, remembered that the person he had conversed
with the night before was the man he had convicted and sentenced at
the assizes. He repaired to Bow Street with his information, and the
police were put on the scent; but it is well known if no reward is
offered for the apprehension of an eminent criminal the police are not
so active as they are when they have a monetary inducement to incite
them to action. It was imagined that American Jack had taken refuge
with his friends near the Haymarket. A waiter who had been discharged
from one of the night-houses was known slightly to a sergeant of
police, who interrogated him on the subject. This waiter confessed
that he could point out the whereabouts of the thief, and would do so
for twenty pounds, which reward no one concerned in the matter would
offer; and, as I have already stated, the criminal soon after made
his escape to Paris, where he continued to carry on his depredations
with considerable skill, until one day he mixed himself up in a great
jewel robbery, and was apprehended by the _gensdarmes_, and sent to the
galleys for some time, where he is now languishing.
This little history is suggestive--why should not Parliament vote every
year a small sum of money to form a “Detective and Inquiry Fund,” from
which the Commissioners of Police at Whitehall and Old Jewry might
offer rewards for the capture of offenders? Some spur and inducement
surely might be given to our detectives, who take a great deal of
trouble, and, if unsuccessful, are almost always out of pocket through
their researches.
Cannot Sir Richard Mayne and Mr. Daniel Whittle Harvey improve on this
idea?
The police enter the night-houses every evening to see if spirits are
sold on the premises; but as there are bullies at all the doors, and
a code of signals admirably concerted to convey intelligence of the
approach of the officers to those within, everything is carefully
concealed, and the police are at fault. They might if they chose detect
the practices they very well know are commonly carried on; but they
either are not empowered to go to extremities, or else they do not find
it their interest so to do. I have heard, I know not with what truth,
that large sums of money are paid to the police to insure their silence
and compliance; but until this is established it must be received
with hesitation, though circumstances do occur that seem strongly to
corroborate such suspicions. The women who cohabit with thieves are
not necessarily thieves themselves, although such is often the case.
Most pickpockets make their women accomplices in their misdeeds,
because they find their assistance so valuable to them, and indeed
for some species of theft almost indispensable. There are numbers
of young thieves on the other side of the water, and almost all of
them cohabit with some girl or other. The depravity of our juvenile
thieves is a singular feature in their character. It is not exactly
a custom that they follow, but rather an inherent depravity on their
part. They prefer an idle luxurious life, though one also of ignominy
and systematic dishonour, to one of honesty and labour; and this is
the cause of their malpractices, perhaps inculcated at first by the
force of evil example and bad bringing up, and invigorated every day by
independence brought about by the liberty allowed them, the consequence
of parental neglect.
It is of course difficult to give the stories of any of these women,
as they would only criminate themselves disagreeably by confessing
their delinquencies; and it is not easy to pitch upon a thieves’ woman
without she is pointed out by the police, and even then she would deny
the imputation indignantly.
_Park Women, or those who frequent the Parks at night and other retired
places._
Park women, properly so called, are those degraded creatures, utterly
lost to all sense of shame, who wander about the paths most frequented
after nightfall in the Parks, and consent to any species of humiliation
for the sake of acquiring a few shillings. You may meet them in Hyde
Park, between the hours of five and ten (till the gates are closed)
in winter. In the Green Park, in what is called the Mall, which is a
nocturnal thoroughfare, you may see these low wretches walking about
sometimes with men, more generally alone, often early in the morning.
They are to be seen reclining on the benches placed under the trees,
originally intended, no doubt, for a different purpose, occasionally
with the head of a drunken man reposing in their lap. These women are
well known to give themselves up to disgusting practices, that are
alone gratifying to men of morbid and diseased imaginations. They
are old, unsound, and by their appearance utterly incapacitated from
practising their profession where the gas-lamps would expose the
defects in their personal appearance, and the shabbiness of their
ancient and dilapidated attire. I was told that an old woman, whose
front teeth were absolutely wanting, was known to obtain a precarious
livelihood by haunting the by-walks of Hyde Park, near Park Lane. The
unfortunate women that form this despicable class have in some cases
been well off, and have been reduced to their present condition by
a variety of circumstances, among which are intemperance, and the
vicissitudes natural to their vocation. I questioned one who was in the
humour to be communicative, and she gave the subjoined replies to my
questions:--
“I have not always been what I now am. Twenty years ago I was in a
very different position. Then, although, it may seem ludicrous to
you, who see me as I now am, I was comparatively well off. If I were
to tell you my history it would be so romantic you would not believe
it. If I employ a little time in telling you, will you reward me for
my trouble, as I shall be losing my time in talking to you? I am not
actuated by mercenary motives exactly in making this request, but my
time is my money, and I cannot afford to lose either one or the other.
