Authors: George W. M. Reynolds,James Malcolm Rymer
"Yes, sir; and now let me thank you with
the most unfeigned sincerity for having thus saved me from a dreadful death.
Your kindness and condescension have led to a lengthy conversation between us;
and accident has made me reveal to you those particulars which have led you to
form that conclusion relative to the fate destined for myself. You must not
imagine for a moment that I would league with such villains in any of their
diabolical plans. No, sir - I would sooner be led forth to the place of
execution this minute. Although I consented to do their bidding In one respect,
I repeat - that I had mine own curiosity to gratify - that is my own
inclinations to serve: but when they wished to make me their instrument and
tool in forwarding their unholy motives, I shrank back in dismay. Oh! yes, sir
- now I comprehend the entire infamy of those men's characters: I see from
what a fearful abyss I have escaped."
There was again something so sincere and so natural in the
manner and emphasis of this young lad, that Markham surveyed him with
sentiments of mingled interest and surprise. Then all the thoughts of our hero
were directed towards the one grand object he had in view - that of delivering
a horde of ruffians ever to justice.
"The gang may be more numerous than I imagine,"
said Markham; "indeed, I know that there are a third man and a hideous
woman connected with those two assassins whom you have already named. It will
therefore be advisable to lay such a trap that will lead to the capture of them
all."
"Oh! by all means, sir," exclaimed Holford,
enthusiastically: I do not wish to show them an, mercy now!"
"We have no time to lose: it is now four o'clock,"
said Markham; "and we must arrange the plan of proceeding with the police.
You will accompany me on this enterprise."
"Mr. Markham," returned Holford, respectfully but
firmly, "I have no objection to aid you in any shape or way in capturing
these miscreants, and rooting out their headquarters; but I must beg of you not
to place me in a position where I shall be questioned how I came to make this
appointment for to-night with those two wretches. It would compel me to make a
revelation of the manner in which I employed my time during the last few
days; and
that
- for certain reasons - I could
not do!"
Markham appeared to reflect profoundly.
"I do not see how your presence can be dispensed
with," he observed at the expiration of some minutes. "In order to
discover the exact spot where the murderers dwell, it will be advisable for you
to allow yourself to be inveigled thither, and myself and the police would be
close behind you."
"Oh! never-never, sir!" cried Holford, turning
deadly pale. "Were you to miss us only for a moment - or were you to force
an entrance a single instant too late - my life would be sacrificed to those
wretches."
"True-true," said Markham: "it would he too
great a risk in a dark night-in narrow streets, and with such desperadoes as
those. No - I must devise same other means to detect the den of this vile gang.
But first of all I must communicate
with the police. You can remain
here until my return. To-morrow inquiry shall be made relative to your honesty
and industry; and, those points satisfactorily ascertained, I will take you
into my service, without asking any farther questions."
Holford expressed his gratitude for this kindness on the
part of Markham, and was then handed over to the care of Whittingham.
Having partaken of some hasty refreshment, and armed himself
with a brace of pistols, in preparation for his enterprise, Richard proceeded
with all possible speed into London.
THE WRONGS AND CRIMES OF THE POOR
THE parlour of the
Dark-House
was, as usual, filled with a very tolerable sprinkle of
queer-looking customers. One would have thought, to look at their
beards, that there was not a barber in the whole district of
the Tower Hamlets; and yet it appears to be a social peculiarity,
that the lower the neighbourhood, the more numerous the shaving-shops. Amongst
the very rich classes, nobles and gentlemen are shaved by their valets: the
males of the middle grade shave themselves; and the men of the lower orders are
shaved at barbers' shops. Hence the immense number of party-coloured poles
projecting over the pavement of miserable and dirty streets, and the total absence
of those signs in wealthy districts.
