Park, Meadows, to the effect that nine ducks had been stolen from his
premises on the previous night; and after the lapse of another hour, a
second charge, involving the nine hens, came from Mr Renton of Hope Park
End. To these places I repaired, and saw the servants, who could, of
course, have had no difficulty about the identity of their favourites,
fed and tended by them every morning, and relieved by them of the
succulent treasure they dropt so industriously for the morning's meal,
provided the feathers remained, but they all laughed at the idea of
knowing their lamented favourites with bare bodies. As to the thief, no
one could say that he was seen, or even heard. Sandy had done his work
well. I then got the lasses to dress themselves, and accompany me to the
Office, where we soon arrived; the bodies were all lying in the state in
which I left them. The sight to the girls was nothing less than
striking. They held up their hands, and really looked pitiful, for no
doubt they had had an affection for the creatures; and the strongest of
us, I suspect, have some feelings thus lowly, but not the less
sympathetically directed, which even the savoury morsel of a fed
favourite cannot altogether dissipate. My pig is a better pig than
yours; but I'd rather eat yours, if you will eat mine.
So the girls turned over and over the bodies, examining them with all
the minuteness in their power. Jenny declared it impossible, and Helen
was in despair; Peggy thought she observed something, and Barbara
declared it to be nothing. I watched them with some amusement, nor less
the men in the Office. They stood around us laughing heartily at the
remarks of the investigators, running up a joke to a climax, and then
pursuing another, not always at the sole expense of the lasses, who
could retort cleverly, impeaching their mockers as utterly unable to
distinguish a male from a female fowl. At the long run, a happy thought
struck Jenny.
"But where's the 'pensioner?'" cried she.
"Ay, the 'pensioner,'" responded her neighbour Nelly.
"Had he a spliced leg?" inquired I.
"Yes," replied the first, "a dog broke it, and Nelly and I bound it up
with two thin pieces of wood and a string."
"Ay, and he got aye the best handful of barley," rejoined Nelly; "but
the leg of the 'pensioner' was cured a month ago, and the bandage
removed."
"Is that the 'pensioner?'" said I, as I shewed the leg of one which I
had observed in the forenoon as having on it the appearance of a
healed-up sore.
"Ay, just the creature," they both exclaimed. "It was the right leg, and
you'll see yet the marks of the string."
The discovery was followed by the merriment of the men, who asserted
that some one or other of the girls must have had a pensioner for a
lover, with the designation of whom the drake had been honoured; but the
girls indignantly denied the charge, declaring that they could not fancy
a man pensioner, however much they might love a drake one.
"Besides," added Jenny, cleverly, "he was our pensioner, not the
Queen's."
"So much for the ducks," said I; "and now for the hens and cocks; was
there no pensioner among them?"
"No," cried Barbara, "but there was the 'corporal.'"
"Any mark beyond the coat?" inquired I.
"Ay," cried Peggy, "he was stone-blind in the right eye; he lost his
sight in a battle with Mr Grant's cock, and never recovered his eyesight
again. When toying with his wives, he turned aye round to the left
side."
"Yes," struck in Betty; "before his misfortune, he was the king of a'
the cocks in the Meadows."
"Is that the blind 'corporal?'" said I.
"The very creature," cried Barbara, as she examined the white orb of the
animal which I had detected in the morning; "but oh," she added, "I am
vexed to see him in that condition!"
And really I thought I could see some little humidity about the blue eye
of the good-natured girl.
"That's the lass for a man," thought I. "Give me a qualm of pity in a
woman even for a bird, and I tell you you may make sure of a good wife."
I once knew--permit me to go off the scene a little--a young woman who
lived in Great King Street. She was a great belle, and admired for a
kind of beauty not uncommon among our servants. A gentleman in town,
whose name I could mention, saw her one day, as she was carrying home
some books from the library in Dundas Street. He was smitten--followed
her--spoke to her--and entertained the idea of making her his wife,
whereby she would have become a lady. Time passed; and, in the meantime,
he was informed that the pretty Margaret one night, when in the bed-room
flat of the house, pitched the cat, which had offended her in her
cleanly notions, out of the window. It was a bitter cold night, and the
frost was intense. In the morning the cat was found spiked on the
railing, and frozen stiff. This was enough for our lover, and he forsook
her. She afterwards fell, became a street-walker, and died neglected and
uncared for in the Infirmary. I suspect the little pearl in Barbara's
eye for the blind corporal was worth all the beauty in the face and
person of the once admired but forsaken Margaret.
