The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 284: what you’re looking at

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7? | THE MYSTERIES OF THE COUBT. 271 now. Suffice it to say, that without for an instant recoliecting the possibility—or indeed the proba- bility of being interrapted while pryizg into the mysteries of the bulky volume, he continued to study its contents with the deepest attention » and the more profoundly le examined into it, the more was he astonished and bewildered at the extraor- dinary mass of information which Lawrence Samp- won had acquired relative to al! the bad characters and flash houses in London. Nor less was-the “Hangman astounded at the remarkable perse- verance, the unflinching dauntlessness, the ex- quisite skill, and the reckless indifference to danger, which characterised the Bow Street offi- cer, and which qualities were made apparent enough by the various adventares, enterprises, and procéedings obronicied in the diary. We mast, however, leave Daniel Coffin for a few minates to peruse the entries chiefly regarding himself or his companions in iniquity, while we proceed to furnish our readers with a few speci- mens of those parts of Mr. Sampson's journal which may be termed his comments or éxperiences. And therefore, without farther preface, we quote the following extracts -— “* Parilament being over, most of the beggars are going out of town to make the round of the country-seats of the nobility and gentry. A great many of them are dressed Mfke old soldiers or sailors; and they are all well provided with lists of those houses and estates where military or naval officers dwell Be it observed that before the beg- gars go out into the country upon these expeditions, they meet at certain cadgers’-haunts, low lodging-houses, or boozing-kens in London, and exchange information as to what country-seats are good te call af. Because as the samé parties cannot call twice at the same place during the season, they lose nothing by giving each other such in- formation. In fact, it is a constant practice with begyurs to compare notes in this manner. When once ont in the country in Autumn, they remain out while the Aare-skin tine Is on; because while buying and selling hare-skins, they are able to pass gway a great quantity of bad money. “Women hire infants for fourpence or slxpence a day each, and make at least five shillings a day by carrying them abont—particulariy if a woman hires two children at the same time and represents them as twins. ** There are some beggars who know every good house in the country. Some who go the highfly, or play the part of broken-down gentiemer, manage to make ten or fifteen pounds a week. Sometimes they take drawings with them, which they present to the ladles whom they see at pariour-windows, or walking in gardens, or on lawns, at country-seats, lcaving the roward to their generosity. Sometimes they bribe gentlemen's servants to take in thelr begging letters, ami just throw in any little word of com- misecration that may assist thelr case. Just the opposite of these are the beggars that go upon the shallow—that ts, half-naked. They obtain from compassionate persons quantities of left-off clothes, by which they make as much sometimes as twetve or fifteen shillings per day. This is one of the most lucrative systems of beggary ; but it of course succeeds best in the cold weather, when the beggars manage to shiver and shake like aspens, and thus attract avast amount of sympathy. The- system of hawking is also excellent: many smal) shopkeepers do not make in a day 80 much as some of these itincrant venders. Take for instance a pair of knit cotton braces: the hawker buys them at Surpence, and sells them at one shilling and two- pence—or at all events a shilling. He pute on the extra halfpence expecting to be beaten down.® - “Beggars not only provide themselves with lists of the i ere ee ee eee © India-robber braces cost 12s. « dozen: and the hawker sells them at 38. a-piece. Steel pens can be bought as low as 44, a gross—that is, twelve dozen; and the hawker can sell three or four pens for a penny. . — Owe eeeeetime @- ~ resifences of benevolent people in town and country, but also have lists of all charitable Societies and Institations, to which they constantly apply in the winter; such as for coals, potatoes, &., which they always sell as soon as ob- tained, for half their valuo. Women get baby-linen, tickets of admission to lying-in-hospitals, &., all of which they {m- mediately sell for what they ean get. “Of an evening in London, the beggars meet at their favourite haunts, where they eat and drink of the best. At night they generally stay in doors and get drumk; but a few of them dreas themselves out in decent style and go to the cheap concerts or to low gaming-houses. Pn Petti- coat Lane, Whitechapel, there are several low gaming- houses, kept by Jews; and as it is chiefly here that the beggars sell the clothes which they obtain when ont on the shallow, 20 f is hither they come to lose thelr ill-got money again at the gaming-table. Nearly all the Jews in Petticoat Lane are receivers of stolen goods, or fences; one or two of them keep fence-shops up at the West-End as branch establish- ments, and even sometimes send large quantities of stolen property abrom@i. There are a great many pablicans who buy stolen property, and then sell it again at a profit to the Jew-fences. Some of these Jews. go into the country once or twice a year, travel from town to town, and sell to country-dealers plunder of the metropolis. There are many Christian jewellers and silver- sraiths who buy property direct from thieves; and it is cominop enough with refiners, who never ask any questions at all. @ wealthiest Jew-fences have agents, and are themselves bat seldom seen in the transactions. “* Another dangerous class of persons who profit by the crimes which they do not directly commit themselves, are the putiers-up of burglaries; and these are very often marine-store dealers, or else flashy-looking fallows frequent- ing public-houses. This latter class is specially dangerous . they get hold of servant girls who come to &tch the beer, pretend to court them, worm out of them the secrets of the houses to which they belong, and then give the requi- site information to the cracksmen or bargiars. hivery- servants are frequently puéiers-up of burglaries. The cracksaman or burglar generally dresses shabby, like a dis- tressed tradesman: they remain al! day in low public-houses or boozing-kens, drinking or playing at skittles. “At the bottom of Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell, is Capel Court; and there lives a blacksmith who makes housebreakers' implements. Cracksmen go to him and give their orders: he tells them when the implements will! be ready, and appoints to meet them at some boozing-ken, porhaps quite in another part of London. ‘The sum agreed upon is paid at this interview} and the blacksmith hands over a brown paper parcel, containing all the implements, stating that the packet has just come up from the coun- try.” @ Having thas afforded our readers a specimen of Mr. Larry Sampeon’s diary, we will now return to he Hangman, whom we left busily engaged in consulting those entries and statements which spe- cially regarded himself and the members of the gang to which he belonged. He was still deep in his somewhat unpleasant though interesting studies, when the thought sud- denly floated to his mind that he was incurring a great risk of detection by prolonging his intrusion in the privacy of the officer's sanctum. He there- * The preceding information fs given upon the authority of the police-book referred to in the annotation at page 370: and relative to Petticoat Lane we were particularly struck by the following remarks:—‘“ The Jews here can raise money to purchase any amount of property. There is one Jew, L—— L——=, who has bought as much as 12003 worth of stolen property at one time. If the royal crown and all the jewels were stolen from the Towér and taken down to Petticoat Lane, the money world bé raised fit less than a couple of hours to bay them all. The great mer- chants could not raise @ foreign loan quicker upon Change," ? @ —~ | ECOMICHOOolKS.conn