The guests in the
Dark-House
parlour formed about as pleasant an assemblage of scamps as one
could wish to behold. The establishment was a notorious resort for thieves and
persons of the worst character; and no one who frequented it thought it worthwhile
to shroud his real occupation beneath an air of false modesty. The conversation
in the parlour, therefore, usually turned upon the tricks and exploits of the
thieves frequenting the place; and many entertaining autobiographical sketches
were in this way delivered. Women often constituted a portion of the company in
the parlour; and they were invariably the most noisy and quarrelsome of all the
guests. Whenever the landlord was compelled to call in the police, to have a
clearance of the house - a proceeding to which he only had recourse when his
guests were drunk and penniless, and demanded supplies of liquor upon credit, -
a woman was sure to be at the bottom of the row; and a virago of Spitalfields
would think no more of smashing every window in the house, or dashing out the
landlord's brains with one of his own pewter- pots, than of tossing off a
tumbler of raw gin without winking.
On the evening of which we are writing there were several
women in the parlour of the
Dark. House.
These horrible females were the "blowens" of the thieves
frequenting the house, and the principal means of disposing of the property
stolen by their paramours. They usually ended by betraying their lovers to the
police, in fits of jealousy; and yet - by some strange infatuation on the part
of those lawless men - the women who acted in this way speedily obtained fresh
husbands upon the morganatic system. For the most part, these females are
disfigured by intemperance; and their conversation is far more revolting than
that of the males. Oh! there is no barbarism in the whole world so truly
horrible and ferocious - so obscene and shameless - as that which is found in
the poor districts of London!
Alas! what a wretched mockery it is to hold grand meetings
at Exeter Hall, and proclaim, with all due pomp and ceremony, how many savages
in the far-off islands of the globe have been converted to Christianity, when
here - at home, under our very eyes - even London itself swarms with infidels of
a more dangerous character:- how detestable is it for philanthropy to be
exercised in clothing negroes or Red Men thousands of miles distant, while our
own poor are cold and naked at our very doors :- how monstrously absurd to
erect twelve new churches in Bethnal Green, and withhold the education that
would alone enable the poor to appreciate the doctrines enunciated from that
dozen of freshly-built pulpits!
But to return
to
the parlour of the
Dark-House.
In one corner sate the Resurrection Man and the Cracksman, each
with a smoking glass of gin-and-water before him. They mingled but little in
the conversation, contenting themselves with laughing an approval of any thing
good that fell upon
their ears, and listening to the
discourse that took place around them.
"Now, come, tell us, Joe," said a woman with eyes
like saucers, hair like a bundle of tow, and teeth like dominoes, and
addressing herself to a man who was dressed like a coal-heaver, - "tell
us, Joe. how you come to be a prig?"
"Ah! do, Joe - there as good feller," echoed a
dozen voices, male and female.
"Lor' it's simple enough," cried the man thus
appealed to: "every poor devil must become a thief in time.''
"That's what you say, Tony," whispered the
Cracksman to the Resurrection Man.
" Of course he must," continued the coal-heaver
"more partickler them as follows my old trade - for though I've got on the
togs of a whipper, I ain't one no longer. The dress is convenient - that's
all."
"The Blue-bottles don't twig-eh?" cried the woman
with the domino teeth.
"That's it: but you asked me how I come to be a prig -
I'll tell you. My father was a coal-whipper, and had three sons. He brought us
all up to be coal-whippers also. My eldest brother was drownded in the pool one
night when he was drunk, after only drinking about two pots of the publicans'
beer: my other brother died of hunger in Cold-Bath Fields prison, where he was
sent for three months for taking home a bit of coal one night to his family
when he couldn't get his wages paid him by the publican that hired the gang in
which he worked. My father died when he was forty - and any one to have seen
him would have fancied he was sixty-five at least - so broke down was he with
hard work and drinking. But no coal-whipper lives to an old age: they all die
off at about forty-old men in the wery prime of life."
"And why's that?" demanded the large-toothed lady.
"Why not?" repeated the man. "Because a
coal-whipper isn't a human being - or if he is, he isn't treated as such: and
so I've always thought he must be different from the rest of the world."