My story of the ducks and hens concludes with this investigation; for
though the scene was renewed before the Sheriff, it was not so rich as
that which took place among ourselves. Sandy got sixty days'
imprisonment for the ducks, and six months for the hens, as a kind of
second offence; and Luckie Dewar could afford a few tears (common to
certain amphibious animals on the banks of the Nile) over the
misfortunes of Sandy Dewar, who had thus fallen from being master of the
Cock and Trumpet to being the occupant of a prison. Such is the
ascending and descending scale of profligate life.
The Widow's Last Shilling.
Do you know any one within the circle of your experience who is utterly
renounced to himself--what is called a money-grub or hunks, eternally
yearning for money, so as to deserve the address of Burns: "Fie upon
you, coward man, that you should be the slave o't?" If there's any tear
about that man's eye, depend upon't it's only a thinnish rheum; and as
for anything like a response in the ear to the cry of pity, the drum
will as soon crack at the singing of a psalm. Such a character is the
result of an accumulation of _hardnesses_, increasing in intensity with
his advancing years. We don't wonder so much at the hunks as hate him.
But in regard to the brick-moulded thief, who seldom comes within the
range of ordinary observation, you are apt to think that he is not so
hard-hearted after all. You give him some credit for generosity,--nay,
when he is picking your pocket, you lay to his charge more necessity
than will. Yet there never was a harder-hearted wretch than a regular
thief. He is as destitute of pity as of honesty, and will steal as
readily the shilling from under the poorhouse pensioner's pillow as the
ring from the finger of my lady. Even after "feeding time" he is still
rapacious, and if he ever gives away, it is from recklessness, never
from benevolence.
I have had many cases that go to prove these remarks, and one occurs to
me worthy of recital, from the personal proximity into which I was
brought to the condition of the hearts of the actors.
In the eddies at the bottoms of stairs leading to pawn-shops, a
detective has often a chance for promising rises to his phantom minnow.
In 1845, somewhere in August, I chanced to be coming up the stair
leading from the Market to Milne Square. Just as I was arriving at the
passage out, two women were coming down from the Equitable Loan
Company's Office; and as they were engaged in conversation, I stood a
few steps down where I couldn't be seen, and heard what they were saying
to each other. The voices were those of a young brisk wench and an aged
woman, with that kind of wail in her speech which sometimes comes to be
a bad habit, but which at least shews that the heart is not so easy as
it might be.
"I got five shillings on a plaid worth five pounds," said the younger.
"What did he give you on the blankets?"
"No less than I sought," replied the elder, "ten shillings. It will just
pay my landlord, and leave a shilling over; but it's a sore heart to me
to pawn, for I never was used to it; yet better pawn than be poinded."
"And who will poind you?"
"My landlord for the rent, woman; ay, a rich man with thousands, who
feeds his servants on roast-beef and pudding till they are ready to
burst, and yet takes the two or three shillings of rent of me which I
need for porridge; and it's not that these great people like their
servants, only they like to get the name of their house being a good
meat-house; and the fat limmers are as saucy to them, after all, as
ever."
"But where have you put your ten shillings?" said the other. "Take care
you don't lose it. Is it in your pocket?"
"Ay, all safe enough, along with the ticket. If I lose them, I lose all;
and I may just as weel be coffined at once, and be done wi't. Ye're a
young creature, and don't know the miseries o' the old."
"And don't want for a while," said the other; "but where do you live?"
"In Lady Lawson's Wynd," was the reply.
"And how do you go home?"
"By Hunter Square and the Bridge," said the simple woman; "for I've to
go to Nicolson Square, where the factor lives, to pay him the nine
shillings; but I doubt if he will ever get more, for now, with my
blankets in the pawn, and nothing to redeem them, what is to cover me in
the cold nights of winter?"