Well, then, I am the daughter of a curate in Gloucestershire. I was
never at school, but my mother educated me at home. I had one brother
who entered the Church. When I was old enough I saw that the limited
resources of my parents would not allow them to maintain me at home
without seriously impairing their resources, and I proposed that I
should go out as a governess. At first they would not hear of it; but I
persisted in my determination, and eventually obtained a situation in
a family in town. Then I was very pretty. I may say so without vanity
or ostentation, for I had many admirers, among whom I numbered the only
son of the people in whose house I lived. I was engaged to teach his
two sisters, and altogether I gave great satisfaction to the family.
The girls were amiable and tractable, and I soon acquired an influence
over their generous dispositions that afforded great facilities for
getting them on in their studies. My life might have been very happy
if an unfortunate attachment to me had not sprung up in the young man
that I have before mentioned, which attachment I can never sufficiently
regret was reciprocated by myself.
“I battled against the impulse that constrained me to love him, but
all my efforts were of no avail. He promised to marry me, which in
an evil hour I agreed to. He had a mock ceremony performed by his
footman, and I went into lodgings that he had taken for me in Gower
Street, Tottenham Court Road. He used to visit me very frequently
for the ensuing six months, and we lived together as man and wife.
At the expiration of that time he took me to the sea-side, and we
subsequently travelled on the Continent. We were at Baden when we
heard of his father’s death. This didn’t trouble him much. He did not
even go to England to attend the funeral, for he had by his conduct
offended his father, and estranged himself from the remainder of his
family. Soon letters came from a solicitor informing him that the
provisions of the will discontinued the allowance of five hundred a
year hitherto made to him, and left him a small sum of money sufficient
to buy himself a commission in the army, if he chose to do so. This
course he was strongly advised to take, for it was urged that he might
support himself on his pay if he volunteered for foreign service. He
was transported with rage when this communication reached him, and he
immediately wrote for the legacy he was entitled to, which arrived in
due course. That evening he went to the gaming table, and lost every
farthing he had in the world. The next morning he was a corpse. His
remains were found in a secluded part of the town, he having in a fit
of desperation blown his brains out with a pistol. He had evidently
resolved to take this step before he left me, if he should happen to be
unfortunate, for he left a letter in the hands of our landlady to be
delivered to me in the event of his not returning in the morning. It
was full of protestations of affection for me, and concluded with an
avowal of the fraud he had practised towards me when our acquaintance
was first formed, which he endeavoured to excuse by stating his
objections to be hampered or fettered by legal impediments.
“When I read this, I somewhat doubted the intensity of the affection
he paraded in his letter. I had no doubt about the fervour of my own
passion, and for some time I was inconsolable. At length, I was roused
to a sense of my desolate position, and to the necessity for action,
by the solicitations and importunity of my landlady, and I sold the
better part of my wardrobe to obtain sufficient money to pay my bills,
and return to England. But fate ordered things in a different manner.
Several of my husband’s friends came to condole with me on his untimely
decease; among whom was a young officer of considerable personal
attractions, who I had often thought I should have liked to love, if
I had not been married to my friend’s husband. It was this man who
caused me to take the second fatal step I have made in my life. If I
had only gone home, my friends might have forgiven everything. I felt
they would, and my pride did not stand in my way, for I would gladly
have asked and obtained their forgiveness for a fault in reality very
venial, when the circumstances under which it was committed are taken
into consideration.
“Or I might have represented the facts to the family; and while
the mother mourned the death of her son, she must have felt some
commiseration for myself.