"How isn't he treated like any one else? "
"In the first place, he doesn't get paid for his labour
in a proper way. Wapping swarms with low public-houses, the landlords of which
act as middle-men between the owners of the colliers and the men that a hired
to unload 'em. A coal-whipper can't get employment direct from the captain of
the collier: the working of the
collier is farmed by them landlords I speak of; and the whipper must apply at
their houses. Those whippers as drinks the most always gets employment first;
and whether a whipper chooses to drink beer or not, it's always sent three
times a-day on board the colliers for the gangs. And, my eye! what stuff it is!
Often and often have we throwed it away, 'cos we could'nt possibly drink it -
and it must be queer liquor that a coal-whipper won't drink!"
"I should think so too. But go on."
"Well, I used to earn from fifteen to eighteen
shillings a-week; and out of that, eight was always stopped for the beer; and
if I didn't spend another or two on Saturday night when I received the balance,
the landlord set me down as a stingy feller and put a cross agin my name in his
book."
"What was that for?"
"Why, not to give me any more work till he was either
forced to do so for want of hands, or I made it up with him by standing a crown
bowl of punch. So what with one thing and another, I had to keep myself, my
wife, and three children, on about seven or eight shillings a-week - after
working from light to dark."
"And now your wife and children is better purrided
for?" said the woman with the huge teeth.
"Yes - indeed! in the workus," answered the man,
sharply. "So now you see what a coal-whipper's life is. He can't be a
sober man if he wishes to - because he must pay for a certain quantity of
drink; and so of course he won't throw it sway, unless it's so bad he can't
keep it on his stomach."
"And was that often the case?"
"Often and often. Well - he can't be a saving man,
because he has no chance of getting his wages under his own management. He is
the publican's slave - the publican's tool and instrument. Negro slavery is
nothing to it. No tyranny is equal to the tyranny of them publicans."
"And why isn't the plan altered?"
"Ah! why? What do the owners of the colliers, or the
people that the cargo's consigned to, care about the poor devils that unload?
The publicans takes the unloading on contract, and employs the whippers in such
a way as to get an enormous profit. Talk of appealing to the owners - what do
they care? There has been meetings got up to change the system - and what's the
consekvence? Why, them whippers as attended them became marked men, never got
no more employment, and drownded themselves in despair, or turned prigs like
me."
"Ah! that's better than suicide."
"Well - I don't know, now! But them meetings as I was
a-speaking of, got up deputations to the Court of Aldermen, and the matter was
referred to the Coal and Corn Committee - and there was, as usual, a great
talk, but nothink done. Then an application was made to some Minister - I don't
know which; and he sent back a letter with a seal as big as a crown-piece, just
to say that he’d received the application, and would give it his earliest
attention. Some time passed away, and no more notice was ever taken of it in
that quarter; and so, I s'pose, a Minister's earliest attention means ten or a
dozen years.'
"What a shame to treat people so."
"It's only the poor that's treated so. And now I think
I have said enough to show why I turned prig, like a many more whippers from
the port of London. There isn't a more degraded, oppressed, and brutalised set
of men in the world than the whippers. They are born with examples of drunken
fathers afore their eyes; and drunken fathers makes drunken mothers; and
drunken parents makes sons turn out thieves, and daughters prostitutes ;- and
that a the existence of the coal-whippers of Wapping. It ain't their fault:
they haven't edication and self-command to refuse the drink that's forced upon
them, and that they must pay for ;- and their sons and daughters shouldn't be
blamed for turning out bad. How can they help it? And yet one reads in the
papers that the upper classes is always a-crying out about the dreadful
immorality of the poor!"
"The laws - the laws, you see, Tony," whispered
the Cracksman to his companion.
"Of course," answered the Resurrection Man. "
Here we are, in this room, upwards of twenty thieves and prostitutes: I'll be
bound to say that the laws and the state of society made eighteen of them what
they are."