"What you can get, woman," said the other, harshly, as I thought, at
least without the feeling due to age and poverty; "just as I do, what we
all do--the world to the winner."
And what heartless creature can this young woman be? thought I, as,
making a long neck, I looked round the side of the stair. My five times
convicted Mary Anne Stewart, one of the nimblest pickpockets of the
city, and for whom I was then looking as connected with a stolen plaid.
"Easy to say that," continued the old woman, "when you've health and
youth on your side; but don't be too confident. I was once a winner when
I won my poor husband; but what was there for me to win when I lost him
who was the winner of my bread, and was left to fight the battle of life
with nothing but my ten fingers? You've both to win and to lose yet, my
lass; and may the Lord be kinder to you than He has been to me!"
"Best to look to one's-self and one's own pocket," was the consistent
reply of the winner, Mary Anne.
And to the pockets of others, said I to myself, the graceless baggage.
"And you never look to Heaven, lass?" again said the woman.
"Never got anything from that quarter yet," was the reply, in the same
strain. "Will Heaven enable you to take that pawn-ticket out of your
pouch and get your blankets back?"
"Ay, and maybe mair," said the woman; "but though Providence may look
sour on me, there's the Lord of providence, lass, mind that; and He can
smile on you even when you're suffering, for He knows He can take you
out of it. And what church go ye to with these notions in your head?"
"No one," was the saucy answer; "there's no kail in the kirks;" then
with a laugh, "The ministers eat all the shewbread."
And what more of this kind of talk which I have reported, perhaps in a
form different from what took place, but retaining the general
sentiments of both, I cannot say, for they moved off. I saw them still
at it in the midst of the square, and till they came to the end of the
close opposite Hunter Square, where they parted. Meanwhile I went down
the steps by the Bridge, and making a circle round, I saw the woman
making for Hunter Square, where there was a crowd round an Italian with
a puggy--general holding a levee--a more sensible animal than its
master. Then keeping my eye on Mary Anne, I saw her join William Walker
and James M'Guire, two of my very best friends, as ready to do me a
service now as they had done before on more occasions than one. They did
not seem at the moment to be in so playful a mood as the Italian's
puggy; and I did not look for much sport till I got my expectations
sharpened by their movement after Mrs Kerr (that was the name, I think)
towards the two mountebanks, who had removed to the south of the Tron.
I then wheeled round the north-east corner of the church, and keeping my
eye on my trio, I placed myself in a stair-foot on the east side of the
South Bridge, from which I could see both sets of performers, as well as
those performed upon. Mrs Kerr, who, in Lady Lawson's Wynd, had no
opportunity of seeing monkeys from her garret window, seemed to have
forgotten the sorrows of her rent-day and the pawn-shop, and was gaping,
as all sight-seers do, at the evolutions of pug, one of whose best
feats, general as he was, was to extract his master's pocket
handkerchief from the one pocket of his cotton velvet coat and put it in
the other, and then came the laugh, in which, I presume, the widow of
the sorrowful face joined, when the Italian sought for the article in
the wrong pocket. Mrs Kerr did not take the lesson, though the Italian,
as a kind of philanthropist, might have had the credit of putting his
crowd upon their guard. The simple woman, from whose mind all her
sorrows seemed, for the moment, banished, enjoyed this trick
wonderfully, for I could see the careworn face lighted up with the very
extreme of satisfaction. Mary Anne was now at her back, apparently
gaping too, and behind her stood Walker and M'Guire, as interested in
pug's pocket-picking as if the trick had been one new to them, and
worthy of being learned.
Now I fairly admit that, while I expected something, I was utterly
unprepared for an attack on Mary Anne's part on her poor old friend of
the entry; for however harsh her words were to the old woman, I still
thought she had some qualms of pity excited in her by that sorrowful
wail which had struck my own ears as something touching and
heart-stirring. I had been simply false to my experience, while Mary
Anne remained true to her heartless craft. Yes, I saw the young hopeless
extract from Mrs Kerr's pocket something, doubtless the ten shillings,
and hand it to M'Guire, whereupon they all three hurried away down the
High Street.