“The officer asked me to live with him, and made the prospect he held
out to me so glittering and fascinating that I yielded. He declared
he would marry me with pleasure on the spot, but he would forfeit a
large sum of money, that he must inherit in a few years if he remained
single, and it would be folly not to wait until then. I have forgotten
to mention that I had not any children. My constitution being very
delicate, my child was born dead, which was a sad blow to me, although
it did not seem to affect the man I regarded as my husband. We soon
left Baden and returned to London, where I lived for a month very
happily with my paramour, who was not separated from me, as his leave
of absence had not expired. When that event occurred he reluctantly
left me to go to Limerick, where his regiment was quartered. There
in all probability he formed a fresh acquaintance, for he wrote to
me in about a fortnight, saying that a separation must take place
between us, for reasons that he was not at liberty to apprise me of,
and he enclosed a cheque for fifty pounds, which he hoped would pay my
expences. It was too late now to go home, and I was driven to a life
of prostitution, not because I had a liking for it, but as a means of
getting enough money to live upon. For ten years I lived first with one
man then with another, until at last I was infected with a disease,
of which I did not know the evil effects if neglected. The disastrous
consequence of that neglect is only too apparent now. You will be
disgusted, when I tell you that it attacked my face, and ruined my
features to such an extent that I am hideous to look upon, and should
be noticed by no one if I frequented those places where women of my
class most congregate; indeed, I should be driven away with curses and
execrations.”
This recital is melancholy in the extreme. Here was a woman endowed
with a very fair amount of education, speaking in a superior manner,
making use of words that very few in her position would know how to
employ, reduced by a variety of circumstances to the very bottom of a
prostitute’s career. In reply to my further questioning, she said she
lived in a small place in Westminster called Perkins’ Rents, where for
one room she paid two shillings a week. The Rents were in Westminster,
not far from Palace-yard. She was obliged to have recourse to her
present way of living to exist; for she would not go to the workhouse,
and she could get no work to do. She could sew, and she could paint in
water-colours, but she was afraid to be alone. She could not sit hours
and hours by herself, her thoughts distracted her, and drove her mad.
She added, she once thought of turning Roman Catholic, and getting
admitted into a convent, where she might make atonement for her way of
living by devoting the remainder of her life to penitence, but she was
afraid she had gone too far to be forgiven. That was some time ago. Now
she did not think she would live long, she had injured her constitution
so greatly; she had some internal disease, she didn’t know what it was,
but a hospital surgeon told her it would kill her in time, and she had
her moments, generally hours, of oblivion, when she was intoxicated,
which she always was when she could get a chance. If she got ten
shillings from a drunken man, either by persuasion or threats, and she
was not scrupulous in the employment of the latter, she would not come
to the Park for days, until all her money was spent; on an average,
she came three times a week, or perhaps twice; always on Sunday, which
was a good day. She knew all about the Refuges. She had been in one
once, but she didn’t like the system; there wasn’t enough liberty, and
too much preaching, and that sort of thing; and then they couldn’t
keep her there always; so they didn’t know what to do with her. No one
would take her into their service, because they didn’t like to look at
her face, which presented so dreadful an appearance that it frightened
people. She always wore a long thick veil, that concealed her features,
and made her interesting to the unsuspicious and unwise. I gave her
the money I promised her, and advised her again to enter a Refuge,
which she refused to do, saying she could not live long, and she would
rather die as she was. As I had no power to compel her to change her
determination, I left her, lamenting her hardihood and obstinacy. I
felt that she soon would be--
“One more unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death.”