"Nobody knows the miseries of a coal-whipper's
life," continued the orator of the evening, " but him that's been in
it his-self. He is always dirty - always lurking about public-houses when not
at work - always ready to drink - always in debt - and always dissatisfied with
his own way of living, which isn't, however, his fault. There's no hope for
coal-whippers or their families. The sons that don't turn out thieves must lead
the same terrible life of cart-horse labour and constant drinking, with the
certainty of dying old men at forty ;- and the daughters that don't turn out
prostitutes marry whippers, and draw down upon their heads all the horrors and
sorrows of the life I have been describing."
"Well - I never knowed all this before!"
"No - and there's a deal of misery of each kind in
London that isn't known to them as dwells in the other kinds of wretchedness:
and if these things gets represented in Parliament, the cry is, '
Oh!
the people's always
complaining;
they're never satisfied!
' "
"Well, you speak of each person knowing his own species
of misery, and being ignorant of the nature of the misery next door," said
a young and somewhat prepossessing woman, but upon whose face intemperance and
licentiousness had made sad havoc; "all I can say is, that people see
girls like us laughing and joking always in public - but they little know how
we weep and moan in private."
"Drink gin then, as I do," cried the woman with
the large teeth.
"Ah!
you
know well enough," continued the young female who had
previously spoken, "that we
do
drink a great deal too much of that! My father used to sell
jiggered gin
in George Yard, Whitechapel."
"And what the devil is jiggered gin?"
demanded one of the male guests.
"It a made from molasses, beer, and vitriol. Lor',
every one knows what jiggered gin is. Three wine glasses of it will make the
strongest man mad drunk. I'll tell you one thing," continued the young
woman, "which you do not seem to know - and that is, that the very, very
poor people who are driven almost to despair and suicide by their sorrows, are
glad to drink this jiggered gin, which is all that they can afford. For three
halfpence they may have enough to send them raving; and then what do they think
or care about their miseries?"
"Ah! very true, said the coal whipper. "I've heard
of this before."
"Well-my father sold that horrid stuff," resumed
the young woman; "and though he was constantly getting into trouble for
it, he didn't mind, but the moment he came out of prison, he took to his old
trade again. I was his only child; and my mother died when I was about nine
years old She was always drunk with the jiggered gin; and one day she fell into
the fire and was burnt to death. I had no one then who cared any thing for me
but used to run about in the streets with all the boys in the neighbourhood. My
father took in lodgers, and sixteen or seventeen of us, boys and girls all
huddled together, used to sleep in one room not near so big as this. There was
fifteen lodging houses of the same kind in George Yard at that time; and it was
supposed that about two hundred and seventy-five persons used to sleep in those
houses every night, male and female lodgers all pigging together. Every sheet,
blanket, and bolster, in my father's house was marked with STOP THIEF, in large
letters. Well - at eleven years old I went upon the town; and if I didn't bring
home so much money every Saturday night to my father, I used to be well
thrashed with a rope's end on my bare back."
" Serve you right too, a pretty girl like you."
"Ah! you may joke about it - but it was no joke to me!
I would gladly have done anything in an honest way to get my livelihood —"
"Like me, when I was young," whispered the
Resurrection Man to his companion.
"Exactly. Let's hear what the gal has got to say for
herself," returned the Cracksman; "the lush has made her
sentimental;- she'll soon be crying drunk."
"But I was doomed, it seemed," continued the young
woman, "to live in this horrible manner. When I was thirteen or fourteen
my father died, and I was then left to shift for myself. I moved down into
Wapping, and frequented the long-rooms belonging to the public-houses there. I
was then pretty well off; because the sailors that went to these places always
had plenty of money and was very generous. But I was one night suspected of
hocussing and robbing a sailor, and - though if I was on my death-bed I could
swear that I never had any hand in the affair at all - I was so blown upon that
I was forced to shift my quarters. So I went to a