My energy was roused in a moment, sharpened by the cruelty of this most
heartless robbery. My course was, to myself, clear, though not, perhaps,
what you might imagine. I have always had a horror of being seen rushing
along the street, like Justice under hysterics flying after a victim.
It's not decorous, and, besides, it does no good. The red-hand is a good
catch, but I have often enough known a startled thief drop a valuable
which never could be recovered, and I have found my account better
balanced by knowing my man, and catching him with the booty, when he
thinks all safe. In this case, I allowed the three to pass me, nor did I
lay hands on them. I first hurried up to Mrs Kerr, and touching her on
the shoulder,
"Is your ten shillings safe in your pocket?" said I.
"My ten shillings!" said she, nervously; "surely it is, but how do you
know I had ten shillings in my pocket?"
"Never mind that, search quick."
"The Lord help me!" she exclaimed, as she fumbled in her empty pocket;
"it's gone, with the pawn-ticket. I'm ruined, sir; it's all I have in
the world, and how am I to meet the factor? I'm ruined, ruined!"
And she burst into tears, sobbing in the midst of the crowd.
"Get as fast as you can to the Police-Office," said I, "and I'll bring
to you the pickpockets, and maybe your money. You know one of them."
"Who could be so cruel?" she inquired.
"The young woman you blabbed to in the pawnbroker's stair," said I.
"Oh, the Lord forgive her," said she, "for I told her the whole story of
my grief."
"Which you should have kept to yourself," said I. "Away to the Office,
and wait for me."
And having seen her off I proceeded down the High Street, in the
direction taken by the thieves. That confidence I have so often felt,
and perhaps somewhat vaingloriously expressed, I can account for in no
other way than viewing it as a result of my knowledge of thieves and
their haunts, joined to the impression of so many successes. On this
occasion I was so sure, that I believed I walked as if I had been going
to dinner, without being quickened by a very sharp appetite; but I did
not feel the less desire to get hold of those who had so unknowingly to
themselves roused sympathies in my breast, made sluggish, no doubt, by
the hardening influences of official routine. Mary Anne was so well
known about the High Street, that she couldn't pass without the
observation of the loungers in that crowded resort of the poor. A few
passing hints, like dots in a line, led me along till I came to
Toddrick's Wynd, at the head of which I paused, and casting a glance
down with my advantage of a good eye for a long wynd, I saw one of those
little clots of human beings, generally so interesting to me, in
proportion as they shew an interest among themselves. I was quicker now,
and rushing forward, I came upon the three I wanted, all busy in the
glorious ceremony of division, that is, giving every one _his own_, with
the exception of the proprietor. The very sums were in their hands, with
the unction inseparable from the acquisition of money.
"Five shillings to Mary Anne, and half-a-crown to each of you," said I,
"is fair. I will settle it for you, since you seem to disagree. The
pawn-ticket for the blankets is for my trouble."
There is seldom any hurry-skurry among these gentry, for they know the
worst, and are made up to it.
"Come, give me the money."
And so they did, the whole ten shillings, and the ticket to boot.
"No kail in the police cell to night, Mary Anne," said I, "any more than
in the church, where the ministers eat all the shewbread."
Mary Anne looked into my face, and burst out into a laugh,--such is the
seared and hardened temperament of thieves; and it is as well that the
punishment-mongers should know this, that they may endeavour to devise
some other and more effectual mode of reclamation.
"So you had no pity for the poor old woman?"
"The whining hag had more money than I had," was the reply.
"You mean more than the five shillings you got for the stolen plaid?"
said I.
"Who said it was stolen?"
"The lady in Gilmour Place you stole it from," said I. "I have been
looking for you to settle that small matter for three days."
A streak of new light thus thrown upon an old subject, which qualified
Mary Anne's fun, and silenced her.