In the course of my peregrinations I met another woman, commonly
dressed in old and worn-out clothes; her face was ugly and mature; she
was perhaps on the shady side of forty. She was also perambulating
the Mall. I knew she could only be there for one purpose, and I
interrogated her, and I believe she answered my queries faithfully. She
said:--
“I have a husband, and seven small children, the eldest not yet able to
do much more than cadge a penny or so by cater-wheeling and tumbling
in the street for the amusement of gents as rides outside ’busses. My
husband’s bedridden, and can’t do nothink but give the babies a dose of
‘Mother’s Blessing’ (that’s laudanum, sir, or some sich stuff) to sleep
’em when they’s squally. So I goes out begging all day, and I takes
in general one of the kids in my arms and one as runs by me, and we
sell hartifishal flowers, leastways ’olds ’em in our ’ands, and makes
believe cos of the police, as is nasty so be as you ’as nothink soever,
and I comes hout in the Parks, sir, at night sometimes when I’ve ’ad a
bad day, and ain’t made above a few pence, which ain’t enough to keep
us as we should be kep. I mean, sir, the children should have a bit of
meat, and my ole man and me wants some blue ruin to keep our spirits
up; so I’se druv to it, sir, by poverty, and nothink on the face of
God’s blessed earth, sir, shou’dn’t have druv me but that for the poor
babes must live, and who ’as they to look to but their ’ard-working but
misfortunate mother, which she is now talking to your honour, and won’t
yer give a poor woman a hap’ny, sir? I’ve seven small children at home,
and my ’usban’s laid with the fever. You won’t miss it, yer honour,
only a ’apny for a poor woman as ain’t ’ad a bit of bread between
her teeth since yesty morning. I ax yer parding,” she exclaimed,
interrupting herself--“I forgot I was talking to yourself. I’s so used
though to this way of speaking when I meant to ax you for summut I
broke off into the old slang, but yer honour knows what I mean: ain’t
yer got even a little sixpence to rejoice the heart of the widow?”
“You call yourself a widow now,” I said, “while before you said you
were married and had seven children. Which are you?”
“Which am I? The first I toll you’s the true. But Lor’, I’s up to
so many dodges I gets what you may call confounded; sometimes I’s
a widder, and wants me ’art rejoiced with a copper, and then I’s a
hindustrious needle-woman thrown out of work and going to be druv into
the streets if I don’t get summut to do. Sometimes I makes a lot of
money by being a poor old cripple as broke her arm in a factory, by
being blowed hup when a steam-engine blowed herself hup, and I bandage
my arm and swell it out hawful big, and when I gets home, we gets in
some lush and ’as some frens, and goes in for a reglar blow-hout, and
now as I have told yer honour hall about it, won’t yer give us an ’apny
as I observe before?”
It is very proper that the Parks should be closed at an early hour,
when such creatures as I have been describing exist and practise their
iniquities so unblushingly. One only gets at the depravity of mankind
by searching below the surface of society; and for certain purposes
such knowledge and information are useful and beneficial to the
community. Therefore the philanthropist must overcome his repugnance
to the task, and draw back the veil that is thinly spread over the
skeleton.
THE DEPENDANTS OF PROSTITUTES.
Having described the habits, &c., of different classes of prostitutes,
I now come to those who are intimately connected with, and dependant
upon, them. This is a very numerous class, and includes “Bawds,” or
those who keep brothels, the followers of dress lodgers, keepers of
accommodation houses, procuresses, pimps, and panders, fancy men, and
bullies.
_Bawds._--The first head in our classification is “Bawds.” They may
be either men or women. More frequently they are the latter, though
any one who keeps an immoral house, or bawdy-house, as it is more
commonly called, is liable to that designation. Bawdy-houses are of
two kinds. They may be either houses of accommodation, or houses in
which women lodge, are boarded, clothed, &c., and the proceeds of whose
prostitution goes into the pocket of the bawd herself, who makes a very
handsome income generally by their shame.
We cannot have a better example of this sort of thing than the
bawdy-houses in King’s Place, St. James’s, a narrow passage leading
from Pall Mall opposite the “Guards Club” into King Street, not far
from the St. James’s theatre. These are both houses of accommodation
and brothels proper. Men may take their women there, and pay so much
for a room and temporary accommodation, or they may be supplied with
women who live in the house. The unfortunate creatures who live in
these houses are completely in the power of the bawds, who grow fat
on their prostitution. When they first came to town perhaps they were
strangers, and didn’t know a soul in the place, and even now they would
have nowhere to go to if they were able to make their escape, which is
a very difficult thing to accomplish, considering they are vigilantly
looked after night and day. They have nothing fit to walk about the
streets in. They are often in bed all day, and at night dressed up in
tawdry ball costumes. If they ever do go out on business, they are
carefully watched by one of the servants: they generally end when their
charms are faded by being servants of bawds and prostitutes, or else
watchers, or perhaps both.
There are houses in Oxendon Street too, where women are kept in this
way.