At this moment my assistant came up, and we took the three to the
Office, where I brought the young thief to face with Mrs Kerr. The look
of relief which played over the grief-worn features of the woman when
she saw her four half-crowns and pawn-ticket, can only be understood by
those who are, or have been poor, and who know the narrow margin on the
verge of which flit the few and desultory illumined figures of their
happiness. It did not last long, for it was to give place to the old
melancholy; but I believe the feelings with which she looked on the face
of the hardened creature to whom she had poured out the simple history
of her sorrows, would never pass away.
"I didn't think, for all I have heard of the wickedness of human
creatures," she said, as she kept her eyes on Mary Anne, who did not
seem to feel her situation more than as quite a natural one, "that it
was in the heart of a woman to rob one, who might be her mother, of all
she had in the world."
"'Twill learn you to look at monkeys again," replied Mary Anne, with a
laugh, which gave so ludicrous a turn to the pathetic, that the
Lieutenant himself could scarcely resist it.
She might have profited by the monkey, thought I, for it offered her a
lesson which she did not take to heart.
And thus this act of the strange drama ended. The next was the
retributive one--the issue or conclusion being proportioned, not to the
amount taken, but to the enormity of the hardened depravity which it
revealed. The three were tried before the High Court. Mary Anne, as the
principal performer, getting ten years' transportation, and Walker and
M'Guire seven years each. So that, had Mary Anne's mind not been closed
against every good impression, she would have admitted that, if she had
never previously obtained anything from that Power she so irreverently
maligned, she had at length received a share of the stern and severe
reward it invariably bestows upon the vicious and the guilty.
The Child-Strippers.
How different are the estimates people form of mankind! Some say that
the world is just very much as you take it--the old notion that truth is
just as you think it. If you wear a rough glove, you may think all those
you shake hands with are rough in the palms; and if you wear a soft one,
so in the other way; and no doubt if you grin in a glass, you will get a
grin in return--if you smile, you will be repaid with a smile. All very
well this in the clever way; but I've a notion that there are depths of
depravity not to be gauged in this short plumb way, just as there are
heights of perfection not to be got at by our own estimates of
ourselves. As for the general "top-to-toe rottenness" so congenial to
some religious sects, why there's a little truth there too--at least I
would look sharp at a man who could turn his eye in and about his own
heart, and just say, with a nice smirk, "Well, I am glad to find that
man is an angel after all." It is as well for me anyhow that I am not
given to making a kaleidoscope of my heart, turning up only varieties of
beauty, without considering that a few hard pebbles form the elements
of the fine display, otherwise how could I have had any belief in the
existence of such beings as Kate Lang and Nell Duff. I would as readily
have believed in M. Chaillo's account of the Gorillas; only these
optimist gentry do admit, with a smile of satisfaction, that a hungry
tiger is not to be trusted with a live infant--no more is Kate Lang, say
I.
The practice of child-stripping, which is not so common now, is one of
those depths of depravity to which I have alluded. It is not that there
is so much cruelty done. It forms a fine subject for very tender people
who wail about the poor innocents left shivering in their shirts. But
there is more fancy than fact here; they don't shiver long in a crowded
city; nay, the stripping is sometimes productive of good, in so much as
the neighbours contrive to get the victim pretty well supplied with even
better clothes than those stolen. There is more sympathy due to the case
which happens sometimes where a heartless thief makes off with the
clothes, shirt and all, of a bather, about the solitary parts of
Granton; for here the situation of the victim is really terrible. To run
after the thief is nearly out of the question as regards success, even
if he could make up his mind to a chase in his very _natural_ condition;
nor is his remaining remedy much better--a walk so unlike that of Adam
through Paradise to the nearest house, a mile off, where he must knock
at a door, drive away the opener with a scream, bolt like a robber into
a bed-room, and get a walk home in a suit of clothes in which his
friends cannot recognise him. Our feelings depend often upon such
strange turns of thought, that a case of this latter kind, so replete
with even agony, can scarcely be told without something like a smile
working among the gravely-disposed muscles of the face of the hearer;
while that of the child, almost always left its _skin_ linen, is viewed
with indignation and pity. I cannot explain this difference; but it is
not difficult to see how, independently of the rather exaggerated
notions we entertain of the condition of the victim, the crime of
child-stripping should be visited with the execration it generally
meets.