A victim of this disgraceful practice told me she was entrapped when
she was sixteen years old, and prostituted for some time to old men,
who paid a high price for the enjoyment of her person.
“I was born at Matlock in Derbyshire,” she began; “father was a
stonecutter, and I worked in the shop, polishing the blocks and things,
and in the spring of ’51 we heard of the Great Exhibition. I wished
very much to go to London, and see the fine shops and that, and father
wrote to an aunt of mine, who lived in London, to know if I might come
and stay a week or two with her to see the Exhibition. In a few days
a letter came back, saying she would be glad to give me a room for
two or three weeks and go about with me. Father couldn’t come with me
because of his business, and I went alone. When I arrived, aunt had
a very bad cold, and couldn’t get out of bed. Of course, I wanted to
go about and see things, for though I didn’t believe the streets were
paved with gold, I was very anxious to see the shops and places I’d
heard so much about. Aunt said when she was better she’d take me, but
I was so restless I would go by myself. I said nothing to aunt about
it, and stole out one evening. I wandered about for some time, very
much pleased with the novelty. The crowds of people, the flaring gas
jets, and everything else, all was so strange and new, I was delighted.
At last I lost myself, and got into some streets ever so much darker
and quieter. I saw one door in the middle of the street open, that is
standing a-jar. Thinking no harm, I knocked, and hearing no sound, and
getting no answer, I knocked louder, when some one came and instantly
admitted me, without saying a word. I asked her innocently enough where
I was, and if she would tell me the way to Bank Place. I didn’t know
where Bank Place was, whether it was in Lambeth, or Kensington, or
Hammersmith, or where; but I have since heard it is in Kensington. The
woman who let me in, and to whom I addressed my questions, laughed at
this, and said, ‘Oh! yes, I wasn’t born yesterday.’ But I repeated,
‘Where am I, and what am I to do?’
“She told me to ‘ax,’ and said she’d heard that before.
“I suppose I ought to tell you, before I go further,” she explained,
“that ‘ax’ meant ask, or find out.
“Just then a door opened, and an old woman came out of a room which
seemed to me to be the parlour. ‘Come in, my dear,’ she exclaimed, ‘and
sit down.’ I followed her into the room, and she pulled out a bottle
of gin, asking me if I would have a drop of something short, while she
poured out some, which I was too frightened to refuse. She said, ‘I
likes to be jolly myself and see others so. I’m getting on now. Ain’t
what I was once. But as I says I likes to be jolly, and I always is. A
old fiddle, you know, makes the best music.
“‘Market full, my dear,’ she added, pushing the wine-glass of gin
towards me. ‘Ah! I s’pose not yet; too arly, so it is. I’s glad you’ve
dropped in to see a body. I’ve noticed your face lots of times, but
I thought you was one of Lotty’s girls, and wouldn’t condescend to
come so far up the street, though, why one part should be better nor
another, I’m sure, I can’t make out.’
“‘Really you must make a mistake,’ I interposed. ‘I am quite a stranger
in London; indeed I have only been three days in town. The fact is, I
lost myself this evening, and seeing your door open, I thought I would
come in and ask the way.’
“Whilst I was saying this, the old woman listened attentively. She
seemed to drink in every word of my explanation, and a great change
came over her features.
“‘Well, pet,’ she replied, ‘I’m glad you’ve come to my house. You must
excuse my taking you for some one else; but you are so like a gal I
knows, one Polly Gay, I couldn’t help mistaking you. Where are you
staying?’
“I told her I was staying with my aunt in Bank Place.
“‘Oh! really,’ she exclaimed; ‘well, that is fortunate, ’pon my word,
that is lucky. I’m gladder than ever now you came to my shop--I mean
my house--cos I knows your aunt very well. Me an’ ’er’s great frens,
leastways was, though I haven’t seen her for six months come next
Christmas. Is she’s took bad, is she? Ah! well, it’s the weather, or
somethink, that’s what it is; we’re all ill sometimes; and what is
it as is the matter with her? Influenzy, is it? Now, Lor’ bless us,
the influenzy! Well, you’ll stay with me to-night; you’s ever so far
from your place. Don’t say No; you must, my dear, and we’ll go down to
aunt’s to-morrow morning arly; she’ll be glad to see me, I know. She
always was fond of her old friends.’